Along with Gandhi in his loincloth, Mossadegh in his pyjamas would be associated with the humbling of an empire, even if his adventure, unlike Gandhi’s, was stopped in its tracks. On the face of it, the British were the winners in August 1953, but there could be no return to the status quo ante. When Anglo-Iranian (by now renamed British Petroleum) returned to Iran, it was as a minority stakeholder in a consortium which contained five US majors. Clinging to the mystique of British power, some Iranians were reluctant to accept that Britain’s imperial decline amounted to more than a cunning delegation of heavy lifting to the United States, but it was true and unstoppable. Over time, in Iran as elsewhere, Britain fell in with American strategy and methods, sometimes grumpily, sometimes with relief. It was worth it for Britain, if only to avoid the fate that Eden had foreseen – of becoming ‘no more than some millions of people living on an island off the coast of Europe, in which nobody wants to take any particular interest’.5
Coups make few friends and many enemies. America and its officials denied involvement in the drama of August 1953, and the Shah was suave and equivocal, but for the majority of Iranians it was an axiom that Eisenhower had taken down Mossadegh and stuck a despot in his place. Almost overnight, the US had gone from being a force for good to the Shah’s accomplice in injustice and oppression. In 1960, a chastened Kennett Love wrote that ‘Iranians are well aware of the American role [in the coup] although the American public is not. Thus it is that many Iranians hold the United States responsible for creating and supporting a regime that they believe has become an increasingly malign influence.’6
Love’s warning went unheeded, and Iran’s affairs became ever harder to disentangle from those of the United States. By 1979, the US Embassy in Tehran had a staff of nearly 1,000 and there was bilateral cooperation in virtually every field: military and commercial, strategic and cultural. The US had a particularly close relationship with the intelligence organisation, Savak.
In the aftermath of the Shah’s flight in January 1979, and Khomeini’s return from exile, the revolutionaries naturally assumed that the Americans would try to bring back their friend, the Shah. Had they not done so in 1953? Carter’s humanitarian gesture of admitting the Shah for cancer treatment was all the confirmation they needed. On November 4, 1979, radical students went over the walls of the US Embassy and the Iranian hostage crisis began.
For the United States and much of the world, the detention of dozens of people enjoying diplomatic immunity was a rank offence against honour and decency. But history had taught Iranians that foreign missions were fronts for spying and plotting, and some of the documents they found inside the US Embassy supported this view. The hostage-takers regarded their actions as pre-emptive but they were also actuated by a sense of historic injustice. In the course of the interrogations they conducted of their captives, the students were tougher on the CIA agents they managed to unmask than they were on the regular diplomats. In the view of one agent, the hostage-takers regarded him and his colleagues as ‘surrogates for the CIA of 1953; unable to punish those involved in the 1953 coup, the Iranians took out their anger on us’.
At the beginning of the revolution, it had looked as though the Mossadeghists might end up with the lion’s share of political power. Mehdi Bazargan, the man who had implemented oil nationalisation for Mossadegh, was Khomeini’s provisional prime minister, and Karim Sanjabi was foreign minister. But Khomeini wanted a distilled, purer revolutionary spirit, and the hostage crisis was an opportunity. The radicals around him used it to humiliate Bazargan, who resigned after failing to have the students evicted. The hostages would only go free in January 1981 – after President Jimmy Carter had been ejected by the US electorate for failing to end the hostages’ ordeal. For years to come, the poison of the hostage crisis would stay in the United States, just as the poison of August 19, 1953 carried on circulating in Iran.
After the revolution, people made up for the decade and a half they had been unable to say Mossadegh’s name. They renamed Pahlavi Street, the capital’s main north–south artery, after him, and Mossadegh kebab houses opened for business. Stamps and bills were issued with his head on them, and his memoirs were published. The historian Iraj Afshar called for a centre for Mossadegh studies to be set up, and for Ahmadabad to be turned into a museum.
Mossadegh had left the estate to his children and, while none had gone to live there, they had kept it in good repair. Crumbling perimeter walls were mended and his bedroom was preserved as it had been when he left, with a thin mattress in one corner (the Russian bed no longer suited him), a rope bolted to the wall which had allowed him to haul himself to his feet, and a table laid out with pills and pens.7 The bits of newspaper he had stuffed in the cracks of the walls had been taken out and the cracks plastered in. Then the scraps of newspaper had been glued onto the plaster. It looked as if nothing had changed.
Mossadegh had been buried at Ahmadabad because the Shah refused to let him lie alongside the martyrs who had fallen in the 1952 uprising against Qavam. He was lowered into the floor of the dining room – to which henceforward attached the reverence and sanctity of a shrine.
