The crucial event of that day, however, took place not on the streets but behind closed doors. At midafternoon Ambassador Henderson came to call on Mossadegh. The old man was at a distinct disadvantage. He had no idea that clandestine agents based at the American embassy were working day and night to overthrow his government. And since he did not imagine that there existed such a person as Kermit Roosevelt, he could not guess that Roosevelt was using Ambassador Henderson to lay a trap for him. Still, he knew that outside powers had been involved in Saturday’s failed coup. He should have been on guard.
Mossadegh received the ambassador in formal attire, signaling the importance of their meeting. He was distinctly cool, with what Henderson called “smoldering resentment” palpable behind his courtesy. The United States had taken the official position that the Shah was still Iran’s leader, and Mossadegh protested this American support for “a man who is now no more than a rebel.” Henderson replied that although the Shah had indeed fled, the Prophet Mohammad had also fled from Mecca in his time, and from that moment his influence had only grown. This comment surprised Mossadegh, and he paused to consider it. Henderson decided that it was time to deliver the speech Roosevelt had devised for him. He spoke sternly, his voice rising to a crescendo of staged indignation.
“I must tell you that my fellow citizens are being harassed most unpleasantly,” he began. “Not only do they get threatening phone calls, often answered by their children, who are then subjected to rude words children should not even hear; not only are they insulted in the streets when going peacefully about their business. In addition to all the verbal aggression they are exposed to, their automobiles are damaged whenever they are left exposed. Parts are stolen, headlights are smashed, tires are deflated, and if the cars are left unlocked, their upholstery is cut to pieces. Unless this kind of harassment is stopped, Your Excellency, I am going to ask my government to recall all dependents and also all men whose presence here is not required in our own national interest.”
Mossadegh might well have laughed at this mendacious monologue. Americans had organized the upheaval in Iran, but Henderson was portraying them as its victims. As proof, he offered highly exaggerated accounts of supposed outrages. But amazingly, Mossadegh seemed genuinely pained by these fanciful stories and alarmed at the prospect of Americans leaving Iran. Henderson reported that he was “visibly shaken” and quickly “became confused, almost apologetic.”
Roosevelt had perfectly analyzed his adversary’s psyche. Mossadegh, steeped in a culture of courtliness and hospitality, found it shocking that guests in Iran were being mistreated. That shock overwhelmed his good judgment, and with Henderson still in the room, he picked up a telephone and called his police chief. Trouble in the streets had become intolerable, he said, and it was time for the police to put an end to it.
With this order, Mossadegh sent the police out to attack a mob that included many of his own most fervent supporters. Then, to assure that his partisans would not return to the streets the next day, he issued a decree banning all public demonstrations. He even telephoned leaders of pro-government parties and ordered them to keep their people at home. He disarmed himself. It was his “fatal mistake,” according to an account published in Time magazine a week later.
Over the next couple of hours, Mossadegh made several other missteps. Determined to show how serious he was about cracking down on street protests, he mobilized soldiers commanded by General Mohammad Daftary, an officer known for his zeal in repressing civil strife. But Daftary, who had been Tehran’s police chief under the assassinated Prime Minister Razmara several years before, was also an outspoken royalist and close to Zahedi. There was every reason to suspect that if ordered into action, he would lead his men directly to the side of the conspirators. That is precisely what he did. The next day they fought not to defend but to depose the government.
Soon after Mossadegh issued his fateful order, the crackdown began. “Policemen and soldiers swung into action last night against rioting Tudeh (Communist) partisans and Nationalist extremists,” Kennett Love reported in the New York Times. “The troops appeared to be in a frenzy as they smashed into rioters with clubs, rifles and night sticks, and hurled tear gas bombs.”
Among those who had no idea of the turning tide in Tehran was His Imperial Majesty, Mohammad Reza Shah. After arriving in Baghdad, he had insisted that he was not involved in an attempted coup but had dismissed Mossadegh for “gross violations of the constitution.” Like almost everyone else involved in the plot, he assumed that Saturday’s failure meant the end of Operation Ajax. On Tuesday morning he and Empress Soraya boarded a British Overseas Airways Corporation jet and flew to Rome. “Both looked worn, gloomy and anxious as they left the aircraft,” the London Times reported.
