Sykes, Percy, 16, 22, 58
Syria, 272
Taqizadeh, Hassan, 75, 86, 98, 131
Tehran, 14–17, 82; British Embassy building, 193; M’s houses in, 87–8, 97; Sangelaj, 15–16
Tehran, University of, 83
Teimurtash, Abdolhossein, 79, 82, 85, 94
Telli (housekeeper), 90
Texas oil company, 123–4
titles, personal, 23–4n
tobacco, 14
Trans-Iranian Railway, 84–5
Truman, Harry, 125, 165–6, 180, 181, 182, 205n
Tudeh Party: rise, 112, 113; and AIOC, 119; supports granting of oil concessions to Soviet Union, 120–2; Qavam tolerates, 125; Qavam turns on, 126; makes trouble during Muhammad-Reza’s negotiations with AIOC, 127; Muhammad-Reza bans, 128; underground comeback, 133; Razmara favours, 147; some supporters killed in riot against US interference in oil crisis, 169; attitude to US, 190; M’s tolerance, 190; supports uprising to restore M, 202; resurgence in M’s second term, 212; nationalists warily ally selves with, 219–20; British and US attitude to, 221; M’s supposed connections with worsen his reputation, 222–3; reaction to return of Princess Ashraf, 224; M refuses to take action against, 229; US incites fear of, 237, 238; unwittingly aids coup against M, 239–40; pro-Tudeh newspaper offices sacked, 241; possibly offers last-minute support to M, 243; were they really a threat?, 273–4
Turkey: in nineteenth century, 11; Adbulhamit II deposed, 35, 70; Reza Shah’s foreign policy, 108; US involvement in, 134; and Iranian oil nationalisation crisis, 275–6; late twentieth-century politics, 272
United Nations, 175–80
USA: regrets about M, 3; Middle Eastern policy, 3–4, 272–3; role in M’s overthrow, 5–6; opposition to Anglo-Persian Agreement, 53; and Reza Shah’s foreign policy, 108; involvement in Iran in Second World War, 120; Muhammad-Reza’s admiration for, 127; starts to draw closer to Iran, 134–5; fears for Iran’s political condition, 143; attitude to Iranian nationalists, 145; support for Razmara, 146; reaction to nationalisation of Iranian oil industry, 165–6, 169; M woos their help in talks with British, 176–7, 178, 180–5; M asks for financial assistance, 191–2; supports Qavam government, 201; brokers British–Iranian oil talks that fail again, 205–6; support for Zahedi, 210; turns against M, 220–1; involvement in coup against M, 221–6, 228, 229–30; M unsuccessfully attempts reconciliation, 236–7; second coup attempt succeeds, 238–52; pledges emergency aid to Iran, 254; Nixon visits Iran, 261; attitude to Fatemi, 263; Shah’s ongoing links to, 271; policy elsewhere in Middle East, 272–3; Britain’s growing reliance on, 275; Iranian dislike for after coup, 275; and end of Shah’s regime, 276; Iranian hostage crisis, 276–7
USSR see Soviet Union
Vazir-Daftar, Mirza Hedayatullah, 19–21, 22
Venezuela, 150
Versailles, Treaty of (1919), 50
Vieillard, Renée, 35–8, 101
Voltaire, 187
Vusuq ul-Dawleh: negotiates Anglo-Persian Agreement, 51, 52, 53; ejected from power, 57; becomes minister again under Reza, 79, 80; M denounces, 79–80
Walters, Vernon, 172, 173, 177–8, 182
Warriors of Islam: background, 136; and 1949 rigged elections, 138, 139, 140; Kashani’s link to, 141; support Shahed, 148; block AIOC supplemental agreement, 150; and assassination of Razmara, 151; M distances self from, 153; threats against M, 161; assassination attempt on Fatemi, 191
weddings, 26
West: notion of superiority to East, 7–8
Wilber, Donald, 223, 229–30
Wiley, John C., 143, 145
Wilhelm II, Kaiser, 45
Wilson, Woodrow, 53
women: under Qajars, 15, 16, 17; clothing, 16, 17, 95–6; M on status of Iranian, 36–7, 38; status during Reza’s reign, 95–6; and politics, 115; M’s support for female suffrage, 207
Woodhouse, Monty, 221
World Bank, 192–3
Yaghub, Seyyed, 74, 75–6
Yugoslavia, 176
Zaehner, Robin, 193–5, 197
Zahedi, Ardeshir, 226