The twelfth anniversary of Mossadegh’s death came six weeks after Iran gained its freedom from the Shah. It would be the first opportunity for the public to come together and remember him. The bus operators announced that they would put dozens of vehicles at the mourners’ disposal, and a fast-food outlet offered to move its operations to Ahmadabad. The door into the dining room would be opened, and people invited to file in and read the fateheh, the prayer for the dead, while touching his raised gravestone.
The great caravan stirred on March 5, 1979, with the buses gunning and moving off from Tehran University, but as ever Mossadegh surprised everyone. The family had made provision for 20,000 or 30,000 people, not for the several hundred thousand who made the pilgrimage. They came in cars, trucks, on motorbikes and on foot, and preparations went by the board. The road approaching Ahmadabad became impassable, the bus for reporters was bogged down and abandoned, and elderly veterans of the nationalisation movement were forced to trudge miles through the mud. There could be no graveside fateheh; the doors to the house were shut to prevent a stampede. Of lunch, there was no sign.
And yet, everyone seemed happy, people who had met or seen him, alongside people who knew only the empty space he had left behind, standing in the cold around the house at Ahmadabad and in the fields either side, straining to hear speeches from a scaffold that had been erected in Mossadegh’s garden. Thus, at last, he was remembered.8
And the years passed, and the war with Iraq ground on, and the Islamic Republic grew purer and more isolated. It became harder to commemorate him. Books and articles appeared trashing his memory, and the followers of Kashani claimed that the nationalisation of oil had been the ayatollah’s achievement and that Mossadegh had been a British agent all along. I arrived in Iran during the thaw, when the restrictions were relaxed and it was possible to love him again. I was there, also, to watch the thaw end, and with it the government’s toleration of the dead, secular hero.
His name is no longer on the street sign, or his face on the stamps, but his memory is safe in the hearts of Iranians, because his ideals are universal and mock the ephemera of power. ‘Good days and bad days go past,’ he once told the Shah. ‘What stays is a good name or a bad name.’
Notes
FRUS (unless otherwise indicated): Foreign Relations of the United States 1952–54, Vol. X: Iran, 1951–1954, United States Government Printing Office, 1989
One: The Unchanging East
1. Feuvrier, Preface
2. Bell, p. 27
3. Hourani, p. 257
4. Dabashi, p. 69
Two: A Silver Spoon
1. Farmanfarmaian, Manucher and Roxane, p. 96. Najm al-Saltaneh’s language could be very fruity indeed. In this book, her nephew recalls her telling another member of the family, a public figure who had been pilloried in the press, ‘I’d prefer to be sexuall
y abused than to be fucked [as] you have been by the papers.’
2. Lambton, Qajar Persia, p. 76
3. Mossadegh, Khaterat va Ta’limat, p. 55
4. Bani-Jamali, p. 35
5. Mossadegh, ibid., p. 50
6. National Documents Organisation, doc. no. 2983001690. cit. Bani-Jamali, p. 49
7. National Documents Organisation, doc. nos 298004470, 298005408, cit. Bani-Jamali, p. 48. Also see Mossadegh, Khaterat va Ta’limat, p. 53
8. Ettehadieh, Zanani ke zir-e Maghnaeh Kolahdari Nemudeand; Zendegi-ye Malek Taj Khanom Najm al-Saltaneh, p. 72
9. Makki, Doktor Mossadegh, p. 39
10. Ettehadieh and Sa’advandian, p. 83
11. Foreign Ministry Archives, Tehran: carton 20, file 6 (1901); carton 60, file 9 (1900); carton 15, file 23 (1899), carton 20, file 20 (1899), cit. Bani-Jamali, pp. 72–3
12. Ettehadieh, and Sa’advandian, pp. 441, 447, and Bani-Jamali, p. 75
13. Farmanfarmaian, Manucher and Roxane, p. 37
14. Mossadegh, Khaterat va Ta’limat, p. 52
15. Afshar and Salour (vol. 2), p. 1196
16. Ettehadieh, Zanani ke zir-e Maghna’eh Kolahdari Nemudeand, p. 74
17. Bayat, pp. 24–6
18. Sami’i, pp. 124–5
19. Bayat, p. 26
20. Author’s conversation with Abdolmajid Bayat, Geneva, 2010
21. Bani-Jamali, p. 78
22. Mossadegh, Khaterat va Ta’limat, p. 55
23. Ibid.
24. Schuster, p. 21–22
25. Browne, pp. 207–8
26. Mossadegh, Khaterat va Ta’limat, p. 93
Three: Fokoli
1. Rooznameh-ye Majles, February 27, 1910
2. For Renée Vieillard’s impressions of Mossadegh, I have drawn on Abdolmajid Bayat’s unpublished Pages d’histoires de L’Iran: Mossadegh, which contains extracts from her own unpublished memoir.
