 Finding Mossadegh
Reconstructing
the story of a coup that changed history
Masoud Kazemzadeh
January 4, 2005
iranian.com
REVIEW ESSAY:
All
the Shah's Men: An American Coup and the Roots of Middle East Terror, by
Stephen Kinzer. John Wiley and Sons, 2003.
To say that Iran has posed challenging foreign-policy problems
for the United States since the
Carter administration is an understatement. From the intense anti-Americanism
and the hostage crisis
during the Carter presidency to the Iran-contra scandal of the
Reagan years to regime change and the
Axis of Evil of President Bush, Iran-U.S. relations seem both bizarre
and inexplicable. One book that
provides an explanation of the roots of the problem is Stephen
Kinzer's All the Shah's Men.
Although this book has been reviewed
in numerous publications, including Middle East Policy (Vol. X,
No. 4, 2003), virtually all of the reviews have been written for
the general public. In
this article, I will discuss several issues of significance for
scholars and policy makers that have not
been addressed in any of the above-mentioned reviews. There is
little doubt of the high quality of
Kinzer's contributions.
For example, The Economist selected
this book as one of its ten "Books of
the Year in 2003" in history; one of the principal textbooks
in political science has quoted it as a
main source on the 1953 coup; and many graduate and undergraduate
courses in the United States
and abroad have made it required reading. Kinzer's book was
quickly translated into Farsi in Iran
without the permission of the author. The translation was poorly
done with self-censorship or state
censorship of many passages.1 Stephen Kinzer, a senior correspondent for The
New York Times, has covered more than 50 countries and has published
books on Guatemala, Nicaragua and Turkey. All the Shah's Men reads
more like a Tom Clancy novel than a scholarly work; at first glance,
one might even take it for a screenplay. But this should not detract
from the serious contributions Kinzer makes. The book is not a
journalistic recounting of events with superficial explanations.
Kinzer's book presents essential information and raises important
questions for international-relations scholars interested in U.S.
policy towards Iran.
Kinzer makes seven salient points. The first is that the 1953 coup was an American
plot, not a
spontaneous uprising by the Iranian people to overthrow the democratically elected
prime minister,
Mohammed Mossadegh, though both the American government and the former monarchy
have
propagated this myth. Virtually all politically active Iranians knew about the
role of the United
States and Britain in the 1953 coup, but the U.S. government and the Iranian
regime under the
monarchy tried to conceal that information, and Islamic fundamentalists have
tried to suppress
scholarship on their role. It is therefore not surprising that criticism of Kinzer's
book has come from
these quarters.
The U.S. government succeeded for a long time in covering up its role. It was
not until March
2000 that for the first time an American official acknowledged the U.S. role:
Secretary of State
Madeline Albright conceded it with a faint expression of regret to an audience
advocating establishment
of friendly relations with the current regime in Iran. A month later, in April
2000, the CIA's
own secret history (written by one of its main organizers, Donald Wilber) was
leaked to The New
York Times. Access to government files on the coup has been difficult in the
United States, Iran
and even in the USSR/Russia.2
The U.S. government, of course, did not want to
provide evidence of its role in the overthrow
of Iran's only democratically elected government since 1925
and the installation of Nazi collaborator
Gen. Fazlollah Zahedi. Kinzer writes:
"Zahedi shared Reza Shah's view of what Iran needed. Both men were soldiers
at heart, strong, harsh and ambitious. When World War II broke out, both sought
to help the Germans. After the British deposed Reza Shah and forced him into
exile, they focused on Zahedi. They identified him as a profiteer who was making
huge sums from grain hoarding, but would have left him to his devices had it
not been for his close connections to Nazi agents. When they discovered that
he was organizing a tribal uprising to coincide with a possible German thrust
into Iran, they decided to act (p. 142). In 1942, the British kidnaped Zahedi
from Isfahan and interned him in a British prison in Palestine." (pp.
143-4).
The shah's regime, installed
by the CIA coup, would severely punish anyone who
tried to gain
access to such evidence in Iran; research from 1953 to 1979 was virtually impossible.
