1953 ouster of PM Mosaddegh of Iran

By C.A.Chandraprema

The joint clandestine operation launched by the USA and Britain to oust Prime Minister Mohamed Mosaddegh of Iran in 1953 was a turning point in world history. (The CIA was established in 1947. Years later, misgivings among the American public resulted in the institution of Congressional inquiries into the secret operations of this organization. As a result of these inquiries, documents pertaining to the CIA’s clandestine operations were made public albeit in a heavily redacted form.  This article is based entirely on the internal documents of the CIA which have thus been released into the public domain by the American government.)

When Iran entered the 1950s, the country had democratic institutions and political organisations that had evolved on the basis of the 1906 Constitution of Iran. Executive power was exercised in the name of the Shah of Iran by a cabinet of ministers headed by a Prime Minister. Legislative power was exercised by a Parliament (Majlis) of 136 elected MPs. The Parliament was vested with the power to nominate the Prime Minister while the Shah could either approve or disapprove of that choice. On 29 April 1951, Mosaddegh was appointed Prime Minister in accordance with that procedure. Within 72 hours of his assumption of office, the Iranian Parliament passed a resolution nationalising the British owned Iranian oil industry.  That turned Britain against the new Prime Minister.

The cold war between Soviet Russia and the West was then at its height and the USA had been observing with great trepidation, the relationship that had been building up between Iran and Soviet Russia over a long period of time. From its very inception Soviet Russia had taken a very friendly attitude towards Iran. Iranian debts to Russia had been written off. Russian interests in several major Iranian infrastructure projects had been voluntarily relinquished. Since 1921, there was an understanding on security issues between the two countries. After the Second World War, three members of the Iranian Communist Party were accommodated in the Iranian cabinet as well. This was the backdrop in which the joint Anglo-American joint operation was launched to oust Premier Mosaddegh from power and to replace him with a Pro-Western Prime Minister.

Regime change money

On 4 April 1953 The CIA Director allocated a sum of one million US Dollars for the project to oust Premier Mosaddegh. These funds were to be used at the discretion of the US Ambassador and CIA station chief in Iran. In 1953, this was a colossal sum of money.

The main elements of the conspiracy were firstly to prevail upon the Shah to agree to aid the Western powers by dismissing Mosaddegh and appointing the joint US/British nominee General Fazlollah Zahedi as PM and secondly, to ensure that this change actually took palace. If by some chance the Shah had not agreed to dismiss the incumbent PM and replace him with a pro-Western nominee, plan B would be to seize power directly through a military coup. After having brought pressure on the Shah through various means to agree to the change of Prime Ministers – a risky affair because the people of Iran had got used to the existing political system over time – the conspirators had to ensure that this change actually took place. For this they needed support within Parliament, within the religious establishment, within the military and also among the public.

The conspirators were assisted in this ground level operation by the three Rashidyan brothers – a leading business family in Iran and two leading clerics who had fallen out with Mosaddegh. They had extensive contacts among all strata of Iranian society mentioned above and also in the Teheran Bazar and among street gangs as well.

By 20 May 1953, the CIA station chief had received authorisation to spend up to one million Riyals a week to buy support among Iranian parliamentarians. One owner of a media organisation was given a huge bribe of 45,000 to carry out anti-Mosaddegh propaganda. The conspirators set up a separate office to coordinate contacts with members of the Iranian armed forces and a sum of USD 75,000 was allocated for this purpose.  By mutual agreement between the British and the Americans, buying support within the Iranian armed forces was assigned to the CIA. The operation to purchase support within the Iranian parliament was entrusted to the Rashidyan Brothers who were close to the British.  Parliamentarians who would not yield were issued death threats with a view to neutralising them, by an extremist terrorist organization which was under the influence of one of the two clerics who had joined the conspiracy.

The plan to overthrow Mosaddegh was set in motion on the 15th of August 1953. Within the first 72 hours it appeared as if Premier Mosaddegh had been able to defeat the conspirators and retain control over Iran. The Shah fled to Baghdad in Iraq. Key figures in the conspiracy like General Zahedi and the Rashidyan brothers took refuge in safe houses maintained by the American Embassy.  By the morning of the 19th August it appeared as if the conspiracy had been completely defeated. However due to a demonstration organised by the Rashidyan Brothers and the two clerics in the conspiracy on the 19th August, the situation underwent a complete change within a few hours.

Snatching victory from the jaws of defeat

The organisers of this demonstration had a keen understanding of the psyche of the Iranian people. They began attracting crowds onto the street by starting a procession of performers made up of Iran’s most popular wrestlers, body builders, acrobats and the like who were the equivalent of the cricket stars in India and Sri Lanka. A large crowd assembled within minutes to watch the procession. The security personnel on the streets had not done anything to disperse the crowd because this was seen as public entertainment and not as a political demonstration. Once they had drawn a large crowd onto the streets, on a cue, Iran’s most popular wrestling champion and the other entertainers had begun chanting pro-Shah and anti-Mosaddegh slogans.

In order to ensure maximum public participation at this demonstration the CIA had hand delivered on the morning of the 19th August, USD 10,000 to one of the two clerics involved in the conspiracy. It was later revealed that the participants sent to the demonstration by this cleric had been paid the equivalent of USD 27 in Iranian currency. The other cleric in the conspiracy had spent so much money to bring crowds to this demonstration that the payments he had doled out to participants had been known for years afterwards as ‘Behbahani Dollars’. According to a former CIA operative involved in this conspiracy, the extent to which US currency had been thrown around during the operation to oust Mosaddegh was such that the exchange rate in the Teheran black market had declined from about 100 Riyal to the Dollar to less than 50 during this period.

After the crowd assembled in this manner had been turned into a political mob by paid agents, they had attacked a pro-Mosaddegh newspaper office and other buildings belonging to pro-Mosaddegh elements and then marched on to surround Premier Mosaddegh’s house. At this point units of the army that had joined the conspiracy exchanged fire with Mosaddegh’s security detail. The latter tried to disperse the civilian crowd by firing over their heads but failed. After a nine-hour standoff interspersed with skirmishes, Mosaddegh’s security personnel were forced to surrender to the conspirators. By midnight on the 19th August Mosaddegh had been arrested and his tenure as Prime Minister had come to an end. General Zahedi became the new Prime Minister of Iran. After the ouster of Premier Mosaddegh, the operations of the Iranian oil industry was divided up as follows – 40% to the USA, 40% for the British, 14% for the Netherlands and 6% for the French.

As a result of this conspiracy, Iran came under a pro-Western dictatorship from 1953 to 1979. The great Iranian Islamic revolution which swept through Iran in 1979 in opposition to this dictatorship changed not only Iran but the entire Islamic world. Crown Prince Mohamed Bin Salman has explained to the world on many occasions how Saudi Arabia itself was forced to change due to the Islamic revolution in Iran. To this date there is intense mistrust, dislike and even hatred towards the USA among the Iranian people which all stems from the cynical and unprincipled coup carried out 70 years ago by the USA and Britain to oust a constitutionally appointed democratic Iranian leader. To this date many Iranians see the USA as the ‘Great Satan’. All of us are still living within the aftershocks of this conspiracy of 1953.

The successful coup in Iran later served as a model to oust democratic governments in other countries as well in the decades that followed.