Like Sympathizer, Like Oppressor

Ed Kinane must be so proud:

Iran's parliament voted Saturday to designate the CIA and the U.S. Army as "terrorist organizations," a largely symbolic response to a U.S. Senate resolution seeking a similar designation for Iran's Revolutionary Guards.

The parliament said the Army and the CIA were terrorists because of the atomic bombing of Japan; the use of depleted uranium munitions in the Balkans, Afghanistan and Iraq; support of the killings of Palestinians by Israel; the bombing and killing Iraqi civilians and the torture of imprisoned terror suspects.

"The aggressor U.S. Army and the Central Intelligence Agency are terrorists and also nurture terror," said a statement by the 215 lawmakers who signed the resolution at an open session of the 290-member Iranian parliament. The session was broadcast live on state-run radio.

I note, also, that AP writer Ali Akbar Dareini appears to have gotten the same talking points memo from the powers that be in Iran from which Kinane derived his op-ed:

Iran and the U.S. have not had diplomatic ties since Iranian students took American diplomats hostage in Tehran following the 1979 overthrow of U.S.-backed Shah Mohammad Reza Pahlavi.

Iranians have a long list of grievances against the United States, including a CIA-backed coup in 1953 that overthrew democratically elected Prime Minister Mohammed Mossadegh and put Pahlavi back on the throne.

From limited research, my understanding of the history is that Pahlavi appointed Mossadegh based on a fit of popular nationalism. Mossadegh proceeded to expand his power and undermine mechanisms for ousting him. But, you know, "democratically elected" is yet another relativist phrase in the hands of the progressive press and their friends in the Middle East.