After the
revolution, Khomeini and his supporters also tried to conceal the role of high-ranking
Shia clerics
and close Khomeini allies in the coup organized by the "Great Satan."3
One of Kinzer's major contribution's is the careful
reconstruction of the events surrounding the coup and the primary
role played by the CIA and the British Secret Intelligence Services,
MI6, which he based on scholarly publications, memoirs and the
recently released CIA secret history. This narrative explains in
plain language not only the role of the CIA and the monarchists
but also the role Shia clerics played in the coup. Among the latter
were Fadaian Islam and Ayatollah AbolQassem Kashani, whose allies
and supporters have played central roles in the leadership of the
regime ruling Iran since 1979.
Some of the deleted material in the Farsi translation
of Kinzer's book deals with Ayatollah Kashani. One of the top members
of the current ruling elite is Mahmood Kashani, the son of the
late Ayatollah AbolQassem Kashani. The Council of Guardians (dominated
by the hardline faction), which vets candidates for various offices,
has allowed Mahmood Kashani to run for the presidency twice. Kashani
denies there was a coup and says Mossadegh himself was following
British plans and carrying out their dictates. In his words: "In
my opinion, Mossadegh was the director of the British plans and
implemented them."4
Kashani goes on to
say, "Without a doubt
Mossadegh had the primary and essential role" in the August 1953 coup. Kashani
says Mossadegh, the British and the United States were working together against
Ayatollah Kashani to undermine the role of Shia clerics. All evidence, including
the CIA's secret history, shows that Ayatollah Kashani and Fadaian Islam (the
first violent Islamic fundamentalist organization in Iran, many of whose leaders
rose to power in the Islamic Republic after 1979), along with monarchist military
officers, were mobilized by the CIA and MI6 in the August 1953 coup
against Mossadegh. In fact, the second person who spoke on Radio Tehran announcing and celebrating
the overthrow
of Mossadegh was Ayatollah Kashani's son, who was hand-picked by Kermit Roosevelt.5
A more
sophisticated argument on behalf of Ayatollah Kashani is presented by Abdollah
Shahbazi.6 For
Shahbazi, Kinzer's book is a fairy tale for Americans. Shahbazi's main argument
is that Kinzer is
part of the U.S. Democratic party, and he has written this book to undermine
President Bush's reelection
and help the Democratic challenger. Shahbazi's main criticism of Kinzer is that
he portrays
Mossadegh as good and Kashani as bad, and Truman as good and Eisenhower as bad.
Shahbazi
argues that Truman was the main architect of American imperialism, that the
plan to overthrow
Mossadegh began under Truman's administration, and that no difference in policy
existed between
Truman and Eisenhower. Shahbazi tries to show that the Bush family is closely
connected to
Truman through the DuPont Company and the "secret and semi-Masonic sect
'Skull and Bones.'" Shahbazi then proceeds to make personal attacks on Kinzer.
Shahbazi writes: "In Kinzer's book, one sees veins of Zionist attachments
or influences. For example, when he mentions the suspicious bombing of the Jewish
Community Center in Buenos Aires (1994) and other such bombings, where footprints
of Mossad and other mysterious Western conspirators are evident, Kinzer blames
the Islamic Republic of Iran." The second salient point in Kinzer's book is a sympathetic
portrayal of Mossadegh. For Kinzer, Mossadegh was a patriot like
George Washington, Thomas Jefferson and Thomas Paine. Iranian democrats
have always compared Mossadegh to Washington and Gandhi. Such a
portrayal coming from an American journalist associated with the
most prestigious U.S. daily is new and
significant.7
Kinzer shows Mossadegh to have been a genuine democrat
and civil libertarian -- at a time when McCarthyism was at
its zenith in the United States and Stalin's nightmarish dictatorship
reigned in the USSR. Despite tremendous pressure, Mossadegh respected
the civil liberties not only of Communist Tudeh party members but
also of right-wing monarchists and Islamists, all of whom were
engaged in outright slander and violence against his own pro-democracy
followers. For example, as part of their psychological operations
against Mossadegh, CIA agents were planting rumors in the Iranian
press about Mossadegh being of Jewish parentage, being a Communist
or Communist fellow traveler, having secret sympathies for the
British, and having designs on the throne (p. 6).8 Mossadegh neither
harassed nor suppressed any paper that published these
false charges.
