【Military Sub-Plane】: Unlimited system
What exactly happened between the United States and Iran that made hardcore allies a sworn enemy?
One. The clouds of war are thick
In the first few days of 2020, a fierce confrontation in the Middle East labeled 2020, which carries the beautiful vision of countless people, early as turbulent and dangerous, and the protagonists of this "opening drama" are two countries that have long hated each other and have good strength - the United States and Iran.
Since january 3, 2020, the United States used drones to assassinate Iran's "key general" - Qasim Suleimani, the relationship between the United States and Iran has come to the brink of war, after nearly a week of diplomatic and public opinion confrontation, on January 8, more than a dozen surface-to-surface missiles took off from Iranian territory and shot at the Iraqi "Assad" air base with a large number of US troops.
▲ Iran's surface-to-surface missile launch instantaneously
I don't know whether it is fortunate or unfortunate, living in this era, we have once again "inadvertently" witnessed history thousands of miles away -- this is the first time after the end of the Cold War that a country's regular military forces have taken the initiative to launch an attack on the world hegemon, the United States; it is also the closest to the so-called "Third World War" after the end of the Cold War.
Although under the inevitable effect of interest considerations and rational cognition, the two sides invariably chose a low-key cooling treatment, but the temporary "sound of gold and troops" does not mean the elimination of danger.
The United States has publicly expressed its desire to "seriously negotiate" with Iran.
In fact, the tense relationship between the United States and Iran has been hovering at the freezing point for more than a decade: from the Bush administration listing Iran as the "axis of evil", to the brief "peace" after the Obama administration signed the "Iranian Nuclear Agreement", to the war of words after Trump took office, the attack on the oil tanker in the Gulf of Oman, and the attack on the Saudi oil field, finally ushered in a "small outbreak".
Obviously, the relationship between the United States and Iran has fallen into the dead end of "impossible negotiation", and such a tense situation has also made countless melon-eating viewers can't help but sigh the beautiful but short "honeymoon period" between the United States and Iran. What has iran experienced in the past that makes the "hardcore" allies of the United States and Iran eventually become enemies who hate each other to the bone?
Persia: A past of glory and humiliation
To understand the feud between modern Iran and the United States, we have to talk about the glorious history of the Iranian country. Iran, formerly known as "Persia", is one of the oldest civilizations in the world, as early as 4000 BC, the Iranian region was born of civilization, and has appeared in Elam and Medes two highly developed civilizations.
The great advance in the level of civilization development allowed the Persians to enter the world stage before other civilizations - in the sixth century BC, when China was still divided and attacked each other, Persia had unified the Iranian plateau, conquered the Middle East and Greece, and established the world's first world empire across the three continents of Europe, Asia and Africa, the Persian Empire, and Persian civilization reached its peak.
▲ Map of the territory of the Persian Empire at its peak
The splendid and prosperous ancient civilization and the powerful empire that unified Europe, Asia and Africa, these historical legacies have become the solid cornerstone of national pride and cohesion in the hearts of the Persian nation.
▲ Ancient Persian frescoes
Many Persian artifacts are preserved in Western museums
After the fall of the Persian Empire, this land was successively ruled by foreign forces such as Alexander, the Arab Empire, the Seljuk Turks, the Khwarazm, and the Mongol Khanate.
Although there were also many Persian native regimes during this period, in essence, with the rise of other forces in the Middle East, Central Asia and other regions, the Persian (Iranian) region as a middle ground can no longer maintain an independent and completely autonomous and stable development path, but often becomes a vassal of the new powerful empire.
▲ Painting of the Persian army fighting Alexander's army
Junwu felt that the fate of frequent foreign invasion and domination and the achievements of civilization that the Persians were proud of in ancient times formed a huge psychological gap in the hearts of the Persian nation. The Persians want to restore the former glory of the Persian Empire and achieve true independence, which is the reason why the Persian civilization has been able to withstand thousands of years of ups and downs, but it can still survive to this day. It also greatly affected Iran's independent, hard-line style of conduct in the future.
