It’s the anniversary today of the 1953 coup in Iran, when the democratically-elected government of Mohammed Mosaddegh was overthrown by a coup d’etat organized by the intelligence agencies of the United Kingdom and the United States (an extraordinary important historical occasion with ramifications that are still being felt, right up to the present day).
Allen was, of course, supremely aware of all this. Arash Norouzi of The Mossadegh Project has put together a page, a digest of some of his observations. Salutary information.
“..Roosevelt and his U.S. dollars overthrew Mossadeq/They wanted his oil now they got Ayatollah’s dreck/They put in the Shah and they trained his police the Savak/All Iran was our hostage quarter-century/That’s right Jack”
– Allen Ginsberg, October 3, 1981 – “Capitol Air”
Here‘s a video (from PBS) addressing CIA involvement in the 1953 coup
see also here