Zahedi, General Fazlullah: background and character, 209–10; Kashani favours to replace M, 209; and Bakhtiari rebellion, 212; and assassination of Afshartus, 219; and coup against M, 223–4, 230, 231, 232; US support for, 237, 238; Zahedi supporter made chief of police, 244; broadcasts to nation as PM, 247; greets the arrested M, 150; doles out rewards to supporters, 254; repressiveness of his regime, 254–5; unpicks M’s policies, 261
Zahra Zia al-Saltaneh: marries M, 26–7; trip to Switzerland, 39–40, 42; death of fourth child, 40; disapproves of M’s business venture, 55; homes in Tehran, 87–8, 97; last child born, 89; as parent, 89–90; her household, 90; religious observances, 91; and Reza’s ban on hejab, 95; weekends at Ahmadabad, 96; and M’s arrest, 100, 101; and Khadijeh’s mental collapse, 106; and M’s hunger strike re rigged elections, 138–9; traffic incident, 187; flees during coup against M, 245, 249n; sends food to the imprisoned M, 257; visits him in prison, 257–8; distributes photos of him, 267; weekend visits to him in Ahmadabad, 268–9; death, 269
Zia ud-Din Tabatabai, Seyyed, 49, 62–4, 112, 155, 156, 197
Zirakzadeh, Ahmad, 248, 249
Photo Insert
The Persian capital Tehran had been barely touched by modernisation at the time of Mossadegh’s birth in 1882. Two traditional wind towers, for diverting the breeze into the house below, are visible in the middle ground. The Alborz Mountains, snow-capped for much of the year, provided the city’s water.
Wearing the traditional kolah hat and a fashionable moustache, the young Mossadegh (second left) stands to the right of his maternal uncle, Prince Abdolhossein Mirza Farmanfarma (centre), in this family group. Farmanfarma took a paternal interest in Mossadegh, whose own father died in 1892, but relations cooled because of Farmanfarma’s unabashed Anglophilia.
Mossadegh’s first cousin, Farmanfarma’s son Prince Firooz, was an architect of the ill-fated Anglo-Persian Agreement, under which Persia accepted de facto protectorate status in 1919, and which Mossadegh bitterly opposed. Here, Firooz (far left) accompanies Ahmad Shah (centre), the last of the Qajar line, on a state visit to Britain shortly after the agreement was signed. Lord Curzon, Britain’s foreign secretary and the accord’s most enthusiastic supporter, is on the far right, with Prince Albert, later George VI, third from right.
Mossadegh as governor of Fars after his return from Europe in 1920. A local newspaper described him as a symbol of ‘unity, consensus and stability’ in this strategic southern province, where, free from close government control, he displayed his talents as an administrator and conciliator.
Persia’s strongman Reza Khan shows off a new toy during his rise to power in the early 1920s. He acquired the Rolls Royce from Mossadegh’s cousin Prince Firooz.
A parade to mark Reza’s coronation in 1926, when he replaced the Qajars with his new Pahlavi dynasty. Reza realised that Iran needed firepower if it was to become a modern state, but his vaunted army collapsed when Britain and Russia invaded in 1941.
The loving mother: shrewd, acidulous and besotted with her elder son, Najm al-Saltaneh, seen here in old age, was a member of the ruling Qajar dynasty and the single greatest influence on Mossadegh.
Mossadegh with his youngest daughter Khadijeh, whose mental breakdown after she witnessed his arrest in 1940 profoundly affected him.
A demonstration by the viscerally anti-American Tudeh Party shortly after oil nationalisation. Mossadegh repeatedly raised the Communist bogey in his dealings with US officials, but never believed that the party seriously threatened him.
Mossadegh was described by Anthony Eden as ‘the first bit of meat to come the way of the cartoonists since the war’. With his mournful nose and billiard ball head, he soon became recognisable around the world.
