1953 Iranian coup d'état

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1953 coup d'état
Tank-riding anti-Mosaddeq demonstrators in Tehran on August 19, 1953.
Date 1953 Location Iran Result Overthrow of the Iranian Prime Minister, Mohammed Mosaddeq, and his subsequent replacement by Fazlollah Zahedi on August 19, 1953.

The 1953 Iranian coup d'état saw the overthrow of the democratically-elected administration of Iranian Prime Minister Mohammed Mosaddeq and his cabinet from power by British and American intelligence operatives working together with Iranian agents and elements of the Iranian army. Bribing Iranian officials, news media and others with British and American funds, Kermit Roosevelt, Jr. of the Central Intelligence Agency (CIA),^[1] organized the covert operation aiding retired Iranian General Fazlollah Zahedi and Imperial Guard Colonel Nematollah Nassiri. The project to overthrow Iran's government was codenamed Operation Ajax. ^[2]

The coup has been called "a critical event in post-war world history." It re-installed Shah Mohammad Reza Pahlavi, replacing an elected government with a pro-Western dictatorship, and is thought to have contributed to the 1979 overthrow of the Shah and his replacement with the anti-Western Islamic Republic.^[3]

In America, it was originally considered a triumph of covert action but now is considered by many to have left "a haunting and terrible legacy." ^[4] In 2000, former U.S. Secretary of State Madeleine Albright, during the administration of President Bill Clinton, called it a "setback for democratic government" in Iran.^[5]

Reasons given for why the coup occured include CIA bribes, and domestic dissatisfaction with the Mossadegh government. Motivations given for the foreign coup planners include desire to control Iranian oil fields, contempt for democracy in non-European states, and more benign concerns over Iran's coming under the control of the Soviet bloc of Iran's traditional enemy Russia. ^[6][7][8][9]

Contents 1 Background 1.1 Early oil development 1.2 Post-World War I 1.3 Post-World War II 1.4 1950s 1.4.1 Support for nationalization 1.4.2 Nationalization 2 Origins 2.1 Cold War 3 Planning Operation Ajax 4 Aftermath 4.1 Iran 4.2 Internationally 5 Conspiracy theories 6 See also 7 Footnotes 8 References 9 External links

[edit] Background

Further information: Abadan Crisis timeline

One of, if not the principle cause(s) of the coup was the dispute over the nationalization of the Anglo-Iranian Oil Company between the British and Iranian governments.

[edit] Early oil development

Further information: Anglo-Persian Oil Company

In May 1901 Mozzafar al-Din Shah Qajar, the Shah of Iran, sought to partially alleviate debts he owed to Britain by granting a 60-year concession to search for oil to William Knox D'Arcy. Although the oil exploration took seven years in a very punishing environment and was almost called off before oil was found, it discovered a huge oil field for which Iran received only 16% of future profits. ^[10]

The company grew slowly until World War I when its strategic importance led the British Government to acquire controlling interest in the company, essentially nationalizing British oil production in Iran for a short period of time, becoming the Royal Navy's chief source of fuel oil in defeating the Central Powers during World War I. During this period, British troops occupied strategic parts of Iran.

[edit] Post-World War I

There was growing dissatisfaction within Persia with the oil concession and royalty terms, whereby Iran received 16 percent of net profits^{[citation needed]}. This dissatisfaction was exacerbated by British involvement in the Persian Constitutional Revolution^{[citation needed]} as well as the British Empire's use of Iranian routes to invade Russia in an attempt to reverse the October Bolshevik Revolution^{[citation needed]}.

In 1921, a military coup, organized by the British^{[citation needed]}, placed Reza Pahlavi on the throne as Shah of Iran. The new Shah undertook a number of modernization measures, many of which were advantageous not only to the British but the Iranians as well, such as the Persian Corridor railroads for military and other transportation.

In the 1930s, Nazi Germany heavily courted the Shah in order to secure access to oil^{[citation needed]}, for use in their war effort. The Shah terminated the APOC concession. The concession was resettled within a year, covering a reduced area with an increase in the Persian government's share of profits.

In 1935, the Shah insisted^{[citation needed]} that the name Iran be used instead of Persia and, so, APOC became the Anglo-Iranian Oil Company (AIOC).

In 1941, following the German invasion of the USSR, the British and Commonwealth forces and the Soviet Union invaded Iran, to secure supply lines (see Persian Corridor) for the Soviets fighting against Germany on the Eastern Front and Iranian oil fields for the allies. They deposed Reza Shah who was considered sympathetic to the Nazis and installed Reza's 22-year-old son Crown Prince Mohammad Reza Pahlavi to replace him.

