Written by: Colin Offenbacker

When we last left off , The Reagan administration had just been stopped by the US congress from funding the Nicaraguan revolutionary collective known as the Contras directly.

In this week’s blog were going to explore a little of the background of Iran, and how it was that they came to be on the Reagan administrations radar. An international relationship that would ultimately lead to the political controvercy known to us as, Iran-Contra.

This week, Iran-Contra Part 2: Iran.

Last week I mentioned my love for proper context when examining historical events. I would argue that the same is true when it comes to looking at political events, especially historically significant political events. This part of the Iran-Contra affair is one that really needs a serious set up to get at least a partial grasp on why things happened the way the did.

We’re going to jump back in time again. This time were going all the way back to 1953. In the U.S. McCarthyism is in full swing against communism and all the way on the other side of the globe Iran is going through some interesting political change as well.

The nation of Iran has been in an interesting place since the end of world war 2. The nation has a democracy in place and the Elected Prime Minister of Iran is a man by the name of Mohammad Mossaddegh. He is a member of the political party known as the Iranian National Front, a technically pro-democracy group with some rather socialistic tendencies.

He has been involved in government as a member of Parliament for a number of years but has only been Prime Minister for about a year.

In keeping with his parties strangely nationalistic though still democratically socialist ideals Mossaddegh makes a move that would spell his ultimate demise, he nationalizes the oil industry, the economic cornerstone of the nation.

Since world war 2, the oil industry in Iran was not only mainly built but also mostly run by western nations like the United Kingdom and the United States. This move to nationalize the industry forcibly expelled these nations out and choked off there control of the oil.

Enter Operations Ajax or if you’re from the UK, Operation Boot. This was a joint covert operation to overthrow the Prime Minister carried out by the former Iranian monarchy with help from both the US and the UK. It’s important to note that this was the first time the United States had ever covertly deposed a foreign government during peacetime.

Known to the west as the 1953 Iranian coup d’état, Prime Minister Mossaddegh was other-thrown and a member of the former monarch was installed as ruler.

His name was Mohammad Reza Pahlavi, a pro-American, anti-communist monarchical dictator, better known to most of the world simply as “The Shaw”.

The Shaw is a total fascinating individual, who lived a very interesting life and is more than deserving of his own deep dive show, but for now I’ll just have to keep that in my back pocket and save it for a rainy day.

Under the Shaw’s rule, Iran marked the anniversary of 2500 years of “continuous” Persian monarchy, dating back to the founding of the Achaemenid Empire by none other that Cyrus the Great. Unfortunately we need to leave him here and jump all the way to the mid 1970’s.

The Shaw has been in power now for quite a while and he has started to make some serious enemies, as monarchical dictators often do. In 1979 the Shaw left Iran on what he called a vacation, only he never really came back. He bounced around from one side of the globe to the other, but after a cancer diagnosis, which might have actually happened somewhere between 1974-1979 he reached out the the United States, seeking the worlds best medical care.

President Jimmy Carter was opposed to admitting him given the growing unrest to his leadership back in Iran but ultimately folded under pressure, primarily from Henry Kissinger and David Rockefeller. Even before he was in the states a religious leader by the name of Ayatollah Ruhollah Khomeini had seized power during the Iranian Revolution and established a totally new government, an Islamic Republic.

This new government and the revolutionaries were certainly no fan of the west, particularly the United States. Once they heard of the Shaw coming to the US for his Cancer treatment, they’re anger grow to the point of bursting. Soon mass protests were being staged outside the US embassy in Tehran, and on November 4th 1979 a large group of them attacked the embassy, broke in and took 63 people hostage. Before anyone really knew what was happening they took 3 more hostages from the Iranian Foreign Ministry bring the total up to 66. In a few days the Ayatollah had released a total of 14 of those hostages leaving a total of 52. Those 52 would end up being held for 444 days.

The Carter administration tried numerous things to try and negotiate the release of the hostages but even after a military extraction plan failed before it even actually started, Carter, and his administration were left totally embarrassed in front of the American public, paving the way for his Presidential challenger, Ronald Reagan. I think we all know how that election turned out.

After the election the Iranian government had started to feel the pressure from not only American economic intervention but also the international community at large, and only hours after President Reagan had been sworn into office, the negotiations between the United States and Iran had yielded fruit and the hostages were on their way home.

On this episode Don and Offie take a long look at the government shut down to help breakdown how we got here, whos fault it is and some ideas on how to get us out. Why hydro power is not considered a “green energy”, why the term “the wall” might actually be the problem, what it means to Don to be an American, thoughts of a vacation for the Offies , why Don doesn’t lie and reactions to his last blog post, some things Offie learned and reasons why he went into the Coast Guard, and did anyone know Kim and Kanye had four kids? also a HUGE staff changing SPORTS!!

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On the show this week I had said I was going to do my blog post on a book by Toni Morrison that my Grandma had asked me to read. I changed my mind. Not because of the book, because it was pretty alright, but because my mind has been consumed with the incoming arrival of Dax in all arenas. Offie and I talked in the intro of this weeks’ show about part of what has been on my mind and I decided I would expand on that instead so that this isn’t just a forced piece of writing.

Without harping on it too much or trying to make myself sound special, growing up without a father is something that affected me in many ways as a child and continues to affect me today. When I look back on it now, I don’t think I realized how much it affected me when I was a child. My parents were divorced when I was 2, and I think I was 5 when he moved from Washington to Oregon and then eventually to Arizona where he lives now. I have some memories from when he lived here, getting ice cream in his big blue truck, him working on his big blue truck, him helping us move into our house on Quinault, one fight between him and my Mom, and then my next memories are from visiting him in Arizona.

