Mom, Apple Pie, and the Iranian Revolution

By Ralph Lopez    © Ralph Lopez 2003

Working under Prof. Jeremy Pressman, “American Foreign Policy,” Harvard Extension School, Master’s program.

 

On September 20, 2001 president George W. Bush declared unequivocally that the September 11 attacks were the work of those who “hate us for our freedoms,” thus absolving past and recent administrations of all Middle East policy failures.  The declaration also paved the way for debate over the East-West, Cold War paradigm versus the North-South, neocolonial one.  If East-West, US vs. USSR Cold War containment theory does a fairly good job of explaining US policy, including that which resulted in blowback, then American foreign policy could hope to be partially forgiven as miscalculations of the times.  If the North-South, rich nation vs. poor nation theory of US behavior prevailed, the implications were far more disturbing.  The possibility lay open that parts of the world, and the attackers, most assuredly hated “us” for reasons other than our "freedoms."  The first American overthrow of a Middle Eastern government, that of Prime Minister Mohammed Mossadeq in 1953, raises many questions which seem to be better answered by a North-South interpretation of that covert action than by a "domino theory" defense of it.  New York Times journalist Stephen Kinzer argues forcefully that, not only was Dr. Mossadeq not a threat to the US strategic position; in the eyes of many policy makers, including presidents Truman and Eisenhower, his democratic nationalism represented the best bulwark against Soviet designs ("All the Shah’s Men, An American Coup and the Roots of Middle East Terror," John Wiley and Sons, Inc., Hoboken, New Jersey 2003)   Kinzer presents ample evidence that Iran’s relations with the British Anglo-Iranian Oil Company (AIOC) were of a purely neocolonial nature, that Mossadeq disdained the Russians as much as he did the British, and that the Tudeh Party, Iran’s communist party, was weak and no match for the broad National Front coalition put together by Mossadeq.

The plan to overthrow Dr. Mossadeq was conceived by the British and championed by various US State Department and CIA hawks, such as Theodore Roosevelt grandson Kermit Roosevelt and General Walter “Beedle” Smith, even before the Dulles brothers took power under the incoming Eisenhower administration in 1953.  The flashpoint was Mossadeq’s nationalization of the Iranian oil industry, which was 51% British-owned and which extracted and sold Iranian oil at 84% of profits compared to the 16% that went to the Iranians.  This prompted an observer to remark that there was more money being paid in taxes to the British treasury on the British share than Iran’s entire share.  In addition, it was AIOC policy never to open the books to the Iranians, so even this splitting of the take was questionable.  Although sleights such as stark differences between the living conditions of Iranians and those of British executives were rampant, including fountains marked “not for Iranians,” the Iranians at first centered their demands on a 50-50 split in oil revenues, the right to inspect the books, allowance of Iranians onto the company’s board of directors, and other points such as the training of more Iranian technicians.  The demands were rejected outright by the British, and in retaliation the Iranians, led by Mossadeq, proposed nationalization of AOIC.[1]  Of the tens of thousands of Iranian employees of the AIOC, the Jerusalem Post reported: “They lived during the seven hot months of the year under the trees…In winter times these masses moved into big halls, built by the company, housing up to 3,000-4,000 people without walls of partition between them.  Each family occupied the space of a blanket..  There were no lavatories…” [2]

Iran’s history is inextricably bound to the contest between neocolonial Britain and Czarist Russia, culminating in a 1907 treaty in which the powers, without consulting the weak and corrupt Qajar ruler, simply divided it between themselves.  The British were in the south, the Russians in the north, and a neutral zone separated them.  Both British and Russian troops were present to enforce it.  However, the British had long established a stranglehold on the country’s resources, the terms of which were described by British Foreign Secretary Lord Curzan, in 1919, as “the most complete and extraordinary surrender of the entire industrial resources of a kingdom into foreign hands that has probably ever been dreamt of, much less accomplished, in history.” [3]  With its proximity to Britain’s Indian colony, Curzon also declared:

“If it should be asked why we should undertake the task at all, and why Persia should not be left to herself and allowed to rot into picturesque decay, the answer is that her geographical position, the magnitude of our interests in the country, and the future safety of our eastern Empire render it impossible for us now…to disinherit us from what happens in Persia.” [4]

    With the turmoil and exhaustion brought on by the Bolshevik Revolution, Russian power and immediate interest in pursuing the contest waned, and in 1917 the Bolsheviks renounced most of their rights in the country and canceled all debts owed by Iran to the fallen Czarist government.

