The Shah

by Abbas Milani

  The CIA’s memo for President Eisenhower claims that the failure to topple Mossadeq was caused by “three days of delay and vacillation by the Iranian generals concerned.” The memo goes on to say that the United States should now “take a whole new look at the Iranian situation and probably have to snuggle up to Mossadeq if we are going to save anything there.”50

  Maybe as a part of this “snuggling up,” on the evening of August 18, Henderson returned to Tehran. He had left Iran earlier to give the United States “plausible deniability” about its role in the August events. His return was so urgent that he traveled “in a special United States Air Force plane.”51 He was met at the airport by Mossadeq’s son and taken directly to meet the Prime Minister. Mossadeq appeared to be in a jubilant mood, speaking with a “sarcastic smile,” although exhibiting an underlying “smoldering sense of resentment.” He was “fully dressed” and not in his usual pajamas.52

  Henderson began by complaining about attacks on U.S. citizens. It is not clear whether he was, as Roosevelt claims, trying to ensure that Mossadeq supporters would be off the street the next day, thus facilitating a last-ditch effort to overthrow the government, or whether he was truly resigned to Mossadeq’s victory, accepted the failure of “the move,” and was simply trying to protect the lives of American citizens. The incredible fact that the CIA claims that it lost all the relevant files about the August events in Iran—thus avoiding congressional mandates to declassify and release them—and the fact that no Iranian record of the meeting has survived has made the work of understanding Henderson’s motives and Mossadeq’s intentions more difficult. Finally, Soviet and Tudeh Party archives, still not made available for scrutiny, could shed light on the party’s remarkable passivity on August 19. Was it, as some scholars have suggested, the result of the Soviet Union’s post-Stalin realization that it had fallen strategically behind the United States in the arms race?53

  To Henderson’s complaints about reports of attacks on American citizens, Mossadeq replied that Iran was, in his words, “in [the] throes [of] a revolution,” and people thought that the United States was in “disagreement with them.”54

  Henderson was coyly tough, responding that if the people of Iran did not want the Americans, they were ready to “leave en masse.” Mossadeq was quick to respond that the “Iranian government did not want Americans to leave.”55 Henderson then asked Mossadeq to tell him “confidentially. . .just what had happened during recent days.”

  Mossadeq first outlined his reasons for dissolving what he called “[a] British-purchased Majlis.” Mossadeq then surprised Henderson by asking him if he had “any comments to make regarding his dissolution [of the] Majlis.” Henderson had none.

  Mossadeq’s arguments, as he must have known, were hard to fathom for several reasons. With commendable clarity and honesty, Interior Minister Gholam Hussein Sadighi had told Mossadeq that “you have made your name as a parliamentarian,” and that these “current [Majlis] elections were held during your tenure.” He reminded Mossadeq of the long, albeit unhappy, history of recess appointments in twentieth-century Iran. He reminded Mossadeq that in the “first thirteen years, five months and two days of a constitutional monarchy, there was no parliament in session for ten years and two months and twenty eight days”—and thus the Shah had made the necessary recess appointments. He asked Mossadeq, “[W]hat guarantee is there that the Shah will not choose another Prime Minister after you dissolve the Majlis?” Mossadeq replied that the Shah “does not have the guts to do that.”56

  The Shah had developed the guts, and Mossadeq’s referendum had been decisive in that development. Henderson refused to make any direct comment about the dissolution of the Majlis; he wanted to know about the events of recent days and specifically about the effort of General Zahedi to replace Mossadeq. Mossadeq said, “On [the] evening of 15th Col. Nasiri had approached his house apparently to arrest him. Col. Nasiri himself however had been arrested.. . .He had taken oath not to try to oust Shah and would have lived up to his oath if the Shah had not engaged in venture of this kind.”57 Henderson then asked whether it was in fact true that the Shah “had issued [a] firman removing him as Prime Minister and appointing Zahedi in his place.” Mossadeq denied having seen such a firman, and went on to say that even if he had, “it would have made no difference. His position for some time had been that Shah’s powers were only ceremonial in character.”

