Dr. Abbas Milani is he Director of the Iranian Studies Program at Stanford University. His recent book is “The Shah,” is based on ten years studying the archives of the United States and of Britain. The following is from his recent lecture on that subject.
His is the definitive explanation for the Mossadeq incident.
The event that has come to define
perceptions of U.S. meddling is the coup that ejected the popularly elected prime minister, Mohammad Mossadegh, in 1953. Prior to 1951, Britain controlled Iran’s oil industry. The US foresaw how the one-sided dominance would result in a nationalist uprising, and warned Britain, but they refused to alter the agreements, claiming that they knew how to deal with the ‘natives.’
Mossedeq was the nationalist leader of the Iranian Parliament, becoming so via democratic process, and
the first thing he did was nationalize the oil industry. … the Brits tried to get the Shah to use the army to throw Mossadeq out…but
the Shah refused to do anything illegal.
Due to the unrest and criticisms,
Mossadeq decided to dismiss the parliament; without any constitutional or legal basis. His supporters warned him that
this would allow the Shah to make recess appointments, including the Prime Ministers. He didn’t believe that the Shah would do it….he was wrong. On August 13th, 1953
the Shah signed the decree which removed Mossadeq with General Fazollah Zehedi. “When pro-Shah soldiers went to arrest Mossadegh, they instead were captured.”
http://coat.ncf.ca/our_magazine/links/issue51/articles/51_14-15.pdf
Professor Milani, using the latest declassified archival documents, suggests : “Although declassified CIA documents confirmed many details of his account, which Roosevelt [Kermit Roosevelt, top CIA officer in Iran] told with the relish of a John le Carré thriller,
his version was exceptionally self-serving. For instance, despite knowing little about Iranian society and speaking no Persian, Roosevelt launched by his own description an instantly potent propaganda campaign. Dwight Eisenhower, president during the 1953 coup, was to characterize Roosevelt’s report as seeming “more like a dime novel.”
The CIA claimed more power that it actually had.
http://www.hoover.org/publications/hoover-digest/article/5280
In other words, Roosevelt lied.
Kermit Roosevelt puffed up his role even though it put America in a poor light.
His story is used today to assault America.
BTW…."When the Iranian revolution came to power, with the help of Democratic President Jimmy Carter,
the Ayatollah Khomeini killed more human beings (about twenty thousand) in two weeks than had been killed by the Shah during his entire thirty-eight years. Khomeini followed this by sending hundreds of thousands of Iranians to die in the Iran-Iraq war, as martyrdom was needed to resurrect the Islamic Empire."
Paul Berman, “Terror and Liberalism,” p. 108