Force for Stability

With the current revolutionary situation in Egypt one can't help but to see a parallel between how the United States is handling this and how it mishandled and was caught with its pants down during the violent overthrow of Shah Mohammad Reza Pahlavi in Iran.

A mere 10 weeks before the beginning of the 1979 revolution Jimmy Carter in a toasting with the Shah referred to his Iran as 'an island of stability in one of the more troubled parts of the world'

These words rang hollow as mass protests against the Shah begun shortly afterwards - which eventually culminated into a violent Islamic revolution and the installation of the Khoemini Islamic theocracy in place of the Pahlavi dynasty.

On the surface this showed how the Iranian ruling elite back in the Shah's days along with the United States were clearly out of touch with the masses of Iranians who had taken to the streets to protest the Shah, even though it did culminate in an extremist Islamic revolution there was a revolution beforehand that was violently countered by these Islamic extremists, they were Iranians who wanted democracy and didn't want to live in fear of their lives that they could be tortured for speaking out against the Shah by the secret police the SAVAK, who really were replaced in turn by the Basij whom today are the main opposition to Iranian protesters who took to the streets in opposition of the pre-determined fraudulent election in 2009.

Clearly the United States throughout the 1970's hadn't a vested interest in Iran but in the Shah himself whom they along with the British had brought back to power in 1953 during a coup to crush a popular democratic figure Mohammad Mossadeq who wanted to nationalize Iran's oil.

America and Britain then sold him a great deal of military hardware throughout the 1970s, Britain sold him naval frigates and Chieftain main battle tanks while the United States provided the Imperial Iranian Air Force with F-4 Phantom II's, F-5 Freedom Fighters and later Grumman F-14 Tomcats which was one of the most superior jet fighters of its time - and were prepared to sell him a further 160 F-16 Fighting Falcons and 7 AWACS planes clearly setting up Iran to be a powerful military obstacle against Soviet expansion into the Persian Gulf region.

When it was clear the Shah couldn't suppress popular dissent through shooting protesters and when protesters begun giving the majority of the soldiers on the streets of Tehran (who were understandable very hesitant to shoot their fellow citizens) flowers it was clear the Shah's days were over, and any hopes of the US being allied with the new regime were hopelessly crushed when Islamic students stormed the American embassy and held 53 American hostages for 444 days leaving Carter at the will of the hostage-takers which was one of the primary reasons he was defeated in the 1980 election against Ronald Reagan who himself would later start an arms-for-hostages scheme in 1985 to get back American hostages seized by Hezbollah by selling arms to their masters in Tehran.
Within weeks as a result of investing everything in one man over the years America's former ally was forcibly replaced by another man who was hostile to America and in turn turned Iran against the United States, that man Khoemini died and was replaced by another theocrat Khameini who like the Shah of the day is now clearly alienated and out of touch with the masses of Iranians who today want what their predecessors wanted in 1979, and that is a democratic and secular Iran, and if America recognize that fact it might once again get a strong foothold in Iranian politics and Iranian affairs, but this time it will be a meaningful one, not simply a foothold in the affairs of a self appointed dictator and representative of the Iranian people who has a monopoly of fear and violence over his own people to have what he says go!

In a 2009 interview President Obama referred to Egyptian dictator of 29 years Hosni Mubarak as a force for stability in the region after refusing to 'label' him a dictator as such, Mubarak did indeed come to power as a stabilizing force against the chaos and riots that followed the assassination of Anwar Sadet who had along with Israeli Prime Minister Menachem Begin made the Egypt-Israel Peace Treaty in 1979.

Egypt which had been almost exclusively a Soviet arms customer since the time of Abdul Nasser gradually turned to buying US arms in the 1980's the same time the US begun its Bright Star exercises, which are essentially military training exercises with Egypt and later other nations (following Bright Star 95) in the case of another war breaking out in the Middle East.

Since then Egypt has invested a lot of American weaponry into its armed forces, including a hefty amount of F-16 Falcons (which are currently swooping low over protesters in Tahrir Square) and M1A1 Abrams tanks (which are currently overlooking protesters in Tahrir Square), in a bid to stay in power one wonders how suppressive Mubarak will be against his own people with his US made weapons or the implications of who will fill a power vacuum if he does step down considering the Muslim Brotherhood are amongst one of the more organized single parties who have been opposing Mubarak for some time.

If armed Mubarak loyalists turn against the general Egyptian people will they in turn then turn to the Muslim Brotherhood like the more liberal sects of the masses of Iranian protesters used Khoemini not as a symbol of fighting religious oppression, but a symbol of staunch opposition and resistance to the Shah's oppressive rule.

And if the Muslim Brotherhood do come to power then the question is what will the implications be for Israel and its blockade on the Gaza Strip, will the Egyptian Army still enforce the blockade on its 7km wide border in southern Gaza that borders the Sinai peninsula or will an extremist Islamic regime like the Muslim Brotherhood instead decide to funnel weapons to Hamas to be used against Israel, could this in turn escalate into hostilities with Egypt not seen since the Yom Kippur War in 1973?

Although it's a bit early to try and predict what exactly will happen in Egypt it is already clear that all the Obama Administration can do is wait to see how this transpires and see who they can talk to when the fog of uncertainty that hangs over Egypt's near future clears.