[edit] Post-World War II

In Iran, a constitutional monarchy since 1906, nationalist leaders were becoming increasingly powerful as they sought to reduce the long-time foreign intervention in their country, including the highly-profitable British oil arrangements.

A particular point of contention was the refusal of the AIOC to allow an audit of the accounts to determine whether the Iranian government received the royalties it was due. Intransigence on the part of the Anglo-Iranian Oil Company led the nationalist government to escalate its demands, requiring an equal share in oil revenues. A final crisis was precipitated when the oil company ceased operations in Iran rather than accepting the Iranian government's interference in its business affairs.

AIOC and the Iranian government resisted nationalist pressure to come to a renewed deal in 1949.

[edit] 1950s

[edit] Support for nationalization

By 1951, AIOC resistance to negotiating and increasing payment to Iran had created support for nationalization of that company among Iranians that was not just strong but passionate.

In March the pro-western Prime Minister Ali Razmara who had spoken out against nationalization, was assassinated. The next month the Iranian parliament passed a bill to nationalize the oil industry, creating the National Iranian Oil Company (NIOC). This was undertaken with the guidance of western-educated Dr. Mohammed Mosaddeq, at that time a member of the parliament, the leader of the nationalization movement. By May, Mosaddeq was appointed Prime Minister by the Shah.

That summer, American diplomat Averell Harriman came to Iran to try to negotiate a compromise between Mossedegh and the British. His plea for help from the Shah was met with the reply that "in the face of public opinion, there was no way he [the Shah] could say a word against nationalization."^[11] Harriman called a press conference in Tehran were he read a statement calling for `reason as well as enthusiasm` in confronting the crisis. "As soon as those words were out of his mouth, one journalist jumped to his feet and shouted, `We and the Iranian people all support Premier Mossadegh and oil nationalization!` The others began cheering and then marched out of the room. Harriman was left alone, shaking his head in dismay." ^[12]

[edit] Nationalization

Further information: Abadan Crisis

The newly state-owned oil company saw a dramatic drop in production as a result of Iranian inexperience and the AIOC-mandated policy that British technicians not work with the newly created National Iranian Oil Company. This resulted in the Abadan Crisis, a situation that was further aggravated by its export markets being closed when the British Navy imposed a blockade around the country in order to force the Iranian state to abandon the effort to nationalize its nation's oil. Oil revenues to the Iranian government were significantly higher than before nationalization, since nationalization, by definition, caused oil profits to be directed into the state's coffers rather than into the hands of foreign oil companies.

The United Kingdom took a case against the nationalization to the International Court of Justice at The Hague. Mossadegh vowed that at the hearing, the world would hear of a, "Cruel and imperialistic country," stealing from a "needy and naked people." Britain, representing the AIOC, lost the case. The government of Britain was concerned about its interests in Iran, and laboring under a misconception that Iran's nationalist movement was Soviet-backed. Eventually, Great Britain persuaded U.S. Secretary of State John Foster Dulles that Iran was slowly coming under Soviet influence. This was an effective strategy for the British, since it exploited America's Cold War mindset. U.S. President Harry S. Truman never agreed to the British proposal to oust Prime Minister Mohammed Mosaddeq. But in 1953, General Dwight D. Eisenhower became the President of the United States, and the British convinced the new American administration to join them in overthrowing the only democratically elected government Iran has ever had and re-establishing British control of Iranian oil.

[edit] Origins

The idea of overthrowing Mosaddeq was conceived by the British who asked U.S. President Harry S. Truman for assistance but he refused.^[13] The British raised the idea again to Dwight D. Eisenhower who became president in 1953. The new administration agreed to participate in overthrowing the elected government of Iran.^[14]

Mosaddeq decided that Iran ought to begin profiting from its own vast oil reserves and took steps to nationalize the oil industry which had previously been controlled by the Anglo-Iranian Oil Company (later changed to the British Petroleum Company). Britain pointed out that Iran was violating the company's legal rights and spearheaded a worldwide boycott of Iran's oil that submerged the regime into financial crisis.^[15] The monarchy supported by the U.S. and Britain invited western oil companies back into Iran.^[15] "The crushing of Iran's first democratic government ushered in more than two decades of dictatorship under the Shah, who relied heavily on US aid and arms," Dan De Luce wrote in The Guardian in a review of All the Shah's Men by Stephen Kinzer, a reporter for The New York Times, who for the first time revealed details of the coup.

[edit] Cold War

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Among the controversies involved in the coup is the importance and/or legitimacy of American and British fears of Communist influence in Iran.