Three. Iran under the iron heel of the great powers
Contrary to expectations, until modern times, Iranians have not been able to really control their own destiny, and by the late 18th century (1779) when the Kajar dynasty (also known as the Qajar dynasty and the Qajar dynasty) was established in Iran, Iran's northern neighbor, the Russian Empire, had begun to rise and continue to expand outwards, and the British Empire, which had expanded its sphere of influence from Egypt and the Middle East, was also approaching Iran from the west, and Iran once again became a "chessboard" for foreign conflicts and confrontations.
As more Western powers entered, Iran's game became more and more intense: Russia annexed Georgia in northern Iran in 1801, and the British Empire made Iran pay reparations through successive wars. Since then, France, Austria, the United States and other Western countries have "visited" and signed various unequal treaties with Iran...
Painting depicting the war between Britain and Iran (known in the West as the "Anglo-Persian War")
In the late 19th century and early 20th century, the situation in Iran gradually became clear, and in 1907 Russia and Britain completed the partition of Iran, the north of Iran was placed in the Russian sphere of influence, the south was assigned to the British (the middle zone was a buffer zone), and the two families firmly controlled Iran's many privileges such as road construction and mining, training of troops, and so on.
▲ Map of the territorial changes of the Kajar dynasty in the 19th century
Red and green areas are lost (Russian occupation)
The red dotted line is the Russian sphere of influence, and the blue solid line is the British sphere of influence
The Kajar dynasty in Iran during this period was more like an agent and caretaker of Western interests, maintaining its own crumbling rule by selling interests to the great powers and signing unequal treaties. Although the newly appointed king in the mid-to-late 19th century (1848) tried to "reform and change the law", it ultimately failed, and Iran did not complete the "turnaround", but completely degenerated into a semi-colonial and semi-feudal country, and various contradictions were greatly deepened.
Doesn't it feel a little familiar? Yes, apart from the slight differences in timelines, the recent history of China, another ancient civilization "next door", is almost the same as Iran's bumpy experience.
▲ Photograph of the Qing court signing the Treaty of Xinugu with the great powers
Another similarity is that the suffering of Modern China has inspired the Chinese society to save the country and survive and strive for national independence, and the same is true in Iran, because of historical, religious and other reasons, this trend of thought in Iran may be stronger or even more extreme than china.
Such a decadent and unpopular feudal rule naturally could not last long, and in the East, the Qing Dynasty of China was overthrown by the sound of gunfire, and the Kajar dynasty of Iran could not escape the fate of being used by the great powers and abandoned.
Four. Pahlavi dynasty
In 1921, at the behest of the British, Iranian pro-British officers staged a bloodless coup d'état, the Kajar dynasty was overthrown, and an officer named Pahlavi took power in the country. After forcefully suppressing the rebellions that had sprung up in the country, the elder Pahlavi became the new king in 1926 and established the Pahlavi dynasty.
In the time of Iran's internal upheavals, the world situation is also changing. In 1917, the Russian Revolution took place, the Tsar was overthrown, and the nascent Soviet regime had no time to take care of internal and external problems, and lost control of Iran. Britain, on the other hand, took the opportunity to grow bigger and was kind to the newly established Pahlavi dynasty, so Britain became the only "boss" of Iran.
In World War II, Iran once again ushered in a key historical inflection point. In World War II, the two major parties to the war, Britain and Germany, have inextricable relations with Iran, britain is a "suzerainty" on the top, and Germany is a "friendly country" that cooperates closely in the fields of oil trade and infrastructure construction.
In the end, Iran chose "neutrality" in an attempt to avoid strife. However, Iran's "neutrality" is still fundamentally different from the neutrality of Switzerland, Sweden and Spain in Europe, and as a long-colonized and resource-rich and geographically important Middle East country, Iran's fate is still unable to be controlled by itself. Post-war "neutral" Iran suffered the same treatment as the defeated countries – occupied by the United States, the Soviet Union and Britain, and most of the richest oil resources were controlled by foreign companies.
