Iran's 1953 Coup Revisited: Internal Dynamics versus External Intrigue

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Fifty-five years ago a coup d'etat ended Prime Minister Muhammad Mosaddeq's government in Iran on August 19, 1953. Numerous books and articles have analyzed the event but often have overlooked Iran's domestic dynamics. What is presented is nearly always a conspiracy theory that suggests American and British masters of intrigue subverted Iran entirely through their shady operators. The picture portrays Iranians as little more than inanimate objects - a nation of potted plants. Even now over half a century later, and three decades after the fall of Iran's monarchy, misperceptions persist. A review of the coup and what precipitated it may offer some needed clarity. Iran's history during and after World War Two is rich with myths, disinformation, misinformation, and unexpected policy consequences. One myth, that a popular, democratic government in full bloom was aborted by a US/UK coup in 1953, has been particularly persistent. The emotional and material devastation that foreign military occupation (1941-46) had caused made Iran's political climate unstable. That history, real enough, became fertile grounds for mythmaking, while viewing Iranians as mere observers of the events that affected them. Russo-British meddling in the country's affairs in the 19th century, Russian instigations to set up Soviet Republics in Iran in the 1940s, and subversive activities by the Iranian Tudeh Communist Party in the 1950s, had politicized the population and created discord, suspicion, and confrontation among societal factions. The Tudeh had organized much of the industrial labor and influenced the youth, the intellectuals, and the students, with aspirations of building a classless society under its tutelage. The upper middle class, the professionals, businessmen, and nationalists had joined a number of political parties in a loose parliamentary coalition called the National Front - held together by a yearning for national independence that reached back to the Constitutional Revolution of 1906. Dr. Muhammad Mosaddeq, a seasoned Member of Parliament, eloquently expressed the National Front's longing for genuine sovereignty.1 Muslim clerics, particularly the activists lead by Ayatollah Abol- Qasem Kashani, influenced the traditional merchants, shopkeepers, lower middle class, and many others offended by the foreign domination of the nation. The armed forces in general, and the senior officer corps in particular, had maintained their admiration for the late King, Reza Shah - a fierce nationalist - and were loyal to the Crown. The upper classes, industrialists, and landowners supported the monarch, but vacillated back and forth between the National Front and the clerics. The constant jockeying for power and political dominance had poisoned the air, turning legitimate political disagreements into bitter personal attacks and lasting animosities. Iranian tribes, whose local exercise of power was traditionally inversely related to the strength of the central government, were rumbling. The uproar in Iran's Parliament mirrored the greater chaos in the country. Political tension coupled with economic anxiety had afflicted the nation with fears of renewed foreign imperialist intentions. Yet the unfolding of the Cold War that had begun to change the international environment quickly drew Iran into global rivalries and politics that validated Iranians' fears but took little heed of the country's internal realities. Nevertheless, Iranians were far from mere bystanders in the events of 1953. Those events had their origins in circumstances brought to Iran in WWII, but also in a subterranean political disagreement that had plagued Iran for at least two centuries. The constitutionalist movement of 1906 brought together two groups with essentially different beliefs: nationalist modernists and religious traditionalists, both of whom had concluded that the Qajar dynasty had become an instrument for Iran's foreign domination. Reza Shah's rule may have satisfied the nationalists, some of whom had clerical roots, but it alarmed the traditionalists. …