ontd_political | Iran's George Washington: Remembering and Preserving the Legacy of 1953

One of the most important events in the United States' history went unnoticed and uncelebrated last week. I of course speak of the CIA's coup that ousted Iranian Prime Minister Mohammad Mossadegh on August 19, 1953. Last year, Sam Sasan Shoamanesh of MIT wrote a fantastic in-depth look at the event and the implications it had on these two great countries. I recommend that everyone read it, but since it is rather long, I will post choice excerpts beneath the cut. It's still going to be a really long post, just so you've been warned.

We approach the 56-year anniversary of the 1953 coup removing Mohammed Mossadegh as Prime Minister of Iran. Given the challenges that continue to confront the world to this day, it is important to revisit the lessons of this fateful event. An understanding of 1953 seems particularly poignant as the US and the international community grapple with the question of Iran amidst unprecedented levels of internal discord. With seldom seen primary evidence, archived photos and historical correspondence, this essay hopes to shed light on what this event has meant to the Iranian people.

Devising an effective policy towards Iran necessitates an understanding of historical causes of tension between Tehran and Washington. By providing a historical lens through which to view and analyze the Iran quandary for the interested reader and policy maker, the author highlights the following lessons to be derived from one of the most ruinous cases of foreign intervention in Iranian internal affairs.
The 1953 coup has spawned a tragic legacy. It has:

(i) proved to be a blowback in American foreign policy and served as one of the major contributors to the continued souring of US-Iran relations;
(ii) worked to directly impede Iran’s indigenous push towards secular democracy and political development;
(iii) created a culture of ‘mistrustful minds’ within a segment of Iran’s population, who have an embroidered habit of suspiciously looking at the West. Members of this group would later enter politics in the country post the 1979 Revolution. In lieu of handling challenging geopolitical and realpolitik realities with sound sustainable policy, their anti-Western ‘complex’ has obstructed the ability of this latter group to advance the national interests of the country. The preference has been to opt instead for a rigid self-defeating rejectionist posture and policies to the detriment of the Iranian people. The emergence of a new Great Game in the region and the cementing of the Moscow-Tehran-Beijing axis has only served to complicate this dynamic;
(iv) provided a pretext to rogue elements within the ruling elite to rely on a past history of foreign intervention in the country to scapegoat failed domestic policies and silence dissent; conveniently tying any legitimate questioning of the government’s policies by the people to nothing more than external meddling. The recent post election crackdown and the mass “show trials” in the country are cases in point.

Remembering the 1953 Coup at its 56th Anniversary

The year is 1789. George Washington has just been inaugurated as the first President of the United States. He has earned the respect of liberty seeking people of the newly formed confederation, by defeating the British army in the Revolutionary War and presiding over the drafting of the Constitution.

Now imagine a clandestine operation; orchestrated by a foreign intelligence service to undo this turn of events. Imagine what the United States would look like today if this epic hero of America’s founding was abruptly overthrown. Washington's only ‘crime’: devotion to his country and a vision calling for an independent, democratic and prosperous homeland.
The operation would crush the nascent and fragile American democracy, leaving Americans betrayed for years to come. Could one truly measure the full impact and fallout of such an intervention?

While abstract, this tragic “tale” is in actuality the real Iranian experience. August 19, 1953 will mark the 56th anniversary of the CIA-orchestrated coup d’état that deposed Prime Minister Mohammad Mossadegh and derailed Iran’s burgeoning democracy. Dr. Mossadegh – the man whom Time magazine had called “The Iranian George Washington” – represented for Iranians a symbol of change, a champion of (secular) democracy, and a source of valiant resistance to foreign dominion over Iran’s resources and colonial subjugation.

The 1953 coup – CIA’s first in the Middle East – triggered a series of cause-and-effect outcomes that have not only tarnished Iran-US relations and changed the domestic political landscape of the country; it has made dialogue a perturbing challenge, haunting relations to this very day. To be sure, the coup is the first and one of the most severe blowbacks of American foreign policy in the Middle East.
When former President Jimmy Carter was confronted with a comment alluding to America’s role in the coup, he replied: “that’s ancient history.” His presidency marred by the American hostage crisis, Carter neglected the critical implications of 1953. To the contrary, history matters. The 1979 Revolution, the hostage crisis, and the Iranian government’s suspicions and declarations of US-Western motives (both before and after June 2009's disputed elections) all illustrate how prominent a blow the CIA's intervention has continued to inflict on the Iranian consciousness, and Tehran's ruling elite in particular. Senator Jay Rockefeller (D-WV) captured this reality in a 2006 speech:

It was 53 years ago that the United States and the United Kingdom worked their way to overthrow the Prime Minister of Iran, Mossadegh. When you bring that up in a conversation these days, people say, “Who?” But that was 53 years ago. To understand Iran, you must understand that for Iranians, this event happened last night. It is of the moment. It defines us even for what we did so many years ago. (1)

Oil: A Blessing and a Curse
Apart from its vast gas coffers and other natural resources, Iran has the largest oil reserves in the world after Saudi Arabia and Canada. This important resource has been as much a curse as it has been a blessing for the country. Looking back, one can reasonably state that no one private company has been so instrumental in shaping a country’s recent history than the Anglo-Persian Oil Company (APOC) in its dealings with Iran.

