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Mohammad Mosaddegh or Mosaddeq (Persian: محمد مصدّق), also Mossadegh, Mossadeq, Mosadeck, or Musaddiq (19 May 1882 – 5 March 1967), was the democratically elected Prime Minister of Iran from 1951 to 1953 when he was overthrown in a coup d'état backed by the United States Central Intelligence Agency. From
a royal and aristocratic background, Mosaddegh was an author,
administrator, lawyer, prominent parliamentarian, and politician.
During his time as prime minister, a wide range of progressive social
reforms were carried out. Unemployment compensation was introduced,
factory owners were ordered to pay benefits to sick and injured
workers, and peasants were freed from forced labor in their landlords'
estates. Twenty percent of the money landlords received in rent was
placed in a fund to pay for development projects such as public baths,
rural housing, and pest control. He
is most famous as the architect of the nationalization of the Iranian
oil industry, which had been under British control since 1913 through
the Anglo - Iranian Oil Company (AIOC) (later British Petroleum or BP). The Anglo - Iranian Oil Co. was controlled by the British government. Mosaddegh was removed from power in a coup on 19 August 1953, organised and carried out by the United States CIA at the request of the British MI6 which chose Iranian General Fazlollah Zahedi to succeed Mosaddegh. The CIA called the coup Operation Ajax after its CIA cryptonym, and as the 28 Mordad 1332 coup in Iran, after its date on the Iranian calendar. Mosaddegh was imprisoned for three years, then put under house arrest until his death. Mossadegh was born to a prominent family in Tehran in 1882; his father, Mirza Hideyatu'llah Khan, a Bakhtiari tribesman, was a financial administrator in Khorasan province under the Qajar dynasty and his mother, Shahzadi Malika Taj Khanum, was the granddaughter of the reformist Qajar prince Abbas Mirza, and a great granddaughter of Fat′h-Ali Shah Qajar. When Mosaddegh's father died in 1892, his uncle was appointed the tax collector of the Khorasan province and was bestowed with the title of Mosaddegh-os-Saltaneh by Nasser al-Din Shah. Mosaddegh himself later bore the same title, by which he was still known to some long after titles were abolished. In 1901, Mosaddegh married Zahra Khanum (1879 – 1965), a granddaughter of Nasser al-Din Shah through
her mother. The couple had five children, two sons (Ahmad and Ghulam
Hussein) and three daughters (Mansura, Zia Ashraf and Khadija).
Mosaddegh received his Bachelor of Arts and Masters in (International) Law from University of Paris (Sorbonne) before pursuing a Doctorate in Law from the University of Neuchâtel in Switzerland. Mosaddegh also taught at the University of Tehran at the start of WWI before beginning his long political career. Mosaddegh started his career in Iranian politics with the Iranian Constitutional Revolution, at the age of 24, he was elected from Isfahan to the newly inaugurated Persian Parliament, the Majlis of Iran.
In 1920, after being self-exiled to Switzerland in protest of the Anglo
- Persian Treaty of 1919, he was invited by the new Persian Prime
Minister, Hassan Pirnia (Moshir-ed-Dowleh),
to become his Minister of Justice; but while en-route to Tehran, he was
asked by the people of Shiraz to become the Governor of the Fars Province. He was later appointed Finance Minister, in the government of Ahmad Qavam (Qavam os-Saltaneh) in 1921, and then Foreign Minister in the government of Moshir-ed-Dowleh in June 1923. He then became Governor of the Azerbaijan Province. In 1923, he was re-elected to The National Assembly of Iran, known as the Majlis. In 1925, the supporters of Reza Khan in the Majlis, proposed legislation to dissolve the Qajar dynasty and
appoint Reza Khan the new Shah. Mossadegh voted against Reza Khan's
decision to crown himself Reza Shah Pahlevi, arguing that such an act
was a subversion of the 1906 Iranian constitution.