Iran's huge neighbor, the Soviet Union, had expanded its domain to rule over tens of millions of Muslim in Central Asia, and following World War II over much of Eastern Europe. ^[16] On June 26, 1950, as the movement for oil nationalization was gathering steam in Iran, soldiers of the North Korean Communist regime with the backing of the Soviets, crossed the 38th parallel to invade South Korea, beginning the Korean War. ^[17] Three years later, just before the coup in Iran, Soviet tanks crushed an uprising of strikes and protests in East Germany. ^[18]

The United States, challenged by what most Americans saw as a relentless communist advance, slowly ceased to view Iran as a country with a unique history that faced a unique political challenge.

The crisis in Iran with, its large powerful and very pro-Soviet Tudeh (Communist) Party, became just part of the conflict between Communism and "the Free world" Kinzer, Stephen, ^[19]

According to Sam Falle, a young British diplomat at the time of the coup,

1952 was a very dangerous time. The Cold War was hot in Korea. The Soviet Union had tried to take all Berlin in 1948. Stalin was still alive. On no account could the Western powers risk a Soviet takeover of Iran, which would almost certainly have led to World War III^[20]

In addition to fear of the Soviet influence in Iran, the Cold War influenced American support for, or at least lack of opposition to, Britain's policies there. Hardline British Prime Minister Winston Churchill used Britain's support for the U.S. in the Cold War to insist the United States not undermine his campaign to isolate Mossadegh. "Britain was supporting the Americans in Korea, he reminded Truman, and had a right to expect `Anglo-American unity` on Iran." ^[21]

A pro-American Iran under the Shah would give the U.S. a double strategic advantage in the ensuing Cold War, as a NATO alliance was already in effect with the government of Turkey, also bordering the USSR.

[edit] Planning Operation Ajax

As a condition of restoring the Anglo-Iranian Oil Company, the U.S. required that the AIOC's oil monopoly lapse. Five major U.S. oil companies, plus Royal Dutch Shell and French Compagnie Française des Pétroles, were designated to operate in the country alongside AIOC after a successful coup.

In planning the operation, the CIA organized a guerrilla force in case the communist Tudeh Party seized power as a result of any chaos created by Operation Ajax. According to formerly "Top Secret" documents released by the National Security Archive, Undersecretary of State Walter Bedell Smith reported that the CIA had reached an agreement with Qashqai tribal leaders in southern Iran to establish a clandestine safe haven from which U.S.-funded guerrillas and intelligence agents could operate.

The leader of Operation Ajax was Kermit Roosevelt, Jr., a senior CIA officer, and grandson of the former U.S. President Theodore Roosevelt. While formal leadership was vested in Kermit Roosevelt, the project was designed and executed by Donald Wilber, a career CIA agent and acclaimed author of books on Iran, Afghanistan and Ceylon.

The CIA operation centered around having the increasingly impotent Shah dismiss the powerful Prime Minister Mosaddeq and replace him with General Fazlollah Zahedi with the assistance of Colonel Abbas Farzanegan, a choice agreed on by the British and Americans after careful examination for his likeliness to be anti-Soviet.

The BBC spearheaded Britain's propaganda campaign, broadcasting the code word to start the coup.[1]

Despite the high-level coordination and planning, the coup d'état briefly faltered, and the Shah fled Iran. After a short exile in Italy, however, the Shah was brought back again, this time through follow-up CIA operations, which were successful. Zahedi was installed to succeed Prime Minister Mosaddeq. The deposed Mosaddeq was arrested, given what some have alleged to have been a show trial, and condemned to death. The Shah commuted this sentence to solitary confinement for three years in a military prison, followed by house arrest for life.

In 2000, The New York Times made partial publication of a leaked CIA document titled, "Clandestine Service History – Overthrow of Premier Mosaddeq of Iran – November 1952-August 1953." This document describes the planning and execution conducted by the American and British governments. The New York Times published this critical document with the names censored. The New York Times also limited its publication to scanned image (bitmap) format, rather than machine-readable text. This document was eventually published properly – in text form, and fully unexpurgated. The complete CIA document is now web published. The word 'blowback' appeared for the very first time in this document.

[edit] Aftermath

[edit] Iran

One of immediate after effects of the coup was a crackdown on the National Front opposition and especially on the Tudeh party and a concentration of political power in the hand of the Shah and his court. ^[22] Another effect was a sharp improvement in Iran's economy. Not only did the embargo end but oil revenue increased significantly over pre-nationalization levels. Although Iran did not get national control of the oil, the Shah signed an agreement replacing the Anglo-Iranian Oil Company with a consortium of British Petroleum, and eight other European and American oil companies. As a result of the agreement oil revenues increased from $34 million in 1954-55 to $181 million in 1956-57 and continued on up in later years.^[23] In addition America provided development aid to Iran.

