Oil nationalisation and the 1953 coup
Prime Minister Mohammad Mosaddegh nationalises Iran's British-run oil industry and is overthrown in a coup organised by the CIA and MI6.
- The Coup: 1953, the CIA, and the Roots of Modern U.S.-Iranian Relations — Ervand Abrahamian, The New Press (2013)
- Mohammad Mosaddeq and the 1953 Coup in Iran — Mark J. Gasiorowski and Malcolm Byrne (eds.), Syracuse University Press (2004)
- CIA Confirms Role in 1953 Iran Coup — Malcolm Byrne (ed.), National Security Archive (2013)
- A History of Modern Iran — Ervand Abrahamian, Cambridge University Press (2008)
- Modern Iran: Roots and Results of Revolution — Nikki R. Keddie, Yale University Press (2006)
For half a century the Anglo-Iranian Oil Company, majority-owned by the British government (it later became BP), had pumped Iran’s oil from Khuzestan and run the vast refinery at Abadan. Iran received a small share of the profits, and Iranian workers lived in conditions that contrasted bitterly with those of British staff.
- The Coup: 1953, the CIA, and the Roots of Modern U.S.-Iranian Relations — Ervand Abrahamian, The New Press (2013)
- A History of Modern Iran — Ervand Abrahamian, Cambridge University Press (2008)
Nationalisation
After the Second World War a broad coalition, the National Front, demanded control of Iran’s oil. In March 1951 the Majles voted to nationalise the industry, and in April Mohammad Mosaddegh, a veteran constitutionalist from an aristocratic Qajar family, became prime minister. He was hugely popular: an eccentric, emotional old man who received visitors in his pyjamas and wept in parliament, and who was seen as incorruptible.
- The Coup: 1953, the CIA, and the Roots of Modern U.S.-Iranian Relations — Ervand Abrahamian, The New Press (2013)
- Mohammad Mosaddeq and the 1953 Coup in Iran — Mark J. Gasiorowski and Malcolm Byrne (eds.), Syracuse University Press (2004)
Britain responded with a worldwide boycott of Iranian oil, a naval presence in the Gulf and a case at the International Court of Justice, which in 1952 ruled that it lacked jurisdiction. The boycott crippled Iran’s economy. Mosaddegh’s coalition frayed: the communist Tudeh party grew stronger, some clerics led by Ayatollah Abol-Qasem Kashani broke with him, and in 1953 he dissolved parliament through a referendum that his opponents denounced as unconstitutional.
- The Coup: 1953, the CIA, and the Roots of Modern U.S.-Iranian Relations — Ervand Abrahamian, The New Press (2013)
- Mohammad Mosaddeq and the 1953 Coup in Iran — Mark J. Gasiorowski and Malcolm Byrne (eds.), Syracuse University Press (2004)
- Modern Iran: Roots and Results of Revolution — Nikki R. Keddie, Yale University Press (2006)
The coup
Britain, having failed to dislodge him alone, persuaded the new Eisenhower administration, worried about communism, to act. The CIA and MI6 planned an operation, known to the Americans as TPAJAX, run on the ground by Kermit Roosevelt. On the night of 15–16 August 1953 an attempt to deliver the Shah’s decree dismissing Mosaddegh failed, and the Shah fled to Baghdad and then Rome.
- CIA Confirms Role in 1953 Iran Coup — Malcolm Byrne (ed.), National Security Archive (2013)
- Mohammad Mosaddeq and the 1953 Coup in Iran — Mark J. Gasiorowski and Malcolm Byrne (eds.), Syracuse University Press (2004)
- The Coup: 1953, the CIA, and the Roots of Modern U.S.-Iranian Relations — Ervand Abrahamian, The New Press (2013)
- Mohammad Mosaddeq and the 1953 Coup in Iran — Mark J. Gasiorowski and Malcolm Byrne (eds.), Syracuse University Press (2004)
- CIA Confirms Role in 1953 Iran Coup — Malcolm Byrne (ed.), National Security Archive (2013)
Historians still argue about how much the coup depended on the CIA and how much on Iranian royalists, clerics and the army, and whether it would have happened without foreign money. But the documentary record leaves no doubt that the US and Britain planned, financed and drove it.
