All the Shah’s Men

by Stephen Kinzer

  I must add here that the population living in the oil region of southern Iran and around Abadan, where there is the largest oil refinery in the world, is suffering in conditions of absolute misery without even the barest necessities of life. If the exploitation of our oil industry continues in the future as it has in the past, if we are to tolerate a situation in which the Iranian plays the part of a mere manual worker in the oil fields of Masjid-i-Suleiman, Agha Jari and Kermanshah and in the Abadan refinery, and if foreign exploiters continue to appropriate practically all of the income, then our people will remain forever in a state of poverty and misery. These are the reasons that have prompted the Iranian parliament—the Majlis and the Senate—to vote unanimously in favor of nationalizing the oil industry.

  With this, Mossadegh took his seat and handed the text of his statement to Saleh. He began by reading what Mossadegh had singled out as Iran’s essential legal argument: “The oil resources of Iran, like its soil, its rivers and mountains, are the property of the people of Iran. They alone have the authority to decide what shall be done with it, by whom and how.” Saleh took two hours to read the rest of Mossadegh’s statement. It was a history of foreign intervention in Iran, with special attention to the steps Britain had taken “to reduce us to economic servitude.”

  “The record of British economic exploitation of Iran has been a sorry one,” it concluded. “No one should be surprised that its consequence has been the nationalization of our oil industry.”

  After the reading of Mossadegh’s statement was completed, the council voted to meet again the following day to continue its debate. News photographers waiting outside the chamber asked the two adversaries to shake hands for the cameras, and they did. As flashbulbs popped, they had a brief exchange.

  “If God wills it, we will be friends again,” Jebb told Mossadegh.

  “We have always been friends with England,” Mossadegh replied. “The former company dragged your country needlessly into this dispute.”

  The next day, pictures of the two men appeared in newspapers around the world. Mossadegh was the taller, and wore a broad smile. Jebb looked quizzical and bemused.

  Tuesday’s session began with tributes to Liaquat Ali Khan, the prime minister of Pakistan, who had just been assassinated. Liaquat was a figure much like Mossadegh. He had been a leader of the movement to end British colonialism in India and had worked closely with Pakistan’s founding father, Mohammad Ali Jinnah, to build a democratic Muslim republic in what had been India’s northern provinces. Following Jinnah’s death, he had become what George McGhee, who met him several times, called “the unchallenged leader of his country.” Like Mossadegh, he was a visionary statesman, highly educated and erudite. He was committed to secular Islam and sympathetic to Western values but at the same time frustrated by what he saw as crippling vestiges of imperialism that prevented poor countries from achieving true independence. Pakistan never again had a leader of his caliber, just as Iran never had another like Mossadegh.

  Liaquat had personified the spirit of the young United Nations, and news of his murder shocked many delegates. They already had much on their minds. Mossadegh’s epochal challenge to the British was unfolding at a time of unusual turbulence in the world. The Soviet Union had just conducted its second atomic bomb test, making clear that the threat of annihilation would shape history for generations to come. War was raging in Korea. Kashmir, claimed by both India and Pakistan, was also aflame. A state of emergency was declared in Egypt after an outbreak of anti-British rioting.

  An election campaign in Britain was also on the world’s agenda that autumn. Winston Churchill was running to reclaim his old job, and in several speeches he denounced Prime Minister Attlee for failing to confront Mossadegh firmly enough. He told a crowd in Liverpool that Attlee had betrayed “solemn undertakings” never to abandon Abadan. “I don’t remember a case,” he thundered, “when public men have broken their word so abruptly and without even an attempt at explanation.” As the campaign progressed, Churchill became so belligerent on the Iran issue that Foreign Secretary Morrison asked him pointedly during one House of Commons debate whether he was urging war. He did not reply, but never denied that he liked the idea of invading Iran.

  Despite all that was happening around the world, however, Mossadegh remained the man of the hour. In his sweeping indictment before the Security Council, he found words that stung his adversary and delighted his countless admirers. He began his second day at the microphone by ridiculing the British for trying “to persuade world opinion that the lamb has devoured the wolf.”

