1979

Nixon’s move towards China policy reached its conclusion in 1979 as diplomatic relations with Taiwan was severed. The USA and China began to establish diplomatic bonds on January 1st. CHECK CORRECT YEAR

By 1979 Carter’s period in office was seriously going down the pan. His policy over the US hostages in Iran was referred to as the “Rose Garden Strategy” due to his tendency to never leave the White House. When Carter attempted an upbeat morale boosting TV address it was taken as pessimistic, defeatist, and was referred to as his “malaise” speech. It almost certainly contributed towards his eventual defeat by Reagan and Bush.

Shah of Iran overthrown in January 1979. This put a Shi’ite in charge of Iran – a Shi’ite with a personal grudge as well as ideological grudge against the Ba’athist rulers of Iraq. Look closely at Shah’s period in Paris – who helped him in his campaign to overthrow the Shah?
January 16 1979 - The Shah of Iran flees Iran with his family, relocating to Egypt after a year of turmoil.

January 7 1979 - Vietnam and Vietnam-backed Cambodian insurgents announce the fall of Phnom Penh, Cambodia, and the collapse of the Pol Pot regime. Pol Pot and the Khmer Rouge retreat west to an area along the Thai border.

January 10 1978- Pedro Joaquín Chamorro Cardenal, a critic of the Nicaraguan government, is assassinated. Riots erupt against Somoza's government.

Nuclear talks 1979
Salt II limited the number of ICB launcher vehicles. The US was entitled to maintain its present total of 1,054 land-based ICBMs. With MX systems to operate by 1986 – USSR would have a putative total of 5,454 silos to destroy.
SALT placed restrictions on Russian totals of multiple warhead missiles and on development of new and more powerful types of missiles. So unlikely that USSR could launch enough warheads to destroy that many targets. Nor would they be able to sneakily break the treaty as USSR’s nuclear operations were under constant surveillance by US satellites. MX gave the US a degree of invulnerability for the land-based leg of its strategic ‘Triad’. As INSIGHT magazine pointed out – the MX clashes with the principles of SALT – the treaty was supposed to lessen suspicion between the powers.
“In theory the MX system enables the US to gain a siginificant predominance of nuclear weaponry by cheating the Treaty terms in secretly constructing many more than 200 missiles and hiding them away in the warren of 4,400 empty shelters.”
So the US said they’d produce the missiles in full glare of Soviet spy satellites so there’d be no cheating.
Projected funding for the program between 1979 and 1982 is $4,550.6m – and that is for engineering development only. The final cost was beyond accurate estimate.
“History has shown that every improvement or innovation in nuclear weapons delivery systems has been pioneered by the US but then quickly emulated by the Soviet Union.” INSIGHT.

The estimate at the time was that by 1985 the missile numbers would be as follows:

Warheads
land submarine Air-launched
USA 2000 6272 4560
USSR 6200 1,200 1,000

The USSR was beginning to doubt the effectiveness of its land-based deterrent. What was the chances that USSR would copy the MX system? What were the remote areas set aside for the MX? Area 51?