The Shah seemed resigned to a long absence from Iran. When an American reporter asked him if he expected ever to return, he replied, “Probably, but not in the immediate future.” A British correspondent predicted that he would “probably join the small colony of exiled monarchs already in Rome.”
As the Shah was checking into the Excelsior Hotel in Rome, however, Roosevelt was working hard to bring him home. The next day would be the climactic one. If everything went as planned, by midday the streets would be full of boisterous pro-Shah demonstrators. Citizens would see them as decent people fed up with the chaos of recent days, and a sympathetic constabulary would not interfere.
With the help of his invaluable Iranian agents, Roosevelt had organized a most extraordinary mob. Along with street thugs and other unsavories, it included many members of Tehran’s traditional athletic societies. These athletes prided themselves not just on their strength but on acquired skills like juggling and acrobatics. On festive occasions they would join parades or give shows. These were not wealthy men. Some earned their livings with enterprises like protection rackets at the vegetable market. They expected the leaders of their societies to help sustain them. When the CIA came looking for rioters, they were ready and eager.
“In Iran you can get a crowd that’s fearsome,” John Waller, the head of the CIA’s Iran desk, mused afterward. “Or you can get a friendly crowd. Or you can get something in between. Or one can turn into the other.”
Roosevelt had already assured himself of support from the police force, which had fallen largely under General Daftary’s sway, and from several military units. Now he also had the makings of a fine mob. The indispensable Assadollah Rashidian, however, was worried that the mob would not be big enough. He urged Roosevelt to strengthen his hand by making a last-minute deal with Muslim religious leaders, many of whom had large followings and could produce crowds on short notice. The most important of them, Ayatollah Kashani, had already turned against Mossadegh and would certainly be sympathetic. To encourage him, Rashidian suggested a quick application of cash. Roosevelt agreed. Early Wednesday morning he sent $10,000 to Ahmad Aramash, a confidant of Kashani’s, with instructions that it be passed along to the holy man.
Wednesday was August 19, the 28th of Mordad by the Iranian calendar. On this day Roosevelt hoped to change the course of a nation’s history. After he packed up the $10,000 for Kashani and sent his couriers on their way, though, he found himself with little to do. The time had come for others to act. Roosevelt could only wait and watch.
The news that his agents brought during the morning hours was all encouraging. People by the thousands were gathering at mosques and public squares. In their vanguard, giving the whole event a carnival air, were the outlandish athletes. Some waved barbells over their heads. Others juggled heavy pins. Many bared their barrel chests and wore little more than extravagant mustaches and loincloths. More than a few carried knives or homemade clubs. It was as exotic a tribe as ever marched to overthrow a government:
They started with the Zurkaneh giants, weight lifters who developed their physiques through an ancient set of Iranian exercises which included lifting progressively heavier weights. The Zurkanehs had built up tremendous shoulders and huge bic
eps. Shuffling down the street together, they were a frightening spectacle. Two hundred or so of these weightlifters began the day by marching through the bazaar, shouting “Long Live the Shah!” and dancing and twirling like dervishes. Along the edges of the crowd, men were passing out ten-rial notes…. The mob swelled; the chant “Long Live the Shah!” was deafening. As the throng passed the offices of a pro-Mossadegh newspaper, men smashed the windows and sacked the place.
No one tried to stop the insurgents as they marched toward the city center. Police officers at first encouraged them and then, as the afternoon wore on, began leading them. There was no counterdemonstration. Mossadegh’s supporters, respecting his wish and the message of the previous night’s beatings, had stayed home.
The only other group that could have mobilized to defend the government was Tudeh, but its leaders spent the day in meetings, unable to decide whether to act. Mossadegh did not trust them anyway and did not want their help. One Tudeh leader had called him the day before and volunteered Tudeh shock troops if Mossadegh would arm them. “If ever I agree to arm a political party,” he swore in reply, “may God sever my right arm!”