  “The government of the United Kingdom has made abundantly clear that it has no interest in negotiating, and has instead used every illegitimate means of economic, psychological and military pressure that it could lay its hands on to break our will,” Mossadegh declared. “Having first concentrated its warships along our coasts and paratroopers at nearby bases, it makes a great parade of its love for peace.”

  Then it was Jebb’s turn. How disappointing it was, he lamented, that Mossadegh’s speech had been “so entirely negative, an attitude of mind which I regret to say has characterized the Iranian approach in all our long negotiations hitherto.” Mossadegh faced a “distressing situation which has arisen entirely owing to his own folly.” Since taking office, he had done nothing but belittle the achievements of the “prudent and far-sighted” Anglo-Iranian Oil Company, urge the appointment of “unqualified Iranians” to technical jobs, and trample on international law by ordering “the expropriation of foreign property.” The crisis had grown out of Iran’s “persistent refusal to recognize the sanctity of contracts.”

  On Wednesday, the session’s third day, delegates from several countries spoke briefly and then Mossadegh asked to be recognized. He said only that he was “very tired” and handed his text to Mohammad Saleh, sitting beside him. It was a long and impassioned speech on which he had worked for most of the previous twenty-four hours:

  I have not made actual count of the pejorative words used by Sir Gladwyn Jebb in has various statements, but as you leaf through the pages of the record, defamatory word after defamatory word springs to the eye. Our actions are described as “insensate” and our people as “deluded.” We have been “precipitate,” “arbitrary,” and have made life “intolerable.” Our legislative process is described as one of “hustling.” We are damned as “intransigent” and accused of presenting ultimatums. Our grievances are dismissed as “wild accusations.” We are “ridiculous” and exhibit “base ingratitude.” We are “intemperate,” “exploiters” of our own people, and save our own necks by inflaming our people against foreigners. Our aims are “illusory” and our means of achieving them “suicidal.” Our case is presented as one of the lame leading the blind in pursuit of a phantom….

  We have long realized that our hopes for developing our country, improving the condition of our people and expanding the opportunities available to them were dependent to a great extent on this extraordinarily important national resource. The record of the contribution that oil has made to our national prosperity is as pitiable as that of the crumbs which we have been allowed to pick up from the former company’s table…. I respond readily to the United Kingdom representative’s appeal to face the practical facts of the situation, and I am no less eager than he is to negotiate. Wherever the former company may operate in the future, however, it will never again operate in Iran. Neither by trusteeship nor by contract will we turn over to foreigners the right to exploit our oil resources.

  The resolution Britain had brought to the Security Council, already diluted at the insistence of the United States, was weakened further by amendments from India and Yugoslavia. Ultimately it become nothing more than a call for goodwill on both sides. Even that was too much for Mossadegh. He insisted that the council had no right to pass any resolution at all. So profound was the impression he had made that most other governments felt they had no choice but to agree. On October 19 the council voted “to postpo
ne the discussion of the question to a certain day or indefinitely.” Britain and the United States abstained. It was a humiliating diplomatic defeat for the British.

  “The Iranian oil dispute has done something that no other dispute in the history of the United Nations has been able to do,” James Reston wrote in the next day’s New York Times. “It has established the principle of total loss. It has proved what has heretofore been in doubt, namely that it is possible to have an argument in the United Nations in which everybody loses, including the large powers, the small powers, and the United Nations itself.”

  A solution to the oil dispute was now less likely than ever. Mossadegh remained fiercely determined to press ahead with his nationalization project, and the British remained equally determined to thwart it. President Truman decided to make a last effort at compromise and invited the Iranian leader to Washington.

