Hemlock #21 - Iran in the Modern World: Five Sideways Reflections, Operation AJAX, FDR and the Yalta Pact with Saudi Arabia, Oil and the AIOC, Mossadegh, Israel, Nuclear Blackmail, and the Great Satan

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Nuclear weapons in Iran, Middle East environmental crisis, Israeli grand strategy, US covert action skullduggery, and a healthy reminder that it's all just oil at the end of the day.

References

FDR and Saudi King Abdul Aziz

https://www.history.com/articles/fdr-saudi-arabia-king-oil

Nuclear Blackmail at Conference of Ministers

Byrnes, on the eve of the first postwar foreign ministers conference to be held in London, remained adamant in opposition to any attempt to cooperate with the Soviets on atomic energy and viewed the bomb as a diplomatic asset that would make the Soviets more amenable. As Stimson observed in his diary, Byrnes went to London fully set on having "the implied threat of the bomb in his pocket during the conference."...

In a telling innuendo at the Conference of Foreign Ministers in London in 1945, Soviet Foreign Commissar Vyacheslav Molotov asked U.S. Secretary of State James Byrnes whether he carried the atomic bomb in his side pocket. Byrnes warned, “If you don’t cut out all this stalling and let us get down to work, I am going to pull an atomic bomb out of my hip pocket and let you have it.” Molotov is recorded as having “laughed” at this blatant atomic blackmail. “The Allies are pressing on you to break your will and force you to make concessions,” Stalin coached him from Moscow.

https://warontherocks.com/2022/02/moscow-musings-on-brinksmanship-from-stalin-to-putin/

Operation AJAX and the CIA

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/1953_Iranian_coup_d%27%C3%A9tat

Stephen Kinzer's Books:

All the Shah's Men (Iran 53 and the CIA)

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/All_the_Shah%27s_Men

Overthrow America's Century of Regime Change from Hawaii to Iraq

https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/90540.Overthrow