Mossadegh could not forever carry on riding ‘Satan’s donkey’, as the Persian phrase goes. How on earth was he going to get off?
Twelve acres in the heart of Tehran, teeming with political and consular officers, military attachés, ciphers and gardeners, a walled city graced by a clock tower, lily pool and a crescent of residential cottages, the British Embassy on Ferdowsi Street belied an England in decline. In early 1952, on this venerable plot in the diplomatic quarter, the air cooled by miraculous subterranean water courses and sweetened by the ambassador’s wisteria, a British scholar of Iran laboured, conniving to bring about Mossadegh’s fall.
Robin Zaehner had been recommended by Britain’s doyenne of Iranian studies, Nancy Lambton. An austere bluestocking with a somewhat surprising penchant for roller-skating, Lambton had run British propaganda in Tehran during World War II, and Zaehner had been her declared deputy – while working in fact as an agent for Special Operations Executive, countering the spread of Soviet propaganda. After the war Lambton had returned to London to teach at the School of Oriental and African Studies, the newest of Britain’s great orientalist institutions, where she put her students through courses of legendary severity. In 1951 the Foreign Office asked her what should be done about Mossadegh.
Lambton believed that negotiating with Mossadegh was futile since he had built his public position on Anglophobia, and she made the fateful recommendation that he should be overthrown using covert means. Zaehner, who had returned to Oxford as lecturer in Persian, liberated himself from his teaching duties and was dispatched to the embassy in Tehran as an ‘acting counsellor’. He would answer to the Foreign Office, and not MI6 – a stroke of luck for the historian, for the cables relating to his work are now in the public domain.
Zaehner was a Catholic convert with a taste for gin, opium and the homoerotic verses of Rimbaud – his first reading of O Saisons, O Châteaux had tipped him into a mystical ecstasy. Bespectacled and giggly, he was a born networker who knew everyone who mattered in Tehran. Soon he had re-established his old links with the majles, the armed forces and the Court, distributing bribes in empty biscuit tins and shocking professional spies with his amateurism. Zaehner paid a substantial retainer to a wealthy trio of Anglophile brothers, the Rashidians, which they spent on bribing bazaaris, parliamentarians, mullahs and newspaper editors. Hossein Ala, the Shah’s court minister, was acting as a discreet conduit for royal frustrations, though he too was driven almost to his wits’ end by the monarch’s chronic indecision. The Shah’s Swiss friend Ernest Perron beetled about dropping names and bits of information, and feuded with members of the royal family for influence over the Shah. A senior civil servant volunteered detailed reports about the latest cabinet meetings. Might Ayatollah Kashani be turned against Mossadegh? What of those ambitious younger radicals, Makki and Baghai? Feelers were put out, ambiguous answers received.
Into this world, murky but glinting, outsiders dropped at their peril. When Kingsley Martin, the editor of the New Statesman, asked Zaehner at a cocktail party in Tehran what book he might read to enlarge his understanding of Iran, Zaehner suggested Alice Through the Looking Glass.
Zaehner was brilliant and had a dazzling command of languages and world literature, but his commission was ugly: to sow chaos in the heart of a sovereign government. As Zaehner saw it, his mission ended in defeat, for when he returned to Oxford in the summer of 1952 he was disillusioned by his failure to dislodge Mossadegh and gloomy about future prospects. Events of the following year would confute this modest self-assessment; it was he who had paved the way for the coup, probing the nationalists for divisions and cultivating key assets. The Americans would carry the principle of overthrow to its violent conclusion. But it was Lambton’s and Zaehner’s in conception.
Bribed by Zaehner and his MI6 colleagues (of which there were at least four in the embassy), abetted by the Court’s different cliques, Mossadegh’s opponents subverted the country’s fragile democratic institutions. British spooks worked the tribes and the Rashidians drummed up a parliamentary vote of no-confidence. Mossadegh was powerless to stop the army and pro-Shah provincial governors from manipulating the polling for the seventeenth majles, when, among other outrages, a Shia cleric was elected to represent a Sunni-dominated constituency he had not set foot in. While he was dealing with these crises, the prime minister was also negotiating with the World Bank and the Americans, and in May 1952 he made another foreign sortie to defend the country’s honour at The Hague. No wonder he might nowadays be found smoking – a local brand, without inhaling – to soothe his nerves. (The Shah, by contrast, smoked American Camel.)