Mossadegh’s hostility was not, however, the real reason Tudeh leaders did not call out their street fighters on that crucial day. Like most of the world’s communist parties, Tudeh was controlled by the Soviet Union, and in times of crisis it followed orders from Moscow. On this day, however, no orders came. Stalin had died a few months earlier and the Kremlin was in turmoil. Soviet intelligence officers who would normally be concentrating on Iran were preoccupied with the more urgent challenge of staying alive. Whether any of them even considered trying to defend Mossadegh is among the remaining mysteries of Operation Ajax. Scholars have sought access to records in Moscow that might resolve it, but their requests have been denied.
As the morning wore on, crowds surging out of Tehran’s southern slums filled the air with chants of “Death to Mossadegh!” and “Long live the Shah!” Hundreds of soldiers joined in, some of them in trucks or atop tanks. So did tribesmen from outside the city, mobilized by chiefs who had been paid by Kermit Roosevelt’s agents. Groups of rioters attacked and burned eight government buildings and the offices of three pro-government newspapers, including one, Bahktar-e-Emruz, that was owned by Foreign Minister Fatemi. Others attacked the foreign ministry, the general staff headquarters, and the central police station. They raked all three buildings with gunfire and were met with withering volleys in return. Men fell by the dozen.
Roosevelt’s agents kept bringing him good news. Late in the morning, one of them reported that the “huge mob” had occupied every one of the city’s main squares. Another told him that the garrison commander in Kermanshah, four hundred miles to the west, had joined the cause and was leading his men toward the capital. A squad led by Ali Jalili captured the military police headquarters and freed plotters who had been arrested after Saturday’s coup attempt. Among them was Colonel Nasiri, who immediately began marshaling his Imperial Guard to help the insurgents.
Some of the tens of thousands of people who took over the streets that day had always opposed Mossadegh for one reason or another. Others were former supporters who had turned against him during the political conflict of recent months. Many were what the New York Times called “bazaar thugs and bully-boys” who had no political convictions at all and marched because they had been paid a good day’s wage to do so.
“That mob that came into north Tehran and was decisive in the overthrow was a mercenary mob,” asserted Richard Cottam, who was on the Operation Ajax staff in Washington. “It had no ideology, and that mob was paid with American dollars.”
Mobs, however, need leadership to be effective, and while gang leaders like Shaban the Brainless were big and strong, they were by no means clever. Most of the leaders who emerged over the course of that Wednesday were midranking military officers. Like their civilian counterparts, they were a mixture of the committed and the suborned. A goodly number had been persuaded to join the coup by the authority of the firman naming Zahedi as prime minister. If the Shah had spoken, they reasoned, the army was bound to obey.
These soldiers lent the uprising an air of legality. They also brought considerable firepower, including tanks and artillery, and they led the attacks on many government buildings. Without their moral authority and combat skills, the coup might well have failed.
Everything seemed to be going according to plan when, just before midday, the door to Roosevelt’s command post burst open. He looked up, in hope of seeing another agent with reports from the front line, but instead saw his radio operator, distraught and on the verge of tears. In his hand he held an urgent message from Beedle Smith in Washington. Smith had sent it twenty-four hours earlier, but there had been a delay passing it through the relay station in Cyprus. It was another order, in stronger language than the two previous ones, for Roosevelt to flee immediately.
This message could not have arrived at a more absurdly inappropriate moment. Roosevelt, who could sense that victory was at hand, broke out laughing when he read it. “Never mind, chum,” he told the confused radio man. “Buried underground as you are, you have no way of knowing. But the tide has turned! Things are going our way! Right will triumph! All for the best, in the best of all possible worlds!”
Roosevelt sent the radio man back to his burrow with a reply for General Smith. It said: “Yours of 18 August received. Happy to report R. N. Ziegler [Zahedi] safely installed and KGSAVOY [the Shah] will be returning to Tehran in triumph shortly. Love and kisses from all the team.”
