In his book, The Right Man: The Surprise Presidency of George W. Bush, David Frum (Bush's speech writer) explains how he used WWII mentality (fear of the reckless Axis powers) to come up with a phrase to articulate the case for dislodging the government of Saddam Hussein in Iraq. On January 29, 2002, President Bush needed to convince the American people to support the upcoming war, and so the phrase "axis of evil" was born.
The Axis powers in the 40s were widely feared, and Hitler's actions were considered to be extremely rash and reckless. At the same time, Germany, Italy and Japan were widely suspicious of one another, so had they won, the world would have quickly reverted to chaos instead of the 'long peace.' The phrase was meant to represent Saddam Hussein's reckless actions in starting wars in Iran and Kuwait, and Iran and Iraq's (together with Al-Qaeda and Hezbollah) common resentment of the Western countries. North Korea was just added to the list due to their proliferation attempts.
Frum intended the phrase to be "axis of hatred" but Bush changed the last word to "evil" at the last moment. What a mistake that was. Hatred would have inferred to their resentment of Israeli and Western power. Evil, on the other hand, has a completely different connotation. The United States, through Bush, insulted their values and essentially said that they had absolutely no other reason to attempt proliferation other than to destroy the United States.
And now we are pissed that Iran didn't positively respond to the threats of a hard-handed U.S.
The U.S. created an obvious security threat to Iran: we put the states of Iraq, Iran and North Korea in the same bucket of 'rogue and evil' states... and then we went ahead and invaded one of them. Clearly this would seriously affect the notion of security within the other states. And how else could they deter the United States? Producing conventional weapons would be useless, since the United States could trump them anytime. The answer: creation of a credible nuclear deterrent.
History gives Iran countless reasons to mistrust the West and all of its incentives for stopping their nuclear fuel enrichment processes. In 1941, Britain and the USSR invaded Iran for its railroad capacity during WWII, forcing the Shah to abdicate. After democratic elections in 1951, the newly elected prime minister Dr. Mossadegh nationalized the state's petroleum industry and oil reserves, making Britain and the U.S. worry that he would lead the nation to Communism. And so we overthrow an elected, civil government in '53 trough President Eisenhower's authorized Operation Ajax. So much for our values.
The autocratic rule of Mohammad Reza Pahlavi crushed any form of opposition, eventually imprisoning and exiling Aytollah Khomeini after his denouncement of the government. Pahlavi's government was strongly tied to the United States, so any criticism of him was tied together with the Western state.
The Islamic Revolution forced the Shah to leave, and in December 1979, the theocratic constitution that made Khomeini the Supreme Leader was approved. Of course the people would fear following U.S. intervention, and due to their suspicion seized the U.S. embassy. And then we had the Iranian Hostage Crisis.
Saddam Hussein, meanwhile, interpreted the Revolution as a sign of political turmoil and thus the perfect opportunity to invade Iran, starting the Iran-Iraq War. In order to counterbalance the post-revolutionary Iran, the United States ran to support Iraq. We sent them billion dollars worth of economic aid, sold dual-use technology, non-U.S. origin weaponry, provided them with military intelligence, training and finally direct involvement in the war. Iraq was removed from a list of State Sponsors of Terrorism, a U.S. State department designation to nations that have "repeatedly provided support for acts of international terrorism."
Most shockingly, the United States sent "pathogenic, toxigenic, and other biological research materials" that were "not attenuated or weakened and were capable of reproduction" (U.S. Senate Banking Committee's Report). The United States sent them 70 shipments of these materials, which included Bacillus anthracis. Yes, that is anthrax. Oh so surprisingly, these shipments were identical to the materials that "the UN inspectors found and recovered from the Iraqi biological warfare program."
100,000 Iranian soldiers and civilians died from Iraq's attacks with chemical weapons. On March 21, 1986, after considering Iran's assertions of unethical chemical weapon use by Iraq, the UN Security Council declared that "members are profoundly concerned by the unanimous conclusion of the specialists that chemical weapons on many occasions have been used b Iraqi forces against Iranian troops" and proposed a draft resolution condemning these actions. The U.S. delegates were sent a message indicating that they "should work to develop general Western position in support of a motion to take "no decision" on Iranian draft resolution on use of chemical weapons by Iraq" (cable from the Department of State to the Mission to the European Office of the UN).
After Iraq clearly used weapons of mass destruction, the US kept providing support. After an Iraqi fighter mistakenly attacked the USS Stark, killing 37 servicemen in May 1987, the U.S. accepted Hussein's apology and started attacking Iranian oil platforms. Of course Iran is going to see how far the U.S. is willing to go just to overthrow their government, and how international treaties and agreements (especially the Geneva Protocol of 1925 which prohibits the use in war of chemical weapons) are essentially moot.
In addition, in July, 1988, a U.S. cruiser shot down Iranian Air Flight 655, a civilian airplane with 290 passengers which was in Iranian territorial waters and thus violated no rules of war. The U.S. has still not formally apologized for the incident.
So why does Iran hate the United States? We provided their enemy with biological weapons and materials to create chemical weapons which killed 100,000 Iranians. We did not condemn this unethical action. We killed their civilians. We have a history of meddling in their governmental affairs. And now we have invaded their neighboring country of Iraq and pursuing a war in Afghanistan. They are trapped and surrounded by a country that called them part of the "axis of evil," clearly they are going to want to bolster their defenses.
President Obama tried a "year of engagement" with Iran which ended with the start of 2010 and was deemed an utter failure. So what do we do now? Initially I had hoped that with the new administration's stronger willingness to communicate with Iran would bring in some hope for change, but it has become clear that Iran's distrust is essentially unbreakable.
And of course, there's a paradox. We say that we want to try economic sanctions, using both sticks and carrots, before giving Israel a free hand to attack their nuclear plants. We have previously indicated that we were not going to use a preemptive attack to take out their program, but then we released the 2010 Nuclear Posture Review.
The United States will not use or threaten to use nuclear weapons against non-nuclear weapons
states that are party to the Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty (NPT) and in compliance with their
nuclear nonproliferation obligations.
You can't take a clearer stab at North Korea and Iran. With all their rhetoric on sitting down and having a reasonable talk with Iran instead of using military action intended for rollback, this statement seems to present a clear paradox.
Ayatollah Khameni said that the new strategy amounted to "atomic threats against Iranian people."
And now they have even more of an incentive to achieve weaponization capabilities to deter the United States (and Israel for that matter) from doing anything. Will sanctions work, especially with the hard-liners that are gaining more power within the government? Honestly, I doubt it. Iranians are given a choice with a gun to their head. Given their history with making international agreements and agreeing to bargains and incentives, they know they cannot believe the international community to keep their word.
The anarchy of the system is so blatantly obvious in this case. No international institution can create transparency. They say their nuclear power plants are used for energy creation... they sit on barrels of oil. Are they suddenly worrying about the greenhouse gas effect? Ha. So we have a reason to be suspicious, but what the U.S. is forgetting is that so do they. 
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