In his defense of “analogical reasoning” in statesmanship, political scientist Yuen Foong Khong quotes Arthur Schlesinger: “the historian can never be sure-the statesman himself can never be sure, to what extent the invocation of history is no more than dignifying a conclusion already reached on other grounds.”[5]  Proponents of the Cold War, East-West confrontation  explanation of the US conspiracy with royalist elements in Iran to overthrow Mossadeq might be correct in pointing to the superheated Cold War atmosphere of the times: the US had just “lost” China, the North Koreans in 1950 had poured over the 38th Parallel, and the USSR had recently brought Latvia, Estonia, Lithuania, and Poland into its orbit.  However, as Jerome Slater suggests, merely looking at a map and counting the red patches can represent “a failure of intellect, a substitute for historical observation and careful analysis.”[6] The eminent Thomas Paterson notes that during this time: “Most upheaval actually sprang from indigenous sources-colonial, tribal, ethnic, religious, cultural, economic.  Yet Americans posited a mechanistic “domino theory.”” [7]

Paterson, however, also contends that Secretary of State John Foster Dulles’ reputation as a “simplistic, hard-line, rigid thinker” was at odds with “what one saw around the table within the department arguing about what should be done.” .[8]     This is at odds with the account of at least one participant around such a table, the man appointed to implement the overthrow of Mossadeq, Kermit Roosevelt.  Roosevelt notes that at the meeting called by Foster Dulles to decide Mossadeq’s fate, the decision was one which Dulles “clearly, he had already made.”[9]  At the close of the momentous meeting, Roosevelt, who was then 36 years of age, recalls:

“It was with mixed feelings that I left his office.  On one hand, it was good to have our project approved.  The manner of its acceptance to my mind implied not only support of the Shah but also confidence in the Agency-and in me personally.  This I had to regard as flattering.  On the other hand, this was a grave decision to have made.  It involved tremendous risk.  Surely it deserved thorough examination, the closest consideration, somewhere at the very highest level.  It had not received such thought at this meeting.  In fact, I was morally certain that almost half of those present, if they had felt free and had the courage to speak, would have opposed the undertaking.”[10]

Roosevelt remembers that Foster Dulles “waved us from the room” and picked up the phone.  “I hoped that perhaps he was calling the White House, that he was making an appointment to get the president’s concurrence.  But I never knew.”[11]  Paterson has made pointed note of the McCarthyite purges that Foster Dulles conducted of his State Department, which in effect eliminated all who disagreed with his analysis, such as one China hand who offered his professional opinion that the American-backed Chiang Kai-shek would probably lose.  Dulles’ inquisitors took this to mean that the professional was plotting to defeat Jiang.  The effect, says Theodore White, “was to poke out the eyes and ears of the State Department on Asian Affairs, to blind American foreign policy.”[12]

Mossadeq was first and foremost a nationalist, as both Truman and Eisenhower understood.  Author William Blum notes that he “had campaigned successfully against lingering Soviet occupation of northern Iran after World War II, and in October 1947 had led Parliament in its rejection of a government proposal that a joint Irano-Soviet oil company be set up exploit the oil of northern Iran.”[13]  Kinzer notes: “Two central beliefs shaped Mossadeq’s political consciousness.  The first was a passionate faith in the rule of law… The second was a conviction that Iranians must rule themselves and not submit to the will of foreigners.”  In his book Iran and the Capitulation Agreements Mossadeq argued that “Iran could develop modern, European-style legal and political systems if it took one vital step.  It must impose the law equally on everyone, including foreigners, and never grant special privileges to anyone.”[14]  Rising Third World nationalism at this time was often modeled on American ideals.  Kinzer relates an anecdote in which, after a long conversation with an older Iranian woman, she became agitated for the first time when he mentioned Mossadeq, and said: “Why did you Americans do that terrible thing?  We always loved America.  To us, America was a great country, the country that helped us while other countries were exploiting us.  But after that moment, no one in Iran ever trusted the United States again…why, why did you do it?”[15]   In contrast to the hated British, Americans were well-liked, among all strata of society.  The U.S. had, in 1919, criticized Britain’s ruinous Anglo-Persian Agreement, and championed Iran’s claim for compensation for the wartime occupations of Britain and Russia during World War I. 

