Iran's 1953 Coup Couldn't Have Happened Without the

United States
foreignpolicy.com/2023/08/19/mosaddeq-iran-coup-united-states-role

Gregory Brew

Argument

An Iranian-Led Coup Still Needed America’s Help

Despite revisionist claims, documents show the critical U.S. role in

Mosaddeq’s fall.

August 19, 2023, 8:30 AM

By Gregory Brew, a postdoctoral fellow at the Jackson Institute for
Global Affairs at Yale University.

Shah Mohammad Reza Pahlavi and U.S. President Dwight D. Eisenhower ride in
a car.
Shah Mohammad Reza Pahlavi of Iran (right) and U.S. President Dwight D.
Eisenhower drive through cheering crowds in Tehran on Dec. 14, 1959, on their
way to the shah’s palace. The Associated Press

The August 1953 coup in Iran is traditionally seen as the most

significant episodes of the early Cold War, a landmark in U.S. covert
interventions in the Global South, and a watershed moment in the
political history of modern Iran. While the United States supported the
operation to unseat prime minister Mohammad Mosaddeq and replace
him with a new government led by Iran’s shah, Mohammed Reza
Pahlavi, revisionist scholars such as historian Ray Takeyh and
Darioush Bayandor, a former Iranian diplomat, argue that it was
primarily an Iranian affair, with the U.S. playing as secondary or, in
some accounts, a negligible role.
It is true that Mosaddeq would not have fallen from power without
actions undertaken by Iranians. But it is misleading to elide the U.S.
role in the coup, the memory of which continues to continues to haunt
U.S.-Iran relations. Even more importantly, the United States played a
major role in stabilizing the shah’s post-coup regime. Focusing on the
events of August 19 alone obscures Washington’s ultimate aims with
the coup: the return of Iran’s oil resources to foreign control, an
objective the United States achieved roughly one year after
Mosaddeq’s dramatic fall from power.

Following the discovery of oil in 1908, the British-owned Anglo-Iranian

Oil Company (AIOC, later renamed British Petroleum, or BP) operated
Iran’s oil industry, enjoying almost complete autonomy and sharing little
of the resulting wealth with Iran’s government. In April 1951, Iran’s
parliament nominated nationalist leader to be the country’s new prime
minister. Once in power, Mosaddeq nationalized the country’s British-
owned oil industry, promising an end to years of foreign interference in
domestic Iranian politics. The nationalization set off an international
crisis, with the British government arguing Iran’s action was illegal and
placing a blockade on Iran’s oil exports.

Iranian Prime Minister Mohammad Mosaddegh waves.

Iranian Prime Minister Mohammad Mosaddeq speaks to a crowd in Tehran on
Sept. 27, 1951, reiterating his views on the nationalization of oil. Keystone-
France/Gamma-Keystone via Getty Images

Mohammed Mossadegh walks in a crowd.

Mosaddeq waves after arriving at New York International Airport in Idlewild,
Queens, on Oct. 8, 1951. The prime minister was in the United States to plead
his country’s case before the U.N. Security Council on the Anglo-Iranian oil
dispute. Associated Press

Mohammed Mossadegh reads from a piece of paper.

 Mosaddeq appears at a news conference in Tehran on Sept. 17, 1952, to
announce that he was rejecting the offer made by the United States and France
for a settlement of the oil dispute with Britain. Bettmann/Getty Images

The United States supported the British argument but was worried
about Iran’s internal stability. The British blockade, enforced with the
cooperation of major U.S. oil companies, squeezed Iran’s economy
and drained Mosaddeq’s finances. Concerned that such an “oil-less”
state would lead Iran to ruin and eventual communist rule, the United
States spent two years trying to get Mosaddeq to agree to proposals
that would leave Iranian oil in the hands of Western corporations.

But Mosaddeq would not surrender control of Iran’s oil industry, even if
it meant the immiseration of his government. To end the dispute,
reverse nationalization, and preserve Iran from communism, the United
States resolved in early 1953 to remove Mosaddeq from power and
replace him with a new prime minister, former general Fazlollah
Zahedi, with support from the shah.

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Elisabeth Braw
The United States and Britain both played a critical role in making the
coup possible. The United States supplied funds and constructed a
secretariat to coordinate members of Iran’s military who backed the
shah over Mosaddeq. The British utilized their wide-ranging intelligence
network, which included prominent clerics, businessmen, and
politicians. The critical U.S. contribution was convincing the reluctant
shah to take part, as this granted the operation a degree of
constitutional legitimacy. Acting through several intermediaries,
including the shah’s twin sister and former military advisor Gen.
Norman Schwarzkopf, the United States sent assurances to the shah
that he would receive U.S. support once he assumed power and that
the nationalization crisis would be resolved on terms favorable to Iran.
While powerful factions on Iran’s political scene wanted Mosaddeq
gone, repeated efforts to push him out had failed due to a lack of
organization. The United States and Britain provided the funding and
coordination that facilitated the successful coup on Aug. 19, 1953.

