Agreed. But self-congratulatory ignorance is so much more fun.
The author of All the Shah’s Men has a career interest in outing American imperialism (something we are better served to face up to than pretend away), but he portrays the events and personalities rather well. I read it a good while ago, but I remember wanting greater attention to things that would render motives for the coup more understandable than simple greed or imperialist exploitation:
1) The Cold War and European context, wherein the US was struggling to keep Britain and most of Europe from collapsing economically and drifting into the Soviet sphere(much of the US relationship in the Middle East, and influence in Europe, was built to serve a policy of guaranteeing “cheap” energy supplies to European allies);
2) The difficulties the US had in pushing the Soviet Union out of northern Iran after WWII, and the history of Soviet attempts to “Bolshevize” Iran, all the way back to the early 1920’s (and Russian imperial adventures before that). What would a Soviet Iran have been like for its people?
3) Mossadegh’s overtures to Soviet oil interests. I suspect that Mossadegh meant to merely play on US fears of Soviet entry, and to make a point about that Iran would make decisions about Iran’s natural resources. But in the Cold War atmosphere, and given his mercurial nature, was the US prepared to gamble that M. could “handle” the Soviets once they got their foot in the door? Perhaps I give the CIA too much credit, but I have always wanted to hear much more about the substance of M’s dealings with the Soviets.
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In recent years, one American journalist has published a book to ”prove” that Osama Bin Laden and al-Qaeda decided to attack the United States on 9/11 because of the ”bitterness felt about those distant events in Iran”. In 2006 the newspaper USA Today ran an article claiming that the ”destruction by the United States of democracy in Iran” was ”an established fact”.
In March 2000, Secretary of State Madeleine Albright implicitly adopted the myth of ”August in Teheran” and apologized to the Iranian people for it. Later that year, President Bill Clinton echoed her apology in a speech, expressing regret for ”all the crimes my country and my culture have committed” against the Iranian people. After leaving office, Clinton told an audience at the World Economic Forum in Davos, Switzerland, that during his presidency he had ”formally apologized on behalf of the United States” for what he termed ”American crimes against Iran”. By his account, ”it’s a sad story that really began in the 1950s when the United States deposed Mr Mossadeq, who was an elected parliamentary democrat, and brought the shah back and then he was overturned by the Ayatollah Khomeini, driving us into the arms of one Saddam Hussein. We got rid of the parliamentary democracy in the ’50s, at least, that is my belief.”
Duped by the myth spread by the Blame-America coalition, Clinton appeared to have done little homework on Iran. The truth is that Iran in the 1950s was not a parliamentary democracy but a constitutional monarchy in which the shah appointed, and dismissed, the prime minister. Mossadeq was namned prime minister by the shah twice, and dismissed by him twice. This did not mean that the United States ”got rid of parliamentary democracy,” something that did not exist in the first place. Having dissolved the parliament and stopped the subsequent general election in midcourse because he realized his opponents would win a crushing majority, Mossadeq was ruling by decree in violation of the constitution. Though a popular populist, he could hardly be described as a democrat.
Clinton’s claim that the United States changed the course of Iranian history on a whim would be seen by most Iranians, a proud people, as an insult by an arrogant politician who exaggerates the powers of his nation more than half a century ago. Moreover, in the Islamic Republic that Clinton was trying to court, Mossadeq, far from being regarded as national hero, is an object of intense vilification. One of the first acts of the mullahs after seizing power ni 1979 was to take the name of Mossadeq off a street in Teheran. They then sealed off the village where Mossadeq is buried to prevent his supporters from gathering at his tomb. History textbooks written by the mullahs present Mossadeq as ”the son af a feudal family of exploiters who worked for the cursed shah, and betrayed Islam.” Clinton’s apology to the mullahs for a wrong supposedly done to Mossadeq was like begging Josef Stalin’s pardon for a discourtesy towards Alexander Kerensky
The so called coup d’etat that supposedly brought back the shah happened only in the imagination of the anti-American ideologists. The Iranian army did not intervene in the events until after the pro-shah demonstrations had seized most key government buildings, and then only to restore public order after the new governement had been announced. Many hour of newsreel footage of the events are available in archives, including the national Film Archive in Washington DC, clearly depicting a popular pro-shah uprising. There are hundreds of eyewitness accounts by Iranians who observed or took part in the events.
It is interesting that the CIA claims that all its documents relating to the events disappeared in a mysterious fire. We are thus left with two accounts. One is a self-serving book by Kermit Roosevelt, who presents himself as a lattter-day, and vastly inflated, Scarlet Pimpernel (5). The other is an official report commissioned by the CIA and written by Donald Wilber, the agency’s operational director in Teheran at the time. While Roosevelt’s account is obviously fanciful, Wilber’s report is written in a sober, almost slef-deprecating style. He shows the CIA and the British MI6 did have a plan to foment trouble agaisnt Mossadeq after the shah had signed the dismissal decree, but the plan failed as the CIA’s agents and ”assets” behaved more like Keystone Kops than professional conspirators engaged in a major big-power clash in the context of the Cold War. Wiber reports that the CIA station sent a message to Washington that ”The operation has been tried and failed.” The British followed with their own messge of failure: ”We regret that we cannot consider going on fighting. Operations agaisnt Mossadeq should be discontinued.” (6). Wilber blames the CIA’s Iranian ”assets” for the failure. The CIA had prepared ”a Western type plan offered for execution by Orientals [sic]. Given the recognized incapacity of Iranians to plan or act in a thorougly logical manner, we would never expect such a plan to be executed in the local atmosphere like a Western staff operation.” (7)
Moscow, too, noticed the failure of the CIA-MI6 plot. For two days running, Moscow radio broadcast an editorial by Pravda, the CPSU organ, headed ”The Failure of the American Adventure in Iran.” The editorial claimed that Britih and American agents had tried to foment street riots against Mossadeq but had failed because ”progressive forces,” a codeword for Communists and felllow travelers, had rallied behind the old leader.
