Kamala Harris recently called Iran a “destabilizing, dangerous force” in the Middle East. The appropriate context for understanding this remark is the US’s own decades-long history of destabilizing Iran.
by Seraj Assi
Part 2 - A Long, Violent History
For those familiar with this history, it’s hard to hear such statements without hearkening back to New Year’s Eve, 1977, a year before the Iranian Revolution broke out. In the heat of growing civil unrest in Iran, US president Jimmy Carter attended a lavish state dinner with the shah of Iran, Mohammad Reza Pahlavi, where Carter toasted, “Iran, because of the great leadership of the Shah, is an island of stability in one of the more troubled areas of the world.”
Ironically, the toasts were preceded by a long US history of destabilizing Iran — a history marred with covert operations and clandestine interventions. Twenty-four years earlier, during “Operation Ajax,” the CIA, in collaboration with the British MI6, had orchestrated a coup that ousted the democratically elected Iranian prime minister Mohammed Mossadegh, who had won on a platform of nationalizing Iranian oil and taking it back from Western control. The coup set into motion the destruction of the country’s budding democracy and would haunt Iranians for decades to come.
Ironically, the toasts were preceded by a long US history of destabilizing Iran — a history marred with covert operations and clandestine interventions. Twenty-four years earlier, during “Operation Ajax,” the CIA, in collaboration with the British MI6, had orchestrated a coup that ousted the democratically elected Iranian prime minister Mohammed Mossadegh, who had won on a platform of nationalizing Iranian oil and taking it back from Western control. The coup set into motion the destruction of the country’s budding democracy and would haunt Iranians for decades to come.
Starting in the late 1940s, in the heat of the Cold War, the Harry Truman administration embraced the young shah as an important partner in the emerging anti-Soviet alliance in the Middle East, despite mounting Iranian resentment of the shah’s corruption and his reckless sales of Iran’s resources to foreign companies to finance his lavish lifestyle. The shah’s spending spree led him to sell exclusive rights to Iran’s oil and natural gas to Western multinational oil companies, mainly the Anglo-Iranian Oil Company (AIOC), which exploited Iranians and exported millions of barrels of oil that made fabulous profits while paying Iran virtually nothing.
Resentment of the shah soon gave rise to popular dissent. In October 1949, Mossadegh, a longtime critic of the Pahlavi dynasty and a vocal advocate for Iran’s right to control its own oil industry, founded the National Front, a broad coalition that included both middle-class moderates and members of the left-wing Tudeh Party. Mossadegh and his allies soon held the balance of power in the Iranian parliament, known as the Majles, where they ran on the platform of sharing oil profits between Iran and AIOC, citing the example of other multinational oil firms operating in Venezuela and Saudi Arabia.
Backed by the British government, AIOC refused to compromise. The Majles responded by nationalizing the Iranian oil industry. Shortly after, Mossadegh was elected prime minister, and immediately announced plans to wrest control of Iran’s oil fields and refineries from the UK.
The West was quick to retaliate. When Mossadegh moved forward with nationalization, the British and US governments joined forces to press the shah to oust his new prime minister, threatening an international embargo on Iranian oil, while secretly planning a coup in Tehran.
The West was quick to retaliate. When Mossadegh moved forward with nationalization, the British and US governments joined forces to press the shah to oust his new prime minister, threatening an international embargo on Iranian oil, while secretly planning a coup in Tehran.
President Dwight D. Eisenhower gave his blessing to the plan. The coup architects were US secretary of state John Foster Dulles, a rabid anti-communist who dismissed Mossadegh as a Russian stooge and “madman,” and Allen Dulles, the new CIA director, who had close ties with MI6, the British intelligence service, and an enthusiast for covert operations against nations he deemed vulnerable to Soviet subversion or takeover. Kermit Roosevelt, a grandson of Theodore Roosevelt and a veteran CIA covert operator, was dispatched to Tehran to oversee the plan.
US and British agents carried out what they branded as a “countercoup” against the newly elected government, which entailed distributing lavish bribes to mobilize hundreds of pro-shah mercenaries, who stormed into the streets chanting anti-government slogans and staged violent clashes with Mossadegh’s supporters. Meanwhile, Western-friendly general Fazlollah Zahedi and right-wing military officers, along with the Iranian secret police, known as SAVAK, moved to restore order and crack down on dissent, rounding up Tudeh Party militants, arresting Mossadegh, and reinstating the shah.
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