An opposition newspaper which enjoyed friendly relations with the British Embassy printed the following ditty:
Sleep, child, a thief’s in the house; hush, it’s that infernal lunatic;
Sleep, child, for the ogre has come. It’s Mossadegh with a blanket over his shoulders;
My child, if this is a national government, it’ll shit over the country even more;
He’s burrowed so far under his blanket, he’s bloody well dropped the country in it.8
Mossadegh’s response to the threats and abuse was in keeping with his idea of himself as a wartime prime minister fighting desperately to stave off national collapse. He would not give the order for brutality, but he would use every other weapon at his disposal, even if that meant abandoning his political scruples. He began to imagine that he could run the country solely on the basis of his rapport with the people, bypassing those institutions which he considered corrupt. It was pure demagogy when he announced, ‘However much the deputies curse and insult me, my prominence in society rises proportionately.’
Increasingly he addressed the people by radio, and his appearances in parliament grew rarer – though this was also connected to his fear of assassination. He accused anyone doubting him of lacking patriotism; he did not care ‘a farthing’ for their opposition. He saw off the parliamentary no-confidence motion with an appeal to jingoism, announcing the closure of all provincial British consulates on the day that the motion was to be debated, and prompting anti-British demonstrations around the country. Events abroad only served to jangle the Shah’s nerves.9
When it was clear that the elections to the seventeenth majles were being perverted in the regions, Mossadegh waited until results had been declared in the urban constituencies where his supporters were strongest, and then had the poll suspended in the remainder of the constituencies. (The seventeenth majles met for the first time in May 1952, with only two thirds of the seats occupied.) Finally, and most controversial of all, realising that the majles would oppose his government on many issues, he gave the deputies an ultimatum: grant him plenary powers to rule by decree for six months, or he would resign.
Here was Mossadegh turning away from the institution he had once so loved, and where he had enjoyed his finest triumphs. It was a scandal. The prime minister proposed to bulldoze the principle of the separation of powers on the grounds of national expediency, in the full knowledge that it was against the constitution. He had arrogated to himself the authority to judge when and how the constitution should be applied. ‘When unconventional warfare is being waged,’ he would write later, ‘the granting of [plenary] powers is in harmony with the spirit of the constitution, for the constitution is there for the country, not the country for the constitution.’
Mossadegh’s obsession with complete and unconditional victory over the British and the Shah was leading him to dismantle the very institution he had spent his life trying to build, and which he now regarded as corrupt beyond redemption. With the Court, uneasy cooperation had given way to open breach. That left just himself and the people. Mossadegh was a master at manipulating the popular mood, but he was only one man against a legion of enemies. The people were only just being tested. Building a national strategy between the two was like treading a wire strung between two poplars in a gale.
By the summer of 1952, Zaehner and his colleagues were prepar
ing for the moment when the Shah would have no option but to support a scheme to dump Mossadegh and replace him with someone to cut an oil deal that would be satisfactory to the British. The government in London continued to regard their old favourite Seyyed Zia as the best candidate. Since his return from exile at the end of Reza Shah’s rule, Zia had wormed his way into the Shah’s confidence; his Anglophilia burned as brightly as ever. Eventually, the British and the Shah were persuaded by the Americans that Zia’s pro-British reputation would make it impossible for the people to accept him. Their thoughts turned to Qavam.
Even before Mossadegh’s ascent to power, Qavam had solicited British support for another bid for the premiership, in return for which he promised to engineer a favourable oil deal. The grand old man was not idle as he convalesced in Europe in the spring of 1952, following an operation. He assured establishment figures in London that the Shah was not up to the job and that they should consider a Qajar restoration. But Qavam’s ill-health made backing him a gamble. He was even older than Mossadegh and his doctors had ordered him to restrict himself to two hours’ work a day. His left eye twitched disconcertingly whenever he took off his dark glasses.