Kinzer shows that throughout his life, Mossadegh
was impeccably honest and incorruptible. This contrasts sharply
with the avaricious
Reza Shah Pahlavi and his son Mohammad Reza, who looted the treasury,
confiscated private
property, and lived a life of conspicuous consumption in a land
of terribly poor people.9
Corruption has only worsened in the post-revolutionary period.10
The third salient point is Kinzer's
portrayal of the British colonial subjugation of Iran. Kinzer brings
to life the British
contempt for the "natives." This
section explains in part why Iranian patriots hated their British
colonizers and passionately supported Mossadegh in the struggle
to expel them and restore Iranian independence
and dignity. The intense emotional opposition of Iranians to Britain
and the United States
is due to Britain's harsh colonial subjugation and the CIA's imposition
of the Pahlavi
monarch, who regarded himself, and was regarded by the population,
as the puppet of colonial powers.
According to a top-secret communication
sent by the State Department to the British Foreign Office:
"He [the shah] is reported to be harping on the theme that the British
had thrown out the Qajar Dynasty, had brought in his father and
had thrown his father out. Now they could keep him in power or remove him in
turn as
they saw fit. If they desired that he should stay and that the
Crown
should retain the
powers given to it by the Constitution, he should be informed.
If on the other hand they
wished him to go, he should be told immediately so that he could
leave quietly."11
For international-relations
scholars and policy makers alike, it is essential to understand
the emotional aspect of Third World
nationalism and demands for independence from colonial subjugation.
Where scholarly
theories lack the tools
to explore these raw emotions, Kinzer's narrative succeeds brilliantly
in conveying the British
mechanisms of humiliation and the emotional outrage of Iranians
to those indignities. Massive
American assistance to and close relations with the Pahlavi monarch
were the main cause
of the intense anger of the Iranians towards the United States.
For Iranians, Mossadegh represented
political democracy and Iranian independence from colonial
subjugation; Mohammad Reza
Shah Pahlavi represented subjugation to Western colonialism
and political despotism. The main slogans
of the 1979 revolution were esteghlal (independence) and azadi
(liberty). The demand for
an Islamic republic came late and only after Khomeiniand his
followers succeeded in gaining the
leadership of the anti-shah movement from the secular liberal
democrats. Americans, who never
considered themselves a colonial power in Iran, continue to
be perplexed by the Iranian
outrage directed at them. Kinzer helps U.S. policy makers and
the general public alike to understand
the cause of Iranian anger at the United States.
The fourth salient point of Kinzer's book is
his masterful explanation of the internal debates between American
and British
policy makers. Through the use of many sources -- published
memoirs, unpublished private papers and interviews -- Kinzer
creates lively personal profiles of various protagonists: President
Truman, Dean Acheson (Truman's secretary of state), Kermit Roosevelt
(grandson of Theodore), who
organized the coup in Tehran, Gen. H. Norman Schwarzkopf, Sr. (father
of the commander of U.S.
forces in Desert Storm), President Eisenhower, John Foster Dulles
(Eisenhower's
secretary of state) and his brother Allen (director of the CIA).
Kinzer does
the same with
various British actors from prime ministers to foreign secretaries
to the head of the British oil company in
Iran (the Anglo Iranian Oil Company, later British Petroleum).
The fifth salient point is the
role of individuals and luck in history. Kinzer is quite explicit
here without ignoring the role
of great-power interests and ideologies (pp. 210-11). Here Kinzer
presents alternative scenarios, had several
of the key players acted differently. Mossadegh's charismatic personality
made democracy possible. Churchill's
steadfast colonialism was a factor. Also, Churchill's decision
to conjure
up the Communist threat helped convince Eisenhower to support the
British. Most significant of
all for the success of the coup was Kermit Roosevelt's persistence,
imagination and intelligence.
