Hey folks!
It's my first time posting here and I'd just like to say that it thoroughly love your subreddit for its impeccable quality. That being said, I'm trying to educate myself on modern middle eastern history and how current relationships between that region and the West came to be. Yesterday I read an article within Foreign Affairs magazine titled ,"What really happened in Iran?" In which the author makes the attempt to dispel the notion that the US AND Britain had a heavy hand in the reinstatement of the Shah, and his subsequent downfall in the he Islamic Revolution of 1979. The author argues that it was PM Mossaddeq's reluctance to concede in negotiations with the British with regards to their oil acquisitions and his attempt to consolidate his power at the expense of the shah that really created his downfall. He mentions that the shahs brief a leave of absence led to incredible amounts of civil unrest independent to that instigated by the CIA and MI6, displaying the Iranian populace' favor towards the monarchy.
How much veracity is their in his piece? In the article he discredits almost every narrative/text/historian that's come to speak or write on the matter as propagating a myth and that their exists a need for the current relationship to rid itself of this false foundation.
Thanks for the help! Also are there any texts that you would recommend with regards to middle eastern history/politics that would be most enlightening with regards to our relationship with that region today?
Thanks!
I would recommend that you read over the CIA's own history of the coup. A lot written about this event tends to be highly biased, so its difficult to find concrete sources. But, the CIA's history is a basic look at the CIA's arguments for the coup and the actual events, which I found insightful. http://www2.gwu.edu/~nsarchiv/NSAEBB/NSAEBB28/
He's right, but he's wrong at the same time. In one sense, there was a level of discontent with Mossaddeq and his government. Mossaddeq was a fairly controversial leader, who alienated many with his unrelenting opposition to an oil agreement with the British. He was seen by many to be overly emotional, to the extent that he would physically collpase after extended speeches and rants. In one discussion with an American ambassador, Mossadeq reportedly responded to the looming economic disaster with the French phrase “tant pis pour nous,” meaning “too bad for us.” Pro-shah forces were also fairly significant (although much less pronounced) as the traditional power base of the monarchy was still prominent, especially in the military.
While Mossadeq did have oppositions within the clerics, business leaders, and other elements of society, it was not enough on its own to materialize a coup. The CIA's and British involvement was absolutely critical in this endeavor. The CIA's TPBEDAMN program had for years been distributing black propaganda throughout Iran, attempting to delegitimize the Communist Tudeh party and Mossaddeq power base. Millions of dollars were spent by the CIA to buy off religious leaders and business men, while false flag attacks were carried out against religious leaders to complicit the Tudeh party and Mossaddeq. Protests and counter protests were explicitly created by the CIA to maintain a level of chaos in Tehran, which would form the basis of an Iranian military intervention on the side of the Shah.
The actual coup was entirely organized by the MI6 and the CIA, which would involve the Shah issuing decrees dismissing Mossaddeq and declaring General Zahedi as PM. Zahedi would then use the military to quell the protests, arrest members of the Tudeh and Mossaddeq, and cement the Shah's rule.
The coup actually failed magnificently, with Mossaddeq preempting the Shah and Zahedi by arresting key military officers and dissolving the Iranian parliament. The Shah would soon flee the country, crippling the ability to carry out the coup. It was only the ingenuity of CIA operator Kermit Roosevelt, who used the TPBEDAMN propaganda wing to massively augment the protests of both the pro-shah and pro-mossaddeq parties, while massively distributing the royal decrees of Mossaddeq dismissal to the populace. With this and a combination of a US condemnation of Mossaddeq's handling of the riots, Mossaddeq was forced to order his National Front protestors from the streets, otherwise face international scrutiny and the evacuation of the American embassy. When the pro-shah supporters later over-ran Radio Tehran, they were able to further augment the pro-shah protestors by convincing much of the military to side with Zahedi. The military and protestors eventually consolidated their control over the Tehran, arresting Mossaddeq and other Tudeh party members.
The author of the Foreign Affairs article is correct in the idea that all the pieces of a potential coup was already present in Iran. However, it was the CIA who explicitly augmented those realities via its operations. The coup could not have existed without these preexisting conditions, and yet the fall of Mossaddeq government and reestablishment of the Shah could not have happened without the CIA and MI6. Both were critical aspects of Mossaddeq's fall, contrary to the author's one-sided claim that the US involvement was "insignificant."
Just in August the CIA released documents describing its role in the coup: http://www2.gwu.edu/~nsarchiv/NSAEBB/NSAEBB435/
Sorry for the incomplete answer. I'm hoping the article and its sources help inform the proper answers I'm sure are being written now.
Revisionism, that's all.
See at one point the CIA fucked up, so some revisionist have latched onto that event and claim that really the coup had nothing to do with the CIA and it was Iranians themselves who overthrew Mossadegh. What is conveniently left out is the long history of CIA actions that led to the overthrow such as the CIA's posing as communists and bombing of the home of a prominent cleric, which caused Mossadegh to lose support amongst his religious supporters.
BTW while some people have heard of the 1953 coup, fewer still speak of the events of 1907 when Iran created the first democracy in the Mideast by adopting a constitution that formed an elected Parliament and the King reigned but did not rule (the model was European monarchies such as Belgium.) Back then the British and Russians conspired to overthrow the govt and reinstalled a puppet shah. They even shelled Iran's parliament building.