11th January: “SALT talks, Schmidt & Carter had drawn attention to the fear of Russian domination in the grey areas of strategic arms limitations.” Tony Benn.
Newsweek: “Soviet thrust” was “severe threat” to US interests: “put Russia within 350 miles of the Arab Sea, the oil lifeline of the West and Japan. Soviet warplanes based in Afghanistan could cut the lifeline at will.”
Carter called for a 4.5% increase in military spending for following 5 years. Cruise and Trident programs.
The MAD Myth
 “Mr McNamara’s 1960s-style declaratory policy of mutual assured destruction (MAD) neatly encapsulates the idea of stability being achieved by both sides.”
The following exchange at a Senate Hearing was recorded in 1979:
Senator Tower: “General Jones, what is your opinion of the theory of mutual assured destruction?”
General Jones: ”I think it is a very dangerous strategy. It is not the strategy that we are implementing today within the military but it is a dangerous strategy…”
FROM THE DEATH OF DETERENCE: A CND PUBLICATION.
This is significant because at the time the only way the public were able to tolerate the existence of nuclear weapons was this myth of MAD and of superpower stability. It’s not something you hear anything about in the 21st Century. It seems these days that the media see it as a dead subject. In the 50s US authorities found through public surveys that MAD was a way of making nuclear weapons acceptable to the public and propaganda was developed accordingly. During the late 1960s a new strategy was developed by NATO called FLEXIBLE RESPONSE.
The SALT II treaty was set up to run till ’85 and provided for an interlocking set of apparent restrictions on strategic nuclear forces.
There were serious shortcomings of the treaty – eg – the 40% increase in combined MIRVed ICBM totals allowed.
50 – 70% increase in total missile re-entry and bomber weapons allowed.
Increased counter force potential allowed by modernisation of existing ICBMs and the introduction of one new oine on each side. The lack of restriction on new types of SLBMs.
The expanding of the protocal to prevent deployment of long-range sea and ground launched missiles at the end of 1981, and so on.
Goldblat – “there is a remarkable compatibility between the Treaty limitations and the projected strategic nuclear weapons programs of both sides…”
The US failed to ratify SALT II which “despite its faults,” “could have served as a step along the road to disarmament if it had been ratified by the US “Dando and Rogers” The Death of Deterrence.
There was right wing opposition to SALT II– see “with enough shovels: Reagan, Bush and Nuclear War” R Scheer, pub. Secker and Warburg, London 1982.
Soviet ‘advantage’ in ICBMs as a cause of concern – ‘hawks’ voiced much concern over this. The campaign of the Committee on the Present Danger and the accession of its members to power with Reagan and consequent massive rearmament programme.
Soviets had no equivalent of the ‘Triad’ and depended on land-based missiles.
So-called ‘window of vulnerability’. It depended or the assumption of Soviet willingness to use their strategic nuclear forces first time in a PRE-EMPTIVE attack on the US strategic nuclear forces.
Soviet forces were heavily dominated by land-based ICBMs for historical reasons. As ICBM were more accurate in 1979 the fear was expressed that the USSR might use part of its ICBM force to wipe out the US ICBMs in a disabling first strike. In this scenario the US president would be left wondering whether to risk striking back with inaccurate weapons against Soviet cities.
The reality is that USSR would have to have taken appalling risks to make such an attack. It is dar from clear that USSR had enough hard-target capability to even theoreticvally threaten US ICBM silos.
Despite objections – the argument was used to support MX deployment and the unequal US START prtoposals aimed at preferential cuts in Soviet ICBMs.
There is an implicit assumption that the USSR might strike first, but that the USA would not contemplate doing so.
NATO leaders have spoken very clearly of their policy of using nuclear first in Eruope If a conventional war went badly.
The real reason the US failed to ratify SALT II? The USSR superiority is meaningless within the overall parity of strategic forces – so that’s not the reason – although its useful to tell to the public.
Michael Krepon directed defence programme and policy reviews at the US arms control and disarmament agency (ACDA) during Carter period, in October 1981: “What are we to make of a president who asserts that the Soviet goal is “promotion of world revolution and a one-world socialist or communist state”, initiates a 7% real increase in defence spending, and then pursues the arms control objective of comprehensive, deep reductions in strategic forces?”

Carter Years & The New Cold War
Carter “declaring that American foreign policy was going to be reshaped on the basis that the cold war was over. America, he said, was no longer prepared to support any dictatorship that called itself anti-communist, because America was no longer frightened of communism and wanted a new international system based on confidence and faith in free societies.” TONY BENN
But did anything really change? The repressive regimes still managed to get their arms, from US allies who had been given the capability to mass produce arms for export by the US.  below
Right at the end of 1976 something called the “Team B” study – Richard Pipes, Paul Nitze and Daniel Graham, looking at documents supplied by George Bush of the CIA, described as “demented nonsense”, sought to re-demonise the USSR. It seeped into the press and became an accepted truth. The Team A study by contrast, accurately, saw the Soviet Union as no longer a threat.
In December 77 Carter was publicly declaring that under his leadership defense spending had gone up in real dollars, “we have compensated for the inflation rate then added on top of that.” –Wash Bab, see 1978.

February 1 - Ayatollah Ruhollah Khomeini returns to Tehran, Iran after nearly 15 years of exile.
February 1 - Convicted bank robber Patty Hearst is released from prison after her sentence is commuted by U.S. President Jimmy Carter.
February 3 - Khomeini creates the Council of the Islamic Revolution.
February 7 - Supporters of Khomeini take over the Iranian law enforcement, courts and government administration; the final session of the Iranian National Consultative Assembly is held.
February 10-February 11 - The Iranian army mutinies and joins the Islamic Revolution.
February 11 - Khomeini seizes power in Iran.
February 14 1979- In Kabul, Muslim extremists kidnap the American ambassador to Afghanistan, Adolph Dubs, who is later killed during a gunfight between his kidnappers and police.
February 17 - The People's Republic of China invades northern Vietnam, launching the Sino-Vietnamese War.