That was, of course, premature, but it reflected the supreme confidence that Roosevelt now felt. By his own account, he was “grinning from ear to ear.” He had not eaten a proper meal in days and suddenly he felt hungry. An acquaintance of his who was a counselor to Ambassador Henderson maintained a home in the embassy compound, and he strolled over for lunch and a drink.
Outside, Tehran was in upheaval. Cheers and rhythmic chants echoed through the air, punctuated by the sound of gunfire and exploding mortar shells. Squads of soldiers and police surged past the embassy gate every few minutes. Yet Roosevelt’s host and his wife were paragons of discretion, asking not a single question about what was happening.
A radio was on. Although the announcer was reading nothing more interesting than grain prices, Roosevelt listened carefully. He had sent one of his Iranian teams to storm the station. If things went well, the programming would soon change.
As the three Americans ate in silence, the radio announcer started speaking ever more slowly, as if he were falling asleep. After a time, he stopped altogether. Obviously something unusual was happening at the station. Roosevelt smiled knowingly at his baffled luncheon partners. There were several minutes of dead air, followed by the sounds of men arguing. “It doesn’t matter who reads it, the important thing is that it be read!” one finally shouted with an air of authority. Then, in loudly emotional tones, he began shouting what Roosevelt called “well-intended lies, or pre-truths.”
“The government of Mossadegh has been defeated!” the man cried. “The new prime minister, Fazlollah Zahedi, is now in office. And His Imperial Majesty is on his way home!”
Roosevelt did not recognize the voice—an army officer had beaten his agent to the microphone—but the message was just as he had wished: “The government of Mossadegh was a government of rebellion, and it has fallen.” Roosevelt rose from the table, thanked his hosts for their hospitality, and withdrew.
It was shortly after two o’clock as Roosevelt made his way back to the command post. His comrades, who had also been listening to Radio Tehran, were in ecstasy. When Roosevelt appeared, they looked up, and for a silent moment all shared the delicious realization that the day was theirs. A moment later they were dancing around the narrow room. Roosevelt remembered them “literally bubbling over with joy.”
What should they do next? One agent, surmising that the mob was now at its peak of enthusiasm, suggested that it was time
to produce Zahedi. Roosevelt said no, it was still too soon.
“There is nothing to be gained by rushing,” he said. “Let’s wait till the crowd gets to Mossadegh’s house. That should be a good moment for our hero to make his appearance.”
Military units led by anti-Mossadegh officers had already begun converging on the house. Inside, loyal soldiers built fortifications and prepared for battle. They were armed with rifles, machine guns, and Sherman tanks mounted with 75-millimeter cannons. Late in the afternoon the assault began. Defenders beat back wave after wave, leaving the sidewalks littered with bodies. Then, after an hour of one-sided combat, the assailants gave a great cheer. Friendly army units had arrived with tanks of their own. A close-quarters artillery duel soon broke out. Operation Ajax was approaching its climax.
Once Roosevelt learned that the assault had begun, he decided to fetch General Zahedi from the hideout where he had been closeted for two days. Before leaving, he summoned General Guilanshah, who, like Zahedi, was at a CIA safe house impatiently awaiting instructions. Roosevelt asked the general to find a tank and bring it to Zahedi’s hideout. He scribbled the address on a scrap of paper and then drove there himself.
When Roosevelt arrived, Zahedi was sitting in a basement room wearing only underwear. He was thrilled to hear that his moment had finally come. As he was buttoning the tunic of his dress uniform, there was a rumble outside. General Guilanshah had arrived with two tanks and a cheering throng.
In later years, perhaps inevitably given his grandfather’s fame as a swashbuckler, a story took hold that Roosevelt had ridden triumphantly atop the lead tank as it crashed through the streets of Tehran toward Mossadegh’s house. In fact, Roosevelt realized as soon as he heard the crowd accompanying General Guilanshah that he should not even be seen in Zahedi’s presence. As the door to the basement burst open, he jumped into a small cavity behind the furnace. From there, he watched the jubilant crowd embrace Zahedi, lift him high, and carry him out.
All the Shah’s Men Page 22