▲ Iranian Prime Minister Mohammed Mossade, who is pushing for the nationalization of oil resources
Although Iran was occupied by three countries, the United Kingdom lost a lot of voice in the Middle East after the two major wars; while the Soviet Union was in the recovery period after the war, in the Cold War, it was on the defensive, and did not want to have too many entanglements with the United States in the core areas of non-interests, which gave the United States "an opportunity".
In 1951, Prime Minister Mohammed Mosses, who advocated the annexation of oil to The nationalization of Iran, came to power and embarked on a radical reform of oil nationalization. He nationalized the British-Iranian joint venture oil company and cancelled the BP concession, which prevented Britain from obtaining oil from Iran and greatly ignited the former "suzerainty".
Arguably, Iran's attempts to nationalize oil are very similar to the policies of many independent developing countries in Asia, Africa, and Latin America after the war (such as the Allende government in Chile, which recovered copper mining rights), hoped to regain control of its own resources from Western companies, but ultimately failed in coups, rebellions, and armed interventions controlled by extraterritorial forces.
▲ Pahlavi king (Pahlavi Jr.) who monopolized power after the 1951 coup d'état
Iran's "boss" has also changed from Britain to the United States
Iran, which has not yet escaped the control of external forces, has also failed to get rid of its "bad luck". In 1953, Britain commissioned the CIA to stage a coup d'état in Iran, and the Mossadean government collapsed. The United States also took advantage of the opportunity of this coup d'état to hold Iran's "baton" in its hands. Iran has since become an "ally" of the United States in the Middle East.
Five. The White Revolution"
Since then, iran's Pahlavi regime, with the support of the United States, has been in Iranian politics. A series of reforms called the "White Revolution" were carried out in many fields, including the economy, religion, and culture: the establishment of their own petrochemical heavy industry and the establishment of a complete industrial system; the implementation of judicial and administrative reforms, and the implementation of the separation of church and state;
Vigorously develop Western-style modern secular education, open regular primary and secondary schools and technical schools in towns and cities, and create many institutions of higher learning, including the University of Tehran; implement a compulsory military service system to weaken the local armed forces. Procurement of new weapons from the United States and other Western countries, the establishment of arsenals, the construction of a complete army, navy and air force, and so on...
It is undeniable that these measures have indeed played a positive role in promoting Iran's modernization and economic development. Between 1968 and 1978, Iran's economy grew at an average annual rate of 16%-17%, with per capita GDP jumping from $160 in 1961 to $2,250 in 1978 (China was only $220 in 1978), and the urbanization rate increased from 30% to 52%.
▲Iran's GDP growth in the reform period (blue line)
The reform has opened the door for Iran to enter modernization, Iran has initially established a relatively complete light and heavy industrial system, the industrial structure has been upgraded, and has the ability to further develop high-tech industries such as atomic energy and electronics industry; the promotion of culture and education has greatly improved the quality of the people;
The construction of the military industry has laid a solid foundation for Iran to become a rare country in the Middle East with a relatively independent and complete military industrial system, and now in the Middle East where "imported" weapons are everywhere, Iran can achieve self-improvement, research and development or production on some high-precision weapons, which is really valuable.
▲ Iran launched the "Karaal" main battle tank in 2017
It is believed to be an improved version of Iran's domestic production based on the Russian-made T-72B tank
At this time, the streets of Iranian cities were bustling with traffic; women dressed brightly, sitting and reading in elegant parks could be seen everywhere; and petrochemical trade brought a steady stream of wealth to Iran (in 1976, Iran's oil industry reached its peak, producing 6.6 million barrels of crude oil per day, ranking fourth in the world and second in sales).
▲ Iranian women reading in the park
The Iranian military had extremely advanced equipment at that time (60s and 70s) and was the only overseas user of the American F-14 "Tomcat" fighter (the United States also built a special "Kidd" class destroyer for it, and eventually cancelled exports to Iraq due to the political upheaval in Iran).
▲ Iranian Air Force F-14 and U.S.-made tanker (Boeing 707)
At first glance, everything in Iran under U.S. control is "thriving," so much so that the Chinese Internet is full of passages that "Iranians miss the Pahlavi era," but the digital progress does not fully reflect the real state of Iranian society, and this top-down reform has not allowed the civilian class, which makes up the majority of Iran's population, to enjoy much.