March 28 - A nuclear power plant accident at Three Mile Island, Pennsylvania, releases radiation.
NJM seized power from Sir Eric Gairy in March 1979 in Grenada

April 1 - Iran's government becomes an Islamic Republic by a 98% vote, overthrowing the Shah officially.
China Invaded Vietnam
11 April “Chris Mullin”…”had just come back from Vietnam and Cambodia. He described how the Chinese had invaded Vietnam on a punitive mission, dynamiting all the schools, hospitals and factories in the towns they occupied. They removed all the equipment from factories and sent it to China, leaving the Vietnamese nothing.”

April 11 - Tanzanian troops take Kampala, the capital of Uganda; Idi Amin flees.
By 1978, the number of Amin's close associates had shrunk significantly, and he faced increasing dissent from within Uganda. After the killings of Luwum and ministers Oryema and Oboth Ofumbi in 1977, several of Amin's ministers defected or fled to exile.[49] Later that year, after Amin's vice president, General Mustafa Adrisi, was injured in a car accident, troops loyal to him mutinied. Amin sent troops against the mutineers, some of whom had fled across the Tanzanian border.[26] Amin accused Tanzanian President Julius Nyerere of waging war against Uganda, ordered the invasion of Tanzanian territory, and formally annexed a section of the Kagera Region across the boundary.[26][28]
Nyerere mobilised the Tanzania People's Defence Force and counterattacked, joined by several groups of Ugandan exiles who had united as the Uganda National Liberation Army (UNLA). Amin's army retreated steadily, and despite military help from Libya's Muammar al-Gaddafi, he was forced to flee on 11 April 1979 when Kampala was captured. He escaped first to Libya and ultimately settled in Saudi Arabia where the Saudi royal family paid him a generous subsidy in return for his staying out of politics.[10] Amin stayed for a number of years on the top two floors of the Novotel Hotel on Palestine Road in Jeddah. Wikipedia, 2010 http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Idi_Amin

April 20 - Jimmy Carter's rabbit incident

May 9 - Unabomber bomb injures Northwestern University graduate student John Harris.
May 25 - John Spenkelink executed in Florida. First usage of electric chair in USA after the reintroduction of death penalty in 1976.

Energy Crisis 1979
A second “oil shock” and queues at gas stations in America – May 1979. Ended in the autumn when the world supply caught up with demand. Domestic oil production peaked in 1970 and declined every year thereafter.
Carter took action to reduce US dependency on Middle East oil. Up till 1979 the US was importing about 45% of its oil and was vulnerable to crises in the Middle East. After 1979 as conservation took hold, oil imports dropped to 32% by 1985.

George Bush’s son, GW, was to make his first, ill fated, attempt to become a major player in the Texas oil big league. It brought him together with James Bath of Houston, a family friend, who gave GW $50,000 for a 50% stake in Bush’s firm Arbusto Energy. According to Wayne Maden, “In These Times – Institute for Public affairs No 25.”
Bath was sole business representative for Salem bin Liner, head of the family and one of Osama’s 17 brothers (Gore Vidal).

Chrysler Corporation in trouble – seeking a government loan to prevent plant closures and redundancies .

Western Union went to the government for a $750m loan to build a space communication satellite for NASA – due to heavy space shuttle budget NASA suspected Congress wouldn’t appropriate the $750m for the project. Western Union went to a bank that permits the government to do off-the-balance-sheet financial transactions, the Federal Financing Bank. The FFB allows the govt to hide the national deficit and allows projects congress thought to be too costly or unnecessary. It was started in 1974 and made up to $65bn in loans till 1979.

When OPEC bumped up oil prices again in 1979 the new economic doctrine of monetarism became fashionable . Inflation was fought with high interest rates, unemployment and a deliberate recession which eventually triggered the debt crisis of the 1980s. Third World commodity prices fell as Western markets collapsed; the rapid rise in interest rates doubled and in some cases tripled the cost of debt service.

In May 1979 – the California Supreme Court took measures to stop utility companies from refusing to employ homosexuals, and to interfere with employees rights to get involved in gay organisations. Over 100,00 people march on October 14th for gay rights in the first ever national March on Washington.

