Injustice in Iran - Research Paper Example

An interesting and unique case of this phenomenon is Iran. Today it is public knowledge that the American CIA helped to overthrow in 1953 the democratically-elected government of Mohammed Mossadegh in order to establish a regime more sympathetic to Western oil interests. The fact that the US has played such a significant role in modern Iranian history is hardly something worth boasting about. One word that would well describe the history of events in Iran of the last 50-60 years would be tragedy.

A despotic government, through the insidious intervention of a foreign power, was installed and which went on to commit many crimes against the people of Iran. The reaction to that regime, the regime of Shah Pahlavi, helped to fuel to the 1979 Iranian Revolution. Today the similarities between the oppression and abuse of power by the Shah’s regime and that of the current Islamist one are quite alarming. It was Karl Marx who famously said that “History repeats itself, first as tragedy, second as farce” (Marx 2010).

His comments can be applied to Iran where a revolution took place which wanted to overthrow what was seen as a tyrannical and unjust government so as to implement a traditionally Islamist and “uncorrupt” government. Sadly, the government of the Islamic Republic of Iran has shown itself to be just as unjust and oppressive as that of its predecessor. The Iranian Shah, after seizing full autocratic power in Iran following the overthrow of the Mossadegh government, instituted a repressive government in order to take and maintain power.

A key part of this power structure was the “Sazeman-I Ettela-at Va Amniyat-I Kishvar” or as it was commonly known, SAVAK, the Iranian National and Intelligence Organization. Founded in 1957, SAVAK kept eyes on domestic opponents of the Shah’s regime and “staged several operations to influence political events…[for] the late 1950’s were a time of great political