The official CIA report also refutes the claim that Americans had bribed a number of Iranian army officers to stage a coup agaisnt Mossadeq. Wilber states categorically: ”In Iran we did not rely on bribery….,, We did not spend a cent in the purchases of officers. (8) He also makes it clear that no army units were involved in the events, although a brigade led by Colonel Bakthiar, a cousin of the shah’s wife, Oueen Soraya, arrived in Teheran from Kermanshah after the fall of Mossadeq.
Wilber observerd part of the popular pro-shah uprising and offered his version in the report commissioned by the CIA:
"In the evening, violence flared in the streets of Teheran. Just what was the major motivating force is impossible to say, but it is possible to isolate the factors behind the disturbances, First the flight of the Shah brought home to the populace in a dramatic way how far Mossadeq had gone, and galvanized the people into an irate pro-Shah force. Second it seems clear that the Tudeh Party overestimated its strength in the situation... Third, the Mossadeq government was at last beginning to feel very uneasy about its alliance with the Tudeh Party. The Pan-iranists were infuriated and the Third Force was most unhappy about the situation." (9)
Wilber’s narrative continues:
"The surging crowd of men, women and children were shouting: Shah piruz ast (The Shah is victorious). Determined as they seemed, a gay holiday atmosphere prevaied, and, as if exterior pressure had been released so that the true sentiments of the people showed through. The crowds were not, as in earlier weeks, made up of hoodlums, but included people of all classes – many well dressed – led or encouraged by civilians. Trucks and busloads of cheering civilians streamed by…… As usual, word spread like lightening and in other parts of the city pictures of the Shah were eagerly displayed. (10)
Some Iranians believe that the CIA retrospectively built up its own role in the August 1953 events so as to restore its prestige, shattered after the Bay of Pigs fiasco in 1961. The agency needed at least one feather it it were to keep its expensive hat. Anti-Americans, especially the Soviets and their agents and sympathizers throughout the world, found it in their own interest to endorse the CIA’s claim as ain eample of American ”imperialism” in action against a Third World nation. The shah’s enemies inside Iran also liked the story, as it absolved them of any responsibility for Mossadeq’s failure. Blaming the foreigner for one’s own shortcomings has always been popular in Iran.
Not all anti-shah and anti-American scholars have bought the CIA’s claim. According to one British Marxist academic:
"There is no doubt that the US government, and specifically the CIA, played an active part in organising the coup of the 19 August 1953 that ousted Mossadeq, and that this intervention was the fruit of the build-up of the US presence in Iran that had been under way since the war. However, it is misleading to attribute everything to this factor alone: Iranian nationalists tend to do so – and so, on occassion does the CIA, keen to claim credit for a successful operation. The reality is not so simple, since the CIA intervention was only possible because of internal balance of forces in Iran, the existence of elements within the dominant class that were interested in acting against the Mossadeq regime and the weakness of Mossadeq’s own position." (11)
Those five days in August 1953 were detined to remain the stuff of legend and myth, as well as accusations and counteraccusations, that have continued to this day. Iranian opponents of the shah cite these events as proof of his ”original sin,” for which he should never be forgiven. The shah’s supporters, on the other hand, mlaim that even if we assume that the Americans played a decisive role in the outcome, we must remember that the change of prime ministers at the time helped save Iran from a Communist takeover. In any case, allegations of CIA plotting did not translate into anti-Americanusm in Iran. Iranians continued to regard the United States as a valuable friend. In the 1960s, the United States became th number-one destination for Iranian visitors and students, By 1978, there were more than 150, 000 Iranian students, most of them financed by their families, in the United States – by far the largest number of any nationality. At the same time, more than 70, 000 Americans worked in Iran along with almost a million other expatriates from some fifty different countries.
Mossadeq himself never blamed the United States for his downfall. And it is quite possible that he was relieved to be pushed aside at a time that he had run out of ideas and lived on a day-to-day basis. He had built his career on opposition to the British and then to the two Pahlavi Shahs. In August 1953, the Britsh wre no longer there, the first Pahlavi had been dead for years, and the second was in exile in Rome. What could Mossadeq do now? What did he have to offer? A typical naysayer, he knew only to oppose, having marketed his ideology as ”a balance of negatives” (movazeneh manfi).
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The official CIA report by Donald Wilber can be found here.
PS: I think you can find the anser to MadIsh32*s question in the text.