- Mohammad Mosaddeq and the 1953 Coup in Iran — Mark J. Gasiorowski and Malcolm Byrne (eds.), Syracuse University Press (2004)
- The Coup: 1953, the CIA, and the Roots of Modern U.S.-Iranian Relations — Ervand Abrahamian, The New Press (2013)
- CIA Confirms Role in 1953 Iran Coup — Malcolm Byrne (ed.), National Security Archive (2013)
Aftermath
Mosaddegh was tried by a military court, served three years in prison and lived the rest of his life under house arrest at his estate in Ahmadabad, where he died in 1967. In 1954 a new international consortium took over oil operations, with Anglo-Iranian keeping 40% and American companies gaining a share.
- The Coup: 1953, the CIA, and the Roots of Modern U.S.-Iranian Relations — Ervand Abrahamian, The New Press (2013)
- A History of Modern Iran — Ervand Abrahamian, Cambridge University Press (2008)
- Iran Between Two Revolutions — Ervand Abrahamian, Princeton University Press (1982)
Why it still matters
“28 Mordad” became shorthand for foreign betrayal. When students seized the US embassy in 1979, one fear was that Washington was preparing a repeat of 1953.
- Revolutionary Iran: A History of the Islamic Republic — Michael Axworthy, Oxford University Press (2013)
- The Coup: 1953, the CIA, and the Roots of Modern U.S.-Iranian Relations — Ervand Abrahamian, The New Press (2013)
Iran's best chance of democracy, led by a popular and honest prime minister, was destroyed by Britain and the United States to protect oil profits, putting the Shah's dictatorship back in place and setting the country on the road to 1979.
- The Coup: 1953, the CIA, and the Roots of Modern U.S.-Iranian Relations — Ervand Abrahamian, The New Press (2013)
- Mohammad Mosaddeq and the 1953 Coup in Iran — Mark J. Gasiorowski and Malcolm Byrne (eds.), Syracuse University Press (2004)
Mosaddegh had become autocratic, dissolving parliament by referendum and defying the Shah, who had the constitutional right to dismiss him. The crowds of 19 August were a genuine national uprising against chaos and the threat of communism, whatever the foreign role.
- Mohammad Mosaddeq and the 1953 Coup in Iran — Mark J. Gasiorowski and Malcolm Byrne (eds.), Syracuse University Press (2004)
- Modern Iran since 1797: Reform and Revolution — Ali M. Ansari, Routledge (2019)
Long denied, the US role has been acknowledged: Secretary of State Madeleine Albright admitted it in 2000, President Obama referred to it in Cairo in 2009, and in 2013 declassified CIA documents stated that the coup was carried out under CIA direction "as an act of U.S. foreign policy".
- CIA Confirms Role in 1953 Iran Coup — Malcolm Byrne (ed.), National Security Archive (2013)
- The Coup: 1953, the CIA, and the Roots of Modern U.S.-Iranian Relations — Ervand Abrahamian, The New Press (2013)
Proof of American and British enmity to Iran. Official accounts tend to downplay Mosaddegh's secular nationalism and the fact that leading clerics, such as Ayatollah Kashani, turned against him and some backed the coup.
- The Coup: 1953, the CIA, and the Roots of Modern U.S.-Iranian Relations — Ervand Abrahamian, The New Press (2013)
- Revolutionary Iran: A History of the Islamic Republic — Michael Axworthy, Oxford University Press (2013)
Why it matters today
The coup is perhaps the single most important event for understanding Iranian distrust of the West, and especially of the United States and Britain. Almost every Iranian knows the name Mosaddegh. It is invoked by the Islamic Republic to justify hostility to America, by liberals as the moment Iranian democracy was stolen, and it explains why many Iranians assume foreign hands behind events at home.