¿Qué demonios pasó en Irán ese año de 1953? Ah sí, la CIA

What Really Happened in Iran
The CIA, the Ouster of Mosaddeq, and the Restoration of the Shah
By Ray Takeyh
From our July/August 2014 Issue

Back in 2009, during his heavily promoted Cairo speech on American relations with the Muslim world, U.S. President Barack Obama noted, in passing, that “in the middle of the Cold War, the United States played a role in the overthrow of a democratically elected Iranian government.” Obama was referring to the 1953 coup that toppled Iranian Prime Minister Mohammad Mosaddeq and consolidated the rule of the shah, Mohammad Reza Pahlavi. Obama would go on to remind his audience that Iran had also committed its share of misdeeds against Americans. But he clearly intended his allusion to Washington’s role in the coup as a concession -- a public acknowledgment that the United States shared some of the blame for its long-simmering conflict with the Islamic Republic.

Yet there was a supreme irony to Obama’s concession. The history of the U.S. role in Iran’s 1953 coup may be “well known,” as the president declared in his speech, but it is not well founded. On the contrary, it rests heavily on two related myths: that machinations by the CIA were the most important factor in Mosaddeq’s downfall and that Iran’s brief democratic interlude was spoiled primarily by American and British meddling. For decades, historians, journalists, and pundits have promoted these myths, injecting them not just into the political discourse but also into popular culture: most recently, Argo, a Hollywood thriller that won the 2013 Academy Award for Best Picture, suggested that Iran’s 1979 Islamic Revolution was a belated response to an injustice perpetrated by the United States a quarter century earlier. That version of events has also been promoted by Iran’s theocratic leaders, who have exploited it to stoke anti-Americanism and to obscure the fact that the clergy itself played a major role in toppling Mosaddeq.

In reality, the CIA’s impact on the events of 1953 was ultimately insignificant. Regardless of anything the United States did or did not do, Mosaddeq was bound to fall and the shah was bound to retain his throne and expand his power. Yet the narrative of American culpability has become so entrenched that it now shapes how many Americans understand the history of U.S.-Iranian relations and influences how American leaders think about Iran. In reaching out to the Islamic Republic, the United States has cast itself as a sinner expiating its previous transgressions. This has allowed the Iranian theocracy, which has abused history in a thousand ways, to claim the moral high ground, giving it an unearned advantage over Washington and the West, even in situations that have nothing to do with 1953 and in which Iran’s behavior is the sole cause of the conflict, such as the negotiations over the Iranian nuclear program.

All of this makes developing a better and more accurate understanding of the real U.S. role in Iran’s past critically important. It’s far more than a matter of correcting the history books. Getting things right would help the United States develop a less self-defeating approach to the Islamic Republic today and would encourage Iranians -- especially the country’s clerical elite -- to claim ownership of their past.

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Day in court: Mohammad Mosaddeq on trial, November 1953. (Getty / Carl Mydans)

HONEST BROKERS

In the years following World War II, Iran was a devastated country, recovering from famine and poverty brought on by the war. It was also a wealthy country, whose ample oil reserves fueled the engines of the British Empire. But Iran’s government didn’t control that oil: the wheel was held by the Anglo-Iranian Oil Company, whose majority shareholder happened to be the British government. By the early 1950s, as assertive nationalism swept the developing world, many Iranians were beginning to see this colonial-era arrangement as an unjust, undignified anachronism.

So strong was the desire to take back control of Iran’s national resources that it united the country’s liberal reformers, its intelligentsia, elements of its clerical establishment, and its middle-class professionals into a coherent political movement. At the center of that movement stood Mosaddeq, an upper-class lawyer who had been involved in Iranian politics from a young age, serving in various ministries and as a member of parliament. Toward the end of World War II, Mosaddeq reemerged on the political scene as a champion of Iranian anticolonialism and nationalism and managed to draw together many disparate elements into his political party, the National Front. Mosaddeq was not a revolutionary; he was respectful of the traditions of his social class and supported the idea of constitutional monarchy. But he also sought a more modern and more democratic Iran, and in addition to the nationalization of Iran’s oil, his party’s agenda called for improved public education, freedom of the press, judicial reforms, and a more representative government.

