All the Shah′s Men: An American Coup and the Roots of Middle East Terror

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Wherever the former (Anglo-Persian Oil) company may operate in the future, it will never again operate in Iran. Neither by trusteeship nor by contract will we turn over to foreigners the right to exploit our oil resources." Kinzer argued that the consequences of Operation Ajax have reverberated throughout the ensuing decades in the fraught international relationships. I found Chapter 12, in which he wrapped up his thesis, interesting even though I wasn't completely convinced. The author had cited academic research which concluded that many of the geopolitical tensions of the 21st century are the rotten fruit borne of the 1953 coup. I have no doubt that the 1979 US Embassy hostage crisis in Tehran was directly connected with Operation Ajax but I remain skeptical of the longer term repercussions. Given Ayatollah Khomeini's fervency, who is to say that he wouldn't have gained power without the US-led toppling of Mohammad Mossadegh? However, the events are relevant in terms of a booming United States economy in the post WWII era. As the oil reserves and industry of the middle-east was both lucrative and profitable, it was a rational move in terms of economics. Great Britain clearly held personal interest in the whole affair because they had been effectively monopolizing the oil industry through their oil company, eventually renamed British Petroleum (BP). This was why the Iranians labeled the British as acting in an imperialist nature towards them. Nonetheless, the US gained economically from the whole ordeal. After gaining 40% ownership of the company among five different United States corporations, domestic economic goals were accomplished, albeit they may have been utterly unintended. This accurately reflects the US legacy of capitalism and free markets. Just as the open door policy in China opened up trade across the Pacific, this was yet another way for the US to develop its international economy as well. Therefore, the content of the book related to and supported the class material we studied relating to US superiority, both economically and diplomatically. Finally, US initiatives surrounding military intervention to stop the potential spread of communism abroad also coincided with our class material. Moreover, blaming the C.I.A. and the AngloIranian Oil Company for the Iranian revolution lets later American administrations (and the shah himself) off the hook. Most cold war presidents relied too heavily on the shah for Persian Gulf stability while doing too little to press him to reform. John F. Kennedy, who did push Iran to liberalize, proved an honorable exception. In April 1962, he told a somewhat baffled shah to learn from the example of Franklin Roosevelt, who "was still regarded almost as a god in places like West Virginia" for siding with the common citizen.

In the fabled history of the coup, from such incapacity the CIA developed a resilient network that easily toppled a popular leader a few months later. Personally, I think heroes exist only in popular narratives, which are typically a fictionalization of reality.

The Qajars thus sold effective power over Iran and its resources to the British. What eventually gave Mossadegh his primary goal in life, however, was the 1901 concession to London-based financier William Knox D'Arcy, granting him the "special and exclusive privilege to obtain, exploit, develop...and sell natural gas [and] petroleum...for a term of sixty years."

