History Lesson on Iran: The Truth about the CIA and the Shah

A cousin of mine has finished his freshman year in college; like most freshmen, he now knows absolutely everything. He took it upon himself, this week, to announce (to my brother, who is a very patient man) that Iran’s Islamist dictators were “a predictable consequence of American imperialism,” which manifested itself through “the CIA’s international pro-fascist crimes.”

That’s nonsense, of course, but it’s widely believed nonsense — and not just among college kids who’ve read the first chapter of a Noam Chomsky book. There are serious men who are under the impression that the CIA led a coup to replace an upstanding, democratic reformer named Mohammed Mossadegh with a fascist Shah named Mohammad Reza Pahlavi, and that Pahlavi’s crimes were so atrocious that Iran was driven into the arms of the mullahs. None of that is true. And with Congress getting ready to vote on the Iran deal, everyone could use a little historical perspective.

Mossadegh, a popular parliamentarian, was appointed prime minister by the Shah in the spring of 1951. He quickly set about social-reforming: Serfs were freed, paid sick-leave was mandated, landlords’ revenues were tithed to pay for public works — and the British-owned Anglo-Iranian Oil Company was nationalized.

The story of Iranian oil dates back to 1901, when an English businessman named William D’Arcy negotiated an oil-exploration contract with the (then) Shah of Iran, Shah Qajar. In exchange for a large cash payment and shares in the ensuing oil company, along with 16 percent of all oil revenue, D’Arcy acquired exclusive drilling rights in most of Iran for 60 years.

At first, it seemed that Iran had gotten the (much) better end of the deal: After seven years of prospecting, D’Arcy had found nothing. He was almost bankrupt; he had recapitalized with a new partner, the Burmah [sic] Oil Company, which wanted to call it a day. D’Arcy was already in the process of closing up his Iranian shop when — lo and behold — he struck oil, in May 1908.

The British government, hoping to reduce its dependence on coal, invested heavily in in the D’Arcy–Burmah company, which was renamed the Anglo-Persian Oil Company, and later the Anglo-Iranian Oil Company. The AIOC turned a large profit for the British, and, with 16 percent of the revenue, Iran turned a large profit too. As time went on, though, Iran’s government came to consider the initial 1901 arrangement unfair; after lengthy negotiations, in 1933 — 32 years into a 60-year deal — the British agreed to sign a new contract. In the late Forties, Iran’s government again demanded a new contract, which led to a “supplemental” agreement in 1949, setting higher minimum payments to Iran. Nonetheless, in 1951, Mossadegh had all Anglo-Iranian Oil agreements terminated and the AIOC nationalized. He described the nationalization as a blow against British imperialism.

Extremely valuable property, legally owned by the British government and British private citizens, had been confiscated by a foreign government. Before the war, Britain might have invaded. Instead, it retaliated against Mossadegh by leading an international embargo of Iran’s oil and by withdrawing its technicians from the nationalized holdings. Without British know-how, the company could barely function; after the withdrawal, Iranian oil production dropped 96 percent. And the oil that was produced couldn’t be sold.

Oil money funded the Iranian government; without it, Mossadegh’s reforms were worthless, and his popularity plunged. Mossadegh called a parliamentary election in late 1951. When he realized he was going to lose, he had the election suspended.

Nonetheless, Shah Pahlavi allowed Mossadegh to form a new government, and in the summer of ’52, Mossadegh demanded authority to appoint a new minister of war and a new chief of staff, which would give him control of Iran’s military — thitherto under the authority of (and loyal to) the Shah. The Shah refused; Mossadegh resigned, and began to organize anti-Shah demonstrations. Iran was thrown into chaos, and, fearing collapse of the country, the Shah acquiesced, re-appointed Mossadegh, and gave him full control over the military.

Reinstated, Mossadegh — in the tradition of all great democrats — persuaded the parliament to grant him emergency powers, which he used to confiscate the Shah’s land, ban him from communicating with foreign countries, and exile his sister. Mossadegh also used his emergency powers to institute collective farming. According to Stephen Kinzer’s book All the Shah’s Men, “Iranians were becoming poorer and unhappier by the day. Mossadegh’s political coalition was fraying.”

You may have noticed that, up to this point, the dark and shadowy hand of the CIA has not made an appearance. In fact, the U.S.’s only role in the proceedings thus far was as an intermediary between Iran and Britain in an effort to reach a settlement everyone could live with — something that turned out not to be possible. (The U.S. also played an accidental role in aggravating the situation when an American oil company reached a 50-50 oil-revenue agreement with the Saudis, which made Iran’s 16 percent deal look shabby by comparison.)

After American mediation failed, the U.S. took Iran’s side, accusing the British of being unreasonably immovable. That changed, however, in 1953: According to a senior fellow at the Council on Foreign Relations named Ray Takeyh, as Iran’s economy collapsed, “Mossadeq responded . . . by behaving in an increasingly autocratic manner.” As Mossadegh’s policies drove Iran further and further into poverty, it looked more and more likely that he would turn to the Soviet Union for support. At least, that was the view of Dwight Eisenhower and Winston Churchill, two men who had more than their fair share of experience in the spread of Soviet socialism. It began to appear that the choice in Iran would be a Soviet-backed dictator — a Mao, a Kim, a Kun — or a pro-Western dictator who they hoped would steer the country toward democracy, as in South Korea or Taiwan.