June 1 - The first black-led government of Rhodesia in 90 years takes power, in succession to Ian Smith and under his power-sharing deal.
June 3 - A blowout at the Ixtoc I oil well in the southern Gulf of Mexico causes at least 600,000 tons (176,400,000 gallons) of oil to be spilled into the waters, the worst oil spill to date. Some estimate the spill to be 428 million gallons, making it the largest unintentional oil spill ever.
June 4 - Flight Lieutenant Jerry Rawlings takes power in Ghana after military coup in which General Akuffo is overthrown.

July 2 - The Susan B. Anthony dollar is introduced in the U.S.
July 8 - Los Angeles passes its homosexual rights bill.
July 12 - Carmine Galante, boss of the Bonanno crime family, is assassinated.
July 16 - Iraqi President Hasan al-Bakr resigns and Vice President Saddam Hussein replaces him.
July 25 - Cerro Maravilla Incident: Two Puerto Rican pro-independence activists are killed in a police ambush.
In July 1979, the overthrow of CIA backed dictator Anastacios Samoza II’s regime in Nicaragua causes grave concern in Washington and becomes main concern of foreign policy for years to come. Marxist Sandinistas take over, and start off popular due to their land and anti-poverty reforms. The USA sought desperately to keep Somoza’s national guard in power after it slaughtered some 40,000 civilians, finally evacuating commanders in planes carrying the red cross – a war crime – to Honduras where they were reconstituted as a terrorist force under the direction of neo-nazis.
Shortly after the revolution the World Bank stopped lending to Nicaragua claiming that the Sandinista administration was biased against the private sector. It had had no problem with the oppressive violence of the Somoza regime. The Americans stoked up public opinion with claims that soon the commies will be pouring across the border at Harlingen, Texas, 2 days’ drive from Nicaragua.
Nicaragua
June 20 1979 - A Nicaraguan National Guard soldier kills ABC TV news correspondent Bill Stewart and his interpreter Juan Espinosa. Other members of the news crew capture the killing on tape.
July 17 - Nicaraguan president General Anastasio Somoza Debayle resigns and flees to Miami, Florida.
July 19 - The Marxist Sandinistas take control of Nicaragua.

August 9 - Raymond Washington, known for founding the Crips, today one of the largest, most notorious gangs in the United States, was shot and killed five months following his arrest for quadruple murder. (His killers have not yet been identified.)
August 10 - Michael Jackson releases his first breakthru album Off The Wall. It sold 7 million copies in the United States alone, making it a 7x platinum album.

September 7 - The Chrysler Corporation asks the United States government for $1 billion to avoid bankruptcy.
September 7 - ESPN starts broadcasting.
September 12 - Hurricane Frederic makes landfall at 10:00 p.m. on Alabama's Gulf Coast.
September 20 - French paratroopers help David Dacko to overthrow Bokassa in the Central African Republic.
September 22 1979 - The South Atlantic Flash is observed near Bouvet Island, thought to be a nuclear weapons test.

October 1-October 6 - Pope John Paul II visits the United States.
October 1 - Nigeria terminates military rule, and the Nigerian Second Republic is established.
October 14 - A major gay rights march in the United States takes place in Washington, DC, involving many tens of thousands of people.

November 1 - Iran hostage crisis: Iranian Ayatollah Ruhollah Khomeini urges his people to demonstrate on November 4 and to expand attacks on United States and Israeli interests.
November 3 - In Greensboro, North Carolina, 5 members of the Communist Workers Party are shot to death and 7 are wounded by a group of Klansmen and neo-Nazis, during a "Death to the Klan" rally.
November 4 - Iran hostage crisis begins: 3,000 Iranian radicals, mostly students, invade the U.S. Embassy in Tehran and take 90 hostages (53 of whom are American). They demand that the United States send the former Shah back to Iran to stand trial.
November 4th – interview with Kennedy – the Chapaquiddick incident took up much of the interview. Kennedy also referred to the friendly regime – Shah of Iran as “one of the most violent regimes in the history of mankind.”
November 7th  – despite the interview on the 4th U.S. Senator Edward Moore Kennedy announced that he will challenge President Jimmy Carter for the 1980 Democratic presidential nomination.
He lost the nomination to Carter.
November 12 - Iran hostage crisis: In response to the hostage situation in Tehran, U.S. President Jimmy Carter orders a halt to all oil imports into the United States from Iran.
November 14 - Iran hostage crisis: U.S. President Jimmy Carter issues Executive Order 12170, freezing all Iranian assets in the United States and U.S. banks in response to the hostage crisis.
November 17 - Iran hostage crisis: Iranian leader Ruhollah Khomeini orders the release of 13 female and African American hostages being held at the U.S. Embassy in Tehran.
November 20 - A group of terrorists of around 200 militants occupy Mecca's Grand Mosque. They are driven out by French commandos (allowed into the city under these special circumstances despite their being non-Muslims) after bloody fighting that leaves 250 people dead and 600 wounded.
November 21 - After false radio reports from the Ayatollah Khomeini that the Americans had occupied the Grand Mosque in Mecca, the United States Embassy in Islamabad, Pakistan is attacked by a mob and set afire, killing 4. (see: Foreign relations of Pakistan)