3. Les Nouvelles, August 22, 1909
4. Mossadegh, Khaterat va Ta’limat, p. 68
5. Matine-Daftary, Hedayat, Mossadegh dar Paris: Dowran-e Tahsil, from Azadi, summer and autumn editions, 2001, p. 95. Speculation that Mossadegh may have destroyed evidence for the interview in question is my own.
6. Mossadegh, Khaterat va Ta’limat, p. 74
7. Sami’i, p. 122
8. Mossadegh, Ghollamhossein, p. 16
9. Walters, p. 253
10. Mossadegh, Le Testament en droit musulman (Secte Chyite), p. 84
Four: Razing Caesarea
1. Churchill, p. 131
2. Kapitulasyon va Iran (published privately, 1914), cit. Afshar, Mossadegh va Masael-e Huquq va Siyasat, p. 72
3. Katouzian, Homa, Musaddiq and the Struggle for Power in Iran, p. 11
4. Ra’ad, February 13, 1918
5. Ibid., January 5, 1918
6. Buzorg Omid, p. 280
7. Ibid., p. 277
8. Mossadegh, Khaterat va Ta’limat, p. 106
9. Afrasiyabi, p. 49
10. Amini, p. 85
11. Moradi-Nia, p. 643
12. Waterfield, p. 63
13. Memo by Armitage-Smith, November 22, 1920, FO 371/4909
14. Norman to Curzon, December 5, 1920, FO 371/4909
15. Memo by Curzon, FO 371/4927
16. Afshar, Mossadegh va Masa’el-e Huquq va Siyasat, p. 66
17. Borhan, p. 143
18. Author interview with Abdolmajid Bayat, Geneva, 2010
19. Bayat, Abdolmajid, Appendix. The Mossadeghs travelled under the name Habib.
20. Norman to India Office, September 22, 1920; FO 371/4927
21. Farahmand, p. 195
22. Torkaman, vol. 1, p. 346
23. Bani-Jamali, p. 164
24. Memo by Churchill, November 2, 1919; FO 371/4929
25. Memo by Oliphant, July 6, 1921; FO 371/6404
Five: Eclipse of the Qajars
1. Loraine to Curzon, May 21, 1923, FO 248/1369
2. Bahar, vol. 1, p. 139
3. Mossadegh, Khaterat va Ta’limat, p. 148
4. Farahmand, Valigari-ye Mossadegh (2), p. 230
5. Bahar, Vol. 2, p. 262
6. Torkaman, Vol. 2, p. 88
7. Makki, Tarikh-e Bist Sal-e Iran (Vol. 3), p. 323
8. Mostowfi, p. 604
9. Wilber, p. 88
10. Makki, Tarikh-e Bist Sal-e Iran (Vol. 3), p. 184
11. Afshar, Taqrirat-e Mossadegh dar Zendan, p. 102
12. Makki, Tarikh-e Bist Sal-e Iran (Vol. 3), p. 423
13. Ibid. Mossadegh’s speech can be found on pp. 442–50.
14. Author conversation with Abdolmajid Bayat, Geneva, 2010
15. Golban, p. 45, cit. Bani-Jamali, p. 217
16. Lees-Milne, pp. 258–9
17. Makki, Doktor Mossadegh, p. 392
18. Ibid., p. 367
19. Ibid., p. 313
20. Ibid., p. 346
21. Avery, p. 283
22. Afshar, Mossadegh va Masa’el-e Huquq va Siyasat, p. 196
Six: Isolation
1. Bayat, Abdolmajid, p. 74
2. Moradi-Nia, p. 590
3. Author interview with Abdolmajid Bayat, Geneva, 2010
4. Ibid.
5. Bayat, Abdolmajid, Hekayati Sade az Dowran-e Kudaki, from Azadi, combined summer and autumn issue, 2001
6. Author interview with Abdolmajid Bayat, Geneva, 2010
7. Torkaman, Vol. 1, p. 113
8. Mossadegh, Ghollamhossein, p. 19
9. Author interview with Abdolmajid Bayat, Geneva, 2010
10. Torkaman, Vol. 2, p. 68
11. Author interview with Abdolmajid Bayat, Geneva, 2010
12. Torkaman, Vol. 2, p. 69
13. Ibid., p. 71
14. Ibid., p. 72
15. Bani-Jamali, p. 237
16. Mossadegh, Ghollamhossein, p. 49
Seven: The Tragedy of Khadijeh
1. Unless otherwise indicated, the information for this chapter has been drawn from the following sources: Ghollamhossein Mossadegh and Abdolmajid Bayat; the author’s conversations with Abdolmajid Bayat in Geneva in 2010; Ahmad Mossadegh’s interview with his father’s cook, Javad Hajji Tehrani, published in Afshar, Mossadegh va Masa’el-e Huquq va Siyasat; and Hossein Makki’s introduction to his book, Doktor Mossadegh va Notghha-ye Tarikhi-ye vey dar Dowre-ye Panjom va Shishom-e Taghniniye.
