Regime Change, Iran, 1953

It is often said that those who forget history are doomed to repeat it. One striking story from recent history that we would do well to recall was the coup that brought down the elected leader of Iran, Dr. Mohammed Mossadegh, in 1953. Both the British and the Americans played key roles in the coup, and in doing so, set the stage for the violent and extraordinary Iranian Revolution of 1979. Without understanding the coup of 1953, it is impossible to understand Iranian, and by extension Arab, sentiment towards American and British involvement in the Middle East in 2006.

Just as today, during the 1940s and 1950s Iran was a key player in the global oil and gas market. Iranian oil had drived the British war effort during the Second World War, and one reason behind the Teheran Conference between Churchill, Roosevelt, and Stalin in 1943 was to shore up Iranian support for the Allies.

During the first half of the Second World War, German diplomats had been lobbying many developing nations including Iran and India with promises of freedom from European domination in return for support, or at least neutrality. During the war, the British had wanted to station troops in the oil-rich district of Khuzestan on the west of Iran adjacent the Persian Gulf. The king of Iran, Reza Shah objected, and in 1941 Britain and the Soviet Union landed troops in Iran, forced Reza Shah to abdicate, and installed his son, Mohammad Reza Pahlavi, in his place. The British soldiers remained in Iran until the end of the war, while the Russians didn’t leave until 1946 after trying — without success — to provoke a popular revolution in their favour.

One debate among historians is the degree to which Reza Shah was sympathetic to Nazi Germany. There were certainly many Germans living and working in Iran at the time, and had the Germans occupied the southern part of the Soviet Union adjacent to Iran, a regular supply of Iranian oil would have been a tremendous asset. Even getting the Iranians to reduce or stop the flow of oil to Britain would have been a significant victory. Reza Shah himself simply described his actions as in line with a soverign state protecting its own neutrality.

The new king, Mohammad Reza Pahlavi, had been educated in Europe as well as Iran, and was broadly sympathetic to Western ideals. He carried on the program of industrial development his father had started, promoted a European rather than traditional (i.e., Islamic) style education for young people, and welcomed large numbers of European and American businesses.

In 1951 Mohammed Mossadegh became the king’s prime minister, and within the framework of a contitutional monarchy, the man who ran the country. He had been elected as a moderate nationalist, and his election and appointment had been welcomed by the British and Americans. At a time when the Soviet Union was promoting communist parties in many parts of the developing world, Mossadegh was seen as the prime example of the democratic, liberal alternative. Contrast, for example, newly independent India, where Nehru oversaw a largely planned economy and pursued a non-aligned foreign policy as willing to deal with the Soviet Union as the United States. Instead, Mossadegh was seen as someone who was sympathetic to thw west but a patriot as well, a leader of his own people while being an economic and political realist. As an example of Mossadegh standing in the west, Time Magazine voted him Man of the Year in 1951.

So what went wrong? Why as Mossadegh removed from power just two years later?

The answer is of course oil.

From 1908, the oil fields of Iran were run by a British-owned company, at this time called the Anglo-Iranian Oil Company. While initially a private company, during the First World War the British government had bought a ‘golden share’, effectively giving them control of the company. Popular perception within Iran was that the Anglo-Iranian Oil Company was unfair to the Iranians. While the Iranians certainly did receive revenues, they didn’t have any say on the running of the company. By the early 1950s, the Iranian Parliament was seeking at least a 50:50 share in the company. The British government refused.

In March 1951, Mossadegh was hugely popular within Iran, and he easily passed an Oil Nationalization Act that took the Iranian oil fields into direct Iranian control. In response, British warships blockaded Iranian ports preventing any exports of oil. So even if they owned the oil fields, the Iranians couldn’t do anything with them. Oil exports were of course a key source of revenue for the Iranians, and this blockade caused a great deal of ecomomic hardship.

From the British point of view, Iranian oil was essential to what was still a global imperial power. Iranian oil, for example, powered the British warships and cargo ships. But the other issue was who else would get the oil: both the British and the Americans were concerned that Mossadegh might turn to the Russians for support and ecomomic development. Historians are divided onto just how realistic this threat actually was, but at the time both Prime Minister Atlee and President Eisenhower were sufficiently concerned to authorise a coup that would remove the Iranian prime minister.

Despite the economic problems within Iran, Mossadegh won a second election and remained popular. Mossadegh asked for control of the Iranian military; the king refused to grant these powers, and Mossadegh resigned. Though the king named a new prime minister who set about trying to repair relations with the British, this only provoked massive popular uprest. Frightened by this, the king recalled Mossadegh and granted him all the powers he wanted.

Perhaps unsurprisingly, Mossadegh became steadily more concerned about plots on his life and plans to de-rail his plans to nationalise the oil fields. Mossadegh removed political opponents, while the British and Americans sent agents to destablise his power and foment political opposition. One notable part of the story is the role played by the BBC, the main radio broadcaster in Iran. Even the BBC admits its role in the coup as a distributor of propoganda and for passing on the code word that informed the king of Iran when to remove Mossadegh and expect immediate British and American aid.

(The code word, incidentally, was the use of “exactly” before saying “midnight” when reading the news.)

Mossadegh was placed under house arrest, the king took on dictatorial powers, and almost entirely abolished free speech and polticial activism. Ironically, the only group within Iran that had any degree of freedom were the religious hierarchy, including one Seyyed Ruhollah Khomeini. And the rest, as they say, is history.

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