The first attempt failed on Saturday, August 15;
CIA headquarters twice ordered him to leave Tehran,
but Roosevelt remained and organized a second coup on Wednesday,
August
19. Roosevelt was able to use
the U.S. ambassador in Tehran, Loy Henderson, to deceive Mossadegh
into ordering the
people to stay home and calling in the armed forces
to bring calm to the streets. Having secretly organized paid mobs,
and having
already secured the support of high-ranking Shia clerics (Ayatollah
Kashani,
Ayatollah Behbahani, Hojatolislam Falsafi) and the radical group
Fadaian Islam, who brought their followers into the streets,
Roosevelt then had one group of military officers attack Mossadegh's
home
and another take over the Tehran
radio station. Roosevelt's leadership was the single most significant
factor in the success of the August
19 coup; without him, there would have been no second coup. The
sixth salient point of the book is the role of perception and
misperception in international relations. Kinzer shows that the
perceptions of the world held by the Americans, the British and
the Iranian
democrats were very different. For the British, the basic fight
was over
their continued control of Iranian oil. The American mindset
was that of the Cold
War. The Iranian nationalists' mindset was that
of a Third World nation demanding independence. Truman understood
to some extent the Iranian desire for freedom and the British
desire
for
the colonial subjugation of Iran, but his main
concern was containment of the USSR. Mossadegh failed to understand
the
paranoia gripping Washington, while
Churchill shrewdly manipulated those fears.
Churchill failed
to understand that colonialism was waning, and he badly miscalculated
the consequences
of the brutal suppression of legitimate demands
of
Third World nationalists such as Mossadegh. Truman tried,
to his credit, to
broker a compromise between Mossadegh and the British, realizing
that Western colonialism was fast becoming outmoded.
But he needed British support in NATO and in the Korean War
(1950-53) in the global struggle
against the Soviets. Despite Truman's and Acheson's best
efforts, the British were not willing to give up their hugely profitable
control of Iranian oil, and Mossadegh was not willing to
sacrifice
Iranian independence.
The elections in Britain in 1951 replaced
the Labour party with the militantly colonialist Conservative
Churchill. The
U.S. elections
in 1952 replaced Democrats with Republicans. The
Dulles brothers were more concerned with securing the profits
of Western
companies and with countering the USSR than with promoting
self-determination, democracy and human rights in the Third World.
They quickly convinced Eisenhower
to authorize the overthrow of Iranian democracy
and replace it with the dictatorial regime of the shah, who was
regarded
to be reliably
subservient to Western interests.
Mossadegh and his liberal democratic
supporters
in the Iran National Front had no illusions about the British
colonial mindset. However, they misperceived the Americans. The
U.S. image in
Iran was extremely positive due to the lack of American colonial
enterprises and to Woodrow
Wilson's support for the rights of colonized nations. The
few Americans who had come to Iran
were either educators or supporters of democratic forces. One
of Mossadegh's close friends was
Supreme Court Justice William O. Douglas. The CIA coup, of
course, dramatically changed all that.
The seventh salient point, and the
most contentious, is Kinzer's argument on the relationship between
the 1953 coup and the rise
of Islamic fundamentalism. Kinzer argues that the CIA coup
smashed Iranian democracy and brought to power a despotic monarchy.
The shah's ruthless
regime succeeded in suppressing the secular liberal democrats
(Mossadegh and the National
Front) and the left (the pro-Moscow Communist Tudeh party).
