Iranian history: that CIA coup that deposed Mossaddegh
A little while ago a commenter here wrote: “We and the Brits destabilized Iran in 1953 for the Shah, then the Shah’s reign led to this theocracy.”
The reference is to the coup engineered by the US and Britain against Iranian Prime Minister Mossaddegh [variously spelled]. Here’s what Wiki has to say about it. It’s the sort of thing you commonly will read if you do internet research on the subject:
He was the head of a democratically elected government, holding office as the Prime Minister of Iran from 1951 until 1953, when his government was overthrown in a coup d’état aided by the United States’ Central Intelligence Agency and the United Kingdom’s Secret Intelligence Service.
An author, administrator, lawyer, and prominent parliamentarian, his administration introduced a range of progressive social and political reforms such as social security and land reforms, including taxation of the rent on land. His government’s most notable policy, however, was the nationalization of the Iranian oil industry, which had been under British control since 1913 through the Anglo-Persian Oil Company (APOC/AIOC) (later British Petroleum and BP).
Many Iranians regard Mosaddegh as the leading champion of secular democracy and resistance to foreign domination in Iran’s modern history. Mosaddegh was removed from power in a coup on 19 August 1953, organised and carried out by the CIA at the request of MI6, which chose Iranian General Fazlollah Zahedi to succeed Mosaddegh.
It seems pretty clear what is being said here, at least from the “progressive” (great word, isn’t it?] point of view. I’ll fill in the blanks for you: good guy Mossaddegh was doing wonderful things for a stable Iran until the greedy bad guys the Americans and Brits got mad at him for nationalizing the oil industry and claiming it for its rightful owners, the Iranians.
You can read that sort of thing all over. Is it true?
One can begin at any number of arbitrary points in Iranian (and Persian, before that) history or modern history. But this might be a good one. While you read it, mull over how very very stable Iran was (that’s sarcasm, by the way) before the coup.
Here’s more:
The CIA’s immediate target was Mossadeq, whom the Shah had picked to run the government just before the parliament voted to nationalize the AIOC. A royal-blooded eccentric given to melodrama and hypochondria, Mossadeq often wept during speeches, had fits and swoons, and conducted affairs of state from bed wearing wool pajamas. During his visit to the United States in October 1951, Newsweek labeled him the “Fainting Fanatic” but also observed that, although most Westerners at first dismissed him as “feeble, senile, and probably a lunatic,” many came to regard him as “an immensely shrewd old man with an iron will and a flair for self-dramatization.” Time recognized his impact on world events by naming him its “Man of the Year” in 1951.
Mossadeq is Kinzer’s [author of a book about the coup being reviewed in the article] paladin””in contrast to the schemers he finds in the White House and Whitehall””but the author does subject him to sharp criticism. He points out, for example, that Mossadeq’s ideology blinded him to opportunities to benefit both himself and the Iranian people: “The single-mindedness with which he pursued his campaign against [the AIOC, otherwise known as the Anglo-Persian Oil Company] made it impossible for him to compromise when he could and should have.” In addition, Mossadeq failed at a basic test of statecraft””trying to understand other leaders’ perspectives on the world. By ignoring the anticommunist basis of US policy, he wrenched the dispute with the AIOC out of its Cold War context and saw it only from his parochial nationalist viewpoint. Lastly, Mossadeq’s naé¯vete about communist tactics led him to ignore the Tudeh Party’s efforts to penetrate and control Iranian institutions. He seemed almost blithely unaware that pro-Soviet communists had taken advantage of democratic systems to seize power in parts of Eastern Europe. By not reining in Iran’s communists, he fell on Washington’s enemies list.
If you want to read a history of Mossadegh devoid of leftist memes, go here:
There are serious men who are under the impression that the CIA led a coup to replace an upstanding, democratic reformer named Mohammed Mossadegh with a fascist Shah named Mohammad Reza Pahlavi, and that Pahlavi’s crimes were so atrocious that Iran was driven into the arms of the mullahs. None of that is true.
That’s near the beginning. The body of the article fleshes out that thesis with points such as this one:
Extremely valuable property [the AIOC, and the oil industry in Iran that had been developed by the British and not the Iranians], legally owned by the British government and British private citizens, had been confiscated by a foreign government. Before the war, Britain might have invaded. Instead, it retaliated against Mossadegh by leading an international embargo of Iran’s oil and by withdrawing its technicians from the nationalized holdings. Without British know-how, the company could barely function; after the withdrawal, Iranian oil production dropped 96 percent. And the oil that was produced couldn’t be sold.
Oil money funded the Iranian government; without it, Mossadegh’s reforms were worthless, and his popularity plunged. Mossadegh called a parliamentary election in late 1951. When he realized he was going to lose, he had the election suspended.
(That should put to bed the notion that he was an idealistic democrat.)
The entire article is well worth reading, if only to present a thought-provoking alternative to the usual simplistic “US bad, Mossaddegh good” story. Later on, there’s this [emphasis mine]:
The CIA was happy to take credit [for the coup], exaggerating its involvement in what was, at the time, considered a big success ”” but a private CIA cable credited Mossadegh’s collapse to the fact that “the flight of the Shah . . . galvanized the people into an irate pro-Shah force.” (A large portion of those galvanized people, it should be noted, were hard-core Islamists, who feared that Mossadegh’s slide to the left would include Communist atheism.)
So: Mossadegh was no democrat, and the CIA was not responsible for his ouster; the CIA did not install the Shah in his place, and it did not become involved because of oil. In fact, after Mossadegh was gone, Iran’s oil infrastructure remained nationalized, and eventually the British agreed to a 50-50 profit split.
Note especially this: “So why do so many people believe the imperialist-calamity version of modern Persian history? Because the world is filled with freshmen and sophomoric adults.”