He gave a speech in the Majlis, praising Reza Khan's achievements as a
statesman, while encouraging him to respect the constitution and become
the Prime Minster, not the Shah. On December 12, 1925, the Majlis
deposed the young Ahmad Shah Qajar, and declared Reza Shah the new monarch of the Imperial State of Persia, and the first Shah of the Pahlavi dynasty. In 1941 Reza Shah Pahlavi was forced to abdicate in favor of his son Mohammad Reza Pahlavi by
the British with the help of Mosaddegh, and by 1944 Mosaddegh was once
again elected to parliament. This time he took the lead of Jebhe Melli (National Front of Iran), an organisation he had founded with nineteen others such as Hossein Fatemi, Ahmad Zirakzadeh, Ali Shayegan and Karim Sanjabi, to establish a democracy and reduce British influence in Iran. Most of Iran's oil reserves were in the Persian Gulf area
and had been developed by the British Anglo - Iranian Oil Company
(AIOC)
for export to Britain. For a number of reasons — a growing
consciousness of how little Iran was getting from the AIOC for its oil;
refusal of the AIOC to offer of a ‘50–50% profit sharing deal' to Iran
as Aramco had to Saudi Arabia; anger over Iran's defeat and occupation
by the Allied powers — nationalization of oil was an important and
popular issue with "a broad cross section of the Iranian people." General Haj-Ali Razmara,
the Shah's choice, was approved as prime minister June 1950. On 3 March
1951 he appeared before the Majlis (parliament) in an attempt to
persuade the deputies against "full nationalization on the grounds that
Iran could not override its international obligations and lacked the
capacity to run the oil industry on its own." He was assassinated four
days later by Khalil Tahmasebi, a member of the militant fundamentalist group Fadayan-e Islam. This
order of events, while appearing in many mainstream historical
accounts, confronts countervailing evidence. Firstly, "[US] embassy
staffers early on speculated that Razmara might either be assassinated
or become involved in a power struggle with the Shah." These two concerns appear to converge according to Steven Kinzer, who notes that: “[e]vidence
emerged to suggest that the fatal shot had been fired not by Tahmasibi
but by a soldier acting on behalf of the Shah or members of his inner
circle, and that Asadollah Alam had
knowingly driven him to his fatal rendezvous. Years later a retired
Iranian colonel wrote in his memoir that the fatal shot had come from a
Colt revolver, available only to soldiers. “An army sergeant, in
civilian clothes, was chosen for the deed”, he asserted. “He had been
told to shoot and kill Razmara with a Colt, the moment Tahmasibi began
to shoot… Those who had examined the wounds in Razmara’s body were in
no doubt that he had been killed by a Colt bullet, not by the bullet of a weak gun.” While this account is corroborated by several other studies, it
remains a point of contention among historians. After negotiations for
higher oil royalties failed, on 15 March and 20 March 1951, the Iranian Majlis and Senate voted to nationalize the British owned and operated AIOC, taking control of Iran's oil industry. Another force for nationalization was the Tudeh or
Communist party. In early April 1951 the party organised nationwide
strikes and riots in protest against delays in nationalization of the
oil industry along with low wages and bad housing in the oil industry.
This display of strength, along with public celebration at the
assassination of General Razmara made an impact on the deputies of the
Majlis. On 28 April 1951, the Majlis (Parliament of Iran)
named Mosaddegh as new prime minister by a vote of 79 – 12. Aware of
Mosaddegh's rising popularity and political power, the young Shah
appointed Mosaddegh to the Premiership. On 1 May, Mosaddegh
nationalized the AIOC, cancelling its oil concession due to expire in
1993 and expropriating its assets. The next month a committee of five
majlis deputies was sent to Khuzistan to enforce the nationalization. Mosaddegh explained his nationalisation policy in a 21 June 1951 speech: The
confrontation between Iran and Britain escalated as Mosaddegh's
government refused to allow the British any involvement in Iran's oil
industry, and Britain made sure Iran could sell no oil. In July,
Mosaddegh broke off negotiations with AIOC after it threatened "to pull
out its employees", and told owners of oil tanker ships that "receipts
from the Iranian government would not be accepted on the world market."