However,
by so isarticulating the
democratic and modernist political forces, the shah left the
field open to right-wing Islamic fundamentalists,
who, in 1979, succeeded in overthrowing the shah and establishing
the first contemporary
Islamist government. Khomeini's regime brought hitherto marginalized
forces to the center of
politics in much of the Muslim world. Khomeini's success
illustrated that Islamic fundamentalists
could overthrow an incumbent regime and create their own. Moreover,
the Iranian revolutionaries
provided assistance to myriad Islamist groups such as Lebanese
Hezbollah and Hamas. Thus, the Shia success in
Iran provided a model for Sunni fundamentalists around the Islamic
world, including Osama bin Laden.
 Kinzer argues that, had the United States
not overthrown
Mossadegh, Iran would have consolidated its infant democracy,
which would have precluded the success of Khomeini and Islamic
fundamentalism. Kinzer writes:
"The world has paid a heavy price for the lack
of democracy in most of the Middle East.
Operation Ajax [CIA code for the August 1953 coup] taught tyrants
and aspiring tyrants
there that the world's most powerful governments were willing
to tolerate limitless
oppression as long as oppressive regimes were friendly to the West
and to Western oil
companies. That helped tilt the political balance in a vast region
away from freedom and
toward dictatorship." (p. 204)
Islamic fundamentalists in Iran
would disagree with Kinzer's analysis, cognizant that many of
their own had supported the CIA coup and had strongly opposed the
secular
liberal nationalism of
Mossadegh. In fact, Khomeini and others broke with the shah in
1961-64 period.12 Shahbazi
strongly disagrees with Kinzer and argues that other factors
and events are far more responsible
for anti-Americanism among Islamic peoples than the CIA coup.
Shahbazi asserts that the following
four American actions were more responsible for anti-Americanism
in the Middle East and the
events of 9/11 than the 1953 coup:
(1) the joint CIA and MI6
coup in July 1952 in Egypt that
brought Gen. Mohammad Naguib to power;
(2) President Kennedy's
reforms imposed on the shah;
(3) the tremendous support that all U.S. administrations have
given to Israel, including Democratic
President Lyndon Johnson's support for Israel in the Six-day
War of 1967; and
(4) the huge
investment by the CIA in the Taliban and Bin Laden during their
war in Afghanistan against the
occupying Soviet forces.13 In Shahbazi's words:
"Were not the actions of the government of John
Kennedy, which imposed many programs
with deep destructive impact on the Iranian society in the decade
of the 1960s, this time
under the banner of "reforms" and not a "coup," another
major event which intensified
the anti-American feelings in Iran? Everyone knows that it was
this intervention
[Kennedy's reforms] that produced the 15 Khordad 1342 [June
4, 1964] uprisings, and the
Islamic Revolution of Iran is the direct effect of that [Kennedy's
reforms]."14
 Kinzer has written a superb book, reconstructing
the story of a coup that changed history. He
resurrects the figure of Mossadegh for English-language readers
at a time when his ideals have been
embraced by masses of Iranians, particularly university students,
who carry Mossadegh's picture in
their protest rallies and sit-ins. As the wave of democracy reaches
the shores of the Middle East, it
is not an accident that Iranians have found Mossadegh again.
As events unfold in the region and
American policy makers are confronted with dilemmas, Kinzer's
book might help them avoid the
mistakes of the past. Scholarly analysis might be enriched through
a consideration of the many
points Kinzer has raised. His book will play a major role in
the debate for years to come.
About
This paper was first published in Midle East Policy, Winter
2004. Masoud Kazemzadeh, Ph.D. is Assistant
Professor of Political Science at Utah Valley State College [homepage].
He is the author of Islamic
Fundamentalism, Feminism, and Gender Inequality in Iran Under Khomeini (Lanham, MD: University Press
of America, 2002).
Notes
[1] Many sentences have been completely deleted and many mistranslated.
The following phrase under the
picture of Ayatollah Kashani has been deleted: "Kermit Roosevelt
sent him [Ayatollah Kashani] $10,000 the
day before the coup." The endnotes and bibliography have
been deleted, as was the subtitle. As an introduction
to the translation, the review of Kinzer's book by Warren
Bass in The New York Times, August 10, 2003,
has been modified and presented without acknowledging the author
of the review and instead attributing it to
Abdolreza Mahdavi. See Azadi,
No. 31-32, Summer-Fall 1382, 2003, pp. 271-272,. This journal is
published
by the National Democratic Front of Iran, headed by Hedayat Matin-Daftari,
Mossadegh's grandson.