  Mossadegh had already proven himself adept at reaching the American public. He appeared several times on television, and the seeming logic of his case, which he always compared to the struggle for American independence, won him considerable sympathy. His personal quirks—the long, aristocratic face that would suddenly explode into laughter, the way he rested his seemingly weary head on his cane, the grand sweeps of his long arms—added to his appeal. They gave him the endearing aspect of a favorite, perhaps slightly eccentric, uncle or grandfather. Cameras followed him wherever he went in New York.

  Before leaving for Washington, Mossadegh addressed Iranian students at Columbia University and told them that if they wanted to help their country, they should concentrate on learning how to run an oil industry. The next morning he set off by train, but instead of traveling directly to Washington, he made a brilliantly conceived stop in Philadelphia. There he visited Independence Hall, which he said symbolized the aspirations that united Americans and Iranians. Hundreds of onlookers cheered as he was photographed beside the Liberty Bell.

  Truman had received a confidential profile of Mossadegh that reflected the American view of him. It said that he was “supported by the majority of the population” and described him as “witty,” “affable,” “honest,” and “well informed.” This could not have been more different from the British view, in which, according to various diplomatic cables and memoranda, Mossadegh was a “wild,” “erratic,” “eccentric,” “crazy,” “gangster-like,” “fanatical,” “absurd,” “dictatorial,” “demagogic,” “inflammatory,” “cunning,” “slippery,” “completely unscrupulous,” and “clearly imbalanced” “wily Oriental” who “looks like a cab horse” and “diffuses a slight reek of opium.”

  Mossadegh’s arrival at Union Station in Washington on October 23, 1951, was unforgettable. He stepped off the train with great difficulty, supported on one side by his cane and on the other by his son’s steadying grasp. To all appearances, he was ready to collapse on the spot. Suddenly he saw Secretary of State Acheson, whom he had admired from afar but had never met. His face lit up and he seemed instantly rejuvenated. He dropped his cane, brusquely pushed his son aside, and skipped down the concourse to embrace his host.

  The next day, President Truman walked across the street from the White House to meet Mossadegh at Blair House. Once again Mossadegh was the fading invalid who, with his dying breaths, wished to defend his oppressed people against evil. He leaned toward Truman and began feebly, “Mr. President, I am speaking for a very poor country, a country all desert—just sand, a few camels, a few sheep….”

  “Yes, and with your oil, just like Texas!” Acheson interjected. Mossadegh loved it. He snapped back in his chair and broke out into one of the laughing fits that were almost as famous as the ones in which he wept.

  Truman began by telling Mossadegh that he felt great sympathy for Iran’s cause. He was deeply afraid, however, that if the oil crisis spun out of control, Iran might fall into the hands of the Soviets, who were “sitting like a vulture on the fence waiting to pounce.” If the Soviets took Iran, he warned, “they would be in a position to wage a world war.” Mossadegh said he saw the same danger, but insisted that British intransigence was the factor most likely to throw Iran into chaos.

  Recognizing that no compromise would be possible that day, Truman invited Mossadegh to stay in Washington for a while and spend some time with Acheson and George McGhee. To sweeten the invitation, he had arranged for Mossadegh to be installed at Walter Reed Hospital, where he could rest and be given a full battery of tests. To a man who had many ailments and believed he had many more, who felt comfortable in bed and never declined medical attention, this was an irresistible offer. Mossadegh was driven to the hospital that afternoon, and was thrilled to find that the presidential suite had been made ready for him.

  Acheson and McGhee visited him the next day to lay out terms of what they believed would be a fair compromise with the British. Their formula, as the New York Times described it, was to “assure Iran the owner’s control over her oil resource, but provide a so-called ‘neutral’ company with full authority to operate and manage the vast refineries and distribution facilities, and enable Britain to market the oil.” Mossadegh rejected it out of hand.

  The same offer had been transmitted to the British, and before they even knew of Mossadegh’s reaction, they, too, rejected it. A senior diplomat at the Foreign Office, Sir William Strang, called it “expropriation at the expense of British interests.” Chancellor of the Exchequer R. A. Butler said it failed to recognize the essential fact that “our own economic viability was at stake, which was much more important than Persia’s.”

