The article presents one way to spin the story. Another would suggest Iran should thank the US and UK for preventing Mossadeq from delivering Iran over to the USSR intentionally or not. During WWII, Iran had been occupied by the Soviet Union, the US and the UK so that aid, mostly from the US, could be delivered to the Soviets. After the war, Stalin refused to withdraw his troops until the UK with the support of the US demanded it. The USSR then for years sought to persuade some outlying provinces to secede, and this agitation continued during the the events of 1953.
There can be little doubt but that the USSR would have turned Iran into a Soviet satellite state if Mossadeq had managed to break relations with the UK and US, and then Iran would have had no control over its oil production or oil revenues.
There is enormous doubt about that, actually.
In fact, had the Soviets not gotten bogged down in Afghanistan, they would almost certainly have tried again to take over Iran after the Islamic Revolution.
Conjecture
Instead asking for an apology from the US, Amadinejad should apologize to the US for its decades of ingratitude.
Don't hold your breath.
Yes, what ingrates. We give them a perfectly good military dictator to rule over them and they dare question us?
And a swell American trained secret police, too. They never thanked us for that, either.
Maybe the Soviets would have taken over Iran, key word being maybe. The choice, however, was for the Iranian people to make, and they clearly chose Mossadeq.
The documents indicate that the CIA paid for thugs to stage the coup. That is not a point of argument it is a fact.
There is no question but that the Soviets would have tried to take over Iran, and with the UK and US not supporting the government, there would have been nothing to stop them. The real choice the Iranians had was between the Shah and a Soviet dictatorship.
There isn't? I say there is.
In fact, the Shah was a constitutional monarch who succeeded his father to the throne in 1941, and after the war instituted extensive social, economic and political reforms, some of which alienated the clergy which joined in a loose political alliance with the communists to oppose the Shah. Mossadeq, who was a member of the Qajar royal family the Shah's father had overthrown in 1921 had not been allowed to participate in politics until after the new Shah had instituted those reforms.
After Mossadeq nationalized the oil industry, the British blockaded Iran, preventing the country from selling any oil, and as the economy crumbled, the people demonstrated daily in the streets for and against everything.
So, a nation elects to take control of its own resources.
Britian blockades that nation (an act of war) and that is the justification for the USA staging a coup by a criminal class?!
Mossadeq became increasingly worried that the crowds would turn against him or that the Shah or his supporters would try to depose him, so he demanded that the Shah sign over to him control of the military which the constitution vested in the Shah.
You mean the crowds that the CIA was paying to riot?
The Shah, never a strong or courageous man, signed papers to that effect, but then had a change of heart and exercised his constitutional authority to remove Mossadeq as PM and appoint some one else, but Mossadeq refused to step down and fired up his followers against the Shah, who then fled the country out of fear. It was at this point the US and UK agents persuaded the Shah to return to Iran, assert his constitutional authority and to rally his supporters and the military to support this move. Mossadeq had in the meantime, facing some opposition in the parliament, declared a state of emergency and began to rule by decree. With the assistance of US and UK advice and money, the Shah's supporters began a propaganda campaign to rally support for the Shah among the people and the military, and then the Shah had Mossadeq arrested for treason for refusing to abide by the Shah's order to step down from the office of PM and other offenses.
What a tangled web we weaved, when at first we practiced to decieve.
So did the US and UK help the Shah depose Mossadeq in a coup or did they prevent Mossadeq from deposing the Shah in a coup? When Mossadeq demanded the Shah give him control over the military was he acting within his legal powers, or had he exceeded his legal authority? When he closed the parliament and began to rule by decree, had he effectively ended democracy in Iran? There are accounts of these events that support all of these points of view, but when we consider that the main opposition to the Shah were the Soviet inspired communists and the hardline Islamists, it is clear that without the Shah, there was no likelihood Iran would remained a democracy.
Per usual, post WWII the European Western powers were seising control of third world natuion's resources.
When those nations objected for purely nationalistic reasons, they were accused of being communists.
Typical of that time.
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