1979: Nuclear leak causes alarm in America from BBC website
Radioactive steam has leaked into the atmosphere in Pennsylvania, USA.
The accident happened when a water pump broke down at the Three Mile Island nuclear plant, 10 miles (16km) south-east of the state capital Harrisburg.
There are fears some of the plant's 500 workers have been contaminated.
The authorities have declared a "general emergency" but did not inform the public until five hours after the gas escaped at 0400 local time
Director of the County Civil Defence Organisation (CCDO) Les Jackson said they had drawn up an evacuation plan, but nearby residents have not been moved yet.
He described the scene at the large power station in the Susquehanna River as "a madhouse".
Spokesman for the United States Nuclear Regulatory Commission (USNRC) Joe Fouchard said: "There's a hell of a lot of radiation in the reactor building."
A spokesman for Metropolitan Edison - one of the companies that runs Three Mile Island - said the nuclear reactor automatically shut down after the malfunction, but not before the leak.
According to a US Government report radiation has been detected a mile away, but the calm weather has helped contain the spread of the noxious fumes.
One of the nuclear engineer at the Pennsylvania Department of Environmental Protection, William Dornsife, said: "There was very little wind this morning, so the radioactivity shouldn't have gone very far."
"What small release there was will be confined to the local vicinity," he continued.
The emergency status will remain until there has been a thorough investigation by teams in anti-radiation suits.
The nuclear industry has been under increasing scrutiny in the US.

December 26 - In Rhodesia, 96 Patriotic Front guerrillas enter the capital Salisbury to monitor a ceasefire that begins December 28.
December 21 - A ceasefire for Rhodesia is signed at London.

Central africa
Islamic dictator jean-bedel bokassa
Famous for armed ‘woman hunts’
He took French officials on and Ugandas criminal president amin were both ejected from power in popular revolution. Civilian rule returned to Nigeria.

Vietnam and SE Asia
Further poor behaviour from Jimmy Carter – champion of human rights and winner of the Nobel Peace Prize, refused to release maps showing the location of mines in Vietnam, and despite continuing deaths and injuries, the US has remained unstinting in this policy. In contrast the USSR did release maps of its mines in Afghanistan to enable the remaining mines to be defused – and removed.  The Pentagon – in response to questions about this refusal replied that “people should not live in those areas if they know there’s a problem”. Very helpful.

Afghanistan
The USSR sent a force into Afghanistan. Zbigniew Brzezinski in Carter’s cabinet was cheered at the news; glad that the Soviets had taken the bait.
US Soviet relations were about to bottom out. Carter signed the first directive for secret aid to the opponents of Afghanistan’s Kabul regime on July 3rd 1979, within 6 months, on 25th December 1979 the USSR moved in to prop up their ally in Afghanistan. Brzezinski says that this invasion was a response to the US military presence there. The aid was in effect a trap to draw Russia into its very own Vietnam from which it never recovered.
December 24 1979 - The Soviet Union invades Afghanistan.
December 27 - The Soviet Union seizes control of Afghanistan, and Babrak Karmal replaces overthrown and executed

Then the Carter doctrine was announced – according to which the US would not allow any other single power to gain control of the Persian Gulf.
Carter prohibited Americans from competing in the 1980 summer Olympics in Moscow and reinstated registration for the draft of young males.
The CIA went on to supply arms to any faction willing to fight the occupying Soviets in Afghanistan. The indiscriminate arming eventually led to very well armed Islamic terrorists and civil war in Afghanistan after the Soviets pulled out.

