Iran 1953...

Line of Sight

Start here

or don’t

That’s the Trick.

Because if you start in 1979,

everything looks like madness.

Noise.

Fire with no origin.

But go back...

just once...

to 1953.

Mohammad Mossadegh

says the oil belongs to the ground it came from,

to the people standing on it.

A simple sentence

Now dangerous

As BP and UK whine

CIA moves quietly

by request

and the sentence disappears.

Replaced with a Western choice

Mohammad Reza Pahlavi

Installed complete with strings

History says it’s strategy

People name it otherwise

Years pass

Control tightens

Voices narrow

Rooms get smaller

And memory -

memory stretches

Across decades

Across generations

Across the gap between what happened

and what’s allowed to be said.

Then - 1979.

Ruhollah Khomeini returns.

The streets answer.

The embassy falls.

And suddenly

Shock.

Outrage.

Confusion, performed like theater,

How could this happen?

But that question...

that question only works

If you cut the line

If you sever 1979 from 1953

and pretend they’re strangers.

They’re not.

They’re Cause and Consequence

Standing in the same room.

And we know that.

That’s the uncomfortable part.

It’s not ignorance.

It’s selection.

A careful editing

Of where the story begins.

Because once you see the full ine...

Once you refuse to look away...

You don’t just inherit the shock.

You inherit the responsibility.

So the real question isn’t

what happened in Tehran.

It’s this:

How many times

do we get to erase the beginning

and still act surprised by the end?

***********************

Iran 1953...Redux

They say it started in flames.

1979, blindfolds, headlines…

but that’s convenient.

That’s the part you saw.

The beginning?

Was quieter.

Cleaner.

Signed without smoke.

Nineteen fifty-three.

Mohammad Mossadegh

stands up, siimple as breath,

and says”

The oil is ours.

And elsewhere…

behind doors that don’t take votes,

the CIA nodded to the UK

and said No way.

Not loudly

Not publicly

Just…effectively.

A government dissolves

like it was a suggestion

And in its place

Mohammad Reza Phlavi,

pressed, polished, positioned -

a puppet that looks stable

If you don’t look too closely.

But people do look

And they remember.

Not always in textbooks…

In stories.

In kitchens.

In the way a grandfather pauses

Before he finishes a sentence.

Memory doesn’t disappear.

It waits.

When Ruhollah Khomeini returns,

When the streets fill,

when the embassy falls,

You say:

irrational

extreme

out of nowhere.

Out of nowhere?

No.

out of somewhere

you keep choosing not to see.

Four hundred forty-four day.

you count hostages.

They count the moment

their voice was edited out of history.

And here’s the part…

the quiet part…

the part we step around:

It’s not that we don’t know.

It’s that we know

just enough

to look away on purpose.

To call it complicated

Instead of connected.

To call it sudden

instead of seeded.

Because if you follow the line -

Really follow it -

From 1953 to the fire,

then the question isn’t

Why did this happen?

The. question is:

Who benefits

from pretending it didn’t start there?