The Mossadegh Affair: Is a 1953 Coup America’s Original Sin in Iran Policy?

As the Iran crisis dominates our national conversation, a debate over a 1953 event is heating up: Did that year’s overthrow of Prime Minister Mohammed Mossadegh lead to the 1979 rise of the Khomeinists — and to today’s Middle East wars?Politicians, scholars, and the press have long considered the August 19, 1953 coup that ended the Mossadegh era as America’s original sin. “In the middle of the Cold War,” President Obama declared at Cairo in 2009, America “played a role in the overthrow of a democratically elected Iranian government.”That version served Mr. Obama’s goal of appeasing the Tehran regime. It was also a “story that touches all the erogenous zones of the American left,” the Council of Foreign Relations’ Iran scholar, Ray Takeyh, says. American politicians have long stressed America’s guilt in the events that led to Mossadegh’s ouster. Ben Affleck’s Oscar-winning film on the 1979 hostage crisis, “Argo,” opens with a three-minute tale of how that history preceded everything that happened in Iran afterward. The Central Intelligence Agency’s man at Tehran in 1953, Kermit Roosevelt, a grandson of President Teddy Roosevelt, wrote a book that glorified his personal role in the coup. It was mostly a fictional account, described by critics as fiction and a “dime store novel” rather than a true account of events. In reality, Britain’s MI6 played a more significant role in the coup than the CIA. Yet the largest factor was that by 1953 the Iranian people soured on Mossadegh. On August 15 the Shah sent troops to dismiss the premier, but Mossadegh managed to repel the soldiers. Four days later the premier was arrested as Tehran crowds called for his ouster. That time’s American and British backing for Shah Reza Pahlavi is now used as a cudgel against current supporters of regime change in Iran. “We think it’s a point of high moral achievement to say we are not seeking, and we don’t believe in displacement of a clerical tyranny that tortures its citizens and tries to undermine the region,” Mr. Takeyh, the author of “The Last Shah: America, Iran, and the Fall of the Pahlavi Dynasty,” said in a Foundation for Defense of Democracies podcast. Yet Mossadegh is revered in today’s Iran, a New Yorker who is a distant Mossadegh relative, Ali Wambold, tells the Sun. Yet he acknowledges that Mossadegh is admired by Iranians who see him as a “bulwark against foreign domination,” rather than an avatar of democracy, a concept that is not part of Mideast traditions. Mossadegh never, as Mr. Obama claimed, headed a “democratically elected government.” In accordance with that time’s Iranian constitution, the Shah, then a young king in his 20s, appointed Mossdegh in July 1952 as prime minister. Parliament then affirmed the appointment. A year later — and again in accordance with the constitution — the Shah dismissed him. In between appointment and dismissal, Mossadegh irked Washington and London. Both saw him as “one of the most mercurial, maddening, adroit, and provocative leaders with whom they ever dealt,” according to a 1998 CIA top secret document declassified in January, 2017. One of Mossadegh’s first acts in office was to nationalize the Iranian oil industry, which was dominated by the Anglo-Iranian Oil Company, later renamed British Petroleum. Iranians rejoiced, but London was livid. The Truman administration attempted to mediate. Washington supported the anti-colonial nationalization, but tried to convince Mossadegh to pay compensation to Britain. After the Truman diplomacy failed, America and Britain imposed sanctions on Iran’s oil exports. While Britain was mostly concerned with the loss of that time‘s largest Mideast oil source, America feared the growth of global Soviet influence. When President Eisenhower assumed office in January 1953, the enthusiasm for Mossadegh diminished, as sanctions shrunk the economy. The premier’s shrinking National Front and the Soviet-backed Tudeh party were his only remaining supporters.Some of Mossadegh’s fiercest opponents at the time of his ouster were the Iranian clerics. As he returned to Tehran in 1979, Ayatollah Khomeini scoffed at Mossadegh’s failure to oust the Shah. Diplomats like former foreign minister Javad Zarif, though, stressed America’s guilt in the affair, which sat well with America’s pop culture — and a myth was born.

The Mossadegh Affair: Is a 1953 Coup America’s Original Sin in Iran Policy?

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