All the Shah’s Men

by Stephen Kinzer

  This left Truman more worried than ever. His fears were heightened by two messages he received in the next few days. The first, from Mossadegh, made clear that Iran and Britain remained on a collision course. Mossadegh complained about Britain’s efforts to sabotage his nationalization project and added ominously, “There is no danger whatever to the security of life and property of the British nationals in Iran. Any spreading of false rumors on the part of the agents of the former oil company might, however, cause anxieties and disturbances.”

  Mossadegh’s warnings arrived in blunter terms on July 1 from Ambassador Grady. In an anguished cable he warned Truman that Iran was in “a most explosive situation” and reported for the first time that Britain was looking for ways to overthrow Mossadegh. “The British, led by Mr. Morrison, seem to be determined to follow the old tactics of getting the government out with which it has difficulties,” he wrote. “Mossadegh has the backing of 95 to 98 percent of the people of this country. It is utter folly to try to push him out.”

  What Grady considered “utter folly” was indeed what the British were planning. They had abandoned all hope of bringing Mossadegh around to their way of thinking and were not prepared to make the concessions he wanted. Ambassador Shepherd wrote in a cable to London that “the moment has come for us to try and get him out,” so that Iran would once again have a prime minister who was “reasonable and friendly” rather than “rigid and impractical.”

  News from The Hague on July 5 further complicated matters. The International Court of Justice, acting at Britain’s request, issued an “indication” recommending that Iran allow the oil company to continue functioning as before while negotiations proceeded. Iran had refused to participate in the case. The Court was empowered to adjudicate only disputes between nations, and Iranian officials asserted that since the 1933 oil accord was a deal between Iran and a private company, it had no right to intervene. The Iranian minister at The Hague dismissed its recommendation as “null and void” and “an intervention in our internal affairs.”

  That steeled Foreign Secretary Morrison’s resolve. He marched to the House of Commons and took the floor to declare that the situation in Iran was “becoming intolerable.” To assure that Mossadegh understood the intensity of his indignation, he added that the Royal Navy was “lying close to Abadan” and would be ordered into action “should the Persians fail to discharge their responsibilities.”

  Truman now saw greater peril than ever. To him, the question of who would control Iranian oil was only secondary. He was more worried that the argument between the United States and Britain over how to deal with Mossadegh might spiral out of control and split the Atlantic alliance. Determined to make a last effort at compromise, he wrote to Mossadegh suggesting direct American mediation:

  This matter is so full of dangers to the welfare of your own country, of Great Britain and of all the free world, that I have been giving the most earnest thought to the problems involved…. I have watched with concern the breakdown of your discussions and the drift toward a collapse of oil operations with all the attendant losses to Iran and the world. Surely this is a disaster which statesmanship can find a way to avoid….

  I lay great stress on the action of the [World] Court…. Therefore, I earnestly commend to you a most careful consideration of its suggestion. I suggest that its utterance be thought of not as a decision which is or is not binding depending on technical legal considerations, but as a suggestion of an impartial body dedicated to justice and equity and to a peaceful world….

  I have a very sincere desire, Mr. Prime Minister, to be as helpful to you as possible in this circumstance. I have discussed this matter at length with Mr. W. Averell Harriman, who as you know is one of my closest advisors and one of our most eminent citizens. Should you be willing to receive him, I should be happy to have him go to Tehran as my personal representative to talk over with you this immediate and pressing situation.

  Averell Harriman was an accomplished diplomat who had served as ambassador to Britain, ambassador to the Soviet Union, and director of the Marshall Plan in Europe. He also knew Mohammad Reza Shah and was thought to have some expertise in matters Iranian. Immediately after Truman told him of his new mission, Harriman received an illustrious delegation at his Washington home: Secretary of State Acheson, Assistant Secretary George McGhee, two other State Department officials, and the British ambassador, Sir Oliver Franks. All agreed that the situation in Iran had become exceedingly dangerous. A small incident at Abadan, they feared, could lead the British to intervene militarily, which might in turn lead Mossadegh to seek Soviet help. Even if that did not happen, closing the refinery was sure to set off a wave of social and political turmoil.

