SubscribeKinzer would have been better off making a less sweeping judgment: that TPAJAX got the CIA into the regime-change business for good—similar efforts would soon follow in Guatemala, Indonesia, and Cuba—but that the Agency has had little success at that enterprise, while bringing itself and the United States more political ill will, and breeding more untoward results, than any other of its activities. Most of the CIA's acknowledged efforts of this sort have shown that Washington has been more interested in strongman rule in the Middle East and elsewhere than in encouraging democracy. The result is a credibility problem that accompanied American troops into Iraq and continues to plague them as the United States prepares to hand over sovereignty to local authorities. All the Shah's Men helps clarify why, when many Iraqis heard President George Bush concede that "[s]ixty years of Western nations excusing and accommodating the lack of freedom in the Middle East did nothing to make us safe," they may have reacted with more than a little skepticism.
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US Iran Policy - An Interview with Stephen Kinzer
Viewpoints: Iran's nuclear crisis
Secrets of History: The CIA in Iran
Visit of his Excellency Mohammad Mossadegh, Prime Minister of Iran, to the United States of America, October 6 to November 18, 1951.
The New York Times review of All the Shah's Men.
In 50 Years After the CIA’s First Overthrow of a Democratically Elected Foreign Government We Take a Look at the 1953 US Backed Coup in Iran, Kinzer provides the story in its gist:
The Anglo-Iranian Oil Company arrived in Iran in the early part of the twentieth century. It soon struck the largest oil well that had ever been found in the world. And for the next half-century, it pumped out hundreds of millions of dollars worth of oil from Iran. Now, Britain held this monopoly. That meant it only had to give Iran a small amount--it turned out to be 16 percent--of the profits from what it produced. So the Iranian oil is actually what maintained Britain at its level of prosperity and its level of military preparedness all throughout the '30s, the '40s, and the '50s. Meanwhile, Iranians were getting a pittance, they were getting almost nothing from the oil that came out of their own soil. Naturally, as nationalist ideas began to spread through the world in the post-World War II era, this injustice came to grate more and more intensely on the Iranian people. So they carried Mossadegh to power very enthusiastically. On the day he was elected prime minister, Parliament also agreed unanimously to proceed with the nationalization of the oil company. And the British responded as you would imagine. Their first response was disbelief. They just couldn't believe that someone in some weird faraway country--which was the way they perceived Iran--would stand up and challenge such an important monopoly. This was actually the largest company in the entire British Empire. When it finally became clear that Mossadegh was quite serious, the British decided to launch an invasion. They drew up plans for seizing the oil refinery and the oil fields. But President Truman went nuts when he heard this and he told the British, under no circumstances can we possibly tolerate a British invasion of Iran. So then the British went to their next plan, which was to get a United Nations resolution demanding that Mossadegh return the oil company. But Mossadegh embraced this idea of a U.N. debate so enthusiastically that he decided to come to New York himself and he was so impressive that the U.N. refused to adopt the British motion. So finally, the British decided that they would stage a coup, they would overthrow Mossadegh. But what happened, Mossadegh found out about this and he did the only thing he could have done to protect himself against the coup. He closed the British embassy and he sent all the British diplomats packing, including, among them, all the secret agents who were planning to stage the coup. So now, the British had to turn to the United States. They went to Truman and asked him, please overthrow Mossadegh for us. He said no. He said the C.I.A. had never overthrown a government and, as far as he was concerned, it never should. So, now, the British were completely without resources. They couldn't launch an invasion, the U.N. had turned down their complaint, they had no agents to stage a coup. So they were stymied. It wasn't until November of 1952 when British foreign office and intelligence officials received the electrifying news that Dwight Eisenhower had been elected president that things began to change. They rushed one of their agents over to Washington. He made a special appeal to the incoming Eisenhower administration. And that administration reversed the Truman policy agreed to send Kermit Roosevelt to Tehran to carry out this fateful coup.
Also related are parts 1, 2 and 3 of Why Israel Really Fears Iranian Nukes - Tel Aviv's concern about an Iranian bomb is more likely political rather than military by Roger Howard.
And here is Push for Nuclear-Free Middle East Resurfaces - Arab Nations Seek Answers About Israel
And once again, for the Tom Clancy minded fans of an American or Israeli strike against Iran, consider the less rosy scenarios of
Will Iran Be Next? - Soldiers, spies, and diplomats conduct a classic Pentagon war game-with sobering results.
and
Four Day War - The Iran/Israel conflagration, a history.
posted by y2karl at 9:20 AM on March 7, 2005