The U.S. Seizes Control In Iran: The 1953 CIA Coup
Based on its position as the number one global power coming out
of World War 2, the U.S. moved throughout the world to rip colonies
away from its rivals and institute oppressive relations with much of
Asia, Africa, and Latin America. Iran was a key prize. In 1953 the
U.S. Central Intelligence Agency (CIA) orchestrated a coup d’etat
that returned Iran’s monarch, Shah Mohammed Reza Pahlavi, to power.
This was a turning point in Iranian — and Middle East — history. The
coup put a brutal tyrant and U.S. client on the throne, crushed his
opponents, and turned Iran into a key client of U.S. imperialism. It
signaled the U.S. ascent to regional dominance, taking over from
Britain. And it planted the seeds for Iran’s 1979 revolution, which
brought Islamic fundamentalist clerics to power — ushering in the
new, tense and dangerous chapter in U.S.-Iranian relations we’re in
today.
Oil, The Middle East & The Rise Of U.S. Imperialism
Petroleum’s military and economic importance grew enormously
after World War 1. New oil-based industries, such as auto, rubber,
petro-chemicals, and plastics, had arisen and expanded. The
economies and militaries of the U.S., Europe, and Japan were more
and more dependent on petroleum. A 1944 U.S. State Department memo
called oil “a stupendous source of strategic power, and one of the
greatest material prizes in world history.”
During World War 2, the U.S. rulers focused increasing attention
on the Middle East because of its strategic location at the
intersection of Africa, Asia and Europe, and because most of the
world’s oil reserves are located there. U.S. strategists realized
that controlling this region was crucial not only to winning the
war, but to emerging as the globe’s dominant imperialist power
afterward as well.
Seizing Middle East dominance meant first, edging out the British
and French as the region’s dominant power. Second, containing or
suppressing the post-war nationalist and anti-imperialist movements
rising across the region. Third, preventing the then-socialist
Soviet Union from gaining influence or power.
All three of these challenges came together — very sharply — in
Iran after the war’s end.
In 1946, the first post-war confrontation between the U.S. and
the Soviet Union took place over Iran. At the time Britain still
occupied southern Iran and the Soviet Union occupied the north
(where it had helped set up Soviet Republics, really mini-states, in
Iranian Azerbaijan and Kurdistan). The wartime alliance between the
U.S. and the Soviets was breaking down and turning into all-out
hostility and the Cold War. President Harry Truman wrote: “[I]f the
Russians were to control Iran’s oil, either directly or indirectly,
the raw material balance of the world would undergo serious damage
and it would be a serious loss for the economy of the western
world.” ** Amin Saikal, The Rise and Fall of the Shah, p.
33. [For an important discussion of the real nature of World War 2,
and the role of the U.S. in that war, see
“Bringing Forward
Another Way,” by Bob Avakian, Chairman of the Revolutionary
Communist Party, USA— in particular Part 6 — available at
revcom.us]
Truman considered Iran so strategically crucial that he
threatened to drop a “super-bomb” — a nuclear weapon — if Soviet
forces didn’t withdraw. This was no idle threat; the year before the
U.S. had dropped not one, but two atomic bombs on Japan. Soviet
forces soon withdrew.
Iran: Mass Anger & Oil Nationalization
Iranians had suffered enormously as a result of what one
historian called “social disorder, political disarray, and economic
hardship,” during World War 2. (Saikal, p. 26) When the war ended,
Iran’s political instability continued, along with a rising tide of
anger against British imperialism.
This anger focused on the enormous gap between the riches Britain
reaped from Iran’s vast oil wealth (which the British still
exclusively controlled) on the one side, and the paltry sums paid
Iran and the crippling poverty which was the lot of most Iranians on
the other. For instance, in 1947, Anglo-Iranian Oil Company reported
an after-tax profit of £40 million ($112 million in U.S. dollars),
while paying Iran only £7 million. (Stephen Kinzer, “All The Shah’s
Men,” p. 67)
Conditions for oil workers were so bad that riots broke out in
Abadan (where most oil production took place) in 1946 after striking
workers were attacked by criminal gangs organized by the British. On
May First, International Workers Day, 1946, tens of thousands of
people marched in Tehran and Abadan under the leadership of Iran’s
Tudeh Party (a non-revolutionary, pro-Soviet communist party).
(Kinzer pp. 52, 65)
By the late 1940s, a broad movement to take control of the
country’s oil wealth was gaining momentum. It coalesced in the
National Front, a diverse alliance under the leadership of a
bourgeois nationalist politician, Mohammed Mossadegh. By April 1951,
Mossadegh had enough support to pass a bill in Iran’s parliament
(Majlis) nationalizing the Anglo-Iranian Oil Company (AIOC), which
the Shah Mohammed Reza Pahlavi felt compelled to sign. A week later,
Mossadegh was named Prime Minister. Iran’s nationalization was a
defiant and unprecedented act in the Middle East, where oil
production was controlled and run by foreign imperialist monopolies.
