by Amir Taheri
It is interesting that the CIA claims that all its documents relating to the events disappeared in a mysterious fire. We are thus left with two accounts. One is a self-serving book by Kermit Roosevelt, who presents himself as a latter-day, and vastly inflated, Scarlet Pimpernel.5 The other is an official report commissioned by the CIA and written by Donald Wilber, the agency’s operational director in Tehran at the time. While Roosevelt’s account is obviously fanciful, Wilber’s report is written in a sober, almost self-deprecating style. He shows that the CIA and the British MI6 did have a plan to foment trouble against Mossadeq after the shah had signed the dismissal decree, but the plan failed as the CIA’s agents and “assets” behaved more like Keystone Kops than professional conspirators engaged in a major big-power clash in the context of the Cold War. Wilber reports that the CIA station sent the message to Washington that “The operation has been tried and failed.” The British followed with their own message of failure: “We regret that we cannot consider going on fighting. Operations against Mossadeq should be discontinued.”6 Wilber blames the CIA’s Iranian “assets” for the failure. The CIA had prepared “a Western type plan offered for execution by Orientals [sic]. Given the recognized incapacity of Iranians to plan or act in a thoroughly logical manner, we would never expect such a plan to be executed in the local atmosphere like a Western staff operation.”7
Moscow, too, noticed the failure of the CIA-MI6 plot. For two days running, Moscow Radio broadcast an editorial by Pravda, the CPSU organ, headed “The Failure of the American Adventure in Iran.” The editorial claimed that British and American agents had tried to foment street riots against Mossadeq but had failed because “progressive forces,” a codeword for Communists and fellow travelers, had rallied behind the old leader.
The official CIA report also refutes the claim that the Americans had bribed a number of Iranian army officers to stage a coup against Mossadeq. Wilber states categorically: “In Iran we did not rely on bribery. . . . We did not spend a cent in the purchase of officers.”8 He also makes it clear that no army units were involved in the events, although a brigade led by Colonel Bakhtiar, a cousin of the shah’s wife, Queen Soraya, arrived in Tehran from Kermanshah after the fall of Mossadeq.
Wilber observed part of the popular pro-shah uprising and offered his version in the report commissioned by the CIA:
In the evening, violence flared in the streets of Tehran. Just what was the major motivating force is impossible to say, but it is possible to isolate the factors behind the disturbances. First the flight of the Shah brought home to the populace in a dramatic way how far Mossadeq had gone, and galvanized the people into an irate pro-Shah force. Second, it seems clear that the Tudeh Party overestimated its strength in the situation. . . . Third, the Mossadeq government was at last beginning to feel very uneasy about its alliance with the Tudeh Party. The Pan-Iranists were infuriated and the Third Force was most unhappy about the situation.9
Wilber’s narrative continues:
The surging crowds of men, women and children were shouting: Shah piruz ast (The Shah is victorious). Determined as they seemed, a gay holiday atmosphere prevailed, and, as if exterior pressure had been released so that the true sentiments of the people showed through. The crowds were not, as in earlier weeks, made up of hoodlums, but included people of all classes—many well dressed—led or encouraged by civilians. Trucks and busloads of cheering civilians streamed by. . . . As usual, word spread like lightning and in other parts of the city pictures of the Shah were eagerly displayed.10
Some Iranians believe that the CIA retrospectively built up its own role in the August 1953 events so as to restore its prestige, shattered after the Bay of Pigs fiasco in 1961. The agency needed at least one feather if it were to keep its expensive hat. Anti-Americans, especially the Soviets and their agents and sympathizers throughout the world, found it in their own interest to endorse the CIA’s claim as an example of American “imperialism” in action against a Third World nation. The shah’s enemies inside Iran also liked the story, as it absolved them of any responsibility for Mossadeq’s failure. Blaming the foreigner for one’s own shortcomings has always been popular in Iran.