Carter and Brzezinski started a $40bn program of training Islamic fundamentalists in Pakistan and Afghanistan. Led to creation of Taliban regime in Afghanistan and the creation of violent Islamic fundamentalist groups including Al Qaida – who now possessed, not only trained personnel, but state of the art weaponry. Sheikh Abdel Rahman (one of these fundamentalists) and his involvement in WTC bombing in NYC? The US also began to train the Mojahedin around this time. To the tune of $½ - $1 bn a year and continued until after the USSR withdrew. Research Pakistan’s involvement in Mojahedin.

A Brzezinski interview in 1998: “CIA aid to the Mujahedin began during 1980, that is, after the Soviet army invaded Afghanistan…But the reality, secretly guarded until now, is completely otherwise.” At Brzenzinski’s urging, in July 1979 Carter authorised $500m to help set up what was a terrorist organisation. Pilger in 2003.
For 17 years Washington poured $4bn into pockets of some of the most brutal men on earth.
Gulbuddin Hekmatyar - warlord favoured by CIA, received tens of millions of dollars. – trafficked opium and acid in faces of women refusing the veil.
In “The Grand Chessboard: American Primacy And its Geostrategic Imperatives, he writes that the key to dominating the world is central Asia, with its strategic position between competing powers and immense oil and gas wealth. “To put it in terminology that harkens back to the more brutal age of ancient empires,” he writes, one of the “grand imperatives of imperial geostrategic” is to keep the barbarians from coming together”. Surveying the ashes of the Soviet Union he helped destroy, the guru mused more than once: so what if all this had created “a few stirred up Muslims?” On September 11 2001, “a few Muslims” provided the answer. I recently interviewed Brzezinski in Washington and he vehemently denied that his strategy had precipitated the rise of al-Qaida: he blamed terrorism on the Russians. – pilger 2003.

Iraq
And so began a Golden Age for Iraqis. 1975 to 1985, the majority of Iraqis benefited from “surge in social investment…and later fell back under sanctions”-Jonathan Steele 31.03.03.
There was an agreement, between Iraq and Iran, on March 1975. Almost immediately the collapse of the Kurdish military movement followed. The US pulled the plug on them, cutting of all aid. The Kurdish movement dissolved itself, by a decision from its own command, taken against the background of a combined Iraqi – Iranian threat to destroy it if it refused. Without US aid it was lost.
This was because the US and Teheran abruptly cut off aid to the Kurds. Iraq massacred the rebels, while the US refused them asylem. “Official” said in defence, “covert  action should not be confused with missionary work”. (US House of Representatives, Select Committee on Intelligence, 19th January, 1976 [Pike report] in Village Voice, 16th February 1976, pp 85, 87n465, 88n471.   – c/o ZMagazine
By April more or less all the fighters and civilians who had joined or supported the armed struggle of March 1974 had left Iraq .. the vast majority soon took advantage of the general amnesty declared by the ruling Revolutionary Command Council. Barzani, the movement’s leader was humiliated as the Shah of Iran refused to meet him on his return from Algiers, for 4 days, eventually on March 11th. “there was a barely disguised satisfaction at the humiliation of the Kurdish leader who was soon to die of cancer .” He died in a US hospital in 1979.
Iraq yielded on all points in historic dispute between with Algeria in return for abandoning the Kurds – proved there was no price the Iraqi regime would not pay to achieve total domination.
Kurds were expelled from Kurdistan to mid-Euphrates area of Iraq – 120 to 130,000 and kept there for around a year before being allowed back home. The aim was to force them into becoming permanent residents there and to absorb them into Arab society. Kurdish militants were persecuted, with imprisonment, torture and executions. Kurdish parties and movement began to recover months after its dissolution. A new wave of armed action began in June ’75. Small groups infiltrated from Iran and Syria.
According to “A people without a country – The Kurds and Kurdistan”, in the chapter “The two Gulf Wars” by Kamran Karadaghi, the Iran-Iraq war began in 1978. The scale of the confrontations was at first limited if only because of the limited military capacity of both sides.
Within the Kurdish movement there was an internal power struggle between the KDP and PUK which became violent. The Baathists launched a campaign of terror against the Kurdish communists.
Saddam Hussein became the top man in 1979. He was supported by US – supported and protected by the CIA right up to the Kuwait Invasion in August 1990.
Saddam Hussein took over as president – from al Bakr whose resignation he’d engineered– and launched a massive purge of the Baath Party. Just as he had previously purged the Iraqi communist party and other oppositionists [Marion Farouk – Sluglett and Peter Sluglett, Iraq since 1958, London: IB Tauris, 1990 pp 182 – 187].
“We see no fundamental incompatibility of interests between the US and Iraq” declared US National Secuirty Advisor Brzezinzki in April 1980.” [Barry Rubin, “The US and Iraq: from Appeasement to War”, in Iraq’s Road to War, ed. Amatzia Baram and Barry Rubin, New York: St Martin’s 1993, page 256].