Later known as the Anglo-Iranian Oil Company (AIOC) in 1935, and eventually British Petroleum, APOC's legacy has lasted for over a century.

Oil was struck in Iran in 1908. APOC was born from an oil concession obtained by a British national from the fifth Qajar King of Iran. The concession was to last for 60 years in territories covering most of Iran. In exchange, the Iranian monarch was promised a personal payment of 20,000 pounds sterling, shares in the company, and 16 percent of future profits. APOC was the first company using oil reserves in the Middle East and the refinery later built in Abadan, Iran, was for some 50 years the largest in the world. Recognizing the importance of Iranian oil to British power, the British government swiftly moved and partially nationalized APOC in 1914, assuming control of some 53 percent of the company’s shares.

With no oil of its own, and aggravated by its abundance of colonies devoid of black gold, Britain had significant interests in ensuring control over the flow of Iranian oil. Britain's interests included not only those of its navy – at the time, the heart of British power – but also the success of its entire economy at large. From the 1920s through the ‘40s, Britain received all of its oil from Iran, and enjoyed a reasonably high standard of living at least in part as a result. Meanwhile, APOC’s Iranian workers, not to mention much of the Iranian population, lived in abject poverty. To counter these deficits with any meaningful social or industrial reform, the Iranian government relied heavily on oil revenues to jumpstart such initiatives. It soon became apparent that with such little control of its country's oil resources, Iran was paralyzed to realize these aims.

What's more, APOC increasingly engaged in unfair practices and failed to honor even the marginal royalties that it had contracted to pay Iran. In 1948, for example, while APOC reported profits of ₤62 million and paid the British government ₤28 million in income taxes, Iran received a meager ₤1.4 million on its oil resources. The company also regularly reneged on obligations and withheld payments when its demands on the Iranian government were not met.

((The astute reader will note that the Anglo-Persian Oil Company changed its name in 1954 to the more familiar British Petroleum, which has continued its proud tradition of creating really awful situations that inevitably spills over into US policy.))

The emergence of the National Front of Iran, founded by Prime Minister Mossadegh and 19 other like-minded Iranians, gave Iranians renewed hope of achieving a more democratic and economically independent Iran. A long serving politician, Dr. Mossadegh stormed the Iranian political scene in the early 1950s with the romance attributed in the West to charismatic and notable public figures amongst the ranks of George Washington, General Charles de Gaulles, John F. Kennedy, Pierre Trudeau and more recently, President Barrack Obama. A graduate of universities in Tehran, Paris and Switzerland where he obtained his PhD in law, Dr. Mossadegh served the country in different capacities, including as prime minister, ministers of finance and foreign affairs. As a young rising statesman, Dr. Mossadegh had supported the constitutionalists in the Constitutional Revolution of 1905-1911, restricting the absolute powers of the traditional Iranian monarch, notwithstanding ties with the royal court through his mother. As a politician, he called for political and economic independence; the strengthening of civil society, and competent, corruption-free government. He further advocated for an independent judiciary, free elections, freedom of religion and political associations, women’s and worker’s rights, and projects aimed at supporting the country’s large agricultural sector. For all intents and purposes, he was to the majority of Iranians, the figure of a national hero, the new founding father of Iran in the modern age, who carried on his aging shoulders the promise for democracy and true independence – he was to many the “Iranian George Washington."

After taking office in 1951 as Prime Minister, Mossadegh led the National Front’s campaign to nationalize Iran’s oil industry by sponsoring nationalization bills passed by Parliament in March 1951. The Oil Nationalization Act received Imperial assent on 1 May 1951. This act of “hostility” as perceived through the British lens quickly resulted in mayhem. Oil production came to a standstill as British technicians left the country en masse, damaging refineries on departure. Britain moved aggressively and took a series of steps to penalize Iran. An embargo on the purchase of Iranian oil as well as a ban on exporting goods to Iran were soon put in place, as were measures to freeze Iranian sterling assets. Britain mobilized its navy and paratroopers as a show of military might and Iran was placed under increased pressure to abandon its nationalization plans (against this historical background, the current international response to Iran’s nuclear program, justly or not, is a déjà vu in the eyes of the Iranian authorities). The message for Iranians was clear – their interests or rights over their own natural resources mattered little.

In July 1951, with British-Iranian tensions continuing to rise, President Truman dispatched Secretary of Commerce Averell Harriman to Tehran to preempt a confrontation. The Truman administration opposed military action against Iran and appears to have sympathized with its position. Truman’s Democrats were seemingly of the view that diplomacy should be employed as a first strategy in dealing with the nationalization question.