  Harriman’s mission faced challenges even before it began. The British disapproved of the whole idea. In an impatient note to Acheson, Foreign Secretary Morrison said that Britain was “in grave difficulties” and needed not more negotiations but “wholehearted support” from the United States. “I must tell you that one of our main difficulties in dealing with this intractable problem has arisen from a belief persistently held by many Persians that there is a difference of opinion between the American and British over the oil question,” he wrote. “An approach by a representative of the President would, I fear, merely encourage Dr. Mossadegh in this belief.”

  This message confirmed Acheson’s view that Morrison, as he wrote later, “knew nothing of foreign affairs and had no feel for the situation.” He had even less use for Britain’s hard-line ambassador in Tehran, Sir Francis Shepherd, whom he considered an “unimaginative disciple of the ‘whiff of grapeshot’ school of diplomacy.” Their dislike was mutual. As soon as Shepherd learned that Acheson was sending an emissary to Tehran to interfere in what he considered his business, he called a news conference to express his “astonishment and chagrin” at the temerity of the Americans.

  “What is the use of Harriman flying here?” he asked. “We are not inviting mediation in this matter.” This was a highly undiplomatic outburst, and under instructions from the Foreign Office, Shepherd retracted it the next day.

  It was in this climate that Ambassador Grady visited Mossadegh to deliver Truman’s letter. He wore a white suit and a jaunty tropical hat and waved happily to photographers as he arrived. The bedside meeting, however, did not go well. At Mossadegh’s request Grady read the letter aloud, and when he reached the passage in which Truman urged him to accept the Court’s advice, Mossadegh broke out into a thirty-second fit of convulsive laughter. When he finally stopped, there was a long moment of silence. Mossadegh finally told Grady that Iran believed the World Court had no jurisdiction in this case. Then he launched into a long and increasingly angry denunciation of the United States, which he said had once upheld moral principles but was wilting in the face of British pressure. His tirade was so vitriolic that Grady did not even see the point of pressing Harriman’s possible visit.

  Acheson was much irritated when he received news of this encounter. He sent Grady a sharp note telling him that the Harriman mission was

  the one new positive element contained in the President’s proposal and is the step to which the President and I attach greatest significance. I cannot believe that Mossadegh’s initial reaction will, upon reflection, be his final one. Considerations of courtesy will lead him, I am convinced, to give President’s message full consideration, and to receive President’s personal rep who can give both you and Mossadegh the benefit of great thought which President has put to this matter and receive any suggestions which Mossadegh may have. Therefore request that you see Mossadegh again as speedily as possible and in tactful way, which I know you will employ, urge these considerations upon him.

  Grady did as he was told, and Acheson’s faith in his persuasive powers turned out to have been justified. He convinced Mossadegh that the Harriman mission was in everyone’s interest. Harriman arrived in Tehran on July 15, 1951. His welcoming committee consisted of ten thousand enraged Iranians shouting, “Death
to Harriman!”

  CHAPTER 7

  You Do Not Know How Evil They Are

  Averell Harriman’s first hours in Tehran were not auspicious. His limousine had to take a roundabout route from the airport in order to avoid angry mobs. He made it safely to the guest palace that had been prepared for him but had to dine while the sound of gunfire echoed through the air. Mounted police and soldiers in armored cars were firing at protesters. By midnight the city was awash in blood and tear gas. More than twenty people lay dead and another two hundred were wounded.

  Why did the protest end with such awful carnage? The next day’s newspapers blamed Mohammad Reza Shah and General Fazlollah Zahedi, the hard-line interior minister, who, they said, had intentionally provoked violence in order to give Harriman the impression that Iran was in chaos. Prime Minister Mossadegh was furious and fired Zahedi before the day was out.