[2] In the words of Ervand Abrahamian, "It
is easier for a camel to pass through the eye of a needle than
for a historian to gain access to the CIA archives on the 1953
coup in Iran." See Abrahamian, "The 1953 Coup in Iran," Science
and Society, Vol. 65, No. 2, Summer 2001, p. 182.
[3] The best work
on the role of high-ranking Shia clerics and Islamic fundamentalists
in opposing Mossadegh, supporting the shah, and helping the coup
is Homa Katouzian, Musaddiq and the Struggle for Power in Iran (I.B. Tauris, 1990), pp. 156-76.
[4] ISNA (Iranian Students News Agency)
November 2003 interview in Farsi with Mahmood
Kashani.
I have translated the passage. The most
important achievement that Mahmood Kashani mentioned during his
first campaign for the presidency was
that he had "slapped the American judge in the face" during
the proceedings of the tribunal at the Hague
created as part of the Algiers agreement to resolve the U.S. claims
against Iran.
[5] The New York Times redacted many of the names
of the CIA's Iranian collaborators. Cryptome was able to recover
only
some of them. One was one of "Ayatollah Kashani's
sons." See page
71 here. Cryptome was unable to recover the
redactions in the section that deals with the religious
leaders. The following is page 20 of the secret history that can
be found here.
"(4) Religious Leaders.
It is our belief that nearly all the important religious leaders
with large followings are firmly
opposed to Mossadeq. Both the U.S. field station and the British
group have firm contacts with
such leaders. The pro-Zahedi capabilities in this field are very
great.
These leaders include such assorted and sometimes inimical elements
as the non-political
leaders [......] and [......], as well as [....] and [...] and
his terrorist gang, [....]. During the period of
intensive anti-Mossadeq publicity before the coup day, the leaders
and their henchmen will:
(a) Spread word of their disapproval of Mossadeq.
(b) Give open support
to the symbol of the throne and give moral backing to the shahthrough
direct contact with him
at the shrine.
(c) As required, stage small pro-religious anti-Mossadeq demonstrations
in widely
scattered sections of Tehran.
(d) Threaten that they are ready to take direct action against
pro-Mossadeq deputiesand members of Mossadeq's entourage
and government.
(e) Ensure full participation of themselves and followers in Situation
A.
(f) After the change of government, give the strongest assurance
over Radio Tehran
and in the mosques that the new government is faithful to religious
principles."
The "terrorist group" that Kermit Roosevelt
and Donald Wilber mobilized was the "Fadaian Islam." The
redacted names of high-ranking Shia clerics include Grand Ayatollah
Brujerdi, Ayatollah Behbani, and
Ayatollah Kashani. See Katouzian, op. cit., and Masoud Kazemzadeh, "The
Day Democracy Died: The 50th
Anniversary of the CIA Coup in Iran," Khaneh: Iranian
Community Newspaper, Vol. 3, No. 34, October
2003.
[6] Abdollah Shahbazi, "A Survey of Stephen
Kinzer's Book: 'Good Truman' and 'Bad Eisenhower,' An
American Tale," posted at Shahbazi's
website.
All the quotes are from
the above-mentioned review (my translation). Shahbazi has written
the memoirs of several political prisoners
based on the tapes of their interviews with interrogators of VEVAK
(the fundamentalist regime's feared
intelligence agency) during their incarceration. These memoirs
include those of Nouraldin Kianouri (secretarygeneral
of the Tudeh party) and Gen. Hussein Fardoost (the shah's
head of Court Intelligence and childhood
friend and one of his closest friends and advisors, who had apparently
betrayed him and worked with the
fundamentalist regime). According to Shahbazi himself, he would
provide questions that were put to Kianouri
thus creating Kianouri's "memoir."