Mossadegh also led the Iranian delegation before the Security Council in New York as he had done in The Hague. He declared the United Nations to be “the ultimate refuge of weak and oppressed nations, the last champion of their rights.” In challenging Britain’s draft resolution, he charged that “it requires a deficient sense of humor to suggest that a nation as weak as Iran can endanger world peace…Iran has stationed no gunboats in the Thames.” He emphasized that Iran is “not prepared […] to finance other people’s dreams of empire from our resources.” The move to engage the Security Council was a diplomatic debacle for the UK, and on October 19, 1951, the council postponed the discussion on the draft resolution until the ICJ had rendered its final judgment.

Finally on July 22, 1952 by a 9-5 vote, the ICJ declared that the 1933 agreement could not constitute a treaty between the two states as the UK claimed, but merely a concessionary contract between a private company and the government of Iran to which the UK was not a party. The court declared it lacked jurisdiction – as contended by Iran – to rule on the merits of the case.

Apart from growing British discontentment with the turn of events, the embargoes and the drastic reduction in oil output had placed extreme pressure on Iran’s economy, thereby triggering domestic divisions. Furthermore, frustrated by Iranian resilience, Westminister Palace became convinced that Mossadegh posed a direct threat to British interests and had to be removed. As with Teymourtash decades earlier, Mossadegh presented as an obstacle to British interests and ‘had’ to be neutralized. A resort to the British Intelligence Service was made, yet an attempted coup was uncovered and bore no fruit. In retaliation, the Iranian government severed diplomatic ties (November 1, 1952). Anxious about what losing Iranian oil would mean for the British navy and economy, Winston Churchill, by then prime minister, lobbied the Americans to commit the deed.

As the Cold War developed, the UK thusly framed its argument: Iran is strategically positioned, rich in oil, sympathetic to the Tudeh party (the Communist party in Iran against which, in fact, Mossadegh had taken strong measures), and, therefore, on the verge of falling into Soviet hands. A formerly classified report addressed to the US National Security Council in November 1952, speaks volumes to the increasing anxiety Washington felt at the time over the escalating crisis and how British moves were successful in influencing American policy makers. Still whilst Truman was willing to confront militarily a Communist takeover of Iran, even his doctrine of Soviet containment would not permit him to accept a coup or to allow a British invasion of the country. It appears he had hoped as a first strategy to not disturb the oil flow, diplomacy would convince the Iranians to give up or make concessions on their nationalization plans.

The dynamic changed, however, when President Dwight Eisenhower – a man who earnestly contemplated nuking Moscow to prevent the Soviet Union from becoming nuclear – came to power in January 1953 with John Foster Dulles as his secretary of state. The latter, apart from being a public supporter of the Nazi Party in the early 1930s, was against the very notion of nationalization, let alone nationalization of such an important resource. He famously quipped: “[t]he United States of America does not have friends; it has interests.” His younger brother, Allen Dulles, headed the CIA. Both had represented corporate interests and American oil companies in previous professions as lawyers. Soon policy discussions at the National Security Council took a drastic change from the Truman years – now, covert or “special political operations” were on the table.

American strategic interests in the coup appear to have been twofold. First, the US sought to prevent Iran from falling into the Soviet camp at all costs. This “threat” was more likely a pretext; indeed, at the time of the coup, CIA and State Department Iranokrats neither believed that Mossadegh and other leaders of the National Front were communists nor that Iran was on the verge of collapse into communist hands. This brings serious doubt on the wisdom and real motivations of the coup, putting aside illegality of the act of undermining a sovereign (democratic) government. The second interest was in maintaining stability in the world’s oil markets and concomitant benefits.

Mohammad Reza Pahlavi, the Shah of Iran who regained his throne after the coup through the clandestine tactics of a foreign power would never enjoy legitimacy in the eyes of the Iranian people. Iran’s last monarch had become the victim of his own survival. As he would later lament in old age as a deposed king after the 1979 Revolution: “[i]ngratitude is the prerogative of the people.” His reputation was further tarnished as a result of the cruelty and repression of the infamous Sazeman-e Ettela'at va Amniyat-e Keshvar (“SAVAK”), Iran’s intelligence service, created with direct CIA support, training and encouragement.

Nationalization of Iran’s oil, the first bold move of its kind in the Middle East and the reactions to it, laid the foundation for a tsunami wave of cause and effect outcomes that would storm the socio-political landscape of the country and ultimately, significantly impact Iran’s relations with the US after the 1979 Revolution.

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I really hope you take the time to read the entire article. And then, if you're feeling adventurous, you may want to take a look at Stephen Kinzer's All the Shah's Men, which documents the event from a more personal perspective. Anyway, I hope you think of this story the next time you turn on the news and someone is talking about the evil, repressive nation of Iran.

Iran's George Washington: Remembering and Preserving the Legacy of 1953

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