  That afternoon, Harriman paid his first call on Mossadegh. It was a meeting different from any in Harriman’s long diplomatic career. He was ushered into an upstairs bedroom in Mossadegh’s modest home. There Mossadegh was reclining in bed, dressed in a camel-hair cloak. He welcomed Harriman weakly and said that he hoped during their talks to learn whether the United States was truly a friend of the oppressed or merely a puppet of the vile British. Harriman replied that he had lived in London and knew that there were good Britons as well as bad ones. Mossadegh demurred. “You do not know them,” he mumbled. “You do not know them.”

  Mossadegh never saw any contradiction between his boundless respect for Britain’s constitutional tradition and his contempt for its government and imperial history. During one of his meetings with Harriman, he mentioned a grandson on whom he doted. Harriman asked where the grandson was studying. “Why, in England, of course,” Mossadegh replied. “Where else?”

  In his cables back to Washington, Harriman described Mossadegh as “completely rigid” and “obsessed with the idea of eliminating completely British oil company operations and influence within Iran.” His impression of the old man, as related by a biographer, reflected his frustrations:

  Caught in deception, as he often was, [Mossadegh] would respond with disconcerting, childlike laughter or a heart-rending confession, often followed by a repeat of the devious tactic with an ill-concealed new twist. He projected helplessness; and while he was obviously as much a captive as a leader of the nationalist fanatics, he relented on nothing. Under pressure, he would take to his bed, seeming at times to have only a tenuous hold on life itself as he lay in his pink pajamas, his hands folded on his chest, eyes fluttering and breath shallow.

  At the appropriate moment, though, he could transform himself from a frail, decrepit shell of a man into a wily, vigorous adversary. He would arrive at the entrance of Harriman’s guest palace shuffling slowly along while leaning heavily on his cane; but once inside, he would throw the cane aside and sometimes forget where it was. The first time he was presented to Marie Harriman, he took hold of her hand and didn’t stop kissing until he was halfway to her elbow. Later, he could be caught stealing glances at her, sometimes losing his train of thought altogether.

  Harriman had brought a petroleum expert, Walter J. Levy, with him to Iran, and Levy accompanied him to several of his meetings with Mossadegh. Again and again, Levy enumerated the obstacles that Mossadegh’s government would face if it tried to run the Abadan refinery by itself. There were almost no Iranians trained for senior administrative and technical positions, and even if by some miracle a way could be found to keep the oil flowing, Iran had no tankers to bring it to market. Loss of Anglo-Iranian’s royalty payments, which in 1950 had reached nearly £10 million, would destabilize Iran and possibly lead to Mossadegh’s overthrow and replacement by a Tudeh government controlled from Moscow. That in turn might provoke Western military intervention.

  None of these arguments moved Mossadegh in the slightest. Foreign intervention, he insisted, was the root of all Iran’s troubles, and “it all started with that Greek Alexander,” who had burned Persepolis twenty-four centuries before. Whenever Levy paused after making what he thought was an especially trenchant point about how much Iran would suffer if it failed to reach an accord with the British, Mossadegh would roll his eyes and reply simply, “Tant pis pour nous.” Too bad for us.

  Harriman and his aides, accustomed to the give-and-take of traditional diplomacy, were driven to distraction by Mossadegh’s maddening style of negotiation. “Dr. Mossadegh had learned to take one step forward in order to take two backward,” the American interpreter, Vernon Walters, wrote afterward. “After a day’s discussion, Mr. Harriman would bring Mossadegh to a certain position. The next day when we returned to renew the discussion, not only was Mossadegh not at the position where he was at the end of the previous day, he wasn’t even at the position where he had been the day before that. He was somewhere back around the middle of the day before yesterday.”

  Walters was then a lieutenant colonel in the United States Army. His language skills had brought him to the attention of superiors and would help carry him through a stellar career that culminated with appointments as deputy CIA director and ambassador to Germany. He had an irreverent wit, once remarking that Mossadegh’s nose “made Jimmy Durante look like an amputee.” More important, he knew when to interpret literally and when to reshape indiscreet comments. On one occasion, for example, Ambassador Grady’s wife greeted the Iranian leader by saying, “Dr. Mossadegh, you have a very expressive face. Every time you are thinking of nothing, I can tell by the blank stare on your face.” Walters rendered this comment into French as: “Dr. Mossadegh, you have a very expressive face. Every time you are thinking deep thoughts, I can tell by the look of concentration on your face.”

