NEW YORK ¨C The preliminary nuclear agreement with Iran, which has been long in the making, may succeed or fail. But only a cataclysmic war will prevent Iran from fulfilling its long-postponed destiny as a major economic, political and scientific nation.
Speaking at the United Nations in 1951, Iran¡¯s first elected prime minister, Mohammad Mossadegh, asked why Iran had lagged behind in a neighborhood where ¡°hundreds of million of Asian people, after centuries of colonial exploitation, have now gained their independence and freedom.¡± Why did Westerners, who had acknowledged even Indonesian claims to sovereignty, Mossadegh asked, continue to ignore Iran?
Within a few months of his U.N. speech, Mossadegh, who was fighting to renegotiate Iran¡¯s grossly unfair deal with a British-owned oil company, was overthrown in a joint Anglo-American coup.
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