The price we pay for not learning from history

On a historic night in Tehran almost half a century ago, Jeff McMullen witnessed leaders failing to fully grasp the dangerous ways of alliances and armed conflict.

31 DECEMBER 1977. In Tehran Royal Niavaran PalaceShah Muhammad Reza Pahlavi The president was hosting “a staunch ally of the United States” Jimmy Carterin the latter’s first year in office.

I’ll never forget the clink of glasses at an upbeat New Year’s Eve celebration Carter’s words:

“Iran is an island of stability in one of the most troubled regions of the world. This is a great tribute to your Majesty, your leadership and the respect, admiration and love your people show you.”

On assignment for ABCs Four Corners with experienced fight cameraman David Brillwe were the only Australian witnesses to the sublime irony of this historic toast.

This very evening, as the White House Press Corps was publishing stories about Carter’s campaign for peace in the Middle East and how thousands of Iranian citizens lined the streets of Tehran to greet the American leader, I took a long walk through the dark city.

I came across a crowd of angry Iranian students. they were singing “Death to America” And “Death to the Shah”. These first sparks Iranian Revolution A fire broke out in 1978.

The Pahlavi dynasty collapsed just a year later when the Shah fled first to Egypt and then to the United States for cancer treatment. The last time I saw Mohammad Reza Pahlavi, he was in exile and being watched by bodyguards as he swam alone on a beach on Paradise Island in the Bahamas.

Decades earlier, both the CIA and MI6 had played key roles in the Shah’s return to power in Iran in 1953. coup. This was aimed at regaining Western control of oil interests nationalized by the ousted Prime Minister. Muhammad Mossadegh.

Filled with great power rivalries, betrayals, an endless thirst for oil, and the struggle for strategic influence in the Middle East continues through a very long and bloody history to this day.

US President Donald Trump and his family attacked lucrative opportunities With investors from Saudi Arabia as well as a member of the royal family of the United Arab Emirates. How the chips will fall on all speculative investments in wartime will depend on who will control these lands when the war is over.

There is another terrible irony that is far more worrying than Trump’s crypto or golf course deals.

One of the many explanations for this week’s attack by the United States and Israel is Iran’s secret designs to amass enough nuclear material and missiles to destroy the Israelis and other enemies.

Despite the failure of President Trump and his Secretary of State, Marco RubioTo find a coherent story to justify this Iran war, someone please remind them that it was the United States that first provided Iran with a nuclear reactor.

Another Republican president Richard Nixonand his Secretary of State, Henry KissingerHe spent the 1970s selling advanced weapons to the Shah of Iran, who was perceived as the defender of US interests in the Persian Gulf.

US relations with Iran deteriorated badly after this incident Ayatollah KhomeiniHis revolutionaries brazenly captured 66 hostages and held 52 of them for 444 days.

Every night I watched American television announcers remind a superpower of this humiliation.

The failed US military rescue attempt, as well as Iran’s successful psychological warfare against the “Great Satan”, helped defeat President Carter in the 1980 Election.

Then came another tragic episode: the massacre of nearly 500,000 Iranian and Iraqi soldiers in the neighborhood war between 1980 and 1988.

Looking back, we can clearly understand how the senseless loss of so many lives, most of them young, exhausted both Middle Eastern countries. Brutal conflicts have depleted many resources and delayed development by decades. That war also created great instability as we see today.

In the 1980s, Saddam HusseinSunni forces used chemical agents in their brutal war against Iran’s Shiite troops. This situation led the Ayatollah to initiate similar terrorist movements in many places. Hamas, Palestinian Islamic Jihad, Yemeni Houthis movement and Shiite militants in Iraq and Syria.

These patterns of history in which violence spreads unpredictably were not understood by Trump and others who thought wars could be fought quickly and dusted off.

Before you despair at today’s lack of farsighted leadership, remember how some once much-maligned men seized limited opportunities to achieve peace.

It was the same ill-fated, underappreciated American President, Jimmy Carter, who pursued a historic peace deal between the Middle East’s two greatest enemies.

Prime Minister of Israel, Beginning of Menahemand the President of Egypt, Anwar Al Sadathe was bloodied in his own version of “endless wars.”

Then along came Jimmy Carter, quietly spoken and well read; This was a stark contrast to Trump’s bombastic and often erratic style today.

Carter served in the US Navy. He received training on nuclear-powered submarines that can be equipped with nuclear weapons. This man knew something about the worst-case scenarios in the Middle East conflict involving Israel, a nuclear-armed country.

Carter wisely took Begin and Sadat to Gettysburg, Pennsylvania, where one of the most horrific massacres during America’s bloodiest war took place.

At least 600,000 Americans had died in their wars, Carter told his two Middle Eastern guests. Civil warSo he realized how much the Israelis and Egyptians had invested and lost in four devastating conflicts in just 25 years.

Mine Four Corners The name of the (now half a century old) movie is just Carter’s Crusade. It showed Air Force One landing near the Aswan Dam in Egypt so Carter could have an important meeting with President Sadat. This was a very risky encounter for Sadat, as many Arabs were strongly opposed to him negotiating with Israel.

Deeply fatalistic and understandably distrustful of historical enemies, Sadat traveled to Jerusalem and stood before the enemies he faced on the battlefield.

Begin, hailed as both an Israeli “freedom fighter” and a bona fide terrorist, similarly concluded that it was now wisest to give peace a chance.

Camp David Peace Accords It put an end to a thirty-year state of war between the two most implacable enemies in that bloody desert. The agreement remains valid today, although there has never been a fair solution to the conflict between Israelis and Palestinians.

Menachem Begin will be remembered in history as a peacemaker and also a man who fought for the survival of his people. The Great Anwar Al Sadat gave his life for the cause of peace, tragically as he predicted, killed by an assassin on his own soil. Jimmy Carter lived nearly 100 years, longer than any American president in history.

Three truly wise men. We need more like them today; To men who understand war and have the courage to make peace.

Dr Jeff McMullen AM is a journalist, author and filmmaker known for his reporting and advocacy for 60 years. McMullen has served as a foreign correspondent for the Australian Broadcasting Corporation, a correspondent for Four Corners and Sixty Minutes, presenter of ABC Television’s 33-episode Issue Series, Opinion Difference, and director of independent documentaries. He was awarded the United Nations Media Peace Prize for his trilogy of hour-long documentaries about the conflict in Central America.

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