All the Shah’s Men

by Stephen Kinzer

  The British wished to make it impossible for the National Iranian Oil Company to function. The first tactic they used was discreet sabotage at the Abadan refinery. Eric Drake, the general manager at Abadan when it was nationalized, recalled years later that British managers did all they could to assure that machines didn’t work and new managers couldn’t find out how the place was run. “There was no question of violent resistance,” he said, “but it’s extraordinary how pieces of the plant would go wrong just when they were supposed to be doing something else.”

  These steps would not have kept the refinery from running if technicians had been available to run it. The National Iranian Oil Company placed advertisements in several European newspapers and specialized journals announcing that it wished to hire such technicians. British diplomats set out to assure that none would make it to Abadan. They persuaded Sweden, Austria, France, and Switzerland to deny exit visas to interested applicants. In Germany, which was still under Allied occupation, they asked the government to “refuse the grant of passports to German nationals intending to travel to Persia” unless they could prove they were not oil specialists; the Germans were in no position to resist. An American firm publicly offered the Iranian government help “to recruit 2,500 American technicians to run the oil industry,” but withdrew the offer after being warned by the State Department that it was “contrary to British interests and embarrassing to the United States.” An American congressman, Owen Harris, introduced a bill authorizing the secretary of the interior to look for qualified experts and help them travel to Iran, but it died after British diplomats protested to the House Foreign Affairs Committee. And in Britain itself, twenty Anglo-Iranian employees who had left Iran but wanted to return were told that under the new sanctions regime, they would not be allowed to convert their salaries into British currency.

  This well-coordinated campaign made it all but impossible for Iran to continue producing oil. The British, however, feared that Iran would find a way, either by using Iranian experts or by slipping some foreigners through the blockade. They resolved to assure that if that happened, Iran would find no customers.

  Companies in Britain and the United States owned more than two-thirds of the world’s oil tankers, but there remained the possibility that tankers from the Soviet Union or elsewhere might begin carrying Iranian oil. To prevent this, the Foreign Office first considered announcing that it would begin to “intercept foreign tankers on the high seas on the grounds that they were carrying stolen oil from Persia.” After realizing that such a threat would violate international law, however, it decided on a different tactic. Anglo-Iranian placed advertisements in dozens of newspapers around the world warning that it would “take all such actions as may be necessary” against any country that bought oil from Iran. The company based its threat on the contention that Iranian oil was its lawful property under “the Convention of 29th April 1933.” That was misleading language, since conventions are instruments between governments and the 1933 concession agreement was between a government and a company. Officials in several countries recognized that fact and made plans to buy oil that Iran had stockpiled or might produce.

  During the summer of 1951, there were still more than three hundred Britons left at Abadan, and one of them, a deputy general manager named Alick Mason, had a way to intercept telegrams sent to the National Iranian Oil Company. In July he intercepted two from American oil companies offering to supply their own tankers if the NIOC would sell them ten million tons of crude over the next year. He informed his superiors in London. They in turn appealed to the State Department, which obligingly persuaded the companies to withdraw their offer. Similar appeals killed incipient deals between the NIOC and companies in Italy and Portugal. The Iranians then tried to arrange barter deals with India and Turkey, but British pressure aborted those deals, too.

  As Britain tightened its noose, Iran fell into political turmoil. Bitter debates broke out in the Majlis, including one in which a deputy hurled his briefcase at a cabinet member. Moderates warned that Mossadegh had brought the country to the brink of disaster. Radicals argued with equal passion that he was not confronting the British strongly enough. The press, freer than at any time in Iranian history, was full of denunciations, accusations, and predictions of one form of doom or another. Ambassador Grady warned in interviews with Tehran newspapers that either war with the British or a communist takeover might be imminent.

  Those were among Grady’s last words as ambassador. His outspoken support for the cause of Iranian nationalism had greatly irritated the British, and, finally, Acheson decided that his “strong personality” had turned him into a liability. He removed Grady in September and replaced him with Loy Henderson, whose worldview was shaped by the East–West confrontation and who soon concluded that Mossadegh was “a madman who would ally himself with the Russians.”

  As the Americans changed ambassadors in Tehran, the British also adjusted their strategy. Having reluctantly ruled out the option of armed invasion, they decided to take their case to the United Nations Security Council. There they hoped to win approval for a resolution ordering Mossadegh not to expel their oil company from Iran. The debate would also give them a chance to present their case, which they believed was highly persuasive, to the court of world opinion.

  Americans warned against this. Henry Grady, by then already a former ambassador, told a London newspaper that the British were foolishly giving Iranians “a great forum to tell the world how their oil company has oppressed the Iranian people, and to show that Western capitalism is tending to control, and possibly destroy, other countries in the underdeveloped part of the world.” The State Department worried that the Soviet Union would veto any pro-British resolution, thereby strengthening its image as defender of the world’s oppressed. In a note to Herbert Morrison, Acheson warned that forcing a United Nations debate might lead to “an irrevocable freezing of the Iranian situation.”

