Distant muddled, foggy memories of the way things were (via Renato Redentor Constantino at TomDispatch):

Twenty stark years ago, on May 17, 1987, a double act of Exocet missiles skimmed through the air and slammed into the American Perry-class frigate the USS Stark.

The first Exocet antiship missile punched into the warship “at 600 miles per hour and exploded in the forward crew’s quarters.” The warhead failed to detonate but managed to smash through seven bulkheads and spit 120 pounds of blazing rocket fuel into the ship’s bunks. […]

The deadly missile attack on the USS Stark was unleashed by a Mirage F-1 jet — flown by an Iraqi pilot who mistook the U.S. warship for an Iranian vessel. […]

The act of aggression that claimed the lives of the Stark’s precious men and women in uniform elicited a fierce barrage of angry denunciation from the United States. The assault was despicable, villainous, and depraved. These were the words of a bellicose U.S. establishment and they were aimed — at Iran. […]

Responding to the great loss of lives “in a spasm of rage at the one country that had nothing to do with the American deaths,” Republican Senator and ex-Secretary of the Navy John Warner denounced Iran as “a belligerent that knows no rules, no morals.” In language that hinted of military action, Democratic Senator John Glenn slammed Iran as “the sponsor of terrorism and the hijacker of airliners.”

Yes, you read that right. An Iraqi warplane destroyed the USS Stark with a cruise missile, and both Democrats and Republicans at the time condemned Iran, the country that had absolutely nothing to do with the tragic loss of 37 American lives, other than being in the same general area as the real perpetrator, Iraq. A country led by Saddam Hussein, a man who, at that time, was our friend and ally, and whose monstrous regime we had chosen to support in its war of aggression against the very nation our political leaders wrongfully accused of attacking the USS Stark and its crew.

This is what makes me nervous about our leading Democratic presidential candidates, when they pander for votes and campaign contributions from organizations like AIPAC, a conservative pro-Israeli lobbying group which has consistently called for the US military to attack Iran. Both parties and the media have painted Iran as the number one threat to America for so long, that we forget that the truth is actually the reverse:

It is the United States that has been, and continues to be, the single greatest threat to Iran and its people.

You want some evidence to support that statement? Well, do you remember this blast from the past?

(cont.)

[O]n July 3, 1988, two surface-to-air missiles are fired by the USS Vincennes, an Aegis-class cruiser, reportedly inside Iranian territorial waters at the time, at Iran Air flight 655. The first missile cut the civilian airliner in half. All 290 passengers and crew aboard the Iranian airbus were killed.

… There were 66 children on board the aircraft.

The Pentagon claimed that the Vincennes shot down the Iranian plane because it appeared the pilot was attempting to fly it into the warship — even though the USS Sides, a frigate in the area, recorded the airliner climbing, not diving.

When the Vincennes returned to San Diego, its homeport, the ship was given a hero’s welcome, while the members of the crew were “all awarded combat action ribbons.” The air warfare coordinator of the ship won the Navy’s Commendation Medal “for heroic achievement” for the “ability to maintain his poise and confidence under fire.” […]

Our memories of Iran’s past dealings with the United States are often distorted, and can be dangerously misleading at times, because they are usually viewed through the lens of the Iranian Hostage Crisis. Angered by that incident, and the national humiliation it caused our country, many Americans failed to realize that Iranians saw the actions of the hostage takers as a legitimate response to decades of oppression at the hands of “America’s friend and ally,” the Shah.

Many Americans conveniently forget (if they ever knew) that it was our CIA in 1953 which engineered a coup to remove the democratically elected regime of Prime Minister Mohammed Mosaddeq after his government voted to nationalize the Iranian oil industry, a move that threatened the interests of the company we now know as British Petroleum or BP.

In it’s place, the CIA installed the often brutal and autocratic regime of Shah Mohammad Reza Pahlavi. The Shah was a major ally of America over the next 26 years until he was deposed during the 1979 Iranian revolution led by Ayatollah Khomeini. However, while he was in power, the Shah created a one party state, and formed (with CIA assistance) SAVAK, a secret police force which employed torture and assassination against thousands of dissidents.

Only in light of this history, and the turmoil of Khomeini’s revolution, can the hostage crisis be understood. It was a response to years of oppression by a ruler that America had installed and supported with arms sales and other forms of “assistance.” Yet despite these facts, and the natural enmity that arose between the the US and Iran’s Revolutionary Regime, the hostage crisis ended peacefully.

Indeed, it has been the United States which has consistently taken aggressive actions against the Iranian regime over the last 25 years, beginning with the Reagan administration’s support for Saddam Hussein during the Iran-Iraq War in the 1980’s. The United States, under the Reagan and Bush I administrations, helped provide Iraq with the means to make chemical, biological and even nuclear weapons. They also gave Iraq other arms and support in order to continue a war that cost hundreds of thousands of Iranians their lives, or left them horribly maimed.

Even now, as we speak, the US Navy has three carriers in the Middle East, and a fourth French carrier is also in the region, an unprecedented show of force meant to intimidate Iran. These carriers would be more than sufficient to carry out the Pentagon’s plans to strike Iran and its nuclear facilities, plans which were prepared pursuant to orders issued by President Bush, and which can be implemented upon 24 hours notice.

So the threat of a US military strike is still out there. Still an option on the table. If you were the Iranians, with their own vivid memories of the actions that various US governments have taken over the last 60 years, what would you do? Actions which undermined a duly elected Iranian government, and then installed and propped up a brutal dictator who killed and tortured thousands of his own people. Actions Which supported your nation’s worst enemy, Saddam Hussein, in a war which led to the mass slaughter of many of your fellow citizens. Actions taken to isolate your country from the world community, both diplomatically and economically. Actions taken to decrease your country’s internal stability. Actions which support known terrorist organizations in ongoing violent attacks within your borders. What would you do?

Would you unilaterally give up your nuclear program based on the vague hope that “regime change” would be taken off the American options table? Would you consent to meet with the US Secretary of State at an international conference, either formally or informally? Would you unilaterally withdraw all your support from Iraq’s Shi’ite militias and parties, and from Hezbollah in Lebanon?

I have no idea what I’d do, but I’d suspect it would be something along the lines of their current strategy to stall and delay any US moves, diplomatic or military, against Iran, in the hopes that a more rational and less militant administration will takes power in Washington in January, 2009. A future American administration that hopefully would be willing to enter into discussions with Iran’s government on all these outstanding issues, including the issue of Iran’s security needs.

Based on our country’s past history with Iran, however, I sure wouldn’t count on that happening if I were them.