In April 1951, the Iranian parliament voted to appoint Mosaddeq prime minister. In a clever move, Mosaddeq insisted that he would not assume the office unless the parliament also approved an act he had proposed that would nationalize the Iranian oil industry. Mosaddeq got his way in a unanimous vote, and the easily intimidated shah capitulated to the parliament’s demands. Iran now entered a new and more dangerous crisis.

The United Kingdom, a declining empire struggling to adjust to its diminished influence, saw the Anglo-Iranian Oil Company as a crucial source of energy and profit, as well as a symbol of what little imperial prestige the country had managed to cling to through the end of World War II. So London responded to the nationalization with fury. It warned European companies doing business in Iran to pull out or face retribution, and the still potent British navy began interdicting ships carrying Iranian oil on the grounds that they were transporting stolen cargo. These moves -- coupled with the fact that the Western oil giants, which were siding with London, owned nearly all the tankers then in existence -- managed to effectively blockade Iran’s petroleum exports. By 1952, Iran’s Abadan refinery, the largest in the world at the time, was grinding to a halt.

From the outset of the nationalization crisis, U.S. President Harry Truman had sought to settle the dispute. The close ties between the United States and the United Kingdom did not lead Washington to reflexively side with its ally. Truman had already demonstrated some regard for Iran’s autonomy and national interests. In 1946, Soviet Premier Joseph Stalin had sought to seize Iran’s northern provinces by refusing to withdraw Soviet forces that were deployed there during the war. Truman objected, insisting on maintaining Iran’s territorial integrity even if it meant rupturing the already frayed U.S. alliance with the Soviets; Stalin backed off. Similarly, when it came to the fight to control Iran’s oil, the Americans played the role of an honest broker. Truman dispatched a number of envoys to Tehran who urged the British to acknowledge the legitimacy of the parliament’s nationalization act while also pressing the Iranians to offer fair compensation for expropriated British assets.

In the meantime, Washington continued providing economic assistance to Iran, as it had ever since the war began -- assistance that helped ease the pain of the British oil blockade. And the Americans dissuaded the British from using military force to compel Iran to relent, as well as rejecting British pleas for a joint covert operation to topple Mosaddeq.

But Truman’s mediation fell short, owing more to Mosaddeq’s intransigence than any American missteps. Mosaddeq, it seemed, considered no economic price too high to protect Iran’s autonomy and national pride. In due course, Mosaddeq and his allies rejected every U.S. proposal that preserved any degree of British participation in Iran’s oil sector. It turned out that defining Iran’s oil interests in existential terms had handcuffed the prime minister: any compromise was tantamount to forfeiting the country’s sovereignty.

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Homecoming king: the shah returns to Iran, August 1953. (Getty / Carl Mydans)

TRUE COLORS

By 1952, the conflict had brought Iran’s economy to the verge of collapse. Tehran had failed to find ways to get its oil around the British embargo and, deprived of its key source of revenue, was facing mounting budget deficits and having difficulty meeting its payroll. Washington began to fear that through his standoff with the British, Mosaddeq had allowed the economy to deteriorate so badly that his continued rule would pave the way for Tudeh, Iran’s communist party, to challenge him and take power.

And indeed, as the dispute dragged on, Mosaddeq was faced with rising dissent at home. The cause of nationalization was still popular, but the public was growing weary of the prime minister’s intransigence and his refusal to accept various compromise arrangements. The prime minister dealt with the chorus of criticism by expanding his mandate through constitutionally dubious means, demanding special powers from the parliament and seeking to take charge of the armed forces and the Ministry of War, both of which had long been under the shah’s control.

Even before the Western intelligence services devised their plots, Mosaddeq’s conduct had already alienated his own coalition partners. The intelligentsia and Iran’s professional syndicates began chafing under the prime minister’s growing authoritarianism. Mosaddeq’s base of support within the middle classes, alarmed at the economy’s continued decline, began looking for an alternative and drifted toward the royalist opposition, as did the officer corps, which had suffered numerous purges.