Guess so. My gut feeling is always that history tends to be far more complex than its presentation by either side. But generally I’ve found the right to be somewhat more reliable on that score than the left.
When the 1953 coup occurred, Iran wasn’t the least bit stable. It was already a battlefield among the groups fighting for power: the monarchists, the liberal democrats, the religious fundamentalists, and the /leftists/Communists. I’m pretty sure that the liberal democrats were the smallest group, even back then. In the end—that is, during the revolution of 1979—the latter two groups (religious fundamentalists and the left) united in unholy alliance in order to overthrow the first two groups. That temporary unity was one of the main reasons the revolution was successful.
Iran has suffered ever since. It turned out that it was the religious fundamentalists who were the last men standing, although the left had intended to take that position.
[NOTE: I’ve written quite a bit in the past about Iranian history and in particular the history of the years directly leading up to the revolution of 1979 (see this this, this, this, and this, which is just a sampler of the most important posts but is by no means an inclusive list).]
“My gut feeling is always that history tends to be far more complex than its presentation by either side.”
Yes! Understanding this truth should be a foundation stone of any serious study of the past. Unfortunately, it seldom is.
I know people who were working/living in Tehran before the Shah was overthrown. They describe a vibrant, modern culture.
Much is made of the Shah’s secret police. I am sure they existed and were no doubt brutal. I do not doubt that dissent was not tolerated by those who opposed the regime. However, according to everything I have read, and the personal testimony of those I cited, it seems that the Shah was attempting to move Iran toward a modern, stable state. Would it have ever resembled a western democracy or republic? Doubtful. But, as we have learned recently, there are worse situations than autocratic regimes that govern with some moderation.
Considering the conventional wisdom from a different tack; I simply am not prepared to believe that Ike would have countenanced a coup to primarily benefit British oil interests. His actions over Suez and his refusal to support the French in Indo-China suggest that he had little tolerance for prolonging the excesses of our friends with Imperial histories. Having said that, I also believe that the actions of the Soviet Union following WWII created a climate that was conducive to miscalculation in various parts of he world.
The following helped form my opinions on Iran. Helian Unbound blog: Mossadegh, Iran, and the CIA’s Electric Kool-Aid Acid Coup. Helian wrote three articles on the issue.
Lest we forget:
Truman FORCED Stalin out of Iran — with the atomic bomb.
Remember ?
( At the time, all of this was hidden from public view. )
The Nazis intended to march down to the Persian Gulf.
So too, Stalin.
This entire affair folds back on up to Stalin.
Lest we forget.
From Amir Taheri’s The Persian Night: Iran under the Khomeinist Revolution. After leaving office, Bill Clinton spoke at Davos:
More from Taheri’s book:
I would echo Oldflyer’s observations from the point of view that I knew many young people from the Shah’s era who were deliberately being educated in the West (US in particular) so that they could form the next generation of a more modernized Iran.
Most of those went into hiding & then fled to other countries or, if my memory holds, sought asylum in the US when the Shah was driven out.
Would they have grown up to think “like me” & lead in Iran like a Westerner? I doubt it…but they sure would have been a far cry from the mullahs. And that would have been something.
Blert:
The Nazi intended to do a lot of things, but mostly they killed civilians. Stalin, well he had plans too, but mostly killed whoever he wished in the tens of millions.
I’m struck by the parallels between today’s leftists enabling and acting as apologists for Islam and the 1979 “unholy alliance” between Iran’s religious fundamentalists and the leftist/communists…
Western Europeans, having failed to learn from history are making the same mistakes that Iran’s 1979 leftist/communists made and Canada under Trudeau is heading down the same path…
I just finished reading Daniel Yergin’s book The Prize which, IYDN, is about the development of the oil business. It more-or-less echoes the non-leftist-meme version. One of the more interesting tidbits is that Kermit Roosevelt, Jr (TR’s grandson) was the CIA agent in change. Another one was that the Shah had to be convinced to start the coup and it was not a particularly easy job to convince him. And then, after it had (apparently) failed, they went to Eisenhower w/their tails between their legs (my words, not Yergin’s) and admitted that it had failed.
Thanks for keeping the record straight.
I have always doubted that anyone ever has all the information right about anything in history, and I am becoming more sure we do not, as I watch our current “fake news” crowding out reality, because what is happening now simply repeats what happened before.
I worry about our understanding of history in the future. On one hand there will be massive amounts of digital information available but on the other hand we no longer will have first hand history as provided by diaries kept by important historical figures. The lifelong diaries of people like John Quincy Adams and Queen Victoria provide unbelievable context to events of their time and give historians first hand insight where as going forward what will be the equivalent?
James Clavell’s novel “Whirlwind” is an interesting look at the Iranian Revolution of 1979 and a British company embroiled in it.
wow. you should be in the NY Times and Washington post.
Baklava:
I presume you mean Neo should be in the NYTimes and WashPost.
I don’t think fiction is her métier..
I guess Wikipedia just sort of forgot about the Soviet armored divisions (as many as 40) poised on the border. I’d be shocked! shocked! if that was a deliberate omission.
The lifelong diaries of people like John Quincy Adams and Queen Victoria provide unbelievable context to events of their time and give historians first hand insight where as going forward what will be the equivalent?
Blogs, assuming they don’t get record wiped.
Ymarsakar:
It’s not necessary to purposely “record-wipe” a blog to have it disappear.
Unless a blog is hosted on something like Blogger, which most big blogs don’t use anymore for a number of reasons, bloggers pay hosts to host the blog. If you don’t pay, it disappears. So when a person stops blogging—for example, if a person dies—the blog will disappear after the term for which the blogger has paid, unless some heir or friend decides to continue to pay for it to be online.