  Henderson knew this was the crux of the matter. I am “particularly interested in this point,” he said, and then asked, “Was I to understand a) he had no official knowledge that the Shah had issued [a] firman removing him as Prime Minister, and b) even [if] he should find that Shah issued such [a] firman in present circumstances he would consider it to be invalid?” Mossadeq’s reply was clear and categorical: “Precisely.”58

  In his memoir, too, Mossadeq repeats at greater length his view that the Shah did not have the authority to dismiss him. He writes that the dismissal “order was not only against the constitution, but there was no reason for it.. . .My government had never done anything against the interests of the country or of His Majesty.”59 But as he himself had confirmed in an earlier letter to the Shah—when he and other National Front leaders organized a sit-in at the Court—and as many of his advisors had warned him before he decided to dissolve the parliament, there was ample evidence that the Shah had the power of making recess appointments.

  One concrete consequence of Mossadeq’s discussions with Henderson was the Prime Minister’s decision to ban all demonstrations on August 19, and to ask his supporters, including members of the Tudeh Party, to stay off the streets on that day. Kennett Love seemed to offer another reason for the order when he claimed that he had in fact witnessed “the first resurgence of royalist sentiments in the evening of August 18th.” During much of that day, Tehran was the scene of bloody street battles between Tudeh Party activists, who had gone on an offensive “ransacking the headquarters of right-wing parties.”60 The Pan-Iranist and Sumka Parties were the two most important of these right-wing groups. American and British sources as well as some Iranian memoirs have reported that the Shah had offered financial and political support to these two parties. That support was now paying off. If in the morning royalist demonstrations seemed small, by “evening the tide began to turn.” Soldiers dispatched to stop the fighting between the right- and left-wing activists began to club “both factions impartially while shouting ‘Long Live the Shah.’ ”61

  There are completely conflicting reports on what actually happened on August 19. Each narrative is shaped either by the real or perceived interests and values of the narrator or by the historically and linguistically determined prism through which they perceive and articulate the event. In retrospect, only a number of facts seem incontrovertible about what took place in Tehran on August 19, 1953.

  By the early hours of that day, as Sadighi, Mossadeq’s minister of the interior, makes clear in his remarkably honest and revealing account of that day’s events, small crowds, some chanting pro-Shah slogans, some wielding clubs, began to gather around the city. Sadighi had been asked to come to Mossadeq’s home early in the morning to receive instructions for yet another referendum—this time to decide whether a regency council should be formed. As he prepared to send out the necessary guidelines to governors, he noticed larger crowds gathering around the ministry, shouting slogans in favor of the Shah. When he called the military governor and ordered him to send soldiers to disperse the crowd, he was told soldiers were no longer obeying orders to attack pro-Shah demonstrators.

  Early in the afternoon, Sadighi returned to Mossadeq’s home and dutifully informed the angst-ridden prime minister that soldiers and officers “are siding with the people” against the government. By early afternoon, the radio headquarters fell to forces loyal to General Zahedi, and Mossadeq knew the day was lost. Till then, the radio had been broadcasting military marches all day. No effort was made by Mossadeq or anyone in the government to solicit public support for
him. When the radio fell into the hands of royalists, they immediately began to broadcast fiery speeches in favor of the Shah. Mossadeq wept as he listened to these broadcasts, including General Zahedi’s victory speech around four o’clock. Mossadeq had refused the request made by Tudeh Party leaders earlier in the day for 10,000 rifles. Ostensibly, they had wanted them to “fight the coup conspirators,” but Mossadeq obviously did not trust them. He had also refused to accept the bitter fact that his relative, General Daftary, handpicked by Mossadeq to be the chief of police, was working with the forces trying to topple Mossadeq. More than once, he told those gathered in his house that there was nobody trustworthy left for him to rely on. In fact, when his house was finally attacked by some in the military and an angry mob, the troops assigned to protect the house fought valiantly. Up to 200 people are reported to have died in the battle for the house.

