"Overthrow Of Premier Mossadeq Of Iran"

[eleny]

I wanted to brush up on the particulars surrounding these events and found an interesting web page with an account of it. I think the NY Times published it at one time. It's a clandestine service history written in 1954 by Dr. Donald N. Wilber, "who played an active role in the operation".

Now, I don't know all the ins and outs or who this guy is but can take a good guess about how his point of view is slanted. Anyhow, I'm into the narrative and find it interesting enough to share the url here.

http://cryptome.org/cia-iran-all.htm

The Cryptome web page also offers all sorts of national security and intelligence data on dvd. Maybe they're whack jobs. I really don't know. But the narrative about the overthrow Of Premier Mossadeq is an interesting account so far.

[reprehensor]

1. It's true.

The man on the scene running the Op was Kermit Roosevelt, FDR's nephew, I believe.

Mossadeq's great crime? He wanted to nationalize the Iranian oil fields.

[eleny]

3. Christiane Amanpour talked about it on Larry King's program tonight

I'm glad that it's spoken about in the MSM. In recent weeks I've heard two people, now, who mentioned it in more than passing. As a way of instructing viewers why Iran has negative feelings toward the U.S. Not the usual "they hate us for our freedoms" bull pap.

[Jcrowley]

2. K&R

Mohammad Mosaddeq and
the 1953 Coup in Iran
Edited by Mark J. Gasiorowski and Malcolm Byrne

New Volume Reexamines a Seminal Event
in Modern Middle Eastern History

A Joint U.S.-British Regime-Change Operation in 1953 that Holds Lessons for Today

New Documents Shed Further Light on Secret U.S. Policy

June 22, 2004

For further information Contact
Malcolm Byrne 202/994-7043
[e-mail]

"This book … sheds vital new light on issues that remain crucial to the evolution of U.S.-Iran relations and to continuing questions about unilateralism and secrecy in U.S. foreign policy."
Nikki Keddie, UCLA

"Mark Gasiorowski and Malcolm Byrne have assembled a stellar array of talented scholars … This is an exceptional collection dealing with a uniquely important event."
Gary Sick, Columbia U.

"This multinational, multiarchival history is a magnificent addition to the literature on post-World War II international history."
Melvyn Leffler, U. of Virginia.

On the morning of August 19, 1953, a crowd of demonstrators operating at the direction of pro-Shah organizers with ties to the CIA made its way from the bazaars of southern Tehran to the center of the city. Joined by military and police forces equipped with tanks, they sacked offices and newspapers aligned with Prime Minister Mohammad Mosaddeq and his advisers, as well as the communist Tudeh Party and others opposed to the monarch. By early afternoon, clashes with Mosaddeq supporters were taking place, the fiercest occurring in front of the prime minister's home. Reportedly 200 people were killed in that battle before Mosaddeq escaped over his own roof, only to surrender the following day. At 5:25 p.m., retired General Fazlollah Zahedi, arriving at the radio station on a tank, declared to the nation that with the Shah's blessing he was now the legal prime minister and that his forces were largely in control of the city.

http://www.gwu.edu/~nsarchiv/NSAEBB/NSAEBB126/index.htm

[eleny]

4. Thanks!

I'm going to request this from my library right now.

[Canuckistanian]

5. All the Shah's Men: An American Coup and the Roots of Middle East Terror

The CIA's immediate target was Mossadeq, whom the Shah had picked to run the government just before the parliament voted to nationalize the AIOC. A royal-blooded eccentric given to melodrama and hypochondria, Mossadeq often wept during speeches, had fits and swoons, and conducted affairs of state from bed wearing wool pajamas. During his visit to the United States in October 1951, Newsweek labeled him the "Fainting Fanatic" but also observed that, although most Westerners at first dismissed him as "feeble, senile, and probably a lunatic," many came to regard him as "an immensely shrewd old man with an iron will and a flair for self-dramatization."7 Time recognized his impact on world events by naming him its "Man of the Year" in 1951.

Read the article. Seriously.

https://www.cia.gov/csi/studies/vol48no2/article10.html

[eleny]

7. Thanks for the link

I've saved it to my handy links for reading when I finish this other narrative. It sounds like they were priming the American public for the coup. Painting him as some crazy man who needed removing.

[AshevilleGuy]

6. Mossadeq was a nationalist but he wasn't a religious nut.

What a shame he couldn't have survived. But Britain and the US had to have that oil... :eyes:

[eleny]

8. That's it in a nutshell

[Gabi Hayes]

12. Britain wanted the oil. it was secondary for John Foster Dulles.

it was much more about the domino theory.

Truman was DEAD set against this, but when Ike got in, everything changed. Dulles and his protofascist brother pulled the strings of foreign intrigue back then (first year of Ike's admin....sound familiar)

they couped Guatemala soon after, and everything blossomed from there

[Hippo_Tron]

13. You would think someone with Ike's foreign policy experience wouldn't be talked into it

Certainly goes to show that experience isn't everything.

[1932]

9. Stephen Kinzer wrote a good book about Mossadeq's overthrow

[slipslidingaway]

10. Other articles/links

snip>> last paragraphs

http://www.worldpolicy.org/journal/articles/wpj02-2/Zahrani.pdf

"Thus, looking backward, we can say the
1953 coup and its consequences afforded the
starting point for the political alignments in
today’s Middle East and inner Asia. With
hindsight, can anybody say the Islamic Revolution
of 1979 was inevitable? Or did it
only become so once the aspirations of the
Iranian people were temporarily expunged
in 1953? Was the radicalization of the clergy,
for that matter, inevitable? This essay
has proposed an examination of the 1953
coup as a starting point for objective discussion.
Certainly looking back at that event,
one might justly recall the famous epitaph
for Sir Christopher Wren, the architect who
rebuilt London after the Great Fire: “If you
wish to see his monument, look around.”•


Hero's Return

Monday, Dec. 03, 1951

http://www.time.com/time/magazine/article/0,9171,889366,00.html

snip>>

"Kids on bikes and men in loudspeaker-equipped trucks toured Teheran urging everyone to get on one of the government's 150 free buses and go out to the airport. Mossadegh was coming home.

...He wanted an election right now (his enemies in Parliament wanted to postpone it until Dec. 18, hoping to bring him down). Two days later he appeared before a Parliament in, which his own Nationalist Front has only 8 members out of 136. He held them spellbound, while the galleries cheered, and in the end he got a 90-0 vote of confidence."


http://www.mohammadmossadegh.com/

[Gabi Hayes]

11. the true genesis of the coup was

England's lust for the OIL Mossadegh nationalized

the brits tried to talk Truman into helping him overthrow them, but he refused.

as soon as Ike was elected, they got John Foster Dulles to convince him that Mossadegh was a dirty commie, and that was enough

the brits USED us to get back control of Iranian oil

they used us just as Isreal/AIPAC/JINSA/PNAC used BushCo as our Hessians to invade Iraq

Iran in 53 was originally ALL about the oil

and THAT's why they're so furious about the brits today.

Brits also did something similar a few years ago. remember that? hostages, etc.; very similar to what's going on now

[rman]

14. It's all documented in declassified documents,

It's so long ago hardly anyone is trying to maintain that Western intel agencies were not involved in the removal of Mosaddeq, by framing him and by causing unrest in the Iran.
The wiki article on it is pretty good, i think.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mohammed_Mossadegh


Just imagine Iran would come into the US and take over the oil industry; Americans would be just as "nationalist" as Iran was.

Nevertheless, when the reverse is the case, the nation in question is vilified as communist... and it seems the intel agencies think anything goes in the war against communism terrorism...