  Mossadegh’s talks with Harriman did not falter because of Mossadegh’s negotiating style or his failure to grasp the intricacies of the oil industry. The real reason was the fundamental difference in the way the two men perceived the dispute. To Harriman, it was a matter of practicalities, a set of technical challenges that could be resolved by rational analysis, discussion, and compromise. Mossadegh saw it from an entirely different perspective. He believed that Iran was at the sublime moment of liberation. Imbued with the Shiite ideal, he was determined to pursue justice even to the point of martyrdom. Details about refinery management or tanker capacity seemed to him laughably irrelevant at such a transcendent moment.

  When Harriman insisted that there must be a way for Mossadegh to build a new relationship with the British, the old man shook his head. “You do not know how crafty they are,” he said. “You do not know how evil they are. You do not know how they sully everything they touch.”

  Most Iranians shared this view, as Walter Levy realized when he struck up a conversation with a group of people he met on a Tehran street. Their colloquy, as Levy later related it, went like this:

  Levy: You realize that if the British technicians leave Abadan you will have to try to run the industry by yourselves?

  Iranians: Yes.

  Levy: You realize that you will fail to run the industry without the British?

  Iranians: Yes.

  Levy: So Iranian oil will no longer be produced for the world market?

  Iranians: Yes.

  Levy: And if Iranian oil is no longer produced, there will be no money in the Iranian treasury?

  Iranians: Yes.

  Levy: And if you have no money there will be a financial and economic collapse which will play into the hands of the Communists?

  Iranians: Yes.

  Levy: Well, what are you going to do about it?

  Iranians: Nothing.

  Unable to move Mossadegh through persuasion, Harriman decided to try influencing him indirectly. First he asked the Shah for help, but the Shah told him frankly that in the face of public opinion, there was no way he could say a word against nationalization. Then he called Iranian reporters to a news conference, and when they arrived, he began reading a statement that called on Iran to confront the crisis with
“reason as well as enthusiasm.” As soon as those words were out of his mouth, one journalist jumped to his feet and shouted, “We and the Iranian people all support Premier Mossadegh and oil nationalization!” The others began cheering and then marched out of the room. Harriman was left alone, shaking his head in dismay.

  In pondering the question of who could influence Mossadegh and the masses, Harriman next came up with an outlandish idea: he would call on Ayatollah Kashani, the firebrand mullah who had become one of Iran’s most powerful public figures. It is difficult to imagine two more different men. Harriman came from one of the world’s richest families. He was a Skull-and-Bones man at Yale, a skier and a polo player who had spent his life in the highest society. Kashani had fought in the desert against the British, had been imprisoned by them, and was later sent into foreign exile at the Shah’s order. He had a long black beard and wore a turban to match. His world was centered around a small, carpeted chamber where he sat for most of every day, meditating, praying, and plotting. Several times a week he emerged to visit a mosque or deliver a thunderous denunciation of imperialism to crowds of the faithful, who considered him a near-deity.

  Harriman arrived at Kashani’s door and was brought into a darkly curtained room where the holy man sat motionless. After removing his shoes, seating himself on a carpet, and expressing his respect, he said he hoped Kashani agreed that the oil crisis could be resolved only by some kind of agreement between Iran and Britain. Perhaps, he ventured, Kashani could help persuade Mossadegh to accept a British emissary. As soon as these first few sentences were translated, Kashani erupted with a stream of invective, the gist of which was that no self-respecting Iranian would ever meet with British “dogs” and that the United States had turned itself into Iran’s enemy by suggesting it. As for Iran’s oil, it could remain in the ground for all he cared. “If Mossadegh yields,” he concluded, “his blood will flow like Razmara’s.”