Dr. Stein was also one of three 2016 candidates to bring up the subject of the U.S.-sponsored 1953 coup which crushed all hope of democracy in Iran, America’s cherished enemy. Everyone is familiar with the long term effects of that decision.

Events such as these, distant in time and space as they are, have helped produce the conditions under which the U.S. now finds itself. Having imposed its will on foreign lands for generations — backing certain tyrants when it felt like it, fighting them when they were no longer useful — this self proclaimed beacon of freedom and liberty is beginning to experience just a small taste of what millions of others have known as ‘normal’ all their lives.

“We need to go back to the drawing board on our relationship to the Middle East,” Stein said, “Our foreign policy has had catastrophic consequences; it’s based on economic and military domination rather than human rights and diplomacy.”

Stein cited the Iranian-US relationship as a perfect example of the failures of American diplomacy.

“Why did we develop conflict with the Iranians in the first place?” she asked. “It’s a glaring example of the disaster of regime change, sixty years later.”

Stein was referring to the US-backed overthrow of the democratically elected Mohammed Mosaddegh, a reformer who began nationalizing the country’s oil industry. That action, argued Stein, paved the way for his government’s eventual toppling by the CIA.

“We overthrew Mossadegh and substituted the shah. That resulted in a tyrannical regime, which was then overthrown [by people].”

Article was published March 4, 2016

...[I]t’s very clear that there is blowback going on now across the Middle East, not only the unrest directed at the Libyan embassy, likewise at the embassies really across the Middle East, including in Egypt. We’re seeing in Afghanistan our soldiers are being shot at by the police forces that they are supposed to be training in Afghanistan. We’re seeing in Pakistan that 75% of Pakistanis actually identify the United States now as their enemy, not as their supporter or their ally. And, you know, in many ways, we’re seeing a very ill-conceived, irresponsible and immoral war policy come back to haunt us, where United States foreign policies have been based, unfortunately, on brute military force and wars for oil.

Under my administration, we will have a foreign policy based on international law and human rights and the use of diplomacy. And instead of fighting wars for oil, we will be leading—as America, we will be leading the fight to put an end to climate change. In Afghanistan and Iraq, we have spent about five trillion dollars. We have seen thousands and thousands of American lives lost, hundreds of thousands of civilian lives lost, about a trillion dollars a year being spent on a massive, bloated military-industrial-security budget. Instead, we need to cut that military budget, rightsize it to year 2000 levels, and build true security here at home, bringing our war dollars home.