not all anti-shah and anti-American scholars have bought the CIA’s claim. According to one British Marxist academic:
There is no doubt that the US government, and specifically the CIA, played an active part in organising the coup of 19 August 1953 that ousted Mossadeq, and that this intervention was the fruit of the build-up of the US presence in Iran that had been under way since the war. However, it is misleading to attribute everything to this factor alone: Iranian nationalists tend to do so—and so, on occasions, does the CIA, keen to claim credit for a successful operation. The reality is not so simple, since the CIA intervention was only possible because of internal balance of forces in Iran, the existence of elements within the dominant class that were interested in acting against the Mossadeq regime and the weaknesses of Mossadeq’s own position.11
Those five days in August 1953 were destined to remain the stuff of legend and myth, as well as accusations and counteraccusations, that have continued to this day. Iranian opponents of the shah cite these events as proof of his “original sin,” for which he should never be forgiven. The shah’s supporters, on the other hand, claim that even if we assume that the Americans played a decisive role in the outcome, we must remember that the change of prime ministers at the time helped save Iran from a Communist takeover. In any case, allegations of CIA plotting did not translate into anti-Americanism in Iran. Iranians continued to regard the United States as a valuable friend. In the 1960s, the United States became the number-one destination for Iranian visitors and students. By 1978, there were more than 150,000 Iranian students, most of them financed by their families, in the United States—by far the largest number for any nationality. At the same time, more than 70,000 Americans worked in Iran along with almost a million other expatriates from some fifty different countries.
Mossadeq himself never blamed the United States for his downfall. And it is quite possible that he was relieved to be pushed aside at a time that he had run out of ideas and lived on a day-to-day basis. He had built his career on opposition to the British and then to the two Pahlavi Shahs. In August 1953, the British were no longer there, the first Pahlavi had been dead for years, and the second was in exile in Rome. What could Mossadeq do now? What did he have to offer? A typical naysayer, he knew only how to oppose, having marketed his ideology as “a balance of negatives” (movazeneh manfi). After a show trial in which he amused himself by demonstrating his oratorical skills once again, Mossadeq was given a three-year sentence, which the shah commuted to one of “surveyed residence.” This meant that the old man would have to live in his estate near Tehran under the watchful eyes of security agents.
Because the power struggle had taken place within a small elite, most of whose members were related by blood or marriage, Mossadeq’s political and army allies received short prison sentences or were released without charge. Only one was executed: Hussein Fatemi, the foreign minister who had publicly called for an end to monarchy and refused to recant. Some of Mossadeq’s close associates remained attached to the belief, or the illusion, that the United States, especially the Democratic Party, somehow supported them. In the years to come, some of them immigrated to the United States and acquired American citizenship—no sign of bitterness there.12
In 1978, as the Khomeinist revolution gathered pace, pro-Mossadeq figures looked to the United States to help them come to power.13 After the Khomeinist revolution, Tudeh Party leaders blamed Mossadeq’s “weakness and tergiversation” for his fall and boasted that the Communists could have helped him seize power by force if necessary. While it is true that Mossadeq offered no leadership in those crucial days, it is unlikely that the Tudeh could have staged a putsch in his support. As noted earlier, the Tudeh and their Soviet masters enjoyed the support of hundreds of army, police, and gendarmerie officers and NCOs, and they co
uld have seized control of Tehran. At the time, however, Moscow was in no position to make such a major move on the Cold War chessboard. Stalin had passed away four months earlier and the CPSU leadership was engaged in a bitter power struggle between the first secretary, nikita Khrushchev, and the prime minister, Grigori Malenkov. The Soviet embassy and the NKVD network in Tehran were paralyzed, unable to obtain clear instructions from Moscow. A combination of factors beyond any man’s control helped Iran escape what looked like an inevitable takeover by the Soviets and transformation into the “People’s Republic of Iranestan” under a red flag.