[7] Kinzer's book has been embraced by pro-democracy
Iranians inside and outside Iran. Kinzer has done
several readings to Iranian audiences, who have given him prolonged
standing ovations.
[8] According to the CIA secret history of black
operations against Mossadegh (pp. 16-17):
"At headquarters and at the field station U.S. personnel will draft
and put into Persian the texts for
articles, broadsheets and pamphlets, some pro-shah and some anti-Mossadeq.
The materials
designed to discredit Mossadeq will hammer the following themes:
(a) Mossadeq favors the Tudeh party and the USSR. (This will be
supported by
black documents).
(b) Mossadeq is an enemy of Islam since he associates with the
Tudeh and advancestheir aims.
(c) Mossadeq is deliberately destroying the morale of the army
and its ability tomaintain order.
(d) Mossadeq is deliberately fostering the growth of regional separatist
elementsthrough his removal of army control over tribal areas.
One of the aims of the removal
of control by the army is to make it easier for the Soviets to
take over the Northern
Provinces.
(e) Mossadeq is deliberately leading the country into economic
collapse.
(f) Mossadeq has been corrupted by power to such an extent that
no trace is left of the fine
man of earlier years, and he now has all the repressive instincts
of the dictator."
[9] On Reza Shah's corruption, see Mohammad
Gholi Majd, Great Britain and Reza Shah: The Plunder of Iran,
1921-1941 (University Press of Florida, 2001). On Mohammad Reza
Shah's corruption, see Nikki R.
Keddie, Roots of Revolution: An Interpretive History of Modern
Iran (Yale University Press, 1981), esp. pp.
149, 172, 178 and 180.
[10] On corruption among high-ranking officials
of the current regime, see Paul Klebnikov, "Millionaire Mullahs," Forbes,
July 21, 2003.
[11] The quote is from a British document discussing
a report sent to them by the U.S. State Department on the shah
and the situation in Iran. The date is about three months before
the
coup. Henderson is the name of the U.S. ambassador to
Iran. The following is the verbatim text:
Sir R. Makins -- No:
1085, May 21, 1953
PRIORITY -- TOP SECRET
Persia.
The State Department informed us today on a number of occasions
associates of the shah have
told Henderson that His Majesty is uncertain about the British
attitude towards himself. He is
reported to be harping on the theme that the British had thrown
out the Qajar Dynasty, had brought
in his father and had thrown his father out. Now they could keep
him in power or remove him in
turn as they saw fit. If they desired that he should stay and that
the Crown should retain the
powers given to it by the Constitution, he should be informed.
If on the other hand they wished
him to go, he should be told immediately so that he could leave
quietly. Did the British wish to
substitute another shah for himself or to abolish the monarchy?
Were they behind the present
efforts to deprive him of his power and prestige?
2. On May 17 the Shah sent an emissary to Henderson to say that
it would do much to clarifythe situation if the ambassador could
ascertain secretly and unequivocally the British attitude
towards him.
[12] For extensive explanation and analysis
on the conflict between Khomeini (and other conservative Shia
clerics) and the shah, see Willem Floor, "The Revolutionary
Character of the Iranian Ulama: Wishful Thinking
or Reality?" International Journal of Middle East Studies,
Vol. 12, No. 1, December 1980; and Masoud
Kazemzadeh, Islamic
Fundamentalism, Feminism, and Gender Inequality in Iran Under
Khomeini (University
Press of America, 2002).
[13] The above are a close rendition of Shahbazi's
words.
[14] Shahbazi, ibid., my translation. Words in brackets are
mine. By the Kennedy reforms, Shahbazi is referring
to reforms that the Kennedy administration forced the shah to
implement, including land reform, female
enfranchisement and the replacement of taking an oath to the
Quran with taking an oath to a holy book as the
criterion of holding government office (which would have undermined
the Shia hold on high positions and
allowed Zoroastrian, Christian, Bahai and Jewish Iranians to
serve as well).
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Finding Mossadegh
