The west was involved in toppling the Mossadegh government. That ultimately led to the Iranian revolution.
Interpretation
The involvement of Western powers in Iran's political affairs can have long-lasting consequences.
Salman Rushdie's quote reflects on the significant role that Western intervention played in the political landscape of Iran, particularly in the overthrow of Prime Minister Mohammad Mossadegh. This action set off a chain of events that culminated in the Iranian Revolution, illustrating how foreign interference can destabilize governments and lead to unforeseen and revolutionary changes in a nation.
In practice
In a discussion about international relations, one might cite this quote to emphasize the ripple effects of foreign interventions.
I've been fascinated by Machiavelli since I was very young. I've always felt that he had a bad rap from history, and that he was actually a person quite unlike what we now think of as Machiavellian. He was a republican. He disliked totalitarian government.
Killing people because you don't like their ideas - it's a bad thing.
faith without doubt is addiction
I am clearly vulnerable to these more passionate and volatile unstable relationships. I am trying to not be so vulnerable.
In India, as elsewhere in our darkening world, religion is the poison in the blood. Where religion intervenes, mere innocence is no excuse. Yet we go on skating around this issue, speaking of religion in the fashionable language of 'respect.' What is there to respect in any of this, or in any of the crimes now being committed almost daily around the world in religion's dreaded name?
Reality is a question of perspective; the further you get from the past, the more concrete and plausible it seems - but as you approach the present, it inevitably seems more and more incredible.
The steep decline in America's image and standing after 9/11 is a direct reflection of global distaste for the instruments of American hard power: the Iraq invasion, Guantanamo, Abu Ghraib, torture, rendition, Blackwater's killings of Iraqi civilians.
Extremism can flourish only in an environment where basic governmental social responsibility for the welfare of the people is neglected. Political dictatorship and social hopelessness create the desperation that fuels religious extremism.
The only prize much cared for by the powerful is power. The prize of the general is not a bigger tent, but command.
There are no gods here, no ghosts and spirits in America, there are no angels in America, no spiritual past, no racial past, there's only the political, and the decoys and the ploys to maneuver around the inescapable battle of politics.
All the common people want is to be left alone. All the ordinary soldier wants is to collect his pay and not get killed. That's why the great forces of history can be manipulated by astonishingly small groups of determined people.
One of the biggest curses from which India is suffering - I do not say that other countries are free from it, but I think our condition is much worse - is bribery and corruption. That really is a poison.
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