Britain & The U.S. Lash Back
Iran’s oil nationalization struck at key British imperialist
interests: AIOC was the largest single overseas commercial asset of
the British empire and a crucial source of oil. The British worried
that the nationalization could ripple through the region and prove a
telling blow to their empire, already reeling in the aftermath of
World War 2.
The British struck back by organizing an international boycott of
Iranian oil, going to international courts, and by covertly
organizing to overthrow Mossadegh. After initially standing aside,
by 1953 the U.S. joined the British in plotting a coup. The
U.S.-Soviet confrontation was growing very sharp and U.S. officials
were concerned that Iran was in danger of falling under Soviet
control, and that only a "regime change" would cure the problem.
The CIA put Kermit Roosevelt (President Teddy Roosevelt’s
grandson) in charge of the operation inside Iran and on April 4,
1953 allocated $1 million to “bring about the fall of Mossadegh,”
and “bring to power a government which would reach an equitable oil
settlement, enabling Iran to become economically sound and
financially solvent, and which would vigorously prosecute the
dangerously strong Communist Party." (Declassified CIA history at:
http://www.nytimes.com/library/world/mideast/041600iran-cia-index.html)
Mossadegh and the oil nationalization were widely popular — in
1951 the nationalization was unanimously approved by the Majlis and
in 1953 Mossadegh won a national plebescite by a landslide — and the
British were widely hated. (Kinzer, pp. 82, 165) So the CIA moved
methodically to forge an anti-Mossadegh alliance, which included
monarchists, military leaders, and other propertied Iranians, while
dividing and weakening Mossadegh’s National Front.
The National Front was a loose coalition of diverse political
forces, including the Tudeh Party, Iranian nationalists and
ultra-nationalists, and Islamic fundamentalists. The U.S. and
British paid particular attention to winning over the Islamic
fundamentalist forces grouped around Ayatollah Seyyed Abolqassem
Kashani (a mentor of Ayatollah Khomeini, who would take power in the
1979 revolution). These clerics had been hostile to the Shah’s
father Reza for undercutting Islamic institutions and tradition.
They initially joined the anti-Shah alliance, bringing their
considerable influence among the impoverished urban masses. But the
clerics feared the growing influence of the Tudeh Party, which
Mossadegh tolerated for his own purposes, much more. This concern,
plus hefty bribes by the U.S. and British, led them to turn against
Mossadegh and support the CIA-led coup.
The British-led boycott of Iran’s oil was wearing on Iran’s
propertied strata. Using Iranian operatives, the CIA also organized
incidents and spread propaganda aimed at confusing and paralyzing
the population, and turning them against Mossadegh.
August 19, 1953 — A Day Of Infamy In Iran
On August 15, 1953, after months of organizing, the Shah signed
orders to arrest Mossadegh and appointed the pro-U.S. General Zahedi
as Prime Minister. CIA operatives in Tehran broadly publicized the
Shah’s order to oust Mossadegh. Bribes were paid to military
officers and $50,000 was handed out to organize criminal gangs to
rampage through Tehran's streets, while shouting pro-Mossadegh
slogans. Then pro-coup police units were sent to break up the "mobs"
and to restore order.
On August 19, CIA-paid gangs began taking over public squares and
shouting, "Long live the Shah! Death to Mossadegh!" A military
assault began against Mossadegh's residence, and after many
attackers were killed, an army unit with tanks broke through to
capture the house. Mossadegh escaped, but surrendered after it was
clear all was lost. General Zahedi rode to Radio Tehran atop a tank
to proclaim his victory. The Shah told Roosevelt, ”I owe my throne
to God, my people, my army — and to you.” (Kermit Roosevelt,
"Countercoup: The Struggle for the Control of Iran," p. 199-202).
The Coup’s Bitter Aftermath
After the coup, the name of Iran’s new nationalized oil company —
National Iranian Oil Company — was kept, but full control of
production and sale of Iran’s oil was returned to a consortium of
international oil corporations, which now included five American oil
giants. They were given 40 percent of Iran’s oil, Anglo-Iranian
Oil’s (later renamed British Petroleum) share was reduced to 40
percent, and French and Dutch companies were given the other 20
percent. Rising nationalism in Iran and across the region had forced
the oil giants to raise Iran’s cut of oil profits to 50 percent, but
Iranians were not allowed to inspect the books, and one oil
historian called the deal “one of the most attractive contracts of
the oil industry in the Middle East, as far as terms of payment are
concerned.” (Kinzer, p. 196; Larry Everest, Oil, Power & Empire,
p. 44; Rashid Khalid, “Resurrecting Empire,” p. 91.)
The Shah was, for the first time, firmly in power, thanks to the
U.S., and his opponents were dispersed, demoralized, or suppressed.
He reigned for the next 25 years, a loyal instrument of American
imperialism in Iran and the region, his rule enforced by brutality
and terror.
The 1953 coup profoundly impacted Iranian politics and
consciousness — a day of infamy to millions — for decades afterward,
and planted seeds that would grow into the 1979 revolution.