Iran
See Strongman and Parker, page 138, for Reagan’s plot to engineer the hostage crisis in October 1980.
The Bush CIA continued a program in Iran which went under the name IBEX. This aimed at building and operating a $500m electronic and photographic capability to cover the entire region, including parts of the USSR.
On August 28th 1976 three Americans working on IBEX were assassinated in Tehran. Washington Post journo Bob Woodward, one month before the killings, the former CIA director and then US Ambassador to Iran, Richard Helms, sent Bush a note complaining about abuses connected with IBEX and in particular demanding that Bush investigate corrupt practices which Helms suspected were involved with the project. Helms apparently wanted to be spared more embarrassment in case IBEX were to become the object of a new scandal – Bush Biog.

Iranian nationalists, in 1978, were fighting to curb the power of both foreign investors and the despised Iranian Monarch. In the US, New York Times told its readers that the Shah had a “broad base of popular support” clearly not true, and was a modernising reform-oriented leader. Amnesty International described the regime as the world’s worst violator of human rights.
There was an unprecedented general strike and several other protests in which an estimated 10,000 Iranians were gunned down by the shah’s security forces. The US sent in riot-control equipment, advisors, trainers and over $2.5bn in weapons. Shah Pahlavi’s strong ties to the US through Henry Kissinger and David Rockefeller served to inflame Iranian nationalists to a fever pitch, climaxing with the seizure of the embassy. CENSORED NEWS

Iranian Revolution in 1979 – not foreseen by US and somewhat shocking. American TV screens suddenly came alive with anti-US slogans, burning flags, etc. Americans were targeted by angry Arabs. I say not foreseen by US, but the CIA had foreseen it but had neglected to inform the president. In fact the CIA had actively supported the revolution since it found out that Shah was likely to die from cancer in near future. It took Carter by surprise, as did the US hostage crisis which lasted all year.
It seemed as if a level of hatred, unsurpassed at any point in history, was directed towards America. Were Americans genuinely baffled? It’s likely that they were as American media had not reported events that led up to the revolution: Washington’s support for the Shah’s bloody regime; CIA backing of SAVAK, the Shah’s secret police; and the gradual increase of fundamentalist violence in last 2 or 3 years.
The Shah Mohammed Reza Pahlavi of Iran was allowed into the USA. Carter staunchly supported his regime and now wished to protect him. In response 52 Americans in the Tehran embassy were taken hostage by militant students who demanded the return of the Shah to Iran. Arms to Iran operations began almost immediately.

El Salvador
1979 saw the beginning of a conflict that continued until 1992. An idealist group of young military officers, repulsed by the massacre of the poor, overthrows the right wing government. The USA compels the inexperienced officers to include many of the old guard in key positions in the new government. Soon it all gets back to the way it used to be and the poor are massacred once again. Many of the young military and civilian reformers resign in disgust. American media continue to refer to the ‘liberal’ Salvadoran government.
Brazil
In Brazil, 1979, General Joao Figueiredo, the 5th and last military leader, took power. The boom had fizzled out due to oil crisis and high international interest rates.
Ecuador
Independent since 1830 – got a civilian government in 1979.
Unhealthy Stitch Up 1979
“In 1979 the British Government appointed Professor Philip James to chair a committee drawing up the first national dietary guidelines. Sugar, diabetes, tooth decay and obesity were linked. The ‘British Nutrition Foundation’, funded by the sugar industry, was represented on his committee – and objected very noisily to its initial findings. ‘The sugar industry has learned from the tricks of the tobacco industry’, said James. ‘Confuse the public. Produce experts who disagree. Try to dilute the message. Indicate that there are extremists like me in the field of public health.’ Laura Barton ‘A spoonful of propaganda’ Grauniad, c/o NI issue 363, Dec 2003.
If this is what’s happening in the UK then the US have been here for years already.