The Shah became increasingly oppressive and after 26 years Iranians finally had enough, overthrowing him in 1979. The US government was clueless, unaware of how much the Shah and his main benefactor the US were hated. The Iranians never forgot who was behind the coup. The next big mistake was to invite the Shah to the US. This played right into the hands of Iranian extremists. Since the US had engineered one coup to put the Shah in power, the idea that the US was planning the same thing again had compelling logic to the Iranians. The takeover of the US embassy in Tehran and the hostage crisis were the immediate result. A regime that supported terrorists and destabilized the entire Middle East was the longer term result. Mossadegh "dashed Britain's hopes of organizing a coup" by breaking diplomatic relations with Britain on 16 October 1952, expelling all British diplomats (and thereby all British intelligence agents). "If there was to be [a coup], the Americans would have to stage it." (147). Why, why indeed? The short answer is that then as now, U.S. decision-makers based their choices on alarmist, highly ideological interpretations of short- term problems and left the toxic fallout to other administrations (and generations). In August 1953 the CIA with the help of some influential figures in Iran orchestrated a coup against Mossadegh. They encouraged and organized the mass protests against Mossadegh that resulted in chaos in the capital city of Tehran. Review: All the Shah's Men Title All the Shah's Men: An American Coup and the Roots of Middle East Terror Author Stephen Kinzer Publisher Hoboken: John Wiley & Sons, 2003 ISBN 0-471-26517-9In addition, Iranian military officers had their own reasons for plotting against Mosaddeq, and they required neither instigation nor instruction from Roosevelt. Under the shah, and during the rule of his father before him, the military and the monarchy were indivisible. The army was an essential pillar of the shah’s rule. That is why Mosaddeq -- who wanted to weaken the shah -- continuously purged the army’s officer ranks, cut the military’s budget, and hollowed out its institutions. i143243688 |b1080006496429 |dculnb |g- |m |h1 |x1 |t0 |i0 |j18 |k220701 |n02-13-2023 19:17 |o- |aDS318 |r.K49 2008 But the author′s real accomplishment is his suspenseful account of Persia′s centuries–old military, political, cultural and religious heritage, in which Mossadegh′s face–off with London comes as the stirring climax to a drama that began with "Cyrus, Darius, and Xerxes, titans whose names still echo through history." By the 1930s, most Iranians had come to regard the abject misery they plunged into with every passing decade of exclusive British control of their one great natural asset as another passing calamity in a long history of the same. But with the global stirring of post–World War II nationalism, Anglo–American Oil pushed them to the breaking point.

That the past is prolog is especially true in this astonishing account of the 1953 overthrow of nationalist Iranian leader Mohammed Mossadegh, who became prime minister in 1951 and immediately nationalized the Anglo–Iranian Oil Company. This act angered the British, who sought assistance from the United States in overthrowing Mossedegh′s fledgling democracy. Kermit Roosevelt, Teddy′s grandson, led the successful coup in August 1953, which ended in the reestablishment of the Iranian monarchy in the person of Mohammad Reza Shah. Iranian anger at this foreign intrusion smoldered until the 1979 revolution. Meanwhile, over the next decade, the United States successfully overthrew other governments, such as that of Guatemala. Kinzer, a New York Times correspondent who has also written about the 1954 Guatemala coup ( Bitter Fruit: The Story of the American Coup in Guatemala), tells his captivating tale with style and verve. This book leads one to wonder how many of our contemporary problems in the Middle East may have resulted from this covert CIA adventure. Recommended for all collections. Ed Goedeken, Iowa S tate Univ. Lib., Ames ( Library Journal, June 15, 2003) Wow, such a great book. I had read Kinzer’s “The brothers” a few years ago, about the Dulles brothers, and found it just as engaging, well-written, and well researched. In the penultimate chapter, we finally get to the second stage of the coup. This section, like the first chapter, is again drawn from the memoirs of Kermit Roosevelt. Like the first chapter, the absence of detail cripples this chapter and I’m not convinced that the coup succeeded because of Roosevelt and CIA agents. During my entire life, I have regarded Iran and Iraq as part of the "troubled Middle East" with its occasional bursts of anger and violence directed at the United States. Even after 9/11, when the US launched military action in this region, I couldn't say that I could unravel the geopolitical complexities that characterize this corner of the world. I have now read a few nonfictions set in Iran in the 20th century, and none of them, including the latest, had been written in a purely objective tone. But at least, All the Shah's Men: An American Coup and the Roots of Middle East Terror offered an explanation for the anti-Western sentiment.

Works Cited

All the Shah's Men)‏ عنوان کتابی از خبرنگار امریکایی استیون کینزر است. این کتاب کودتای ۲۸ مرداد را در قالب روایتی داستانی و رمان‌گونه مورد بررسی قرار می‌دهد. Kinzer cares about Iran and his trip to Tehran for visiting the house that Mosaddeq stayed and lived his final years (which he chronicles in the epilogue of this book), shows that he is passionate about Iran and its fate. His passion is palpable in the account that he offers. Same goes for Che Guevara, Simon Bolivar and everyone else whom popular history loves to celebrate as demi-gods. They are all human beings. Erm ... actually, worse: they were all men, and extremely self-absorbed and dominating ones). My only crime," Mossadegh told his judges, "is that I nationalized the Iranian oil industry and removed from this land the network of colonialism and the political and economic influence of the greatest empire on earth."

