Coup That Sullied American Image In Iran

Sameer Arshad Khatlani
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Iran had valiantly fended off US-backed Iraqi leader Saddam Hussein’s invasion for eight years until July 1988 when Americans downed a civilian aircraft to deal a death blow to the resistance. All 290 civilians aboard the plane met their watery graves in the Persian Gulf. The tragedy turned out to be the last straw, convincing Tehran that the US was now openly siding with Saddam. The fear coupled with Saddam's use of chemical weapons prompted Iran to accept an UN-brokered ceasefire in September 1988. But Iranians could hardly breathe easy after the end of the 20th century’s longest war that is estimated to have killed around a million. Along with the consequences of the conflict, Iran faced crippling American sanctions following the post-revolution seizure of the US embassy in Tehran in 1979 and the captivity of American diplomats. The 444-day hostage crisis has remained etched in the American memory and defined its hostility towards Iran. The antagonism was reinforced by Iran’s inclusion on the list of Muslim countries, whose citizens were temporarily banned from travelling to the US.

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No Iranian or any citizen of the other six countries has recently been involved in mass violence in the US. Far for it, Iran has felt wronged more since 1953 when the CIA helped overthrow Prime Minister Mohammed Mossadegh for nationalising Iranian oil. French-educated Mosaddegh had swept to power in 1951 on the back of the promise to invest oil profits for the welfare of Iran's poor. London-based Anglo-Iranian Petroleum Company [AIPC] had till then had the monopoly over Iranian oil thanks to a deal with Iran’s monarchy. Iranians suffered poverty while their oil fuelled high British living standards. American journalist Stephen Kinzer, who has authored a book on the coup and its disastrous legacy, has noted that Britain had no oil or colonies with petroleum. “Every factory in England, every car, every truck, every taxi was running on oil from Iran. The Royal Navy, which was projecting British power all over the world, was fuelled a hundred percent by oil from Iran,’’ Kinzer told Democracy Now in 2008 when Iran was a potential target of American militarism. Kinzer noted that AIPC "would not give in one inch".

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Mosaddegh’s daring nationalisation of AIPC, then Britain’s most profitable company, propelled him to TIME magazine’s cover in 1951. Britain reacted with economic sanctions and paralysed Iran’s petroleum industry by forcing British technicians to leave the country. It prevented Iranian oil exports through a naval embargo, claiming Iranian oil to be British property. Mosaddegh pre-empted an attempt to overthrow him by shutting the British embassy and packing off secret agents who plotted a coup masking as diplomats. Republican President Dwight Eisenhower reversed American non-intervention policy in 1952, seeing AIPC’s nationalisation a threat to the multinational enterprise that could not have gone unpunished. CIA agent Kermit Roosevelt, who was promptly rushed to overthrow Mossadegh, accomplished the job in three weeks in August 1953. Mossadegh was sent to his village to spend the rest of his life under house arrest. The . "The only Americans there [before the coup] were doctors and school teachers and people who really were selflessly devoting themselves to Iranians,’’ Kinzer told Democracy Now.

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The Americans nipped in the bud lofty ideals of Mossadegh, whom British author Christopher de Bellaigue has described as the region’s “first liberal leader’’ and a “rationalist who hated obscurantism”. Kinzer writes Mossadegh believed in secularism and pluralism. Unlike Mossadegh, who believed in national sovereignty, his successor, the Shah, danced to its tune to become the ugly face of American manipulation. Iran’s nuclear program that has been cited as a justification for sanctions was an American gift to the Shah while Supreme Leader Ayatollah Khamenei has underlined that Islam forbids nukes. The US signed a civil nuclear cooperation pact with the Shah in 1957. A 2007 American intelligence report confirmed that Iran had ended its nuclear weapons program in 2003. Yet a 15-year-old boy died of haemophilia in 2012 because of the shortage of life-saving drugs that sanctions had caused. Around 2,000 people have died in over 200 accidents as curbs prevented Iran from buying aircraft spare parts. 

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Despite heavy odds, Iran has shown much resilience in establishing the region’s most extensive industrial base that has propelled its growth as one of the world’s top steel, cement and automobile manufacturers. Richard Javad Heydarian wrote in The Diplomat in 2015 that Iran has featured among leading countries in stem-cell research and nanotechnology. He added that Iran in 2012 ranked as the world’s 17th biggest producer of scientific papers, above Turkey and Israel. Heydarian noted that Iranian universities have produced top scientists including first woman Fields Medal winner Maryam Mirzakhani.

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The US has also justified sanctions citing Iran’s rights record, which hardly mattered when the CIA trained the Shah’s brutal secret police force along with Israeli Mossad. The force sustained the tyrant's repression that prepared the ground for the 1979 Islamic Revolution. Kinzer has argued that the 1953 coup had triggered the hostage crisis that followed. For him, the crisis was not a result of “nihilistic rage’’ but to prevent a repeat of the coup that CIA agents operating from the American embassy had carried out. This was not how the US saw it and retaliated by imposing sanctions besides backing Saddam’s invasion in 1980. The revolution, meanwhile, prompted the Soviets to invade Afghanistan to prevent similar upheavals within its borders. The US responded with the introduction of a perversion of Jihad that imperilled world peace by unleashing groups like al-Qaeda.

Sameer Arshad Khatlani is an author-journalist based in New Delhi. He has been a Senior Assistant Editor with Hindustan Times, India’s second-biggest English newspaper. Khatlani worked in a similar capacity with The Indian Express, India's most influential newspaper known for its investigative journalism, until June 2018. Born and raised in Kashmir, he began his career with the now-defunct Bangalore-based Vijay Times in 2005 as its national affairs correspondent. He joined Times of India, one of the world's largest selling broadsheets, in 2007. Over the next nine years, he was a part of the paper's national and international newsgathering team as an Assistant Editor. 

Khatlani has reported from Iraq and Pakistan and covered elections and national disasters. He received a master’s degree in History from the prestigious Jamia Millia Islamia University in New Delhi. Kaylani is a fellow with Hawaii-based American East-West Center established by the US Congress in 1960 to promote better relations and understanding with Asian, and Pacific countries through cooperative study, research, and dialogue. 

Penguin published Khatlani’s first book The Other Side of the Divide: A Journey into the Heart of Pakistan in February 2020. Eminent academic and King’s college professor, Christophe Jaffrelot, has called the book ‘an erudite historical account... [that] offers a comprehensive portrait of Pakistan, including the role of the army and religion—not only Islam.'