A kiosk burns in the street.

A communist newspaper kiosk burns—set on fire by pro-shah demonstrators—in
Tehran on Aug. 19, 1953, a day the coup reestablished the shah’s throne and
ousted Mosaddeq in favor of the shah’s nominee, Gen. Fazlollah Zahedi.
Associated Press

Though the operation was a success, Iran’s government required

further assistance from the United States. The first and most immediate
need was financial: The Eisenhower administration approved $45
million in emergency aid to help the shah and Zahedi cover the state
budget in 1953 and 1954. Over the next decade, the United States
would provide Iran $800 million in economic and military assistance.
Leaving these sums out of the total calculation of costs for the coup—
which on its own cost less than $5 million—obscures the importance of
such aid, both for the United States and for the shah.
Other assistance was less material but no less significant. The CIA
helped the government round up and detain thousands of communists
and leftists, including prominent members of Mosaddeq’s government.
The agency’s connections to the powerful Qashqai tribe, one-time
allies to Mosaddeq who had opposed the shah, helped the new
government defuse a tense showdown between armed tribesmen and
military forces in Iran’s southern provinces. The CIA also assisted the
shah with rigged elections in early 1954, purging prominent nationalists
from political power and reducing the country’s parliament to a rubber-
stamp committee. The U.S. ambassador suggested that “an
undemocratic independent Iran” would be preferable to an Iran
“behind” the “Iron Curtain.”

Declassified documents also indicate that the United States supported

the shah, rather than prime minister Zahedi, in the aftermath of the
coup. Prior to August 1953, most U.S. officials had expressed middling
support for Mohammed Reza Pahlavi, regarding him as a weak and
indecisive ruler, and on at least one occasion suggesting that he
abdicate in favor of one of his brothers. But the monarch returned from
a brief exile in August and quickly asserted personal control over the
government and military. When Zahedi, who had his own ambitions,
turned to the United States for help, he was rebuffed. He slipped into a
secondary role and was ousted by the shah in 1955. Officials in
Washington warmed to the shah and supported the extension of “his
personal hold over the people,” in the belief that it would help solidify
Iran’s pro-Western strategic alignment, thus laying the foundation for
the shah’s subsequent dominance of Iran’s political system.

Mohammad Reza Pahlavi looks at a newspaper; Mohammad Mosaddeq rests his

head on his lawyer’s shoulder.
Left: While in exile in Rome on Aug. 21, 1953, Pahlavi reads reports of the Iranian
coup that resulted in the arrest of Mosaddeq. The shah commented that “right
has prevailed over wrong” and then left Tehran. Right: Mosaddeq rests his head
 on his lawyer’s shoulder during his trial in a military court in Tehran on Nov. 12,
1953. He was sentenced to three years’ imprisonment. Bettmann/Getty Images
and Intercontinentale/AFP via Getty Images

Stabilizing the shah’s government was the short-term objective, but the
larger U.S. goal was pushing through a new oil agreement, both to
return Iranian oil to the market and to ensure a stream of revenue for
the shah’s cash-strapped government. The shah opposed any deal that
reversed nationalization, for fear of the political repercussions, but
acknowledged the need for an agreement to secure additional financial
support from the United States. Moreover, the shah hoped to earn
money from Iran’s oil production—an interest he would maintain
throughout his entire reign—and for that to happen, Iran would need a
new agreement with the Western corporations, as they controlled both
the price and major markets for petroleum.

The final terms of the agreement were reached in August 1954. They
reflected the U.S. desire for a “partial negation of nationalization.”
While a semblance of nationalization was preserved, in reality the
agreement “denationalized” Iran’s industry and put Western
corporations back in control. This control would last, in one form or
another, until the Islamic Revolution of 1979 and the shah’s fall from
power.

The legacy of the coup remains a complicated one, disputed among

both scholars and Iranians seventy years later. Understanding the
events of August 1953, and the precise degree of foreign involvement,
remains difficult given the continued paucity of documentary evidence.
As with many covert operations, there is much we do not know—and
may never know—about the coup to overthrow Mosaddeq.
Yet without U.S. involvement, driven by policies influenced both by
Cold War strategic concerns and a desire to control the oil of the Global
South, the coup against Mosaddeq would not have occurred. The post-
coup government would have struggled with greater instability, and it is
unlikely it would have successfully come to terms with the international
oil companies on a settlement resolving the nationalization crisis. The
United States did not orchestrate or control events, but it did play an
outsized role in facilitating the ultimate outcome, and it got the results it
wanted for decades afterward.
Gregory Brew is a postdoctoral fellow at the Jackson Institute for
Global Affairs at Yale University. He is a historian of oil, the Cold War,
modern Iran, and the Middle East. Twitter: @gbrew24