Mossadegh's Iran faced formidable foes: British oil executives, the C.I.A. and the brothers Dulles, all of whom come off wretchedly here. The least sympathetic of all are Iran's erstwhile British rulers, who continued to gouge Iran via the Anglo-Iranian Oil Company. When the Truman administration prodded it to share the wealth with Iran, its chairman sniffed, ''One penny more and the company goes broke.'' In 1951, to London's fury, Mossadegh led a successful campaign to nationalize the oil company, drove the British to close their vital oil refinery at Abadan and became prime minister. The British began drafting invasion plans, but Truman and Secretary of State Dean Acheson warned them that gunboat diplomacy would hurt the West in its struggle with Moscow. Truman named Dean Acheson secretary of state in 1948. Acheson in turn named a Texan, George McGhee, as assistant secretary for Near Eastern, South Asian and American affairs. McGhee had studied geology at the University of Oklahoma and had won a Rhodes scholarship to Oxford. Around the end of 1949, "McGhee repeatedly warned directors of Anglo-Iranian that if they hoped to save Prime Minister Razmara and persuade the Majlis to approve their Supplemental Agreement, they must make concessions." (86-87). D]rawing conclusions about causes and effects is always dangerous.” But he has evidently ignored his own warning in writing his narrative.In writing All the Shah’s Men, Stephen Kinzer takes the reader through a historical outline of the 1953 Iranian coup d'état in which the CIA aided British forces in overtaking Mohammed Mossadegh’s regime. Throughout his analysis, the themes of political ideology, economics and international diplomacy are recurrent. Kinzer offers different levels of analysis from a domestic Iranian point of view all the way to what was going on in Washington. The inherent struggle for military commitment from the US on behalf of Great Britain was ultimately rooted in the oil industry that Mossadegh was nationalizing. Ultimately, the US caved into international pressure from Great Britain and aided in Operation Ajax to overthrow the Iranian leader and re-install the Shah as its rightful leader. In his final analysis, Kinzer argued that while it is inconclusive whether the threat of communism was a realistic threat for intervention, the whole ordeal resulted in tensions and negative diplomatic relations amongst the US, Great Britain and Iran. The US and UK were at odds in the early 1950's. Truman did not support prolonging empires, called by Secretary of State Dean Acheson 'whiff of grapeshot diplomacy'. PM Attlee and Foreign Secretary Bevin delayed invasion, unable to secure US and UN approval. Once Churchill and Eisenhower were in power the tables turned. United under pro-capitalism and anti-communism they defeated Iranian aspirations, later ushering in the Islamic state. Kinzer tells the story well. As the author notes, Mossadegh was not a pragmatist. He was more of a visionary and utopian. Had he been a pragmatic leader, he could have made different decisions and avoided a crises that eventually led to his downfall. He could have agreed to mediation offered by President Truman who wanted to avoid a stalemate. Moreover, blaming the C.I.A. and the Anglo-Iranian Oil Company for the Iranian revolution lets later American administrations (and the shah himself) off the hook. Most cold war presidents relied too heavily on the shah for Persian Gulf stability while doing too little to press him to reform. John F. Kennedy, who did push Iran to liberalize, proved an honorable exception. In April 1962, he told a somewhat baffled shah to learn from the example of Franklin Roosevelt, who ''was still regarded almost as a god in places like West Virginia'' for siding with the common citizen. Great Britain via Anglo-Persian Oil Company (APOC) wanted to secure its grip on Iran's oil. The United States wanted to prevent Iran from joining Russia and going communist. Iran wanted freedom, an Iran free of British imperialism.