Mosaddeq’s supporters among the clergy, who had endorsed the nationalization campaign and had even encouraged the shah to oppose the United Kingdom’s imperial designs, now began to reconsider. The clergy had never been completely comfortable with Mosaddeq’s penchant for modernization and had come to miss the deference they received from the conservative and insecure shah. Watching Iran’s economy collapse and fearing, like Washington, that the crisis could lead to a communist takeover, religious leaders such as Ayatollah Abul-Qasim Kashani began to subtly shift their allegiances. (Since the Islamic Revolution of 1979, Iran’s theocratic rulers have attempted to obscure the inconvenient fact that, at a critical juncture, the mullahs sided with the shah.)

The crisis finally came to a head in February 1953, when the royal court, fed up with Mosaddeq’s attempts to undermine the monarchy, suddenly announced that the shah intended to leave the country for unspecified medical reasons, knowing that the public would interpret the move as a signal of the shah’s displeasure with Mosaddeq. The gambit worked, and news of the monarch’s planned departure caused a serious confrontation between Mosaddeq and his growing list of detractors. Kashani joined with disgruntled military officers and purged politicians and publicly implored the shah to stay. Protests engulfed Tehran and many provincial cities, and crowds even attempted to ransack Mosaddeq’s residence. Sensing the public mood, the shah canceled his trip.

This episode is particularly important, because it demonstrated the depth of authentic Iranian opposition to Mosaddeq; there is no evidence that the protests were engineered by the CIA. The demonstrations also helped the anti-Mosaddeq coalition solidify. Indeed, it would be this same coalition, with greater support from the armed forces, that would spearhead Mosaddeq’s ouster six months later.

THE PLOT THICKENS

The events of February made an impression on a frustrated Washington establishment. The CIA reported to U.S. President Dwight Eisenhower, who had inherited the Iranian dilemma when he took office a month earlier, that “the institution of the Crown may have more popular backing than we expected.” Secretary of State John Foster Dulles cabled the U.S. embassy in Tehran that “there appears to be [a] substantial and relatively courageous opposition group both within and outside [the] Majlis [Iran’s parliament]. We gather Army Chiefs and many civilians [are] still loyal to the Shah and would act if he gave them positive leadership, or even if he merely acquiesced in [a] move to install [a] new government.”

After the protests, the Majlis became the main seat of anti-Mosaddeq agitation. Since Mosaddeq’s ascension to the premiership, his seemingly arbitrary decision-making, his inability to end the oil crisis, and the narrowing of his circle to a few trusted aides had gradually alienated many parliamentarians. In response, the prime minister decided to eliminate the threat by simply dissolving the Majlis. Doing so required executing a ploy of dubious legality, however: on July 14, all the National Front deputies loyal to Mosaddeq resigned their posts at once, depriving the chamber of the necessary quorum to function. Mosaddeq then called for a national referendum to decide the fate of the paralyzed legislature. But this was hardly a good-faith, democratic gesture; the plebiscite was marred by boycotts, voting irregularities, and mob violence, and the results surprised no one: Mosaddeq’s proposal to dissolve parliament was approved by 99 percent of the voters. Mosaddeq won his rigged election, but the move cost him what remained of his tattered legitimacy.

Meanwhile, Mosaddeq seemed determined to do everything he could to confirm Washington’s worst fears about him. The prime minister thought that he could use U.S. concerns about the potential for increased Soviet influence in Iran to secure greater assistance from Washington. During a meeting in January, Mosaddeq had warned Loy Henderson, the U.S. ambassador, that unless the United States provided him with sufficient financial aid, “there will be [a] revolution in Iran in 30 days.” Mosaddeq also threatened to sell oil to Eastern bloc countries and to reach out to Moscow for aid if Washington didn’t come through. These threats and entreaties reached a climax in June, when Mosaddeq wrote Eisenhower directly to plead for increased U.S. economic assistance, insisting that if it were not given right away, “any steps that might be taken tomorrow to compensate for the negligence of today might well be too late.” Eisenhower took nearly a month to respond and then firmly told Iran’s prime minister that the only path out of his predicament was to settle the oil dispute with the United Kingdom.