                  The British dependence on Iranian oil was complete, supplying the Royal Navy with fuel at a fraction of market price, which fueled victory for the British in both World Wars.  British Foreign Secretary Ernest Bevin acknowledged that without Iranian oil, “there was no hope of our being able to achieve the standard of living at which we are aiming in Great Britain.”[16]  The Jerusalem Post recounts that the usual response from Bevin's British colleagues when arguing that the British were making a mistake by not being more flexible was:  “We English have had hundreds of years experience on how to treat the Natives.  Socialism is all right back home, but out here you have to be the master.”  [17]

                  The British position on AIOC infuriated the Truman administration.  The administration called AIOC’s stubbornness “one of the greatest political liabilities affecting the United States/UK interests in the Middle East,” and called the company’s policies “reactionary and outmoded.”  The company’s attitude was “a handicap in the control of communism.”[18]  Averill Harriman remarked, upon a tour of the Abadan refinery complex, the largest in the world, that the British had “a completely nineteenth century colonial attitude.”[19]  Upon news of the nationalization British Prime Minister Winston Churchill wanted to shell Iranians from warships immediately.

                  In describing Mossadeq, the “communist danger,” and the threat of a Soviet takeover, Kermit Roosevelt says in his memoir: “The British motivation was simply to recover the AOIC oil concession.  We were not concerned with that but with the obvious threat of a Russian takeover.”[20]  What stands out in Roosevelt's account is use of words such as “obvious” in making his claims. Roosevelt’s arguments, and those of the State Department, are put forth as axiomatic, unquestionable, and articles of faith.  Foster Dulles often referred to Mossadeq as a “lunatic,” a “madman,” and a “fanatic.”  In the momentous meeting that would change the course of history, Foster Dulles employs the tone of a “school master,” according to Roosevelt:

“First, gentlemen you do know, I assume, where Iran is and what it is.  Persia, as it used to be named, has been throughout history the bridge between Far Eastern Asia and the lands of the Mediterranean and Europe…”[21]

Blum notes of the Roosevelt memoir that “it would be incorrect to state that Roosevelt offers little evidence to support his thesis of the communist danger.  It would be more precise to say that he offers no evidence at all.”[22]  In 2000 the New York Times published a leaked official, and secret, CIA history of the overthrow of Mossadeq, which read:

“By the end of 1952, it had become clear that the Mossadeq government in Iran was incapable of reaching an oil settlement with interested western countries, was reaching a dangerous and advanced stage of illegal deficit financing; was disregarding the Iranian constitution in prolonging Premier Mohammed Mossadeq’s tenure of office; was motivated mainly by Mossadeq’s desire for personal power; was governed by irresponsible policies based on emotion; had weakened the Shah and the Iranian Army to a dangerous degree; and had cooperated closely with the Tudeh (Communist) Party of Iran.”[23]

      This fantastic document (which I recommend to anyone as reading more hair-raising than Stephen King) neglects to mention that it was the British, not Mossadeq, who were uncompromising on an oil settlement, that it was a British blockade driving the country to financial ruin, and that Mossadeq had once gone as far as suppressing the Tudeh Party, which was in any event far weaker than the Mossadeq’s National Front which was “a coalition of highly diverse political and religious elements including right-wing anti-communists,” who may have agreed on little else but Mossadeq’s honesty and freedom from corruption, and on his drive to get a fair oil deal for Iran.[24]  

                  The CIA history employs the language of  NSC-68, which, as Paterson asserts, “glossed over complexities and ambiguities, treated communism as a monolith, [and ignored] differences within the communist community…It made sweeping assumptions about Soviet motives and capabilities without evidence.  The report, in short, exaggerated the ‘threat.’”[25]  This mode of argument was not lost on Mossadeq himself, and in a UN “debate” with the British in an effort to resolve the crisis, he said: “I have not made actual count of the pejorative words used by Sir Gladwyn Jebb [his British opponent] in his various statements, but as you leaf through the pages of the record, defamatory word after defamatory word springs to the eye.”[26]

            In explaining US foreign policy during the Cold War, proponents of the East-West model might cite the importance of what Columbia’s Robert Jervis calls, “state actors’ perceptions of each other.”  The implication is that the difference between those opposing overt and covert military action in any given instance, and those in favor, was whether or not the Soviet Union was perceived as aggressive and expansionist.  This theory loses its explanatory power in this instance, however, because both presidents who opposed Mossadeq’s ouster believed the Soviets were indeed aggressive, and would start trouble if they could.  Yet Truman was ”unalterably opposed” to the overthrow of Mossadeq.  Eisenhower, who only late and reluctantly gave his assent, asked at one meeting of the National Security Council, why wasn’t it possible “to get some of the people in these down-trodden countries to like us instead of hating us?”[27]  