Two months later the AIOC evacuated its technicians and closed down the
oil installations. Under nationalized management many refineries lacked
the trained technicians that were needed to continue production. The
British government announced a de facto blockade, reinforced its naval force in the Persian Gulf and lodged complaints against Iran before the United Nations Security Council. The
British government also threatened legal action against purchasers of
oil produced in the formerly British controlled refineries and obtained
an agreement with its sister international oil companies not to fill in
where the AIOC was boycotting Iran. The entire Iranian oil industry
came to a virtual standstill, oil production dropping from
241,400,000 barrels (38,380,000 m3) in 1950 to 10,600,000 barrels (1,690,000 m3) in 1952. This Abadan Crisis reduced
Iran's oil income to almost nil, putting a severe strain on the
implementation of Mosaddegh's promised domestic reforms. At the same
time BP and Aramco doubled
their production in Saudi Arabia, Kuwait and Iraq, to make up for lost
production in Iran so that no hardship was felt in Britain. Still
enormously popular in late 1951, Mosaddegh called elections. His base
of support was in urban areas and not in the provinces. This
fact was reflected in the rejection of Mosaddegh's bill for electoral
reform (which no longer disqualified illiterates from electoral
participation) by the conservative bloc, on the grounds that it would
"unjustly discriminate patriots who had been voting for the last forty
years". According
to Ervand Abrahamian: "Realizing that the opposition would take the
vast majority of the provincial seats, Mosaddegh stopped the voting as
soon as 79 deputies – just enough to form a parliamentary quorum — had
been elected." An alternative account is offered by Stephen Kinzer. Beginning in the early 1950s under the guidance of C.M. Woodhouse,
chief of the British intelligence station in Tehran, Britain's covert
operations network had funneled roughly £10,000 per month to the
Rashidian brothers (two of Iran's most influential royalists) in the
hope of buying off, according to CIA estimates, "the armed forces, the
Majlis (Iranian parliament), religious leaders, the press, street
gangs, politicians and other influential figures". Thus,
in his statement asserting electoral manipulation by "foreign agents",
Mosaddegh suspended the elections. His National Front party had made up
30 of the 79 deputies elected. Yet none of those present vetoed the
statement, and the elections were postponed indefinitely. The 17th Majlis convened on February 1952. Tension
soon began to escalate in the Majlis. Conservative opponents refused to
grant Mosaddegh special powers to deal with the economic crisis caused
by the sharp drop in revenue and voiced regional grievances against the
capital Tehran, while the National Front waged "a propaganda war
against the landed upper class". On 16 July 1952, during the royal approval of his new cabinet,
Mosaddegh insisted on the constitutional prerogative of the prime
minister to name a Minister of War and the Chief of Staff, something
the Shah had done hitherto. The Shah refused, and Mosaddegh announced
his resignation appealing directly to the public for support,
pronouncing that "in the present situation, the struggle started by the
Iranian people cannot be brought to a victorious conclusion". Veteran politician Ahmad Qavam (also
known as Ghavam os-Saltaneh) was appointed as Iran's new prime
minister. On the day of his appointment, he announced his intention to
resume negotiations with the British to end the oil dispute, a reversal
of Mosaddegh's policy. The National Front — along with various
Nationalist, Islamist, and socialist parties and groups —
including Tudeh — responded by calling for protests, strikes and mass
demonstrations in favor of Mosaddegh. Major strikes broke out in all of
Iran's major towns, with the Bazaar closing down in Tehran. Over 250
demonstrators in Tehran, Hamadan, Ahvaz, Isfahan, and Kermanshah were
killed or suffered serious injuries. After five days of mass demonstrations on Siyeh-i Tir (the
30th of Tir on the Iranian calendar), military commanders, ordered
their troops back to barracks, fearful of overstraining the enlisted
men's loyalty and left Tehran in the hands of the protesters. Frightened
by the unrest, Shah dismissed Qavam and re-appointed Mosaddegh,
granting him the full control of the military he had previously
demanded. More
popular than ever, a greatly strengthened Mosaddegh convinced
parliament to grant him emergency powers for six months "to decree any
law he felt necessary for obtaining not only financial solvency, but
also electoral, judicial, and educational reforms". Mosaddegh appointed Ayatollah Abol-Ghasem Kashani as house speaker. Kashani's Islamic scholars, as well as the Tudeh Party, proved to be two of Mosaddegh's key political allies, although relations with both were often strained. With
his emergency powers, Mosaddegh tried to strengthen the democratic
political institutions by limiting the monarchy's unconstitutional
powers, cutting Shah's personal budget, forbidding him to communicate directly with
foreign diplomats, transferring royal lands back to the state and
expelling his politically active sister Ashraf Pahlavi. In
January 1953 Mosaddegh successfully pressed Parliament to extend
"emergency powers for another 12 months". With these powers, he decreed
a land reform law that established village councils and increased the
peasants' share of production. This weakened the landed aristocracy, abolishing Iran's centuries old feudal agriculture sector. However
during this time Iranians were "becoming poorer and unhappier by the
day" thanks to the British boycott. Mosaddegh's political coalition
began to fray, his enemies increased in number.
Partly
through the efforts of Iranians working as British agents, several
former members of Mosaddegh's coalition turned against him. They
included Muzzaffar Bazaui, head of the worker based Toilers party;
Hussein Makki, who had helped lead the takeover of the Abadan refinery
and was at one point considered Mosadegh's heir apparent; and most
outspokenly Ayatollah Kashani, who damned Mosaddegh with the "vitriol
he had once reserved for the British". The
government of the United Kingdom had grown increasingly distressed over
Mosaddegh's policies and were especially bitter over the loss of their
control of the Iranian oil industry. Repeated attempts to reach a
settlement had failed. Unable
to resolve the issue single handedly due to its post World War II
problems, Britain looked towards the United States to settle the issue.
