While the US is still recovering from the extremely damaging effect of the government shut down which cost the taxpayers some $ 20 billion dollars and which was initiated by the extremists “Tea Party” Republicans in the House of Representatives, we now face another move initiated by Ted Cruz and his “Tea Party” which was taken up amazingly and exasperatingly uncritically by mainstream Republicans and even by Democrats, a move which is resulting in the embarrassing blocking of entry to the US of a distinguished Iranian diplomat who has been nominated to become the Iranian ambassador to the UN.

As the host nation of the UN, the US assumed the obligation to honor the UN member states’  choice of ambassadors to said international organization.

If the US follows through with blocking the entry of said diplomat, Hamid Aboutalebi, the repercussions could be severely damaging  to the currently progressing US – Iranian talks on Iran’s nuclear energy production,  and it could call into question the propriety of the US to serve as a host country to vital international organizations such as the United Nations.  This is happening at the same time that a USAID scandal has been exposed which violates the UN and the OAS (Organization of American States) charters, as it is aimed at interfering with  another member state (Cuba) and fomenting unrest in that country.

Regardless as to whether this bizarre move is being orchestrated for ideo/political objectives by the usual extreme right-wing suspects  or whether Congress is being duped by them due to what Gore Vidal once called a state of some living in the “United States of Amnesia”,  as regards to the historical antecedents on which, speciously, this diplomat is being barred from US entry,   the reality makes it clear that the accusation against this man is literally unfounded.

Mr. Aboutalebi is accused of having been involved, with tenths of thousands of others,  35 years ago in the hostage taking of 55 members of the American Embassy in Teheran.

Indeed, that operation was a violation of international law.  However if one puts this into factual historical perspective, that violation more than pales in comparison to the violation of international which caused this phenomenon to occur, namely the joint British-American crushing of the democratically elected government of Mossadegh of the Tudeh party in Iran and the subsequent installation of the brutal dictatorship of the Muhammad Reza Shah, whose terrorizing Savak secret police carried out huge atrocities against the humanity of the Iranian people.

Savak stands for Organization for Intelligence and National Security, and it  was the secret police of domestic security and intelligence which was a service established by Iran’s Shah with the help of the CIA.  It operated from 1957 to 1979, when the Shah was overthrown.  It has been described as Iran’s “most hated and feared institution” because of its practice of torturing and of  executing the opponents of the Pahlavi regime.

This terror state was US supported until 1979 when hundreds of thousands of Iranians of the most diverse backgrounds took to the streets and overthrew the dictatorship.

The 55 hostages were taken for two reasons and the demand for their liberation was that (a) an apology be forthcoming for the US role in the imposition of the Shah’s dictatorship, and (b) a commitment be made that the US embassy would never again be used as the center for the engineering of the destabilizing meddling in Iranian internal affairs.  Not a single hostage was harmed, women were beginning to be released voluntarily, and then, mysteriously 20 minutes after Ronald Reagan’s inauguration speech all hostages were released.

A book has been written about this event which describes how the Reagan-Bush campaign made a secret deal with Iran to delay the release of the American hostages until after the 1980 election in return for arms, revealing how the Reagan cronies prolonged the crisis for political gain.   The book followed numerous articles on the so-called “October Surprise” which was about the release of the hostages during President Carter’s term, something which supposedly Republicans found not desirable.  The title of the book by author Gary Sick is ” October Surprise : America’s Hostages in Iran and the Election of Ronald Reagan”.

The crushing of the Iranian democracy in 1979 occured for the same reason that on 9/11 of 1973, the democratically elected government of Dr. Salvador Allende occurred, namely the prerogative that both governments had and exercised, namely the nationalization of the BP petroleum company with due reparations to be paid in the Iranian case, and the nationalization of Anaconda copper extraction company with due reparations to be paid in the case of Chile.   In both cases, the US was involved in the overthrow of the democratically elected governments and in both cases brutal, torturing and executing dictatorships were established and supported by the US.  In the Chilean case it was a Nixon/Kissinger/ITT/CIA operation.

So with this factual historical description of the antecedents to contextualize the consequences which ensued we can better understand the absurdity of 35 years later singling out a distinguished diplomat and falsely accusing him of being with thousands who involved in doing what they did as they vented their anger and frustration.   It actually appears that in the case of Hamid Aboutalebi, he was not even involved in the embassy occupation, he was actually involved after the occupation due to his linguistic skills for the purpose of translating negotiations having to do with the release of the hostages.

One last noteworthy comment, for the record.   The British government not long ago threatened to invade the embassy of Equador in London, in order to capture the journalist Julian Assange.  It seems that cooler heads prevailed and the invasion of that embassy did not occur but Mr. Assange cannot leave said embassy without being arrested, on the basis of  spurious charges as well, when in reality it is on the basis that he has divulged facts that were released about wrongdoing by powerful politicians.

If the Congressional Republican extremists continue on their irrational and obstructionist paths, the US will continue to become increasingly isolated from the global community, and that does not bode well for our aspirations to continue to recover from the damaging effects of our 2008/2009 financial melt down, something for which there exists an imperative that we engage with the rest of the world constructively rather than imperialistically.