Shove that 1953 Iran Coup Myth up Your... A Fresh Review

The U.S finally dispatched Averell Harriman to work with Mossadegh toward a resolution. The canny old man’s posturing and slippery illogic inclined the Americans to sense that he plainly did not want an agreement. As the Iranian prime minister himself conceded, he was wary of “my fanatics” in the Iranian polity who would kill him for making concessions. Harriman went home empty-handed, and Eisenhower soon replaced Truman. Cut

Mossadegh’s stacked referendum gave him a landslide victory, which cost him the support of the Shia clergy, the National Front coalition, and even family members. Sattareh Farmanfarmaian, his niece, wrote in her memoir, Daughter of Persia, of how “wretched” she felt over this betrayal. Majles Speaker Ayatollah Kashani denounced him, and his former National Front allies called him a “worse dictator than Reza Shah.” Cut relies heavily on Roosevelt, it is overly padded and suffers from what H.R. McMaster would call strategic narcissism—the tendency to put the United States at the center of everything, deserving of both glory and blame, whether rightly or wrongly. Cut Before flying home, the shah sent telegrams to Grand Ayatollah Borujerdi and Ayatollah Behbehani. The more senior ayatollah responded with elaborately polite hopes that the shah could now put an end to the country’s ills and bring glory to Islam. He closed, “Do return as Shiism and Islam need you. You are the Shiite sovereign.” More than one Iranian historian has derided Roosevelt’s memoir as “prophecy made after the fact,” and Afkhami complained that “[t]his false history, fostered by pro-Mosaddeq Iranians and liberal and leftist westerners, has diminished Mosaddeq, demonized the shah, and turned Iranians into traitors or wimps.”

Cut

Roosevelt lacked a message from Eisenhower, so he made one up. “Since [Eisenhower] had failed to send one, I put into words what he must surely be feeling,” he wrote. His fabricated message from the president to the king was, “If the Pahlavis and the Roosevelts working together cannot solve this little problem, then there is no hope anywhere!” That he chose to publish it just as the shah was overthrown provided the nascent Islamic Republic and its partisans with yet more reasons to hate America. Eisenhower, who had died a decade prior, would have been furious. Cut

contemporaries, including many former supporters, were glad to see him go. Mossadegh’s fictional status as a victimized, heroic advocate of democracy was only later cynically conferred by those who sought and supported the decidedly undemocratic dictatorship that rules Iran today.”

Cut The enduring myth is that the CIA dispatched its serpent, Kim Roosevelt, into a democratic Iranian Garden of Eden, and everything bad that happened over the next half-century can be attributed to this original sin. (The “original sin” metaphor is everywhere—The New York Times even worked it into Ardeshir Zahedi’s obituary). On this, the tier-mondistes, American progressives, and Qajar memoirists all agree. Cut ...and it is distinctly harsh, considering that at no time did the shah ever breach the laws of his country, while Mossadegh did promiscuously, and unapologetically—facts remain: Mossadegh was not democratically elected. He was not a democrat. He was not overthrown by the CIA, but by domestic forces he had repeatedly manipulated or misunderstood, and who welcomed a foreign hand of unmeasurable and uneven utility. Cut. (The article closes with the following) The prime minister had a deep strain of decency, but was an inept visionary who overplayed his hand.

Mohammad Mosaddegh has been romanticized in the West as an ideal noble, democratic figure who the empire of American Imperialism squashed. I think an objective assessment shows this conventional story to be about as grounded as a bedtime story. However, it should be acknowledged that Mosaddegh had some admirable personal qualities. It seems Mosaddegh was a capable, reform-minded man who just got too greedy for power and didn't have the security muscle to pull it off. Under the Iranian system at the time, he was justifiably removed as prime minister (a position he was not elected to but received).

The Shah has his own legacy. Today, the story is that from the start he was a vicious authoritarian dictator who did nothing but oppress the people just so the Americans could loot the country's oil. This simplistic view of things also appears inaccurate. In several respects, he was a Progressive for his time and place. If anything, he was not brutal enough to survive in the rough-and-tumble politics of the Middle East. That's not to say he didn't ever use force on people, nor that he was in line with acceptable behavior for a Western leader concerning domestic civil rights, etc. Not everything is just black or white.

In 1979, the struggle for power resulted in the Islamic Revolutionary clerics winning out. They, unlike Mosaddegh and the Shah, I think, have a much clearer legacy. For those who believe that an Islamic Sharia restoration would lead to a new grand Caliphate worthy of admiration, well, I guess we have something to judge by in the years from 1979 to 2026.

The CIA has been credited with things it has done and things that it hasn't. Some still claim Osama bin Laden "was created by the CIA," despite not understanding the circumstances there. To an even greater degree, I think you have that effect with the 1953 episode in Iran. I think the full evidence reveals that there was NO Coup of Mosaddegh. What occurred was a power struggle within the Iranian system as it existed at the time, culminating in the legitimate ruler removing the usurper to reestablish his authority. It just happens that the Shah was better aligned with American interests—especially during the Cold War period.

The abiding myth endures by putting all evidentiary eggs into the basket of a CIA agent who wanted to inflate himself for a career and ego boost. I find it troublesome, but it makes a good story. It also makes a useful story for those with an angle to push an agenda. (As a side note, John Perkins 2004 book Confessions of an Economic Hit Man built such an audience that there's now a contingent of Americans who will eagerly believe any CIA-scheming story without much scrutiny.)

Wrapping Up

There is a chunk of information to absorb and process to account for the 1953 removal of Mohammad Mosaddegh as Prime Minister of Iran. Hopefully, you see that the case cannot be fully understood in a minute or two. It requires some study. First thing, did the removal of Mosaddegh for exceeding his authority under the terms of his position really satisfy the definition of coup? I think clearly not. If anything, it appears Mosaddegh was doing more of the power-grabbing. Second, was the CIA the driving force behind the Shah and the clerics resisting Mosaddegh? Again, no. This would have occurred regardless of American involvement. The USA supported it, but this should not be conflated with causing it or even being the determining factor in the outcome. Mosaddegh also had his own shortcomings as a leader and wasn't necessarily a liberal model of governance.

As a result, I think we can put to rest this perception of the hard fact view of the American CIA executing the 1953 Iran coup being solely the product of a Washington, DC folder. Instead, the 1953 coup is more myth than reality. A myth that helped Kermit Roosevelt Jr. sell books. This episode in history has also fueled another misconception: that everything in the world revolves around the USA. This view oversimplifies causation and strips other people in the world of their own agency and agendas. The Islamic clerical ideology that now runs Iran was not created in 1979, not in 1953, and not because of the existence of the USA or the modern state of Israel. The revolutionary Islamic mindset of expansion predates all of this. Even if the USA magically ceased to exist tomorrow, the Islamic element within Iran and the world would continue on. In fact, that's what they probably expect.

So, do you accept the conventional 1953 story?

Or do you channel a bit of that rebellious Iranian rapper Hichkas and tell 'em to "shove it"?