1953 coup exposed true face of US to Iranian people

1953 coup in Iran, coup d’état in Iran that occurred in August 1953. Funded by the United States and the United Kingdom, it removed Mohammad Mosaddegh from power and restored Mohammad Reza Shah Pahlavi as Iran’s King. Some 300 people died during fighting in Tehran.

With its strategic location and vast oil reserves, Iran was of special interest to the United States, the United Kingdom, and other powers. Britain had established a presence in the country during World War II to protect a vital supply route to its ally the Soviet Union and to prevent the oil from falling into German hands. After the war, the United Kingdom effectively retained control over Iran’s oil through the establishment of the Anglo-Iranian Oil Company.

This arrangement changed abruptly in 1951 when the Iranian parliament, led by Mosaddegh’s nationalist and democratically elected government, voted to nationalize the country’s oil industry. Seeing its interests thus threatened, the UK embarked on a secret campaign to weaken and destabilize Mosaddegh. At first the British government tried to convince the shah to remove Mossadegh from office by engineering a parliamentary decree, a ploy that both failed and enhanced Mosaddegh’s reputation while diminishing the shah’s. When the push to remove Mosaddegh evolved into the idea of a coup to overthrow the government, Britain, reluctant to shoulder the responsibility alone, persuaded the U.S. to join forces by playing on Cold War fears. 

To know more about the US and the UK goals behind the coup, we reached out to Dr. David Yaghoubian, a Professor of History at California State University, San Bernardino. 

Here is the full text of the interview: 

What were the goals behind the US and UK orchestrated coup? 

The 1953 coup in Iran was orchestrated to fulfill the goal of the UK and the US to simultaneously crush the oil nationalization movement and replace Iran’s democratically elected government with the dictatorship of the puppet Pahlavi regime. It enabled a consortium of western companies to subsequently control Iranian oil, and Mohamad Reza Pahlavi to remain on the throne to serve foreign interests, against the will of the Iranian people and to their collective detriment. Although the 1953 coup was not intended to sow the seeds of revolution in Iran, ultimately this was its primary accomplishment.

Why was the nationalization of the Iranian oil industry so important for them that they couldn't tolerate Iran's democratic then government? 

As the largest source of crude under the control of the UK, the nationalization of the AIOC in 1951 was intolerable for a dying British empire, which initially resorted to enforcing a global boycott of Iranian oil, before successfully manipulating Cold War fears of the new American presidential administration in 1953 to motivate collective action to carry out the coup. Paralleling Eisenhower administration concerns about potential Soviet interests was a clear desire to exert American control over Iranian oil (and thus over British energy resources) evidenced by the equal US/UK division of spoils via the 1954 consortium. Dividing Iran’s oil wealth among this consortium of foreign companies would never be an acceptable proposition to democratically elected Iranian leadership, thus the coup was designed to implant a compliant and subservient comprador government in Iran to serve overlapping British and American interests.

How has the US-orchestrated coup affected the relations between the two countries since then up to now? 

The 1953 US-orchestrated coup was the crucible of modern Iran-US relations. The coup itself and subsequent American-enabled abuses of the Pahlavi dictatorship (such as the horrors of SAVAK) exposed the true face of the United States government to the Iranian people, who rose up collectively to expel the American Shah, and the tens of thousands of US military advisors and contractors that his regime employed. The success and durability of the Iranian revolution since 1979 simply drives American imperialists mad. Nearly a half century of failed attempts at coercion, bullying, provocation, vilification, global ostracization, and even starvation (according to former US Secretary of State Mike Pompeo) since the revolution have only served to isolate the United States and further point out its rapid decline. Having failed to keep the Iranian nation down via their puppet dictator (1953-1979), failed to destroy Iran via support of the Iraqi Baathists (1980-1988), and subsequently failed to contain, retard, control, or otherwise influence the trajectory of the Islamic Republic and its alliances, US empire has been effectively checked in the region.

Do you see any changes in the colonial policies of the US?  Have they stopped it or just changed the methods?

Rather than changes in colonial policies or employment of different methods I see abject failure, continuity, and self-defeating stupidity on a vast scale, in conjunction with the inexplicable attempt to double down on unsuccessful policies of the past. Until American imperialists can come to grips with the fact that the United States will never achieve global hegemony and “full spectrum dominance,” and that their efforts to promote such US unipolar primacy are demonstrably absurd and counterproductive, the United States will continue to pursue policies and short-term objectives that will ultimately benefit only the military-industrial complex, while hastening the demise of American power, legitimacy, and relevance. Consider American policies that sustained the criminal occupation of Iraq, Syria, and Afghanistan, the carnage in Yemen and Libya, as well as the ongoing attempt to destroy Palestinian society in a wholly US-enabled genocidal project. Murder, destruction, and chaos continue to be the hallmarks of US foreign policy in West Asia. While the more sociopathic members of the American political establishment would claim that these results constitute success in the context of “containment,” area denial, and the twisted concept of “constructive instability,” the US position across the region, physically as well as diplomatically, becomes weaker and more perilous by the day. Its global reputation and legitimacy have never been lower in history. Yet on this 71st anniversary of the 1953 coup in Iran, in light of history and current events—including but not limited to the daily slaughter of Palestinian civilians—what does the United States continue to promote in the region besides more waste, tension, division, conflict, color revolution, war, and genocide? Nothing.