  To what extent was the “unexpected strong upsurge” of popular demonstrations that day the result of the people’s spontaneous action, and their decision to choose “the Shah and the Western world” over “Mossadeq and [the] Soviet Union”—as the American Embassy claimed at the time—and to what extent were they a rented crowd, paid for in Roosevelt’s last-ditch attempt to revive the failed Operation Ajax? How consequential was Ardeshir Zahedi’s decision to meet with foreign and domestic journalists and give them copies of the Shah’s two firmans? Those loyal to the Shah immediately set out to publish copies of the order. This way, people learned for the first time of the existence of the two firmans.

  Kennett Love, in an account of his experience in Iran written seven years after the events of that August 1953, reported that so many dollars had been spent in Tehran that in the days after August 19 that there was an actual “glut of dollars” in the currency black market, and the price of the dollar dropped sharply.62 In fact, the price of a dollar did go from about twenty-five tooman for a dollar to about three—the official rate of exchange. But the sudden sharp and immediate drop could have been the result of the market’s anticipation of an influx of U.S. aid and dollars after the fall of Mossadeq. Moreover, after Mossadeq’s fall, there was far less demand for dollars because fewer rich royalist Iranians were arranging for a speedy exit from Iran.63

  While there seems to be overwhelming evidence that some funds were disbursed amongst some street toughs and gang leaders, it is not clear to what extent the appearance of these gangs was the result of that money, or of Kashani’s decision to mobilize opposition to Mossadeq that day. It is a fact that in the postwar years, Kashani and his Feda’yan-e Islam made inroads in mobilizing and organizing some of these street toughs. Long before Franz Fanon and Herbert Marcuse, two influential thinkers of the 1960s New Left, articulated their theory that the lumpenproletariat—déclassé parasitical social elements like pimps and prostitutes—were the liberators Marx had promised, Kashani and Navvab Safavi had organized and mobilized elements of this stratum.

  Regardless of what actually happened, as early as August 21, the U.S. embassy in Tehran was reporting that, “unfortunately [the] impression [is] becoming rather widespread that in some way or other this Embassy or at least [the] US government has contributed with funds and technical assistance to overthrow Mossadeq and establish Zahedi.” The embassy attributed this to the Iranians’ living up “to their old traditions” of crediting “foreigners with financing [whatever] side. . .they [were] supposed to be favoring.”64 On the same day, the embassy also reported that Tehran was calm and that people throughout the country were “apparently taking it for granted [that the] issue between Shah and Mossadeq [was] finally settled and in general pleased with the outcome.”65 This was a far cry from what had happened a year earlier, during Mossadeq’s July confrontation with the Shah. At that time, with every passing day after Mossadeq’s resignation, Tehran had grown more tense, the population more angry, more agitated, and less willing to accept Mossadeq’s replacement as the prime minister. This time there was an eerie complacency in the air.

  The Shah, unaware of any of these developments, gave his version of what happened as soon as he settled in the palace in Baghdad on August 16. He asked to meet with the American Ambassador, who called on him at 9:30 that evening. Neither the British nor the American government was eager to be too identified with the Shah; both countries assumed he was a lost cause and took caution in meeting with him. Many in the British government had concluded by August 18 that their country’s best policy “would be to write off the Shah and proceed on the unpalatable assumption that Mossadeq is the indisputable ruler of Persia.” They were worried that “the Shah, by running away with so little dignity” had forfeited all authority in Iran. Ultimately, however, the British government decided to follow the American lead and comply with the “Shah’s request for advice.” The American Ambassador found the Shah “worn from the sleepless nights, puzzled by [the] turn of events but with no bitterness towards Americans.” He said in “recent weeks he had felt increasingly that he would have to take action against Mossadeq.” In the Shah’s words, after “being assured that everything [was] arranged and that there was no possibility of failure, he left Tehran for his Caspian Palace in order to put Mossadeq off guard.” In his iteration, the Shah had signed the two firmans when he was in Kalardasht. He complained about the three unexplained days of delay in implementing his orders and about the fact that “by some means” Mossadeq had been alerted. We now know that one of those means was the report of officers belonging to the Tudeh Party’s military network.