The U.S. had helped turn Persian public opinion against Mossadegh. However: There was no coup. In 1953, Mossadegh was prime minister of Iran; like many heads of state, the Shah had the legal, constitutional authority to remove his prime minister, which he did, at the behest of his ally the United States. Mossadegh, though, refused to be removed, and he arrested the officers who tried to deliver the Shah’s notice of dismissal. The Shah was forced to flee the country.

At that point, it looked at if the U.S.’s anti-Mossadegh efforts had failed: The Shah was gone, and Mossadegh remained in power. After the Shah fled, says Takeyh, “the initiative passed to the Iranians.”

The man who the Americans, the British, and the Shah had agreed should replace Mossadegh was General Fazlollah Zahedi; Zahedi was a powerful man, and well-liked by much of the political establishment, the religious establishment, and the army. With the Shah gone, and the Americans more or less resigned to failure, Zahedi took over the anti-Mossadegh campaign himself, spreading word throughout the country that the Shah — who remained popular — had fired Mossadegh and appointed Zahedi in his place. Says Takeyh: “Pro-shah protesters took to the streets. It is true that the CIA paid a number of toughs from the bazaar and athletic centers to agitate against the government, but the CIA-financed mobs rarely exceeded a few hundred people in a country now rocked by demonstrators numbering in the thousands . . . in the end, the CIA-organized demonstrations were overtaken by a spontaneous cascade of pro-shah protesters.”

Mossadegh ordered the army to restore order; the army took Zahedi’s side, and Mossadegh fled, soon “[turning] himself in to General Zahedi’s headquarters, where he was treated with courtesy and respect. Before the advent of the Islamic Republic, Persian politics were still marked by civility and decorum.”

The CIA was happy to take credit, exaggerating its involvement in what was, at the time, considered a big success — but a private CIA cable credited Mossadegh’s collapse to the fact that “the flight of the Shah . . . galvanized the people into an irate pro-Shah force.” (A large portion of those galvanized people, it should be noted, were hard-core Islamists, who feared that Mossadegh’s slide to the left would include Communist atheism.)

So: Mossadegh was no democrat, and the CIA was not responsible for his ouster; the CIA did not install the Shah in his place, and it did not become involved because of oil. In fact, after Mossadegh was gone, Iran’s oil infrastructure remained nationalized, and eventually the British agreed to a 50-50 profit split.

There’s no question, though, that the U.S. was one of the Shah’s major backers. And according to many luminaries — Ron Paul, Ben Affleck, my cousin — the Shah was a real bastard. Ben Affleck’s movie Argo opens with a monologue that says the “Shah was known for opulence and excess . . . [he] has his lunches flown in by Concorde from Paris. . . . The people starved. . . . The Shah kept power though his ruthless internal police: the SAVAK.” It was an “era of torture and fear.”

With a brutal, American-puppet dictator in power, who can blame the Iranians for turning to the ayatollahs? Well, it’s possible that Argo overstated its case. According to historian Ervand Abrahamian, “Whereas less than 100 political prisoners had been executed between 1971 and 1979, more than 7,900 were executed between 1981 and 1985. . . . Prison life was drastically worse under the Islamic Republic than under the Pahlavis. One who survived both writes that four months under [the ayatollahs’ warden] took the toll of four years under SAVAK. In the prison literature of the Pahlavi era, the recurring words have been ‘boredom’ and ‘monotony.’ In that of the Islamic Republic, they are ‘fear,’ ‘death,’ ‘terror,’ ‘horror,’ and most frequent of all ‘nightmare.’”

Abrahamian also reports that the Shah’s political prisoners had access to “a radio, television set, reading room, Ping-Pong table, and indoor gym equipped with exercise machines.”

Even Mossadegh was a beneficiary of the Shah’s liberal attitude toward retribution: According to a contemporary New York Times piece, the court that tried Mossadegh “refused to accede to the prosecutor’s demand that Dr. Mossadegh be sentenced to death or at least imprisonment for life as a result of the Shah’s intervention. . . . Most persons had expected the defendant would be exiled or imprisoned for life.” Instead, thanks to the Shah, Mossadegh was sentenced to three years’ house arrest.

Reza Pahlavi was a dictator, but not one of the worst — he was Chiang Kai-shek to the Islamists’ Mao. Reza Pahlavi was a dictator, but not one of the worst — he was Chiang Kai-shek to the Islamists’ Mao. The Shah curbed the power of the aristocracy, promoted rights for women, built new infrastructure and schools, spread literacy to peasants, and maintained a strong pro-democracy foreign policy — the Shah’s Iran was even a friend and ally of that noirest of bêtes noires, Israel. To boot, under the Shah, Iran prospered at Asian Tiger levels: During the last 14 years of his reign, Iran saw annual economic growth of over 13 percent.

Iran did not fall to the mullahs because of “the hated Shah,” as Ron Paul has said — it fell because the United States refused to defend progress from Islamism, in the same way we refused to protect our successes in Iraq from the rise of ISIS. The Shah’s government could have been saved, but we refused to save it.

So why do so many people believe the imperialist-calamity version of modern Persian history? Because the world is filled with freshmen and sophomoric adults.

— Josh Gelernter writes weekly for NRO and is a regular contributor to The Weekly Standard.

A bit late to this thread, but I have copied a few pages from the book "The Persian Night. Iran under the Khomeinist revoution" by Amir Taheri. Yes, I know the author is controversial (at least on his Wikipedia pages...hmmoph), but I think the information here may be pertinent to the present discussion. [All typos are mine of course.]

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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.

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