As prime minister, Mossadegh famously ran the country from his bed. Of his close associates, Hossein Makki (centre, beside Mossadegh) went from being a devoted admirer to a bitter foe.
Mossadegh and US P
resident Harry Truman: the Iranian prime minister wowed America when he visited in 1951, but he soon lost the trust of a new superpower that was unwilling to relinquish its traditional friendship with Britain.
An anti-Mossadegh crowd, possibly dating from February, 1952, when mobs were mobilised to dissuade the Shah from leaving the country. Note the ugly assortment of weapons on display. Unsavoury characters such as these played a key role in the coup.
Charming and ambitious, Ayatollah Abolqassem Kashani helped bring Mossadegh to power, only to abandon him in favour of the Shah.
General Fazlollah Zahedi, who from 1952 was being groomed by the British as a successor to Mossadegh, and who took power after the coup.
Shah Muhammad-Reza Pahlavi and Queen Sorayya flew to Rome in despair after the apparent failure of the initial coup attempt on August 15, 1953. Little did they know that it would very shortly be successfully revived.
Shah-loyalists celebrate the success of the coup atop a tank in a Tehran street.
The coup-masters: (from left) US Secretary of State Foster Dulles, Winston Churchill basking in his last months of power, President Dwight D. Eisenhower and Anthony Eden, Britain’s Foreign Secretary, on the White House lawn in 1954. Transatlantic ties seemed as warm as ever in the aftermath of Mossadegh’s overthrow, but the Suez Crisis of 1956 would strain them almost to breaking point.
The legend in his aba, pacing out his house arrest at Ahmadabad. ‘Good days and bad days go past,’ he told the Shah. ‘What stays is a good name or a bad name.’
About the Author
CHRISTOPHER DE BELLAIGUE was born in London in 1971 and was educated at Eton and Cambridge, where he read Iranian and Indian Studies. Between 1996 and 2007 he lived and worked as a journalist in South Asia and the Middle East, writing for the Economist, the Financial Times, the Independent, and the New York Review of Books. His first book, In the Rose Garden of the Martyrs, was shortlisted for the Royal Society of Literature’s Ondaatje Prize, and his second, Rebel Land, shortlisted for the 2010 Orwell Prize, was described by the New York Times as a “rare, remarkable feat.“ He and his Iranian wife, the artist Bita Ghezelayagh, returned from Tehran to the UK in 2007 so that de Bellaigue could take up a fellowship at St. Antony’s College, Oxford. They now divide their time between London and Tehran.
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ALSO BY CHRISTOPHER DE BELLAIGUE
In the Rose Garden of the Martyrs
The Struggle for Iran
Rebel Land: Unraveling the Riddle of History in a Turkish Town
Credits
COVER DESIGN BY ROBIN BILARDELLO
COVER PHOTOGRAPH © CPA MEDIA CO. LTD./PICTURES FROM HISTORY
Copyright
PATRIOT OF PERSIA. Copyright © 2012 by Christopher de Bellaigue. All rights reserved under International and Pan-American Copyright Conventions. By payment of the required fees, you have been granted the nonexclusive, nontransferable right to access and read the text of this e-book on screen. No part of this text may be reproduced, transmitted, downloaded, decompiled, reverse-engineered, or stored in or introduced into any information storage and retrieval system, in any form or by any means, whether electronic or mechanical, now known or hereinafter invented, without the express written permission of HarperCollins e-books.
First published in Great Britain in 2012 by the Bodley Head, an imprint of the Random House Group Limited.
FIRST U.S. EDITION
Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data
De Bellaigue, Christopher, [date]
Patriot of Persia : Muhammad Mossadegh and a tragic Anglo-American coup / by Christopher de Bellaigue.
pages cm
ISBN 978-0-06-184470-6
1. Mosaddeq, Mohammad, 1880–1967. 2. Prime ministers—Iran—Biography. 3. Iran—Politics and government—1941–1979. 4. Iran—History—Coup d’état, 1953. I. Title.