I think I was 7 or 8 the first time my sister and I went to visit my Dad, and I was either 9 or 10 the first time I went by myself because my Sister had begun to learn of the skeletons in my Dads closet that I was too young to be told about. So I continued to visit my father by myself until I learned those same secrets. I can’t honestly say I learned much in the times I DID visit. I wasn’t really into sports when I was a kid but not because of my Dad not being around and I can’t honestly attest to whether or not he would have made me if he was around so that wasn’t a traditional aspect I missed out on, but I did feel it early.

There are the more traditional male things that I missed out on like being shown how to properly do yard work, learning how to work on cars or use power tools, maybe being shown guns and made more comfortable around them. I don’t like to focus on this too much because I honestly don’t know my Dad well enough to know if he would have taught me these things if he WAS around. But if he IS into those things, I could maybe have been made comfortable with them sooner or been exposed to them in a safer environment than I was.

This may be totally unconnected but to this day I am apprehensive but eventually comfortable using big power saws and tools. This first gun I saw was one shown to be by someone I will not disclose, but the gun was not registered to them and had been used in a crime. Someone had to show me how to change a tire the first time mine went flat when I was 18. The things I know about cars are limited to the things I have had to fix on my own. I did yard work poorly for years because I was just told to do it and not generally given instructions, because the women in my house didn’t want to do that.

Outside of these are the things that people may not think about or could possibly take for granted. There is a healthy list of things that were decided to be my responsibility when I was growing up “Because you have a penis” and that is a quote directly from my mother. That didn’t make sense at the time, and felt like an excuse for me to do something none of the women in my house wanted to. There are all kinds of things NOW I won’t let my wife do because I feel they are my job as a male: picking up dead animal gifts left by our cats, picking up cat or dog vomit in the house, mowing the yard, washing the cars, etc… It took me years of this being explained to me by OTHER peoples fathers that there are just somethings that you are supposed to do for your wife and the women you love, but without it being presented in the right way and by the right person, it doesn’t make the impression it should.

I now understand that these things, these responsibilities of a man, CAN be learned from a woman and can even be better learned that way. But it takes the maturity and objectivity of a grown person, that which a child is not old or experienced enough to comprehend, to understand and be able to see the difference that I was not. That even though my mother and I communicate in vastly different ways and that what she was saying to me WAS that these things are things a man should do and I would eventually have to do for my wife, I just didn’t perceive it that way. I was not able to separate the person telling me with the information I was receiving.

Hard as it was to deal with learning to be a man without what I perceived as anyone to teach me to be a man, as I said I am now able to look back at my upbringing with my Sister, Mother, and Grandmother and see the valuable lessons I was able to learn. Easiest to remember and probably guess, I always felt incredibly comfortable around women. From family to strangers to girls that I had feelings for, I never had or really even understood the problems other boys my age had with talking to girls they liked. It was always first nature to me to speak the same “language” that the teenage girls I was courting did. I was open and honest with how I felt and unafraid to show my feelings (which was actually a very convenient cover for not being able to CONTROL my feelings). This coupled with my large stature and natural gift with words is largely how I got my beautiful wife.

On top of this I was around to hear the stories from my Sister, Mom and Grandmother of their boyfriends, husbands and ex husbands and the grave mistakes and missteps they had made, but also of the things they loved the most and would never forget. I can promise you I learned more from the bad stories than the good. And the older I get, the more boyfriends my sister has and the more stories I hear from my Mom about my Dad, or from my Grandma about the incredible man that my Grandpa was and how proud he would be of me for who I have become and who I have been able to shape myself into.

There is no doubt, as I told Colin this week on the show, that if my Dad or Grandpa were around my life would be drastically different. Shaping my image of what I think a man should be or the man I want to be may or may not have been easier, that I can’t know for sure. Learning some of the skills I am learning now, or the skills I WANTED to learn may have been easier. That I can’t know for sure. What I DO know for sure is that everyday, the confidence I have in my ability to be a strong father to Dax grows. The doubt and hesitation I felt when the discussions of fatherhood began, are largely mitigated.

While I see extreme value in the presence of a steady father in the raising of a child, I recognize now that in that lack of such father, it is simply necessary for the correct roles, responsibilities, and skills to be imprinted on a young man in a way that they can be recalled when proper growth and maturity has been reached. It is vital that the child be raised with the understanding of what being a strong man, husband, and father means and for that, a father is not always required.

With a new theme song and the same routine Don and Offie are back and talk about what it’s like to be a son with no father, the withdrawal of troops from Syria and the subsequent resignation of James Mattis, the temporary partial government shutdown , why it is important to understand basic civics, some details from the newly Senate-passed farm bill, the difference between “the wall” and “border security”, the decriminalization of drugs and prostitution, and a healthy SPORTS!!

We want to thank all of the members of Upper Left for their work on our INCREDIBLE new theme song, we couldn’t be any more please with it. You guys are amazing. You can find all of their music on there SoundCloud HERE!

All of our podcast episodes are available on our SoundCloud or ANYWHERE else you can get a podcast. The pre show video can be found on our Facebook as well as on our YouTube with the full show video and all the rest of our video content. The full video for this weeks show will be available tomorrow afternoon.

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We have also begun to do our weekly blog posts in an AUDIO form to ease the consumption of our material. They generally sit about 10 minutes long and are great for your drive to or from work or while you wait to pick your kids up from school. Look out for it on Thursday, take a listen and let us know.