  The ever-obtuse Morrison, however, was determined to press ahead. When the American ambassador in London, Walter Gifford, called on him to deliver Acheson’s note, he was met with a stern tongue-lashing:

  I had 45 minutes with Morrison this p.m. and found him in a petulant and angry mood…. He launched into a tirade about our attitude re Iranian problem. He was unhappy about [American suggestions for a watered-down Security Council resolution], reiterating a number of times “I will not be put in the dock with Mossadegh.” … He said at one point “We have been the saints and Mossadegh has been the naughty boy.” He emphasized he cld not understand US attitude. He expected 100 percent cooperation and was only getting 20 percent…. We had persistently inveighed against use of force and then when UK reverted to appeal to [the United Nations] to uphold rule of law, we not only had doubts re wisdom of action, but came up with res which failed to make any distinction between relative guilt and innocence of parties…. During all the forgoing conv, Morrison had kept [Acheson’s note] folded in front of him. He finally picked it up and read it, shaking his head and muttering “This is defeatist—defeatist.”

  Morrison was sure that Britain’s silver-tongued representative to the United Nations, Sir Gladwyn Jebb, would dominate the debate and run rhetorical rings around his Iranian counterpart. But if he thought that the prospect of confrontation in such august chambers would terrify Iranian leaders, he was quite mistaken. Mossadegh loved it—so much so that he resolved to come to New York and present his case in person.

  This was a master stroke. The most eloquent figure Iran had produced in many centuries would now take to the world stage, and he would present not just the case of one small nation against one big company, but that of the wretched of the earth against the rich and powerful. Mossadegh was about to become the preeminent spokesman for the nationalist passion that was surging through the colonial world.

  CHAPTER 8

  An Immensely Shrewd Old Man

  Throngs of admirers jammed the Tehran airport to cheer Mossadegh as he set out on his historic trip
to New York. When he landed in Rome, his first stop, his plane was surrounded by news photographers while police officers struggled to control the crush of exuberant Iranian expatriates and other supporters who had waited half the day for a glimpse of him. The same frenzied scene was repeated at his next stop in Amsterdam.

  New York, long accustomed to receiving world-famous figures, awaited Mossadegh with much curiosity. He was not just the “symbol of Iran’s surging nationalism,” as the New York Times called him, but a world leader with a great story to tell and a famously theatrical way of telling it. Everyone, with the possible exception of Britain’s delegate to the United Nations, was eagerly awaiting his performance. “Whether Mossy is a phony or a genuine tear-jerker,” warned the Daily News, “he better put everything he’s got into his show if he goes on television here.”

  Mossadegh stepped gingerly from his plane on the afternoon of October 8, 1951. His son and personal physician, Gholam-Hussein, helped him down the steps. He did not speak, but issued a written statement to waiting reporters. It promised that the world would soon hear the story of a “cruel and imperialistic company” that had stolen what belonged to a “needy and naked people” and now sought to use the United Nations to justify its crime.

  From the airport Mossadegh was taken to New York Hospital for a medical examination. Doctors pronounced him fit, and he decamped to the Ritz Tower Hotel at the corner of Park Avenue and Fifty-seventh Street. There he spent most of his time preparing the speech he would deliver to the Security Council. This was an era before Castro, before Sukarno, before Nkrumah and Lumumba. The voice of poor countries had seldom been raised in such rarefied chambers. Mossadegh’s would be the first that most Westerners had ever heard.

  As he waited for his moment, he devoured everything the American press was writing about his forthcoming performance. Typical of these previews was an edition of Newsweek that carried the cover line “Mossadegh: Fainting Fanatic.” Newsweek praised Mossadegh’s personal integrity, mentioning that he had turned down both his official limousine and his salary as prime minister; recounted his career as “incorruptible provincial governor, anti-British agitator, enemy of the tough old Shah Reza Khan, red-baiter and founder of the terrorist National Front”; asserted that although many Westerners had at first dismissed him as “feeble, senile, and probably a lunatic,” they now saw him as “an immensely shrewd old man with an iron will and a flair for self-dramatization”; and wondered, along with much of the rest of the world, what this “fabulous invalid” would say and do in the days ahead.

  “The stage was set for one of the strangest contests in the strange history of the United Nations—the tremulous, crotchety Premier versus Britain’s super-suave representative, Sir Gladwyn Jebb,” Newsweek reported. “And this might be the decisive act in the dramatic, tragic and sometimes ridiculous drama that began when Iran nationalized the Anglo-Iranian Oil Co. five months ago.”

  The confrontation for which Mossadegh had come to New York began even before he arrived. Gladwyn Jebb, the British delegate, had already given the Security Council a long summation of his government’s position. Mossadegh read it carefully. It was a contemptuous dismissal of Iran’s position and a ringing declaration that the oil beneath Iran’s soil was “clearly the property of the Anglo-Iranian Oil Company.”

  The plain fact is that, by a series of insensate actions, the Iranian Government is causing a great enterprise, the proper functioning of which is of immense benefit not only to the United Kingdom and Iran but to the whole free world, to grind to a stop. Unless this is promptly checked, the whole of the free world will be much poorer and weaker, including the deluded Iranian people themselves….