Initially America had opposed British policies. After American
mediation had failed several times to bring about a settlement,
American Secretary of State Dean Acheson concluded that the British
were "destructive and determined on a rule or ruin policy in Iran." By
early 1953, however, Dwight D. Eisenhower won the presidential election
in the United States and a change in US policy toward Iran ensued. Despite Mosaddegh's open disgust with socialism, Winston Churchill told the United States that Mosaddegh was "increasingly turning towards communism" and was moving Iran towards the Soviet sphere at a time of high Cold War fears. Acting
on the opposition to Mosaddegh by the British government and fears that
he was, or would become, dependent on the pro-Soviet Tudeh Party at a time of expanding Soviet influence, the United States and Britain began to publicly denounce Mosaddegh's policies for Iran as harmful to the country. In
the meantime the already precarious alliance between Mosaddegh and
Kashani was severed in January 1953, when Kashani opposed Mosaddegh's
demand that his increased powers be extended for a period of one year.
In October 1952, Mosaddegh declared Britain an enemy, and cut all
diplomatic relations. In
November and December 1952, British intelligence officials suggested to
American intelligence that the prime minister should be ousted. The new
US administration under Dwight D. Eisenhower and the British government under Winston Churchill agreed to work together toward Mosaddegh's removal. In March 1953, Secretary of State John Foster Dulles directed the US Central Intelligence Agency (CIA), which was headed by his younger brother Allen Dulles, to draft plans to overthrow Mosaddegh. On
4 April 1953, CIA director Dulles approved US$1 million to be used "in
any way that would bring about the fall of Mosaddegh". Soon the CIA's Tehran station started to launch a propaganda campaign against Mosaddegh. Finally, according to The New York Times, in early June, American and British intelligence officials met again, this time in Beirut,
and put the finishing touches on the strategy. Soon afterward,
according to his later published accounts, the chief of the CIA's Near
East and Africa division, Kermit Roosevelt, Jr. the grandson of U.S. President Theodore Roosevelt, arrived in Tehran to direct it. In 2000, The New York Times made partial publication of a leaked CIA document titled, Clandestine Service History – Overthrow of Premier Mosaddegh of Iran – November 1952 - August 1953.
This document describes the point-by-point planning of the coup by
agent Donald Wilbur, and execution conducted by the American and
British governments. The New York Times published this critical
document with the names censored. The New York Times also limited its
publication to scanned image (bitmap) format, rather than
machine readable text. This document was eventually published properly
– in text form, and fully unexpurgated. The complete CIA document is now web published. The word ‘blowback' appeared for the very first time in this document. The plot, known as Operation Ajax,
centered on convincing Iran's monarch to issue a decree to dismiss
Mosaddegh from office, as he had attempted some months earlier. But the
Shah was terrified to attempt such a dangerously unpopular and legally
questionable move, and it would take much persuasion and many U.S.
funded meetings, which included bribing his sister Ashraf with a mink
coat and money, to successfully change his mind. Mosaddegh became aware of the plots against him and grew increasingly wary of conspirators acting within his government. Mosaddegh then moved to dissolve the parliament "by calling for a national referendum". After taking the additional step of abolishing the Constitutional guarantee of a secret ballot, Mosaddegh's victory in the national plebiscite was assured. The electorate was forced into a non-secret ballot and Mosaddegh won "99.9 percent the vote" in the Aug. 4, 1953 referendum. On or around Aug. 16, Mosaddegh "overreached, playing into the C.I.A.'s hands by dissolving Parliament", and Mosaddegh's emergency powers were extended. A few days later on Aug. 19, 1953, Mosaddegh was rounded up as the CIA backed coup came to a successful end. He was then tried, imprisoned for three years and kept "under house arrest at his estate" until he died in March 1967.