As for Mossadeq’s project, the nationalization of oil, it did great harm to Iran. In 1951, Iran had not been ready to take over the industry, produce the oil, and sell it on world markets. There were just four Iranians at the mid-levels of the industry, none with any experience in macro-management of a major business enterprise. In any case, the ownership of the oil reserves had never been in doubt. The Anglo-Iranian Oil Company had operated in less than 1 percent of the Iranian territory, with the right to explore for oil in another 4 percent. Even then, the company never claimed it owned Iran’s oil, if only because such a claim would have been legally groundless and politically impossible to sustain. Ali Razmara, prime minister in 1950-51, just before Mossadeq, had reminded the people of all these points in speeches at the parliament. He had suggested negotiating a new contract under which Iran would get better terms while training the personnel needed for an eventual “Iranization” of the industry at all levels. Razmara, a professional soldier and graduate of the elite French school at Saint-Cyr, also reminded the Iranians that their inefficient and corrupt government—a government that was unable to pay its employees on time—was in no position to run the oil industry and recapture the markets in the teeth of British opposition.
Mossadeq, however, was not interested in economics or practical matters in general. nationalization was a catchy slogan; it created the impression that Iranians were taking revenge against the perfidious Albion that had snatched so much of their territory and subjected them to so much humiliation for 150 years. But during his two and a half years as prime minister, Mossadeq managed to find only one customer for Iranian oil, an Italian company, and sold 23,000 barrels to it. The event was dubbed the “Miracle of Mossadeq” and celebrated as a great victory. In reality, it was a humiliating occasion for a nation that could recall numerous genuine victories in its history. Then the British seized the cargo and declared it “stolen property” when they captured the Italian tanker Rosa Maria before it had left the Persian Gulf. The whole of Iran cried, and Mossadeq, who had been hailed as a hero a few days earlier, was recast as the quintessential martyr—not a bad position for those addicted to martyrdom.
“We don’t care if we are going to starve or return to the stone age,” shouted Hussein Makki, the most popular of Mossadeqist politicians, in Abadan in 1951. “The spectacle of seeing the English [sic] pack up and run away is enough victory for us for generations to come.” The fact is that few Iranians at the time had ever seen any foreigners at all, let alone “the English,” who numbered around two thousand and were confined to seven oil centers in often wild and inhospitable spots in the southwest where average temperatures are in the 100s Fahrenheit for much of the year.
By the time Zahedi took over as prime minister in 1953, most Iranians realized that they had had a good party and that, having tasted revenge against “the English,” they now needed to cope with the hangover. They looked to the United States to help them avoid famine, end the oil dispute, and return the economy to some level of normality. Although the government led by Zahedi depended heavily on American financial aid, it showed no interest in a formal alliance with the United States. Several key ministers in the new cabinet, who had also served under Mossadeq, urged Iran to draw closer to the non-Aligned Movement. The shah, however, was convinced that only a formal alliance with the United States could insure Iran against Soviet expansionism. He believed that once he had that insurance, he would be able to mobilize Iran’s not inconsiderable resources for projecting power in its “natural habitat.” Iran had to become “the regional superpower”; that was its manifest destiny as a builder of empires.
The issue of an alliance created some tension between the shah and his new prime minister, and came to a head over Iran’s membership in the Baghdad Pact, a military alliance led by Britain with the United States as an associate member. The shah was for; Zahedi against. It soon became clear that Zahedi had to go, and he was posted to Geneva as ambassador to the Un’s European headquarters, a sinecure for a golden exile. Even then, influential voices within the decision-making elite still advocated a policy of nonalignment. It was under their pressure that Iran sent a delegation to the Bandung Conference, where the non-Aligned Movement was announced formally in April 1955.14
The shah’s campaign for a formal alliance with the United States included an offer he made to President Eisenhower during a state visit to Washington to put the Iranian army under American command, as European NATO members had done with their armies. Eisenhower politely declined. Instead, he offered a Treaty of Friendship and Cooperation, which the two nations duly signed in 1955. It stated that “there shall be firm and enduring peace and sincere friendship between the United States of America and Iran,” but no military alliance. The treaty remained the basis of Irano-American relations until Khomeini seized power. Even then, since neither side has revoked the treaty, it legally remains in force. In fact, the Islamic Republic invoked it in a suit it brought against the United States at the International Court of Justice at The Hague in 2001. An ICJ judge, Shi Jiu-yong, ruled in Iran’s favor, declaring the treaty still valid.