2. Katouzian, Musaddiq and the Struggle for Power, p. 33
3. Mossadegh, Ghollamhossein, p. 30
4. Pahlavi, Muhammad-Reza, p. 65
5. Author interview with Hedayat Matine-Daftary, London, 2010
Eight: The Prize
1. Wilbur, p. 191
2. Katouzian, Musaddiq and the Struggle for Power in Iran, p. 48
3. Farmanfarmaian, Manucher and Roxane, p. 168
4. Bullard, p. 154
5. Katouzian, ibid., p. 55
6. Kay-Ustuvan, p. 289
7. Makki, Doktor Mossadegh, p. 13
8. I gleaned much of the information in this chapter regarding the Anglo-Iranian Oil Company from J. H. Bamberg’s The History of the British Petroleum Company, Vol. 2, and L. P. Elwell-Sutton’s Persian Oil.
9. Jeffrey, p. 436
10. Kay-Ustuvan, Vol. 1, p. 181
11. Omid-e Iran, Vol. 11, April 16, 1979, cit. Nejati, p. 65
12. Kay-Ustuvan (Vol. 1), p. 191
13. Ibid., p. 224
14. Elwell-Sutton, pp. 114–115
15. Bamberg, p. 256
16. Le Rougetel to Bevin, February 9, 1949; FO 371/75464
17. Torkaman, Vol. 1, p. 101
Nine: Victory or Death
1. Makki, Khaterat-e Siyasi, p. 184
2. Borhan, p. 94
3. Barnett to the British Embassy, FO 371 75468; Le Rougetel to the Foreign Office, November 18, 1949, FO 371 75468
4. Safari, Vol. 1, p. 296
5. Rahnama, p. 112
6. For this account of elections to the fifteenth majles, I am indebted to Rahnama, pp. 114–116, and Makki, Ketab-e Siyah (Vol. III: K
hal’e-yad), pp. 9–23
7. Le Rougetel to Bevin, November 11, 1949, FO 371/75467
8. Shepherd to Younger, June 9, 1950, FO 371/82330
9. FRUS 1950, Vol. V, p. 516
10. The Times, Tuesday November 22, 1949
11. Shepherd to Strang, April 6, 1950, FO 371/82311
12. Memo by Fry, February 6, 1951, FO 371/91522
13. Safari, Vol. 1, p. 329. Much of my information about parliament’s activities before and during Mossadegh’s premiership was drawn from this invaluable book.
14. Rahnama, p. 155
15. Ibid., p. 158
16. Ibid., p. 167. Northcroft’s excellent information about the commission’s deliberations probably came from his subordinate Geoffrey Keating, who, according to one Foreign Office note, ‘did a good deal of lobbying among the majles deputies, and, in particular, among members of the oil commission.’ See FO 371/91522.
17. Rountree to McGhee, FRUS 1950, Vol. V, p. 634
18. Shepherd to Foreign Office, January 5, 1951, FO 371/91452
19. Rahnama, p. 198
20. Khaterat-e Iraj Eskandari, Mu’assesseh-ye Mutale’at va Pazhoheshha-ye Siyasi, 1993, p. 191
21. Mossadegh, Khaterat va Ta’limat, p. 246
22. Shepherd to Furlonge, May 6, 1951, FO 248/1514
Ten: Mossadeghism
1. Daily Express, May 30, 1951, cit. Enayat, p. 99. I draw below from this useful study for other reactions to nationalisation in the British press.
2. Shepherd to Furlonge, May 6, 1951, FO 248/1514
3. Shepherd to Bowker, May 28, 1951, FO 371/91542
4. Avon, p. 36
5. Time, January 7, 1952
6. Mehdi Bazargan, Khal’ e-Yad az Este’mar-e Ingilis va Esteghrar-e Hakemiyat-e Mellat, from Basteh-Negar, p. 139
7. Bamberg, p. 430
8. Kinzer, p. 115
Patriot of Persia Page 31