  The Shah also discussed his future plans with the American Ambassador. He felt he needed to issue a statement giving his version of events, indicating that once he realized that “his orders were not being followed, he left the country to prevent further bloodshed and further damage.” The Shah went on to say that he “will hold off giving any statement until he gets advice.”66 He called Mossadeq “absolutely mad and insanely jealous. . .[he] thinks he can form a partnership with the Tudeh party and then outwit them, but in so doing, [he] will become the Dr Benes of Iran,”67 alluding to the Czechoslovakian nationalist leader overthrown by the Communist Party in 1948.

  While in Iraq, aside from Western diplomats and Iraqi royalty, the Shah also met with Ayatollah Shahrestani, “one of the most eminent Shia divines in Iraq” who was “strongly opposed to Mussadiq.”68 The meeting was not an isolated event but an indication of the clergy’s change of heart in Iran. Shahrestani advised the Shah to go somewhere where “he would be free,” where he could seek American and British advice, and make weekly broadcasts “answering Mussadiq’s insults with dignity.” He even suggested that the best place for the Shah to go to would be Hamburg, since his wife was half-German, or “failing that, Switzerland.”69

  In recollecting his short Iraqi stopover, the Shah also mentioned that, in recognition of the fact that Iran “was facing grave dangers,” he decided to visit the shrine of Imam Ali, Shiism’s revered first Imam, buried in Najaf. “I stretched my beseeching hands towards His Holiness and I have no doubt that it was by his grace that shortly thereafter, the country was saved.”70

  His stay in Iraq was short-lived. On August 18, the Shah and the Queen along with the two men in their entourage boarded a commercial flight bound for Ciampino Airport in Rome. There a “flock of journalists and photographers” awaited them and “harassed” them with questions about unfolding events in Iran and about the Shah’s plans for the future. Here too, the Iranian Ambassador had “not condescended to come and greet” the royal couple, and when they did finally talk with him on the phone, he refused to return to them the key to a car they had left at the embassy during the Shah’s last visit to Europe. According to Soraya, someone at the embassy finally “succeeded in stealing” the keys away from the rebel ambassador.

  The Shah and his wife settled on the fourth floor of the Hotel Excelsior, “a small suite which a Persian industrialist vacated to give to us.”71 The industrialist’s name was Morad Eriye—an Iranian Jew who in later years benefited much fro
m his gesture of support. Apocryphal stories about how he had given the Shah a blank check, or had given the royal couple the use of his Cadillac, afforded him a special cachet.72

  Having left Iran with little clothing, on their first day in Rome the Shah and his wife stole away through the “rear entrance” of the hotel to escape the paparazzi and bought a new gray suit for the Shah and a white polka-dot dress for Soraya. At the same time, the Shah warned Soraya that they “have to be very careful” with money. “We do not have much money,” he said, but reassured her by adding that they “will possibly have just enough to buy a [piece of] land where we can settle down.” She even claims that, so worried was the Shah about their financial situation that before departing for Kalardasht, he had asked her permission to sell some of their wedding gifts.73 He also worried about his responsibility in supporting the other exiled members of the royal family. The news they received from Tehran on the radio on August 18, their first night in Rome, was hardly promising. Tehran was in chaos; anti-Shah forces had won the day and were demanding the end of the monarchy.

  While in Rome, the Shah also met with the American ambassador, the legendary Clare Boothe Luce—journalist, playwright, diplomat, and wife to Henry Luce, the founder of Life, Time, and Sports Illustrated—who told the Shah that the U.S. government “advised” him “to issue a statement on recent events,” emphasize that he had lawfully dismissed Mossadeq, that “he [had] left the country to avoid bloodshed, and that in fact he was the victim of a coup by Mossadeq.”74

  All of that changed the next day, Wednesday, August 19. Around noon, the Shah and Soraya came down from their hotel suite to have lunch. They had barely begun eating when an Associated Press reporter brought the Shah a telegram bearing the news of Mossadeq’s fall. He “went pale and his hands shook so violently that he was hardly able to read. ‘Can it be true?’ ” he asked incredulously. Early that day he had talked to Soraya of the need to find a job and of moving to the United States. Now he might be king again. He repeated several times, “this is not an insurrection. This is my government coming to power,” adding that “everyone who is not a communist is favorable to my stand.” It was not long before he received another telegram, this one from General Zahedi, the new prime minister, inviting the Shah to return to the country as expeditiously as possible.75