Remembering Mossadegh | Apologizing for regime change in Iran

Iran's president Ahmadinejad calls on the US to apologize for its p... There's no doubt in my mind what he is referring to... I learned about how the US supported the rise of the Shah and the end of the democratically-elected Mossadegh regime in 1953 by reading "Confessions of an Economic Hit Man". Here's a compendium of 250 testimonies about the impact of our regime change of Iran on Iranians. We then supported the politically oppressive regime of the Shah for twenty-five years, up until the rise of the Ayatollah. Now, the Clinton Admin, via Madeleine Albright, did tender an official apology in the last year of their presidency, but the "apology" was about as hedged as possible.
So what if we did apologize the right way this time? Whatever problems there were with Mossadegh, they were Iran's problems and we sure as blank didn't make things better, in fact if we sowed the seeds of the rise of the Ayatollah, it also stands to reason we helped Saddam Hussein's reign as a "moderate" ally against Iran. So what do we got to lose? I find it hard to believe that such an apology would make the Iranian people reelect Ahmadinejad in the upcoming June Iranian election... The man is basically a populist, who is willing to say whatever it takes to rally public support for himself. But he's not been that good of a leader for his country and I'm sure that if the Obama Admin put their minds to it, they could win some soft-power with the Iranian people (and hopefully Arab Muslims), without helping Ahmadinejad politically.

dlw