The question to Earnest was asked by John Gizzi, the chief political columnist and White House correspondent for conservative web site Newsmax. Gizzi was guided by the Mossadegh Project’s comprehensive page on Barack Obama and the 1953 coup as a crib sheet, even borrowing specific language from it in his subsequent write-up for Newsmax, which also had comments from All the Shah’s Men author Stephen Kinzer.

Obama’s brief references to the grievance have been widely chastised by right wing pundits, who generally view the rhetoric as “appeasement” and question its historical veracity. The most common talking point from these critics is that Obama has shamefully “apologized” for the coup in Iran. Gizzi’s question, along with Earnest’s reply, correctly indicate that there has been no actual apology from the United States; hence, the open question of whether there will ever be one.

Unlike the U.S., Great Britain has yet to officially own up to its role in the coup, though there have been informal discussions in Parliament.

The House of Commons has recently mulled making a formal statement, provided similar expressions of regret would be reciprocated by the Iranian government for its various offenses.

Whether or not a legitimate statement is ever made, the discussion of apologizing to Iran for Operation Ajax remains problematic, for it is based upon several glaring fallacies:

1. Apologizing to a dictatorial regime for imposing dictatorship on the country is a logic-bending proposition. The nation and its people, not the ruling despots in Tehran, are owed an apology.

2. The CIA coup was merely the firing shot before a 26 year marathon of U.S.-backed oppression in Iran, which only ended due to a massive uprising in 1979. After the anti-Shah revolution, the U.S. either committed or implicated itself in further anti-Iranian crimes. To be sufficient, any official apology to Iranians must encompass this larger narrative.

3. As long as the United States continues to coddle friendly tyrannies, underwrite human rights atrocities and violently intervene in foreign lands, apologizing to Iran for illegal foreign policy measures that have been in its DNA for generations makes little sense.

Furthermore, if America maintains its often domineering, smug and superior posture toward other cultures like Iran, (just this week alone, U.S. Senator Lindsey Graham, a 2016 candidate for President, branded all Iranians “liars”), then an apology for past sins would be meaningless.

A new paradigm, not mere rhetoric, is what’s called for.

May 22, 2015
White House Press Briefing by
Press Secretary Josh Earnest