Four decades after Mossadegh first bowed to his nagging mother and accepted the post of deputy finance minister under Qavam, the cousins faced each other as adversaries. The Shah was torn between his hatred for Qavam, who had never concealed his contempt for the young monarch, and his hatred of Mossadegh. He fretted particularly about the mechanics of Mossadegh’s exit, and the popular explosion that would follow if the affair was badly handled. Then, quite unexpectedly, Mossadegh thrust an opportunity into his hands.
Mossadegh’s entourage had seen the danger in letting relations between him and the Shah deteriorate further, urging the prime minister not to nurture his grievances but to take them to the monarch. The Shah had given Mossadegh assurances of non-interference, and Princess Ashraf’s long sojourn abroad was one of several camouflaged banishments of royal intriguers in this period. But the plots continued, particularly during elections to the seventeenth majles, and whatever mutual trust remained between the two men had evaporated long before they met on July 16, 1952, when Mossadegh went, as convention demanded, to seek royal approval for his new cabinet. In fact, Mossadegh harboured bigger ambitions as his car entered the park at Saadabad, the Shah’s summer palace. Here, among the oriental planes that Reza Shah had planted, Mossadegh would avenge himself on the defunct founder of the Pahlavis. He would demand that the Shah reign, not rule.10
Mossadegh was helped up the steps of the palace by a guard, and was shown into a reception room. The Shah came in and the conversation began decorously enough, with inquiries into health and a wary tour d’horizon of the nation and its affairs. Finally, Mossadegh handed the Shah his cabinet list. The Shah lingered over the list, and it cannot have escaped his notice that its composition was markedly less royalist than its predecessor. Furthermore, there was one significant omission.
‘Who’, he asked, ‘is to be war minister?’
On this question much more rested than a seat around the cabinet table. Constitutionally, the Shah was nominally the commander-in-chief of the armed forces, but the war minister was a member of the government just like any other, and answerable to the prime minister. No past prime minister – even Qavam – had dared challenge the Shah’s unwritten right to nominate the war minister. Any who did so would be reviving memories of Reza himself, who had seized control of the army and used that as a springboard to power. Such a prime minister could but harbour hostile designs towards the monarch. So, it did not please the Shah when Mossadegh replied, ‘Your humble servant is to assume that burden.’
There followed a rambling conversation in which Mossadegh expressed his devotion to the throne and the Shah recalled the circumstances of Reza’s political rise. Mossadegh lost patience. ‘At present,’ he said bluntly, ‘the War Ministry acts as a government within the government and does not carry out my wishes. The Ministry did not execute my orders during the elections. I repeatedly informed you and you even issued orders to this purpose, but they were not carried out.’
Now the Shah grew angry. If he yielded up the War Ministry, he snapped, he ‘might as well pack [his] bags and go’. Mossadegh answered that he would sooner resign, and made for the door. But the Shah was there in a flash and put one arm around Mossadegh while keeping the door shut with the other. There followed another of those wrestling scenes that cropped up from time to time during Mossadegh’s life. Mossadegh tugged at the door handle. The Shah pushed, the servants came running, and Mossadegh got out of an awkward situation with his usual expedient. He swooned.
When he came to, he was on a sofa with the Shah sitting next to him and Hossein Ala also present. The prime minister accepted a glass of water but declined the Shah’s invitation to stay for lunch. The two men reached agreement. If Mossadegh did not hear from the Shah before eight o’clock that evening, he was to consider his resignation accepted.
Back at Palace Street Mossadegh gave orders for the main gate to be shut. He admitted only Makki, who found him sitting in his dressing gown on his bed on the balcony, drafting his resignation letter. Eight o’clock passed without word from the palace, and the letter was dispatched. The doors shut once more, and Mossadegh waited. He had picked up the deck and hurled it into the air. Now he would see where the cards landed.
The following afternoon, that other gambler Qavam was playing poker at the house of a crony when he was told that parliament had given him its vote of confidence. Qavam showed no emotion – this unreconstructed grandee, who had, in Makki’s words, ‘come into this world as prime minister’, insisted on finishing the game before taking up his functions.
