Read: All The Shah’s Men

All The Shah’s Men: An American Coup And The Roots of Middle East Terror, by Stephen Kinzer, Wiley, 2003
I’ve been reading about Iran, and one of the books I read was this account of the 1953 coup that toppled Iran’s democratically elected leader, Mossadegh. New York Times veteran Kinzer dug into the archives to provide a detailed account of the secret actions driving the coup, as well as putting the oil standoff that had led up to it in clear context. (The title is at least slightly misleading – the British had much more responsibility for the coup than the US, even though the work on the ground was done by the CIA. Kinzer’s pitching the book towards those Americans who want to know why America is viewed with hatred and suspicion in the Middle East, hence the downplaying of Britain in some of the copy.)
I knew going in I’d be angry at what I read, and appalled at the level of interference by the US and Britain. I was surprised by just how angry I’d get.
The story goes like this – it’s worth reading, I promise:
* Early 20th century! Great Britain is a colonial power in Iran, extracting its oil via the Anglo-Persian Oil Company (later Anglo-Iranian Oil Company, still later British Petroleum a.k.a. BP). The Brit govt owned a majority share of the company – it saw Iran’s oil as essential for its national wellbeing. For all intents and purposes, the British government was extracting the oil directly.
* The company was massively exploiting Iran – its workers were forced to live in appalling conditions for pitiful pay, no Iranians were trained up to work above the menial level, and Iran was given only a minuscule proportion of the oil revenue.
* Negotiations with Britain to strike a better deal over the oil met a complete stone wall. The US, among others, repeatedly advised Britain to make concessions and improve the terms of the deal with Iran. They did not budge. Their stonewalling led to popular Prime Minister Mossadegh’s decision to nationalise the Oil industry.
* Britain tried to wait Iran out. They removed all their personnel from the oilfields and prevented Iran from recruiting trained workers from other countries; they stopped ships from entering and leaving to transport the oil; they generally tried every trick in the book to break Iran’s spirit and force it to allow them back in. Mossadegh did not back down, and refused to negotiate.
* Britain had the Shah, ruler of Iran, on side the whole time but Mossadegh had proved impossible to control. They wanted to organise a coup, but their Embassy staff had been removed from the country. They approached the US to perform the coup, and as soon as Eisenhower gained power this went ahead. The fledgling CIA sent Kermit Roosevelt into Iran to depose Mossadegh.
* The British had established a small army of paid contacts within Iran. Roosevelt accessed this network and threw a hell of a lot of money around. As a result, newspapers condemned Mossadegh, mullahs condemned Mossadegh, gangsters who ran neighbourhoods in south Tehran condemned Mossadegh. Massive demonstrations were held in which enormous numbers of attendees had been paid off.
* There was more to it than this – Kermit was a sophisticated operator, and he knew how to stage events to drive public opinion. He carefully constructed a plan for the final coup, in which his hand-picked military man would succeed Mossadegh. The coup didn’t exactly go off without a hitch, but it ended as Roosevelt wanted, and Mossadegh was arrested. He spent the rest of his life under house arrest. The Anglo-Iranian Oil Company was recolonised by the British, under more liberal (but still exploitative) terms.
* The Shah gained renewed power after Mossadegh’s fall. His regime became more and more totalitarian until 1979, when popular revolution removed him from office and installed the Ayatollah Khomeini. Mossadegh’s name was invoked frequently during the revolution, but afterwards, to the horror of the democratising forces within Iran, Khomeini removed him from public discourse and put in place the Theocracy that remains in power today.
* Kinzer’s position is also that the US’ role in the 1953 coup was the direct inspiration for the hostage-taking in the US Embassy in Tehran – a situation that set the tone for fractious Iranian-US relations ever after. It’s a reasonable suggestion, I think.
The book was an incredible read. Most eye-opening was the extent to which the British government and CIA could and did undermine democracy in Iran – as soon as your newspapers and Mullahs have their opinions co-opted by foreign interests, you’ve lost the ability to engage in free decision-making.
Most anger-making was reading about Kermit Roosevelt, true believer in the Greater Good, sitting with his friends sipping drinks and waiting for news while hundreds of people die during the coup-struggle he had initiated.
It makes me wonder what the CIA and other such agencies are up to today. Meeting a newspaper editor in an alley with a pre-written story and $1000 cash is a bit too clumsy for todays wired and paranoid Western world, but I don’t doubt the same covert control over news is pursued today. (Of course, overt control of the news agenda continues to be a battleground, but that’s one we at least have some kind of handle on.)
Of course, this was the first major operation by the CIA, and its success led directly to a series of interventions in other foreign countries. In Iran, it all came back to oil; the British government, and then the US government, had ample opportunity to support a strong democracy in the difficuly Middle East, but they chose to destroy that democracy in order to maintain their oil access.
It would be sickening if I didn’t already expect the worst.