In August 1953, the Shah finally succumbed to the CIA plot, having been finally told by Roosevelt that
the U.S. would proceed with him or without him, and formally dismissed
the Prime Minister in a written decree, an act explicitly permitted
under the constitution. Then, as a precautionary measure, he flew to Baghdad and
from there hid safely in Rome, Italy. He actually signed two decrees,
one dismissing Mosaddegh and the other nominating the CIA's choice,
General Fazlollah Zahedi, as Prime Minister. These decrees, or Farmāns as
they are called, were specifically written as dictated by Donald Wilbur
the CIA architect of the plan, which were designed as a major part of
Wilbur's strategy to give the impression of legitimacy to the secret
coup, as can be read in the declassified plan itself which bears his
name. Wilbur was later given a letter of commendation by Alan Dulles,
CIA head, for his work. It too is now declassified, and appears in
Wilbur's autobiography.
Soon,
massive protests, engineered by Roosevelt's team, took place across the
city and elsewhere with tribesmen paid to be at the ready to assist the
coup. Fake anti- and pro-monarchy protesters, both paid by Roosevelt, violently clashed in the streets,
looting and burning mosques and newspapers, leaving almost 300 dead.
The pro-monarchy leadership, chosen, hidden and finally unleashed at
the right moment by the CIA team, led by retired army General and
former Minister of Interior in Mosaddegh's cabinet, Fazlollah Zahedi joined with underworld figures such as the Rashidian brothers and local strongman Shaban Jafari, to
gain the upper hand on 19 August 1953 (28 Mordad). The military joined
on cue: pro-Shah tank regiments stormed the capital and bombarded the
prime minister's official residence, on Roosevelt's cue, according to
his book. Mosaddegh managed to flee from the mob that set in to ransack
his house, and, the following day, surrendered to General Zahedi, who
was meanwhile set up by the CIA with makeshift headquarters at the
Officers' Club. Mosaddegh was arrested at the Officers' Club and
transferred to a military jail shortly after. Shortly
after the return of the Shah, on 22 August 1953, from his flight to
Rome, Mosaddegh was tried by a military tribunal for high treason.
Zahedi and the Shah were inclined, however, to spare the man's life
(the death penalty would have applied according to the laws of the
day). Mosaddegh received a sentence of 3 years in solitary confinement
at a military jail and was exiled to his village not far from Tehran,
where he remained under house arrest on his estate until his death, on
5 March 1967. Zahedi's
new government soon reached an agreement with foreign oil companies to
form a consortium and "restore the flow of Iranian oil to world markets
in substantial quantities", giving the U.S. and Great Britain the
lion's share of Iran's oil. In return, the U.S. massively funded the
Shah's resulting government, including his army and secret police
force, SAVAK, until the Shah's overthrow in 1979. The secret U.S. overthrow of Mosaddegh served as a rallying point in anti-US protests during the 1979 Iranian Revolution and to this day he is said to be one of the most popular figures in Iranian history. Despite this he is generally ignored by the government of the Islamic Republic because of his secularism and western manners. The
withdrawal of support for Mosaddegh by the powerful Shia clergy has
been regarded as having been motivated by their fear of the chaos of a
communist takeover. Some argue that while many elements of Mosaddegh's coalition abandoned him it was the loss of support from Ayatollah Abol-Ghasem Kashani and other clergy that was fatal to his cause, reflective of the dominance of the Ulema in
Iranian society and a portent of the Islamic Revolution to come. The
loss of the political clerics effectively cut Mosaddegh's connections
with the lower middle classes and the Iranian masses which are crucial
to any popular movement in Iran. The
US role in Mosaddegh's overthrow was not formally acknowledged for many
years, although the Eisenhower administration vehemently opposed
Mossadegh's policies. President Eisenhower wrote angrily about
Mosaddegh in his memoirs, describing him as impractical and naive.
However, Eisenhower did not admit any involvement with the coup. Eventually
the CIA's involvement with the coup was exposed. This caused
controversy within the organization and the CIA congressional hearings
of the 1970s. CIA supporters maintained that the coup was strategically
necessary, and praised the efficiency of the agents responsible.
Critics say the scheme was paranoid, colonial, illegal, and immoral. In March 2000, Secretary of State Madeleine Albright stated
her regret that Mosaddegh was ousted: "The Eisenhower administration
believed its actions were justified for strategic reasons. But the coup
was clearly a setback for Iran's political development and it is easy
to see now why many Iranians continue to resent this intervention by
America." In the same year, The New York Times published a detailed report about the coup based on declassified CIA documents. Due to his worldwide popularity, defiance of Britain, and fight for democracy, Mosaddegh was named as Time Magazine's 1951 Man of the Year. Others considered for that year's title included Dean Acheson, then General (and future President) Dwight D. Eisenhower and General Douglas MacArthur. In early 2004, the Egyptian government changed a street name in Cairo from Pahlavi to Mosaddegh to improve relations with Iran. |