More than 50 percent of Iran's population was "hurt" the most, and economic reforms were mostly in the industrial sector, while traditional, more populous agricultural sectors were lackluster, with more than 60 percent of Iranian farmers owning only 5 percent of the country's land in 1962 and being brutally exploited when renting land to landlords.
Since then, King Pahlavi has carried out the so-called "agrarian revolution", but the situation has not been fundamentally improved, and most of the land is still controlled by large farmers and agricultural companies. The "idea" of the king's reform of "not agriculture" has continuously reduced the proportion of investment in agriculture (from 16.6% to 5.1% in 1963-1971), which has plunged the country's agriculture into a vicious circle:
Poor Iranian farmers
The vast number of peasants are struggling to expand production on the subsistence line. The gap in food demand caused by population growth can only be filled by imported agricultural products, and the influx of imported agricultural products has formed dumping, which in turn has once again hit the peasants' enthusiasm for production. As a result, peasant dissatisfaction with the Pahlavi regime deepened.
Economically, the whole country also lacks long-term planning, and is still in a relatively backward stage of "relying on the sky to eat" - for example, in 1974, the oil crisis broke out and the oil price soared, Iran made a "windfall", and began to frantically "buy, buy and buy" (buy talents, technical equipment from abroad), "cover the cover" (vigorously engage in factories, urban construction); by the 1975 world economic crisis, the oil price fell, Iran's economic growth rate plummeted to 2.6%, and the days were tight.
Blindness in economic reform has led to serious consequences. Domestic inflation soared from 9.82 per cent in 1973 to 27.29 per cent in 1977, and the cost of living in cities soared. Originally, during the reforms, a large number of rural people moved to the cities to work and improved their living standards, but inflation in the late 1970s made the living conditions of urban workers worse, and the workers gradually fell to the side of opposing the king.
Iran's inflation rate from 1971 to 1978
Reforms in the cultural and educational fields were more radical, with the authorities imposing restrictions on Islam, the state religion of Iran, the abolition of traditional Islamic sharia by The Pahlavi, the change of the traditional Islamic calendar to the Persian Imperial calendar, and the imposition of various measures to change customs throughout society.
Objectively speaking, the starting point of secular reform is indeed good, but the rulers have ignored Iran's long-standing and deep-rooted religious traditions, and the pace of cultural and educational reform has been too large and radical, completely out of touch with Iranian society, which not only angers clergy and conservative religious figures, but also does not win the favor of the grassroots masses.
Grassroots complained, but the top level enshrined the United States as the "emperor", the United States, Britain and France oil companies controlled Iran's oil resources, more than 50% of the oil export profits flowed into their hands;
▲ Iran's oil industry
The United States has also sent a large delegation to monitor Iran's economic, health, public security, food and other management departments in the name of "supervision", and even undertaken the training task of Iran's gendarmerie; the US military stationed in Iran also enjoys extraterritorial jurisdiction, almost "doing whatever it wants".
What was the life of the upper rulers like at this time? To put it simply, it is extravagant, corrupt, and the biggest beneficiary of this top-down reform is not the people at the bottom, but a small number of elites.
▲ Well-dressed High-ranking Iranian nobles
According to statistics, until 1976, the king's oil income had accumulated to $1 billion, while the king's family, including 63 princes and queens, had accumulated $5 billion to $20 billion, while the common people were still plagued by inflation, the gap between rich and poor widened sharply, and social contradictions became more prominent.
▲ Grand celebration of "Celebrating the 2500th Anniversary of the Founding of the Persian Empire"
To make matters worse, in order to suppress popular resentment, King Pahlavi accepted the anglo-American proposal and adopted a repressive rule at home: all political parties were abolished, all Iranians could only join the king's National Baath Party and had to pay dues; SAVAK (secret police) was set up to arrest and exile dissident religious figures, and the country seemed to have a "stable situation, so that the CIA confidently declared in its 1978 report that there would be no revolution in Iran."
