Langley Escapades - Part 2
Trading Democracy for Oil - Coup d'Etat - Kermit Roosevelt
Operation Ajax - Killing Democracy for Oil
After President Harry Truman refused to support an armed invasion of Iran by Britain, the British had only two options remaining. Either leave Mossadegh in power or organize a coup to depose him. Prime Minister Winston Churchill, a product of the British Empire, had no problem deciding in favor of a coup. Again, they went to President Harry Truman for help, but he sympathized with the nationalist movement. Not to mention the fact that the CIA had never overthrown a government before.
That changed with the election of Dwight Eisenhower in November of 1952. Eisenhower’s Secretary of State, John Foster Dulles, and CIA Director Allen Dulles sold the coup to Eisenhower as a means of preventing a communist takeover of Iran. Operation Ajax was hatched. It was to be an intense psychological campaign against the democratically elected Prime Minister Mossadegh. Mobs and military units, whose leaders were on the CIA payroll, would put down any attempt by the Prime Minister to resist. To direct Operation Ajax was Kermit Roosevelt, a grandson of President Theodore Roosevelt. He was a CIA officer with extensive experience in the Middle East.
August 15, 1953 - The first coup attempt - Kermit Roosevelt
Just before midnight on August 15, 1953 an odd caravan set out under the cover of darkness. In the head car was Colonel Nematollah Nasiri, the commander of the Imperial Guard. He carried in his pocket a firman, a decree, that was signed by Shah Mohammad Reza Pahlavi, removing Mohammad Mossadegh as Prime Minister of Iran. This decree was of questionable legality, as only Parliament had the authority to remove a prime minister. It was Kermit Roosevelt who had convinced the Shah to sign this decree. Nasiri was to present this firman to Mossadegh and arrest him. The plan was to stop first at first at the home of the military Chief of Staff, General Taqi Riahi, arrest him and move on to Mossadegh’s house and arrest him. This plan was authorized by both the CIA and MI6, the British Intelligence service.
Something was not quite right, though. Despite the late hour, no one was home at General Riahi’s house. Not a servant, nor a doorkeeper. The house was empty. That should have been a sign that something was wrong but Colonel Nasiri got back in his armored vehicle and proceeded to his main target, Prime Minister Mossadegh’s home. General Riahi had learned of the coup attempt and had ordered another military column to proceed to the home of Prime Minister Mossadegh. There were now two military columns heading to Mossadegh’s house.
Colonel Nasiri arrived too late. As he stepped out of his armored car he was arrested by General Riahi, denounced as a traitor, his uniform was taken and he was sent to a jail cell. Upon hearing of what had happened, Shah Mohammad Rezi Pahlavi and his wife packed a couple of cases and headed to the airport and their twin-engine Beechcraft. The Shah was a trained pilot. He headed to Baghdad.
After arriving there, he told the American Ambassador that he ‘would be looking for work shortly as he has a large family and very small means outside of Iran”1
As the Shah was on the run, military units loyal to the government were spreading out throughout Tehran. There were several arrests made. A reward was offered for the capture of General Zahedi, who was to have become Prime Minister. Life in the city began to return to normal.
But the story doesn’t end here. Somewhere around midnight, Kermit Roosevelt sent a cable. He had decided to stay in Tehran and have another go at overthrowing Mossadegh. The CIA had sent him to Iran to overthrow the government and he was determined to stay until that was accomplished.
If at first you don’t succeed…
On Sunday morning, August 16th, 1953, the streets of Tehran were filled with security agents who were searching for General Zahedi, who was supposed to have been the new Prime Minister by now. Kermit Roosevelt, who had been urged to return home by his superiors, had other ideas. He knew where the General was and went to visit him to see if he was prepared to try again. Without hesitation, he said yes. Roosevelt slipped Zahedi into the back of his car, covered him with a blanket, and took him to the home of a fellow CIA agent.
By Sunday afternoon, Roosevelt had formulated his new plan. He still had considerable assets in Iran. One was Zahedi, who had numerous friends in the military and was ready to do whatever was necessary to come to power. Roosevelt also had a wide network of Iranian agents. This network had already shown its ability to spread rumors, place provocative articles in newspapers, manipulate politicians and mullahs, and to raise hired mobs on short notice. Above all, he had the two signed declarations (firmans) from Shah Mohammad Reza Pahlavi dismissing Mossadegh and naming General Zahedi Prime Minister.
The Shah, meanwhile, had no idea that any of this was taking place. He had already flown to Rome from Baghdad, expecting to be living in exile for an extended period of time.
By Monday, the riots, arranged by Roosevelt, had rocked Tehran. They intensified on Tuesday. There were thousands of demonstrators, both pro and anti-Mossadegh, surging through the streets, looting and ransacking. All of them, whether they knew it or not, were under CIA control.
The American Ambassador to Iran, Loy Henderson, under the direction of Roosevelt, went to see Mossadegh to complain about the way Americans were being harassed. Mossadegh bought the fictitious story and ordered his police chief to put an end to the trouble in the streets. He had essentially disarmed himself and played right into Roosevelt’s plan.
Wednesday, August 19th, 1953, 28 Mordad
Tehran had descended into chaos. Gunfire and exploding mortar shells filled the air.
“That mob that came into north Tehran and was decisive in the overthrow was a mercenary mob,” asserted Richard Cottam, who was on the Operation Ajax staff in Washington. “It had no ideology, and that mob was paid with American dollars.”2
At lunch, at the American Embassy in Iran, Kermit Roosevelt was eating with a radio turned on. According to his own words, he was “grinning from ear to ear.” Outside, Tehran was in pandemonium. On the radio, someone shouted what Roosevelt called “well-intended lies, or pre-truths.”