The sight of the Shah fleeing the country until a military coup with its covert conspiring of foreign powers returned him to the throne, is often credited with being a major cause of his overthrow in the 1979 Iranian Revolution. The occupation of the U.S. embassy also took place during the 1979 revolution, which caused diplomatic relations to be severed between the new Iranian government and the United States. The role that the U.S. embassy had played in the 1953 coup led the revolutionary guards to suspect that it might be used to play a similar role in suppressing the revolution, some revolutionary guards reported.

Jacob G. Hornberger, the founder and president of The Future of Freedom Foundation, commented that "U.S. officials, not surprisingly, considered the operation one of their greatest foreign policy successes -- until, that is, the enormous convulsion that rocked Iranian society with the violent ouster of the Shah and the installation of a virulently anti-American Islamic regime in 1979."^[24] According to Hornberger, "the coup, in essence, paved the way for the rise to power of the Ayatollah Ruhollah Khomeini and all the rest that's happened right up to 9/11 and beyond."^[24]

[edit] Internationally

The 1953 coup was the first time the United States had overthrown a government.^[25] Operation Ajax was seen as a unalloyed success there, with "immediate and far-reaching effect. Overnight, the CIA became a central part of the American foreign policy apparatus, and covert action came to be regarded as a cheap and effective way to shape the course of world events." A coup against the Guatemalan regime of Jacobo Arbenz Guzmán which had expropriate land owned by the United Fruit Company followed the next year.^[26]

[edit] Conspiracy theories

The Islamic Republic of Iran, the main expose of the 1953 coup, All the Shah's Men: An American Coup and the Roots of Middle East Terror, by Stephen Kinzer, has been censored to exclude descriptions of the late Ayatollah Abol-Ghasem Kashani's activities in the coup. Mahmood Kashani, the son of Abol-Ghasem Kashani and described as "one of the top members of the current ruling elite" who has been approved twice to run for the presidency by the Council of Guardians, denies there was a coup in 1953 and says Mossadegh himself was following British plans and carrying out their dictates. In his words:

In my opinion, Mossadegh was the director of the British plans and implemented them. .... Without a doubt Mossadegh had the primary and essential role^[27]

in the August 1953 coup. Kashani says Mossadegh, the British and the United States were working together against Ayatollah Kashani to undermine the role of Shia clerics. ^[28] According to Masoud Kazemzadeh, this theory is contradicted by the fact that "the second person who spoke on Radio Tehran announcing and celebrating the overthrow of Mossadegh was Ayatollah Kashani’s son, who was hand-picked by Kermit Roosevelt." ^[29]

This allegation is also advanced in a book alleged to have been written by former SAVAK official Hossein Fardoust entitled Khaterat-e Arteshbod-e Baznesheshteh Hossein Fardoust (The Memoirs of Retired General Hossein Fardoust). According to it, Mohammad Mossadeq was not a mortal enemy of the British, but had "always favored" them, and his campaign to nationalize the British Anglo-Iranian Oil Company had been inspired by `the British themselves.`^[30] Scholar Ervand Abrahamian has suggested that torture by Islamic Republican authorities is likely to have been used against Fardoust whose death was announced before the publication of the book. ^[31]

[edit] See also

• Abadan Crisis
• Abadan Crisis timeline
• Asadollah Rashidian
• Mohammed Reza Pahlavi
• False flag operations

[edit] Footnotes

[edit] References

• Kinzer, Stephen (2003). All the Shah's Men: An American Coup and the Roots of Middle East Terror. John Wiley & Sons. ISBN 0-471-26517-9. 
• Kapuściński, Ryszard (1982). Shah of Shahs. Vintage. ISBN 0-679-73801-0. 
• Roosevelt, Kermit (1979). Countercoup: The struggle for the control of Iran. McGRAW-Hill Book Company. ISBN 0-07-053590-6. 

[edit] External links

• 50 Years Later—a look back at the 1953 U.S.-backed coup in Iran
• The C.I.A. in Iran—New York Times report based on uncovered CIA documents
• The Secret CIA History of the Iran Coup, 1953—Provided by the National Security Archive
• Mohammad Mosaddeq and the 1953 Coup in Iran—new book from the National Security Archive reexamines the coup
• How to Overthrow a Government—interview with Stephen Kinzer, author of All the Shah’s Men: An American Coup and the Roots of Middle East Terror
• US-Iranian Relations, the 1953 CIA Coup in Iran and the Roots of Middle East Terror—Interview with Stephen Kinzer, author of All the Shah’s Men
• All The Shah’s Men—interview with Steven Kinzer
• Review of All the Shah's Men by David S. Robarge
• A Very Elegant Coup—critique of All the Shah’s Men
• The spectre of Operation Ajax by Guardian Unlimited