However, this was only the calm before the storm.
Six. Outbreak: The Islamic Revolution
"One of my fatal mistakes was to blindly follow the West and believe in American friendship. I have allowed the country to practice democracy and modernization beyond what it can accept."
— The Dying Confession of King Pahlavi
As mentioned earlier, in the long and bumpy history of Iranians, the national character has gradually taken on the distinctive characteristics of independence and toughness. After the Pahlavi dynasty came to power in Iran, the Iranians also pinned their hopes for freedom from foreign control and true autonomy on King Pahlavi.
Yet the facts poured cold water on the Iranians. If the reform policy merely created resentment among different classes in Iran, the Pahlavi regime's attitude towards external forces touched the tight, sensitive nationalist "red line" in the hearts of all Iranians.
▲ The Pahlavi royal family
The Iranians realized that the Pahlavi dynasty, which is now in cahoots with the United States and Britain, is not fundamentally different from the humiliated and cowardly Kajar dynasty of decades ago, the only difference being that russia and Britain, which used to play with Iran, have now become the United States.
Slogan on the pictorial: "Shah is a puppet of the United States"
(The word "shah" is a transliteration of the title of emperor in Persian.)
As a result, the ambitious and ambitious Pahlavi King finally "successfully" pushed himself to the opposite side of all Iranians with reforms, and the United States, the manipulator behind the scenes, was naturally regarded as the "culprit".
Dissatisfaction with the status quo of the country, hatred of foreign powers, national sentiments for independence and self-determination, various ideas and angers converged under the "calm" created by the Pahlavi powers, converging into a force of resistance that could turn the world upside down, and since October 1977, iran has been in the midst of frequent large-scale demonstrations and riots.
Riots broke out on the streets of Iran in 1977
Finally, in 1979, this anti-king force ushered in a nationwide outbreak – the Islamic Revolution in Iran took place, the people took to the streets, the army defected.... The Pahlavi regime collapsed in an instant, and the religious leader Khomeini, who had been in exile for many years, returned home, and the Islamic Republic of Iran was established.
▲ The Iranian army defected in support of the revolution
In short, the more than three decades of the Pahlavi dynasty's rule over Iran after World War II left countless controversies and legacies for later Iran. The reforms that King Pahlavi had pinned high hopes on did not allow Iran to achieve real modernization, but instead became the "gravedigger" of his own regime, which was the "misfortune" of King Pahlavi.
▲ The people down the statue of King Pahlavi
The "misfortune" of the United States is that, as the last external power to control Iran, it has left enough "psychological shadows" and extremely negative images for Iranians, so it has become the main target of Iranians to vent and squeeze foreign emotions for a long time. America's reputation in Iran is basically "rotten" (although the United States has not hindered the Islamic Revolution, and even gave some help).
▲Under the eyes of everyone, Khomeini returned home on an Air France passenger plane
In the view of the military mushroom, the end of this history marks the complete collapse of the intimate "honeymoon relationship" between the United States and Iran, and also lays the "main theme" of confrontation and hatred for the new United States-Iran relations in the next 40 years.
It has become an indelible boulder between the bridges connecting the two countries, and with the emergence of the Iranian nuclear issue, the sectarian issue, the Syrian issue and other issues, it has been constantly increasing, constantly deepening the prejudice between the two countries, until now the war is against each other.
Seven. People go tea cold
It is worth mentioning that the United States is an external force that Iranians are extremely disgusted with, but it is not the only one, and Britain, the Soviet Union, Israel and other countries are regarded as "enemies". After the Islamic Revolution, the United States was regarded as the "Great Satan" by Iran, and the Soviet Union, Israel and other countries were regarded as the "Little Satan".
Supreme Leader Khomeini proposed a new line of thinking that "no West, no East, only Islam". Therefore, after the establishment of the new iranian regime, it adopted an intermediate policy that was neither pro-American nor pro-Soviet. Iran finally achieved true independence after ousting King Pahlavi and remained isolated from the world for a long time until the end of the Cold War.