In fact he would never truly take them up, for as the country went to pieces over the next few days, the new prime minister, partially bed-ridden, unable at times even to open his eyes, was overtaken by events and eventually swept away by a popular uprising that no one – not himself; not the British; perhaps not Mossadegh himself – had anticipated. Qavam’s infirmities were not old friends as Mossadegh’s were, for hamming up as the performance demanded, but genuine physical crises. Qavam spent the whole of his last, ill-starred premiership in one such crisis, his doctors hovering with their syringes and warning of his imminent demise if he did not rest, and his judgement much impaired. Mossadegh, by contrast, found strength and lucidity in the iron bed.
On Friday morning Qavam accepted office from the Shah – having kept him waiting, of course. He returned to his Tehran mansion in the prime-ministerial Cadillac that his predecessor had disdained to use. Over lunch he sprang an unpleasant surprise on his allies and the nation. He ordered the radio brought in and, as the presenter read out the new prime minister’s first official declaration, his advisers looked at each other in horror. Qavam’s words showed neither the compassion nor the eloquence that his new position required – only wrath.
Around the country, in homes and tea shops, Iranians listened as Qavam trashed all they held precious. His promise to solve the oil crisis was delivered so ambiguously, the people thought he meant to reverse nationalisation. He opened fire recklessly on Ayatollah Kashani, lambasting the ‘black reaction’ that had been manufactured to fight ‘red extremists’, and vowed to set up ‘revolutionary tribunals’ to punish ‘criminals of all classes’. He even promised to keep politics and religion far apart – as if Iran were France! Mossadegh, despite being as much of a secularist as Qavam, would never have made such a reckless suggestion.
Qavam’s final words were the threat of a dictator: ‘Woe betide those who disrupt the expedient actions I take,’ for they would suffer ‘the dry and unforgiving judgement of the law. I warn the public that the days of rebellion have come to an end and that those of obedience to the orders and proscriptions of the government have arrived. The captain is taking a new course.’
How many Iranians who heard this declaration were reminded of the despotic caliph who had martyred their
beloved Imam Hossein? Mossadegh, the old man biding his time at home, was being martyred, and the country was quickly inflamed. Qavam’s only chance of survival, one of his supporters now suggested, was to waste no time in establishing the despotism that was implicit in his radio address – to dissolve the majles and arrest his opponents. This is what the US and British envoys urged him to do. But only the Shah could dissolve the majles, and already he was putting obstacles in Qavam’s way, advising patience when haste was required, and receiving a delegation of nationalist deputies. The Shah had only reluctantly acquiesced to Qavam’s premiership and would not spend political capital helping him to a position from which he could challenge the throne.
Events leaped forward, with Kashani as the spur. On July 19 the ayatollah declared a jihad against Qavam’s government, by whose pernicious agency ‘the foreigners are resolved to take an axe to religion and freedom and independence’. Tehran was filling with soldiers and tanks, but also with groups of Mossadegh supporters, shouting ‘Death to Qavam!’ and ‘Long Live Mossadegh!’ They also tore down copies of the infamous Qavam declaration, which the authorities had pasted to the walls, and many were injured by the security forces.
If he had enjoyed the Shah’s support, Qavam might have stood a chance. Secret negotiations were going on with Kashani, but Qavam had exiled the ayatollah during his previous government and there was bad blood between them. Furthermore, Qavam knew that the price of Kashani’s support would be nothing less than control over the government. ‘The enmity of such people’, he said, ‘is less harmful than their friendship.’ Meanwhile, Henderson, the American ambassador, was promising aid and other assistance on condition that Qavam strike an oil deal with the British. Then news got out that Qavam had ordered Kashani’s arrest. Fearing revolution, the Shah withheld his blessing, and Qavam became an ogre made of straw. As the new British chargé d’affaires, George Middleton wrote, in a fury of frustration, ‘We had long known that he [the Shah] was indecisive and timid, but we had not thought that his fear would so overcome his reason.’ Now, the ayatollah was boiling. In a warning to the army not to set itself against ‘the clarion of conscience and patriotism’, he called on all to join the ‘struggle between good and evil’.
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