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

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Their decision to make Iran the first battleground of their crusade may or may not have been wise, but they deserve to be judged harshly for the way they made it," he writes. "Even before taking their oaths of office, both brothers had convinced themselves beyond all doubt that Mossadegh must go. They never even considered the possibility that a coup might be a bad idea or that it might have negative consequences. History might view their action more favorably if it had been the result of serious, open-minded reflection and debate. Instead, it sprang from petulant impatience, from a burning desire to do something, anything, that would seem like a victory over communism. . . . Iran was the place they chose to start showing the world that the United States was no longer part of what Vice President Richard Nixon called 'Dean Acheson's college of cowardly Communist containment.' " For example, it is hard to see how Eisenhower could take advantage of Mossadeq’s mishaps when he was informed by his intelligence services that the “CIA presently has no group which would be effective in spreading anti-Mossadeq mass propaganda” and the “CIA has no group in Iran which could effectively promote riots demonstrating against Mossadeq.” (from recently declassified CIA documents) Less flattering is portrayal of the Iranian monarchy. But it is the British that leave the worst impression in this While being very curious about the erstwhile Persia, most of the available media-supplied images of Iran were couched in extreme anti-American rhetoric, nary a hint about why the people of that land might be so antagonistic. Kinzer fills in the gaps & does so in an almost politically neutral manner. As the saying has it, "the devil is in the details" and the way the story of the CIA-led overthrow of an elected Iranian government unfolds, seems almost comic at times, with anti-Mossadegh protestors being somewhat randomly hired by the CIA, at times reminding one of an early scene from the recent film Argo. What happened hardly represnts a distinguished moment in American diplomatic history. This is the story of the oil-nationalization episode in Iran and the rise and fall of Mohammad Mosaddeq, the leader who embodied his people’s hopes for taking control of their destiny. This book however, is mainly concerned with depicting how the United States and the British governments tried to influence the event through gunboat diplomacy.

The 1953 US engineered coup in Iran profoundly changed history. Despite Mossadegh’s worldwide 1951 fame, few Americans today would likely know who he was or how America took him down. Yet in Iran he is remembered by all as a hero. Thus most Americans cannot understand how Iranians see the US and the world. In 2015 we are still bearing the repercussions of colonialism exacerbated by Cold War tunnel vision. Kinzer offers up an apt quote from Harry Truman,” There is nothing new in the world except the history you don’t know.”

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Part of what makes All The Shah's Men: An American Coup & the Roots of Middle East Terror so fascinating is Stephen Kinzer's ability to put all of the details into historical context and still formulate his story in a way that causes it to read like a spy novel at times. I initially read this book on the American involvement in Iran when I was awaiting an Iranian visa to visit a country that was officially listed as part of the "Axis of Evil". Not only the reality of politics has no heroes - it also has no good guys and bad guys. This is the truth. i129312289 |b1160002917752 |dvlnf |g- |m |h4 |x1 |t0 |i2 |j70 |k200207 |n06-21-2022 00:19 |o- |a955.05 |rKIN With all that’s happened, it’s hard to believe that things could have gone differently. But that is Stephen Kinzer’s conclusion in All the Shah’s Men, his concise, efficiently presented tale about the overthrow of Iranian Prime Minister Mohammed Mossadegh in 1953. According to Kinzer, this vigorous meddling with Iran’s sovereignty poisoned the well from which both countries are still drinking.

But this book seems to have its good guys and bad guys: the story goes that the magnificent "reforming" "democratic" leader of Iran Mohammed Mossadegh was overthrown solely by the evil CIA in the 1950s and put in place the "evil" "autocratic" and "unpopular" Shah who was overthrown in 1979 by the masses of Iran yearning to be free. 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. 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. Iran had been ruled by a monarch, the Shah (or "king"), for centuries. In the mid-1800s, the Qajar Dynasty under Nasir al-Din Shah began to sell concessions (ie. access) to Iran's natural resources to support a lavish lifestyle instead of benefitting his people. There were no terms of parity as Iran essentially became a cog in Great Britain's industrial empire. Perpetuating his father's practices, Muzzafir al-Din Shah had sold in 1901 the most pivotal concession in his country's history -- access to Iran's natural gas and petroleum for 60 years. After the Mongol conquest of 1220 the Safavid dynasty in 1501 established Iran as the center of Shia Islam. At the turn of the 17th century Abbas Shah combined modernization with tyranny, creating artistic marvels in Isfahan. In the mid-18th century Nadir Shah looted Delhi and lands around. The dissolute Qajars ascended to power during the 19th century selling off natural resources. Movements toward reform were delayed by a British-Russian partition in 1907.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. Kinzer has a real gift to write history that is deep, accurate and, at the same time, as gripping as a novel. So when I think about this book I wonder: is it really offering an impartial account of history, by focusing so much on blaming the US for everything? 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) An exciting narrative. [Kinzer] questions whether Americans are well served by interventions for regime change abroad, and he reminds us of the long history of Iranian resistance to great power interventions, as well as the unanticipated consequences of intervention."

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). Stephen Kinzer doesn’t tell anything new and the almost care-free way by which he draws conclusions about the legacy of the coup diminishes the value of the book. To be fair, this is not a historical work and Kinzer has mostly relied on the works of other historians like Elm and Gasiorowski for creating his narrative. The problematic part is his handling of the events surrounding the coup and its aftermath. His depiction of the coup is basically a banal rehashing of the account offered by Kermit Roosevelt, the CIA field-operative who reputedly masterminded the coup and brought it to success, almost single-handedly. Yet the narrative of exclusive American culpability has become so entrenched that it now shapes the way in which many Americans study and understand the history of U.S.-Iranian relations. It also influences how American leaders think about Iran. Including Obama.

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For example, the idea of a coup was also strongly promoted by aggrieved Iranian politicians who believed that Mossadeq’s disastrous course was ill-serving their country. General Fazlullah confirmed the embassy’s view that a nascent anti-Mossadeq coalition already existed and could gain power with very limited American support. The truly sad part of the story concerns American willingness to take over as a pawn of the British, once Mossadegh had the good sense to evict all United Kingdom diplomats (and spies) from his country as their scheming to overthrow him reached fever pitch. The Dulles brothers, key aides to Eisenhower, did not argue that Mossadegh himself was a Communist or was likely to turn to the Soviets, only that they needed him removed to install Mohammed Rezah Shah and bolster him as a hedge against Soviet expansionism. As Kinzer notes, the Dulles brothers showed little awareness of what they were getting their country into with the first U.S. action to overthrow a foreign government. Obviously, this dose of Sufi metaphysics does not explain the storming of the U.S. embassy in 1979 but it serves to humanize Iran for the outsider perhaps more than any listing of the historical achievements of Cyrus the Great or Darius in ancient Persia. Iran has a very rich & complex history & Kinzer builds on that history so that a casual reader can begin to fathom the happenings in 1979 & what led up to that moment in history. Finally all efforts to find a compromise failed and the Eisenhower administration gradually relented to British pressure for ousting Mosaddeq. To some extent it can be said that the Eisenhower administration did so in the interest of safeguarding its alliance with Britain; not because of a real threat of communist takeover but because the United States needed British support in the international scene and knew that a failure to support them in this case will undoubtedly alienate the British government and will weaken their unified stance against the Soviet Union and China. Roger Goiran, the CIA chief in Tehran, vehemently opposed the coup and given the fact that he was responsible for dealing with the communist threat, it only strengthens the argument that the danger of a communist takeover was mostly a fabrication.