▲ The leader of the Islamic Revolution in Iran , Khomeini
In the more than 40 years since the Islamic Revolution in Iran, the world pattern has undergone tremendous changes, the "little Satan" Soviet Union suddenly "died" in 1991, the relationship between Russia and Iran gradually warmed; affected by the oil export trade, Iran's relations with the European Union, Japan and other Western countries (Japan belongs to the Western camp) has become increasingly close.
Iranian President Rouhani and Russian President Vladimir Putin
However, the protagonists of the feud, the United States and Iran, have not been able to remain on the same channel, and after the Islamic Revolution, the United States has accepted the exiled Pahlavi king, which has led to a rise in anti-American sentiment in Iraq and triggered a hostage crisis.
The united States' favorability toward Iran has also fallen off a cliff, and since then, the two sides have not normalized relations due to the Iran-Iraq war, friction and conflict.
During the hostage crisis, Iranian youth flocked to the U.S. Embassy in Iran
By the 1990s and early 2000s (1989-2005), Iran's two presidents, Rafsanjani and Khatami, were more enlightened and moderate politicians, both advocating avoiding conflict with the United States and the West and engaging in dialogue and negotiation with the United States.
Former President of Iran Rafsanjani (President of Iran from 1989 to 1997)
Pursue a moderate and pragmatic foreign policy
However, the United States did not pay enough attention to this, but instead raised strong doubts about Iran's nuclear program (there is indeed a certain basis), and accused it of supporting and financing terrorism, and in 2002, Iran was included in the list of "axis of evil" countries, and the dawn of U.S.-Iran relations once again ushered in a cold winter.
After tearing its face in the nuclear negotiations, the United Nations and the 2006 resolution introduced Iran with a decade of international sanctions (unilateral U.S. sanctions that last longer and are more severe). In 2015, after marathon negotiations, Iran signed the historic Iranian Nuclear Agreement with the United States, China, Russia, Britain, France and Germany, and relations between Iran and the United States were finally relaxed.
▲ US President Trump showed the signed "withdrawal from the group" document
The story that happened later, I believe everyone will not be too strange. In 2018, the United States withdrew from the Iranian nuclear agreement, which resurfaced the dispute between the United States and Iran, and the confrontation between the two sides extended from the negotiating table to various media and Twitter, and finally with the explosion of missiles, it once again became a nervous news that affected the nerves of the world.
It is true that the Iranian nuclear issue is the main contradiction between the United States and Iran in this period, but it is only a part. The conflict of interests between the United States and Iran is also mixed with iran's contradictions with Saudi Arabia and Israel; many complex issues such as the Syrian civil war and Iran's expansion of the "Shiite arc" in the Middle East have become one of the world's difficulties involving many interests.
On the Syrian issue, Iran has more common interests with Russia and Turkey
Junwu bacteria feel that whether it is the Iranian nuclear problem or the "Shiite arc" and other issues, their nature is similar: the two sides have extreme distrust because of stereotypes, and the lack of security brought about by the lack of distrust has made each other constantly increase the chips of the game, and these chips in turn continue to deepen each other's prejudices, forming a vicious circle that is difficult to unravel.
Iran displays various models of surface-to-surface missiles
On January 8, 2020, a passenger plane taking off from Tehran Airport in Iran crashed into flames shortly after liftoff, killing all 176 people on board. Three days later, Iranian officials admitted to shooting down the airliner due to "human error." The overwhelming coverage has made Iran and the United States once again the center of everyone's attention.
▲ Iranian search and rescue personnel searching at the crash site
That's the way it is, controversies, conflicts, reversals, casualties..... In 2020, there will still be no change between the United States and Iran, and the Middle East in 2020 is the world, and the world is still unpredictable, but it is still worth our taste and thinking.
Finally, I would like to recommend an Iranian anti-war movie "The Lost Strait", which tells the story of Iran's operation in the Abu Ghreb Strait during the Iran-Iraq War, the battle scene is very tragic, and Iraq is also suspected of using chemical weapons, which is worth watching.