  The Iranian Government, for obvious reasons of its own, perpetually represents the Anglo-Iranian Oil Company as a gang of unscrupulous blood-suckers whose one idea is to drain the Iranian nation of any wealth it may possess…. These wild accusations are simply not true…. Quite apart from its financial contributions to the Iranian economy, the record of the company in Iran has been one which must arouse the greatest admiration from the social point of view and should be taken as a model of the form of development which would bring benefits to the economically less-developed areas of the world. Far from trying to keep down the Iranian people, as has been alleged, the company has strained every effort to improve the standard of living and education of its employees so that they might be able to play a more useful part in the great work which remains to be done in Iran…. To ignore entirely these activities and to put forth the company as responsible for oppression, corruption and treachery could be described as base ingratitude if it were not simply ridiculous.

  Jebb asked the Security Council to act before October 4, the date by which Mossadegh had vowed to expel the last Britons from Abadan. When he finished, however, the Iranian delegate rose to ask for a ten-day postponement to allow Mossadegh to travel from Tehran to New York. The Council president agreed, and by the time Mossadegh arrived, the situation at Abadan had indeed changed. On October 4 the last British nationals had assembled at the Gymkhana Club, one of their favorite retreats, and were ferried in groups out to the HMS Mauritius, which was standing by to take them across the Shatt-al-Arab to Basra. With that step, one of the mightiest commercial enterprises in imperial history closed its doors.

  A reporter from the New York Times visited the ghostly expanse a few days later. “When seen from a distance across the plain, the fifty-odd steel chimneys of the refinery bear a striking resemblance to the still-standing remains of King Xerxes’s Apadana and Hall of a Hundred Columns at Persepolis,” he wrote. “But as a traveler draws nearer, the gleaming metal soon identifies the silent towers of idle Abadan as the colossus of the industrial age, not of the fifth century B.C. … The cars and buses of the nationalized oil company—all of them British-made—go by. There are people in the streets. But the visitor may scrutinize every passing face in this English town set in southern Iran without finding the features of a single Englishman. Indeed any European is stared at as a curiosity.”

  Excitement filled the air as the Security Council assembled on October 15 to hear from Mossadegh. Delegates fell silent when he entered the chamber. All gazed at the tall, elegant-looking statesman who had riveted the world’s attention since coming to power six months before. Mossadegh seemed completely at ease, and with good reason. He was, after all, a trained lawyer from a distinguished family who had been educated in Europe and honed his persuasive talents in countless trials and parliamentary speeches. More important, he was utterly convinced not only that his case was just but also that Providence had brought him to this moment. He had come to New York to carry out the mission to which he had devoted his life.

  A Brazilian diplomat, João Carlos Muniz, was presiding over the Security Council that Monday, and he gaveled it to order punctually at three o’clock. His first act was to invite Mossadegh and Allahyar Saleh, Iran’s ambassador to the United Nations, to sit at the table normally reserved for council members. Then he recognized Jebb, who told his fellow delegates that Britain was no longer insisting “purely and simply on the return to the status quo,” but only for negotiated relief from “the great damage inflicted not only on it but on the free world as a whole by the actions of the Iranian government.” Jebb concluded by turning to face “the representative of Iran, who has come so far, and at such inconvenience to himself, to this meeting.” He urged Mossadegh “not to take up an aggressively nationalistic and indeed, I might say, almost isolationist attitude, not to brood unduly on old imagined wrongs, but to concentrate on the broader aspects and to show by his attitude that he too welcomes a constructive solution.”

  Then it was Mossadegh’s turn. He spoke in eloquent French. By way of introduction, he declared that Britain’s complaint was baseless and that the Security Council had no jurisdiction over the matter in any case, since Iran was entitled to dispose of its natural resources as it saw fit. But since the United Nations was “the ultimate refuge of weak and oppre
ssed nations,” he had decided to appear nevertheless, “after a long journey and in failing health, to express my country’s respect for this illustrious institution.” His statement was long, detailed, and passionate. Begging the council to indulge him on account of his delicate condition, he said that he would ask Saleh to read most of it. First, however, he spoke himself, giving a concise but highly evocative summary of the case he was laying before the world:

  My countrymen lack the bare necessities of existence. Their standard of living is probably one of the lowest in the world. Our greatest natural asset is oil. This should be the source of work and food for the population of Iran. Its exploitation should properly be our national industry, and the revenue from it should go to improve our conditions of life. As now organized, however, the petroleum industry has contributed practically nothing to the well-being of the people or to the technical progress or industrial development of my country. The evidence for that statement is that after fifty years of exploitation by a foreign company, we still do not have enough Iranian technicians and must call in foreign experts.

  Although Iran plays a considerable role in the world’s petroleum supply and has produced a total of three hundred fifteen million tons over a period of fifty years, its entire gain, according to accounts of the former company, has been only one hundred ten million pounds sterling. To give you an idea of Iran’s profits from this enormous industry, I may say that in 1948, according to accounts of the former Anglo-Iranian Oil Company, its net revenue amounted to sixty-one million pounds; but from those profits Iran received only nine million pounds, although twenty-eight million pounds went into the United Kingdom treasury in income tax alone….