  There were more meetings and discussions, including an extended debate over how much Iran would charge for its oil, when and if it ever began to flow again. No progress was made. “The general feeling here,” James Reston wrote after Mossadegh had been in Washington for a week, “is that the United States intervened in the problem too late and cannot now be expected to find any compromise that will satisfy the United States, Britain and Iran.”

  Americans were indeed latecomers to the Middle East. The British scorned them as inexperienced and naïve. To a degree they were. They were instinctively repelled by Britain’s colonial arrogance, especially in Iran, but did not have enough self-confidence to act decisively on their own.

  The American failure to reach a deal with Mossadegh during his visit to the United States was not due to any lack of effort by George McGhee. He visited Mossadegh day after day, first at the hospital and then, after Mossadegh was released with a clean bill of health, at his suite in the Shoreham Hotel. “Despite great efforts I was unable to get him to understand the facts of life about the international oil business,” he wrote afterward. “In the end he would always smile and say ‘I don’t care about that’ when I would talk with him about oil prices, discounts or technicians. ‘You don’t understand,’ he would say. ‘It is a political problem.’”

  In mid-November, after meetings with Mossadegh that lasted a total of seventy hours, McGhee finally gave up. When he came to tell Mossadegh, the old man already knew what was coming. “You’ve come to send me home,” he told McGhee.

  “Yes,” McGhee replied. “I’m sorry to have to tell you that we can’t bridge the gap between you and the British. It’s a great disappointment to us, as it must be to you.”

  Mossadegh accepted the news quietly. He decided that before leaving Washington, he would accept an invitation to address the National Press Club. His speech was a denunciation of Britain, skillfully combined with praise for the United States and an appeal for financial aid. A State Department spokesman said that the appeal would be given “every consideration,” but privately Mossadegh was told that a loan was impossible because the British would object too strenuously.

  The most telling comment Mossadegh made before leaving Washington on November 18 was to Vernon Walters, who at Averell Harriman’s request visited him alone just to be sure that he had not had a last-minute change of heart. “I know what you’re here for, and the answer is still no,” Mossadegh said whe
n Walters appeared at his door.

  “Dr. Mossadegh,” Walters replied, “you have been here for a long time. High hopes have been raised that your visit would bring about some fruitful results, and now you are returning to Iran empty-handed.”

  At this, Mossadegh stared at his friend and asked, “Don’t you realize that in returning to Iran empty-handed, I return in a much stronger position than if I returned with an agreement which I would have to sell to my fanatics?”

  On his way home, Mossadegh stopped in Egypt. He was given an ecstatic welcome. Egyptians were already in the anti-imperialist frenzy that would produce the Suez crisis a few years later, and whenever Mossadegh appeared in public, they cheered him wildly. Newspapers hailed him as a hero who had “conquered history” and “won freedom and dignity for his country.” He stayed for several days, was embraced by King Farouk, and signed a friendship treaty with Prime Minister Nahas Pasha. “A united Iran and Egypt,” it pledged, “will together demolish British imperialism.”

  In Britain, a momentous political change had occurred. While Mossadegh was in the United States, Conservatives led by Winston Churchill had been elected to replace Prime Minister Attlee’s Labor government. Like many British leaders of his generation, the seventy-seven-year-old Churchill had great trouble giving up the idea of Britain as an imperial power. As a young soldier in 1898, he had charged the Dervish lines at the decisive Battle of Omdurman that secured Sudan as a British colony. During World War I, he helped conceive the illfated Gallipoli campaign in Turkey. Later he directed British efforts to maintain control over Palestine and Mesopotamia and fervently opposed granting independence to India. He saw in Iran what he had seen for decades: a reliable source of oil at bargain prices. Iran was also one of Britain’s last great foreign outposts, and Churchill knew that if it were lost, there would be little hope of saving Suez or the others that remained. Holding the line against Third World nationalism was one of his lifelong crusades, and in the sunset of his career he was determined to make a last stand.