“The government of Mossadegh has been defeated!” The new prime minister, Fazlollah Zahedi, is now in office.”
This wasn’t quite yet true, but we are now back at where I began this story.
Military units led by anti-Mossadegh officers had began closing in on Prime Minister Mossadegh’s house. Inside, loyal army units prepared for battle, Armed with rifles, machine guns and Sherman tanks they beat back wave after wave of attackers. The street was littered with bodies.
After about an hour, army units loyal to the Shah arrived with tanks of their own. Operation Ajax was reaching its finale. Sensing victory, Roosevelt sent for General Zahedi, who was still at the CIA safe house. He was taken by tank to Radio Tehran. It had been decided to play martial music before the Zahedi spoke to the nation. Maybe it was an accident, maybe it wasn’t, but the first song that was played was the Star-Spangled Banner. Another song was quickly played, and the General stepped up to the microphone.
He declared himself “the lawful prime minister by the Shah’s order” and promised that his new regime would do everything good: build roads, provide free health care, raise wages, and guarantee both freedom and security. About oil he said nothing at all.3
General Zahedi lasted one year, eight months as prime minister.
The Shah, who was dining at his Rome hotel, was unaware of what was happening in Iran. When some news correspondents burst into the dining room and showed the wire service reports to him, the Shah jumped up and cried out, “I knew it, I knew it! They love me!” The Shah then started making plans for his return to Tehran.
Mohammad Mossadegh was eventually arrested, tried, and convicted. He was sentenced to three years in prison and house arrest for the rest of his life. He died on March 5, 1967, at the age of eighty-five. There was no public funeral or any mourning allowed.
Democracy in Iran had died.
Aftermath
The Anglo Iranian Oil Company changed its name in 1954 to BP. It was forced under pressure from the United States to accept membership in a consortium of oil companies that included: BP, Gulf Oil, Royal Dutch Shell, Compagnie Française des Petrolés, The four Aramco partners – Standard Oil of California (Chevron), Standard Oil of New Jersey (Exxon, Standard Oil Co. of New York (Mobil), and Texaco. Shah Mohammad Reza Pahlavi signed this agreement on October 29, 1954. Oil started flowing at Abadan the next day. After the Iranian Revolution of 1979 it became the National Iranian Oil Company, controlled by the Iranian Ministry of Petroleum and likely the Iranian Revolutionary Guard. The British never got “their oil back”. It is, I think safe to say that the Iranian citizens have never shared in any of the wealth this “black gold” brings.
Shah Mohammad Reza Pahlavi ruled until the 1979 Iranian Revolution as an authoritarian monarch. Repression was widespread. Dissent of any kind was not tolerated. Freedom of expression was not allowed in any way. He used his secret police, SAVAK, to suppress all political opposition. Arrest and torture were commonplace. But the United States of America was just fine with that because he was a strong bulwark against the Soviet Union.
In 1979, the Iranian Revolution overthrew the monarchy and established the Islamic Republic of Iran under Ayatollah Khomeini. That is a story for another day. Democracy, though, has not seen another day in Iran since August 19, 1953.
Shah Mohammad Reza Pahlavi was exiled and died in Egypt on July 27, 1980
The CIA first admitted its role in the 1953 coup that overthrew Iranian Prime Minister Mohammad Mossadegh on August 19, 2013. It came in the form of declassified documents released at the U.S. National Security Archive at George Washington University. The CIA, in 2023, in the CIA podcast “The Langley Files,” admitted that the coup was “undemocratic”.
The population of Iran is 92.4 million people. You now know more than that Harvard Law School-educated U.S. Senator from Texas, Ted Cruz.
If you have persevered to the end of this long story, you certainly know more about Iranian history than the current President of the United States, who found it necessary to drop a total of 14 bunker-buster bombs on Iranian nuclear facilities. He declared the operation a complete success. That assessment should be taken with a fair amount of skepticism. Remember, the Eisenhower Administration thought that Operation Ajax was a complete success. In retrospect, after 72 years and everything that has transpired between Iran and the United States, I think a different opinion might be in order.
What would have happened if the Eisenhower Administration had not decided to overthrow the democratically elected government in Iran in 1953? How different would the Middle East look? Would democracy have flourished? Would it have spread to other countries in the region? Would there be peace in the Middle East? Unfortunately, we will never know.
Why did you Americans do that terrible thing?…We always loved America. To us, America was the great country, the perfect country, the country that helped us while other countries were exploiting us. But after that moment, no one in Iran ever trusted the United States again. I can tell you for sure that if you had not done that thing, you would never have had that problem of hostages being taken in your embassy in Tehran. All your trouble started in 1953. Why, why did you do it?4
Stephen Kinzer, All the Shah’s Men, John Wiley and Sons, Inc., 2003
Stephen Kinzer, All the Shah’s Men, John Wiley and Sons, Inc., 2003
Stephen Kinzer, All the Shah’s Men, John Wiley and Sons, Inc., 2003
Stephen Kinzer, All the Shah’s Men, John Wiley and Sons, Inc., 2003
As told to Stephen Kinzer at a book party for an Iranian woman who had written her memoirs, in response to a question he asked her about the coup.
Note: In doing research for this article, I relied upon several sources: Wikipedia, CBS News, and the Grey Art Museum. For the account of the August 19th coup, All the Shah’s Men, by Stephen Kinzer, was where I obtained my information. I can’t recommend this book highly enough. It reads like a novel. I’m surprised no one has made it into a feature film.