In a little-remarked upon twist to the Cold War logic which held sway in the minds of the Dulles brothers, Truman believed that rising nationalist movements in the Third World were not only not a threat to the U.S. strategic position, but potentially beneficial.  Truman liked and admired Mossadeq, and “had nothing but contempt” for the Anglo-American Oil Company.[28]  A Cold Warrior who refused to negotiate with the Russians and had fulfilled the Truman Doctrine by intervening in Greece, Truman made a distinction between armed leftist minorities and popular indigenous movements which reflected the legitimate aspirations of a people.  Truman thought movements like Mossadeq’s would result in positive social change and mature democratic institutions, and be the best “bulwark” against communism.  Eisenhower said Mossadeq was “the only hope for the West in Iran.”  “I would like to give the guy ten million bucks,” Ike once said to British Ambassador Anthony Eden, who was attempting to broach the subject of the proposed coup.[29]

There is now evidence that the Dulles brothers may have subverted the judgment of Eisenhower by telling him that Iran was sliding into anarchy under Mossadeq, presenting a tempting opportunity for the Russians to intervene, in order to win his grudging approval for Operation Ajax.  What they neglected to tell their boss, and what he may have not known even up until his death, was that the anarchy was being paid for with Company money.  Evidence indicates that the early stages of Operation Ajax were set into motion without Eisenhower’s approval.  Knowing well Eisenhower’s views and his abhorrence of the plan, it will be for other scholars to debate whether this constituted gross insubordination that should have earned for Foster Dulles MacArthur’s fate under Truman, when Truman declared he would “fire the the son of a bitch.”

One question to be asked is clear: would Eisenhower have nevertheless eventually approved of Operation Ajax, essentially a British brainchild presented to the Americans with vigor once the Eisenhower administration had taken office, had he understood the true situation on the ground?  This again is a question for other scholars to engage. 

                  Khong asks rightly, of the argument made by skeptics of analogical reasoning in foreign affairs, that if policy makers invoke history, such as "appeasement" in 1938, to justify conclusions “already reached on other grounds,” just what are these “other grounds?”[30]   I have already suggested that the North-South neocolonial paradigm is a better fit than the East-West, and merits further study.  In the case of 1953 Iran, the extent of British oil dependence, the skewed terms of the oil contract, and the willingness to use force against a much poorer and weaker population to enforce it, all bore the hallmarks of a neocolonial arrangement, even in the words of many American policy makers such as Averill Harriman.  It has become fashionable to trot out George Kennan’s, former head of the State Department Policy Planning Staff, PPS23 in support of theories of US empire, but no document written at such a high level can be ignored.  Penned with respect to the Far East in 1948, it is nevertheless another window into policy makers’ thinking, and contains now well-known gems as: “we have about 50% of the world's wealth but only 6.3% of its population…Our real task in the coming period is to devise a pattern of relationships which will permit us to maintain this position of disparity without positive detriment to our national security….The day is not far off when we are going to have to deal in straight power concepts.  The less we are then hampered by idealistic slogans, the better.” 

                  In the division of the spoils after the overthrow of Mossadeq, the AIOC held 40 percent of the shares of a newly formed consortium, five American companies held 40 percent, and the rest was shared by Royal Dutch/Shell and a French company.  In order to enforce the division of spoils, the Shah of Iran was made dictator and given full US backing and support, even as he instituted one of the most corrupt and ruthless regimes in modern history.  Blum says: “life under the Shah was a grim tableau of grinding poverty, police terror, and torture.”[31]  In 1976, three years before the Iranian Revolution, Amnesty International reported that the US-backed Shah had: “a history of torture which is beyond belief. No country in the world has a worse record in human rights than Iran.” [32]  The methods of his secret police included pulling of teeth and nails, electric shock, and the forcing of boiling water into the rectum.[33]

                  Slater notes that economic interest does not always fit the instances in which US interventions take place, such as Grenada or Nicaragua, which have no natural resources to speak of.  But former State Department employee Blum argues, disturbingly, that the greater challenge felt by the responsible policy makers is to stamp out a principle, “as a warning to others,” that what the US “always feared from the Third World was the emergence of a good example” in the form of a flourishing, non-aligned society independent of the US military and economic sphere.[34] 

