The Shah traded the Kurds for a river in one afternoon | HE WAS NEVER THEIR PUPPET — Part 3

History Onion · Part 3 · 2:58

In May 1972 the Shah asked Nixon and Kissinger to join the covert war he was already running for the Kurds of Iraq. They did. On 6 March 1975, at Algiers, he traded the Kurds to Saddam Hussein for the Shatt al-Arab — and the CIA, its own director wrote, "had no option but to terminate its own program." Part 3 follows one card. The 1937 river border on Iran's bank; the 1969 tanker sent down the Shatt under escort; the Kurds armed "for defensive purposes" — enough to pin down two-thirds of the Iraqi army, never enough to win; the handshake at Algiers; the cut-off within days; two to five thousand refugees a day; Barzani's letter; Kissinger's "missionary work"; and the congressional verdict that the whole enterprise was "cynical." Nobody handed him this card. He built it, brought his patron into it, and cashed it — and the Kurds paid. Sources (all quotations verbatim): • "via the Iranians without a hitch" — Kissinger to Nixon, 5 Oct 1972, FRUS 1969–76 vol. E-4 doc. 325: https://history.state.gov/historicaldocuments/frus1969-76ve04/d325 • "acting upon a request from the Shah of Iran"; "a regime whose instability we should continue to promote" — Kissinger to Nixon, 29 Mar 1973, FRUS vol. XXVII doc. 207: https://history.state.gov/historicaldocuments/frus1969-76v27/d207 • "for defensive purposes" — Ambassador Helms to Kissinger, 16 Oct 1973, doc. 237: https://history.state.gov/historicaldocuments/frus1969-76v27/d237