DS318.6.D42 2012
955.05’3092—dc23
[B]
2012005380
Epub Edition © MAY 2012 ISBN: 9780062196620
12 13 14 15 16 OFF/RRD 10 9 8 7 6 5 4 3 2 1
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* In Paris, the Shah was solaced by a Georgian slave-girl purchased in Istanbul, who took her seat at the Paris Opera dressed as a man and chaperoned by a eunuch. While travelling through the French countryside on the same trip, the equipage was thrown into confusion after the Shah’s beloved ‘fetish’ (as the foreigners called him), the poisonous adolescent Aziz ul-Sultan, activated the emergency alarm.
* Most Iranian public figures had longwinded titles not only as a means of identification (there were no European-style surnames), but also to emphasise their indispensability to the Crown. Examples include Ayn al-Dowleh, ‘eye of the state’, or Amin al-Sultan, the ‘trusted of the King’. Titles were conferred by the Shah, and were generally reconferred after the death of the bearer, though not necessarily to his son. As a consequence, they are a false friend to the historian, who risks confusing the actions of one Ayn al-Dowleh with those of another.
* Marie-Thérèse settled in Tehran where she became a governess. To Mossadegh’s distress, she died just three years later, after falling into an open manhole.
* Curzon lost his job with the change of government in Britain in 1924, and died the following year.
* The title ‘Seyyed’ indicates descent from the line of the Prophet.
* The nuptial ceremonies, which were held in both countries, served to reinforce the reciprocal dislike that has existed for centuries between Persians and Arabs. A special train carrying the Egyptian visitors to Tehran ran out of food, water and electricity. The bride’s mother moaned incessantly about the primitive facilities, and Reza Shah caused consternation when he announced that the bride’s private fortune now belonged to Iran.1
* The Shah’s suite showed less spirit than the monarch himself. The Shah’s half-brother Ghollamreza, Le Rougetel reported, ‘threw himself flat on the ground, while the others retreated by imperceptible degrees to a distance of about 20 yards.’16 The Shah’s bodyguard only found their courage after the assailant threw away his revolver and raised his hands above his head. They opened fire on him and he died of his injuries.
* This is the only reference I have seen to Mossadegh’s alleged use of opium, and may be discounted as casual defamation.
* The company recognised him as such, and he ended up chairman of British Petroleum, Anglo-Iranian’s post-1954 incarnation.
* These centred on an invasion of Abadan to restore British control of the refinery, to which end the Sixteenth Independent Parachute Brigade was brought to a state of readiness. The Americans were dead against military intervention, arguing that the Soviets would launch a symmetrical invasion of northern Iran, and Attlee, discomfited by the sabre-rattling of some members of his cabinet, vetoed the idea at the eleventh hour.16
* A few weeks later, with British troops and government-backed ‘liberation battalions
’ effectively at war, the Shepheards Hotel and other symbols of the European presence were burned to the ground.
* Mossadegh’s grandson Hedayat Matine-Daftary was at boarding school in England when he heard the news. He told his housemaster, a retired colonel with thespian pretentions, ‘Sir, the Hague has decided in Iran’s favour. They have declared they have no jurisdiction.’ The colonel snorted, ‘Of course they have no jurisdiction! This case should be heard in the criminal courts!’12
* The first fruits of this success came with the joint proposals that Truman and Churchill submitted to Mossadegh in August 1952. Churchill had been at his most meretricious when proposing this diplomatic ‘gallop’ to Truman, ‘such as I often had with FDR’. Having invoked tradition, Churchill went on reasonably, ‘I do not myself see why two good men asking only what is right and good should not gang up against a third who is doing wrong. In fact I thought and think that this is the way things ought to be done.’ Mossadegh reacted with hostility to the démarche.
* The British left Iran at dawn to avoid unpleasantness. There was a farewell picnic on the road west, towards the Iraqi border, with friends from the Belgian Embassy providing bacon and eggs and the Americans dry martinis. A government car caught up with the party and Middleton was asked to deliver a letter to the British people. He refused on the grounds that he was no longer an accredited representative. The Iranian official thrust the letter into Middleton’s hand. Middleton dropped it. The official tried again, and this went on, in Middleton’s words, until ‘finally, I think about the nineteenth time, I let the envelope drop . . . and that was the end of that one, and off we went. Having drunk about two gallons of American dry martinis.’ 17
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