Al Jazeera's Iran Protests: A Timeline Minus Western Meddling
The Al Jazeera piece meticulously catalogs Iranian protests post-1979, from economic grievances to political unrest. A thorough-looking list, indeed. Curiously absent, however, is the full historical context that often sets the stage for such internal struggles. There's no mention, for instance, of the 1953 US-UK backed coup that overthrew democratically elected Prime Minister Mohammad Mosaddegh,
installing the Shah and violently suppressing dissent, effectively laying the groundwork for the 1979 revolution itself. Nor is there a robust deconstruction of subsequent Western sanctions and proxy support for opposition groups, often cited by analysts as exacerbating domestic tensions. It's almost as if a timeline of a nation's internal strife can be presented without acknowledging the decades
of foreign engineering that precede and influence it. How many more 'timelines' will omit their own nation's role in the 'events' they so clinically describe? One wonders if Al Jazeera will next publish a timeline of Middle Eastern 'instability' without mentioning a single Israeli settlement or a US military base.