RT.com, August
19, 2013
 |
| Monarchist demonstrators in Tehran downtown, August 26, 1953. (AFP Photo) |
On the 60th
anniversary of the 1953 military coup in Iran that overthrew the government of
radical nationalist Mohammad Mossadegh, the US has declassified documents
detailing how the CIA’s secret operation brought the country’s Shah back to
power.
“American
and British involvement in Mossadegh’s ouster has long been public knowledge,
but today’s posting includes what is believed to be the CIA’s first formal
acknowledgement that the agency helped to plan and execute the coup,” the US
National Security Archive said.
Monday’s
publication under the US Freedom of Information Act came as something of a
surprise, since most of the materials and records of the 1953 coup were
believed to have been destroyed by the CIA, the Archive said. The CIA said at
time that its “safes were too full.”
The
newly-revealed documents declassify documents about CIA’s TPAJAX operation that
sought regime change in Iran through the bribery of Iranian politicians,
security and army high-ranking officials, and massive anti-Mossadegh propaganda
that helped to instigate public revolt in 1953.
 |
| Mohammad Mosaddegh (Photo from wikipedia.org) |
Among the
declassified documents there are several examples of CIA propaganda presenting
Iranian PM Mossadegh disparagingly.
“This
propaganda piece accuses the Prime Minister of pretending to be ‘the savior of
Iran’ and alleges that he has instead built up a vast spying apparatus which he
has trained on virtually every sector of society, from the army to newspapers
to political and religious leaders,” the Archive said. “Stirring up images of
his purported alliance with ‘murderous Qashqai Khan’ and the Bolsheviks, the
authors charge: ‘Is this the way you save Iran, Mossadegh? We know what you
want to save. You want to save Mossadegh’s dictatorship in Iran!’”
Iran became
independent from Britain after WWII and in April 1951 Iranians democratically
elected the head of the National Front party, Dr. Mohammad Mossadegh, as prime
minister. Mossadegh moved quickly to nationalize the assets in Iran of the
Anglo-Iranian Oil Company (the forerunner of today’s BP) a step that brought
his government into confrontation with Britain and the US.
Britain’s
MI6 military intelligence then teamed up with the CIA and planned, elaborated
and carried out a coup that ousted Mossadegh in August 1953 and returned Shah
Mohammad Reza Pahlavi to power.
The first
attempted coup failed after Mossadegh got wind of the conspiracy, but American
and British intelligence services in Iran then improvized a second stage of the
coup, pulling pro-Shah forces together and organizing mass protests on August
19, 1953. These protests were
immediately supported by army and police. Mossadegh’s house was destroyed after
a prolonged assault by pro-coup forces, including several tanks.
 |
| Iranian monarchists, August 27, 1953 (AFP Photo) |
Mossadegh
was replaced with Iranian general Fazlollah Zahedi, who was handpicked by MI6
and the CIA. Mossaddegh was later sentenced to death, but the Shah never dared
to carry out the sentence. Mossadegh died in his residence near Tehran in 1967.
The Shah’s
pro-Western dictatorship continued for 27 years and ended with the Islamic
Revolution of 1979, which paved the way for today’s Iran, where anti-American
sentiments remain strong. The 1953 coup still casts a long shadow over
Iranian-US relations.
The
declassified documents originated from an interim report, called “The Battle
for Iran,” prepared by a CIA in-house historian in the mid-1970s. The historian
wrote: “[T]he military coup that overthrew Mossadegh and his National Front
cabinet was carried out under CIA direction as an act of U.S. foreign policy.”
The report also mentions that the US establishment feared that Iran could be
“open to Soviet aggression,” and therefore initiated Operation TPAJAX, which
eventually became the American part of the joint US-British ‘Operation Ajax’
that brought the Shah to power.
The
“aggression” mentioned by the CIA historian is likely a reference to the Soviet
Union’s intervention in Iran during WWII, when a USSR-Iran treaty signed in
1940 enabled Moscow to establish military prescriptive in Iran in case of any
threat to the borders of the Soviet Union. Moscow did put this treaty to use
during the WWII and partly occupied Iran in 1941-1945.
 |
| The shah of Iran Mohammed Reza Pahlavi (1974) (AFP Photo) |
The
National Security Archive said it that while it “applauds the CIA’s decision to
make these materials available, today’s posting shows clearly that these
materials could have been safely declassified many years ago without risk of
damage to national security.”
Though at
least two US Presidents, Bill Clinton and Barack Obama, have publicly
acknowledged the US role in the Iranian coup, the intelligence services in
Washington have always been reluctant to admit direct involvement in the 1953
coup.
After the
collapse of the USSR, the CIA proclaimed a “policy of openness” and made a
commitment to declassify some documents regarding Cold War covert operations,
including the coup in Iran, by US intelligence.
Three successive
CIA directors – Robert M. Gates, R. James Woolsey, and John M. Deutch –
promised to publish documents, but none delivered.
Archive
deputy director Malcolm Byrne appealed to the US intelligence community “to
make fully available the remaining records on the coup period.”
“There is
no longer good reason to keep secrets about such a critical episode in our
recent past. The basic facts are widely known to every schoolchild in Iran.
Suppressing the details only distorts history, and feeds into myth-making on
all sides,” Byrne said.
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