The price the shah paid for American friendship was high, and in later years he almost regretted having agreed to pay it. The Soviet propaganda machine, reinforced by the worldwide network of anti-Americans of all ilk, targeted him as “a lackey of imperialism.” The myth was propagated that Iran had become a satellite of the United States and that the shah was pursuing the kind of militant anti-Communism that the Americans themselves had abandoned after the McCarthy era. But even the most ardent opponents of the shah have never been able to cite a single specific example of anything the shah did that was good for the United States and bad for Iran.
Having made major inroads into the Middle East in the 1960s by signing military pacts with Egypt, Syria, and Iraq, Moscow saw Iran as the main obstacle to Soviet hegemony over the Persian Gulf and its vital energy resources. It tried to pressure the shah into accepting a “Finlandization” of Iran, that is to say adopting a policy of neutrality in the Cold War.15 The suggestion always angered the shah: Finland was “a tiny backwater of Europe” while Iran was “a great power in the heart of the most important region on earth.” Even then, as the United States consistently refused to sign a military pact with Iran, the shah remolded his policy to accommodate aspects of nonalignment. For example, he would not allow U.S. military bases on Iranian territory.16 nor was he prepared to send Iranian troops to fight alongside the U.S.led coalition in Vietnam.17 Ignoring U.S. efforts to isolate Communist China, the shah decided to recognize the People’s Republic in 1970 and sent his twin sister, Princess Ashraf, on a goodwill mission to Beijing. This was followed by an even more spectacular visit in 1971, by Empress Farah and Prime Minister Hoveyda, that turned China into one of the shah’s strongest supporters, right to the end of his reign.18 The shah also tried to diversify the sources of weaponry for Iran while launching a domestic military hardware industry that was to reach impressive scale in the 1980s. If the air force that he created almost from scratch was entirely dependent on American hardware, the army and the navy used French, Italian, British, Swiss, and even Soviet equipment and materiel. Trying not to depend solely on the United States for training the technical personnel his armed forces needed, the shah concluded agreements with thirteen other countries, including several in Europe as well as South Korea.
By the 1970s, the sh
ah felt confident enough to start projecting Iranian power where he believed the United States was failing as defender of the free world against Communism. It was thus that Iranian troops arrived in the Sultanate of Oman to fight Soviet-backed Communist rebels. Iranian troops also appeared in southern Lebanon to prevent Soviet-backed Palestinian groups from attacking Israel. In Morocco, some four hundred Iranian military experts, along with massive Iranian arms supplies, helped King Hassan II beat an Algerian attempt to drive him out of the Western Sahara. nearer home, the shah sent military experts and materiel to help Pakistan defeat a Soviet-backed insurgency in Baluchistan. On the diplomatic front, Iran helped persuade several countries to switch sides and join the anti-Communist camp. These included Sudan, Somalia, and most importantly Egypt under its new president, Muhammad Anwar Sadat. In 1973, Iran initiated a series of diplomatic, political, and economic moves to curtail Soviet influence in Afghanistan. Determined to play the “big power,” Iran, having announced in 1961 that it no longer needed foreign aid, launched its own aid program for the developing world. Part of this aid was channeled to the OPEC Fund, which the shah helped set up.19 The bulk of the Iranian aid, however, was disbursed through bilateral agreements with more than forty countries across the globe, mostly in Asia and Africa. Iran also helped some old allies, notably Great Britain, by lending them vast sums of money to ease their budgetary pressures on a number of occasions. To show the flag, the shah set up his own version of the American Peace Corps. Called the Legion of Mankind’s Servants of Humanity, the paramilitary organization offered medical, agricultural, and educational aid to some twenty countries.