            Kinzer writes that “It is not far-fetched to draw a line from Operation Ajax through the Shah’s repressive regime and the Islamic Revolution to the fireballs that engulfed the World Trade Center in New York.”[35]  The Iranian Revolution in 1979 provided safe haven and an ideology for unsavories such as Hamas, bin Laden, and the Taliban during the 80s and 90s. Although useful as an explanatory device, the effect of placing too much emphasis on East-West relations and the Domino Theory is to say that, although the effects of US foreign policy were sometimes unfortunate, they were necessary to defeat a greater evil, the Soviet threat.  This enables us, as Jervis implies, to continue our perceptions of America as “mom and apple pie.”  Similarly, our perceptions of others can be colored by distrust, fear, and uncertainty, unless and until the “other” becomes human, takes human form.  One anecdote on Mossadeq seems a particular favorite of Kinzer, as he uses it to conclude his book.  Under virtual house arrest by the Shah Mohammed Reza Pahlavi until the end of his days, living at his family’s estate, a woman recounts the only time she ever saw Dr. Mossadeq get angry, as he lived out his days in study, treating villagers’ ailments, and conducting farming experiments.  A peasant had been beaten by the local police in order to get information on Mossadeq’s habits and conversation, and he complained to Mossadeq.  Kinzer, who interviewed the woman on her memories, recalls that she told him:

“It was the only time I ever saw him [Mossadeq] get angry.  He called the police chief and shouted at him to come to the house immediately.  When he got to the house, Mossadeq pushed him against a wall, held his cane against the guy’s throat and shouted: ‘You are here to watch me, and you have no right to abuse anyone else.  If you have a problem, you come to me and only me!  Don’t ever, ever lay a finger on one of my people again!’  This was a Savak officer [the Shah’s secret police] and not a nice man at all…After that, the police never went near us.”[36]

Mossadeq was close to eighty at that time.  When the Iranian Revolution broke out in 1979, giving rise to the hostage crisis, seas of demonstrators carried placards bearing the likeness of Mossadeq, who had died 12 years before, at the age of 85. 

 

 

 

[1] Stephen Kinzer, All the Shah’s Men, An American Coup and the Roots of Middle East Terror, (John Wiley and Sons, Inc., Hoboken, New Jersey 2003) pg. 69

 

[2] Jerualem Post, FO 371/91628, in Kinzer pg.96

 

[3] Persia and the Persian Question, Vol.1 (London: Longmans, Gren, and Co., 1892), p. 480, in Kinzer

 

[4] Documents on British Foreign Policy 1919-1939, First Series, Vol.IV (London: Government Printing Press), pp.1119-1121, in Kinzer

 

[5] Yuen Foong Khong, Analogies at War, Korea, Dien Bien Phu, and the Vietnam Decisions of 1965, (Princeton University Press, 1992), pg.59

 

[6] Jerome Slater, “Dominos in Central America: Will They fall? Does It Matter?” International Security 12, no. 2, fall 1987, pp. 105-134

 

[7] Thomas G. Paterson, J. Garry Clifford, Kenneth J. Hagan, American Foreign Relations: A History Since 1895, volume 2, fifth edition (Boston: Houghton Mifflin Company, 2000), pg.255

 

[8] ibid, pg.279

 

[9] Kermit Roosevelt, Countercoup, The Struggle for Control of Iran,(McGraw-Hill, New York, 1979),pg.10

 

[10] ibid, pg.18

 

[11] ibid

 

[12] Paterson, pg.280

 

[13] William Blum, Killing Hope, US Military and CIA Interventions Since World War II (Common Courage Press, Monroe, ME 1995)pg.66

 

[14] Kinzer, pg.55

 

[15] Kinzer, pg.ix

 

[16] Daniel Yergin, The Prize: The Epic Quest for Oil, Money and Power, (New York: Simon and Schuster, 1991), quoted in Kinzer

 

[17] Jerualem Post, FO 371/91628, quoted in Kinzer

 

[18] Kinzer, pg.89

 

[19] Kinzer, pg.109

 

[20] Roosevelt, pg.3

 

[21] ibid, pg.10

 

[22] Blum, pg.66

 

[23] Clandestine Service History, Overthrow of Premier Mossadeq of Iran, http://www.nytimes.com/library/world/mideast/041600iran-cia-index.html

 

[24] Blum, pg.67

 

[25] Paterson, p.249

 

[26] Kinzer, pg.126

 

[27] Kinzer, pg.158

 

[28] ibid, pg.3

 

[29] Kinzer, pg.158

 

[30] Khong, pg.63

 

[31] Blum, pg.72

 

[32] Martin Ennals, Secretary-General of Amnesty International, quoted in Blum pg.72

 

[33] Mohsen Milani, The Making of Iran's Islamic Revolution: From Monarchy to Islamic Republic, (Westview Press, 1994) pg.70

 

[34] Blum, pg.14

 

[35] All the Shah’s Men, An American Coup and the Roots of Middle East Terror, Stephen Kinzer, (John Wiley and Sons, Inc., Hoboken, New Jersey 2003)

 

[36] Kinzer, pg.222