When we last spoke about Iran, we talked about
the events surrounding the withdrawal of Western
and Soviet occupation forces in the post-1945
time period.
This was one of the early Cold War confrontations
between East and West, one where the Soviet
Union failed to achieve its goal of gaining
influence in Iran.
While this may have seemed like a win for
the West at the time, the situation in Iran
continued to be volatile, with a multitude
of different groups vying for influence and
control.
Today we are going to look at Iran under Mohammad
Mossadegh and his ultimately disastrous relationship
with the West.
I’m your host David and this is...The Cold
War!
So, lets get into what Iranian politics looked
like.
While pluralist in nature, that pluralism
was being tested in the post-war period.
The 1947 parliamentary elections were one
of the first tests of that pluralism.
Opposition forces accused Prime Minister Ahmad
Gavam of rigging the election after Gavam
won 73 seats compared to the 25 seats won
by the pro-Mossadegh forces and the mere 2
seats won by the leftist opposition.
Sitting on the Peacock Throne was Mohammad
Reza Shah, an autocrat by tendency, who wanted
to have more direct political control and
felt the best way of doing this was to decrease
government dependence on Parliament.
The events of February 4, 1949 helped the
Shah towards this.
While attending a ceremony in commemoration
of the founding of Tehran University, a symbol
of secularism in Iran by the way, the Shah
was shot at five times by Nasser Fakhrarai
(Fakh-ra-rai), a journalist affiliated to
a religious newspaper who was also a member
of a union affiliated to the leftist Tudeh
Party.
There was also evidence that Fakhrarai was
a member of the fundamentalist group Fadaiyan-e-Islam
(fad-ai-yan e Islam).
Somehow, the first three shots fired missed
the Shah while the 4th and 5th bullets wounded
him but not severely.
Fakharai was killed by security forces on
the spot.
The Shah declared the assassination attempt
was part of a conspiracy by communists and
religious radicals and declared martial law.
The Tudeh Party was banned, with 28 members
of its leadership being arrested, including
prominent members of the United Trade Unions.
Newspapers critical of the government were
also closed.
This was also used as an opportunity to further
expand the powers of the Shah by means of
the passage of the Seven Year Plan through
the Majlis on the 17th of February.
The goal of the plan was to fight rural poverty
and boost agricultural output.
If successful, it was thought that it would
win over the poor and prevent them from succumbing
to pro-Soviet influence.
The plan was ultimately unsuccessful however,
as the funding for the plan was redirected
to industrial bailouts and the construction
of new rail lines.
Taking advantage of his surge in sympathetic
popularity immediately after the assasignation
attempt, the Shah had a bill passed through
the Majlis calling for a Constituent Assembly
to be formed to reexamine the Constitution
of 1906.
As this Constituent Assembly was dominated
by allies of the Shah, he was able to enact
several laws to his own great benefit.
Lèse-Majesté was introduced, making it illegal
to criticise the Shah or the Royal Family.
Ownership of crown land was changed so that
the land was held directly by the Shah.
Reza Mohammad Shah also succeeded in dividing
Parliament into two separate chambers.
The 60-man Senate became the upper house,
with half of its seats filled by men appointed
by the Shah.
The Shah also gained the right to dissolve
both chambers of Parliament.
So, with these changes now in place, elections
were arranged for July of 1949 to elect the
16th Majlis.
The elections were held but the claims of
fraud and falsification were rampant and calls
for public protests grew.
Mohammad Mosaddegh, listening to the demands
of the people, called for a protest to be
held on October 13, when thousands marched
on the Royal Palace to request a bast.
For those of you who may not know, a bast
is a type of sit-in protest often used in
revolutionary situations in Iran.
It is characterized by being held in a mutually
agreeable location where the protesters can
make their demands free from persecution.
20 representatives were selected to start
bast in the Royal Gardens where they called
on the Shah to prevent the court Minister,
Abdolhossein Hazhir, from falsifying the election
results.
Hazhir meet with the protesters himself, promising
the results would be examined for fairness
and in the event they were found to be unfair,
they would be dismissed, with new elections
held.
Sounds like a total win for the protesters,
right?
That's what they themselves thought as the
group went on to form the National Front,
a coalition of parties led by Mohammad Mossadegh.
The groups represented within the National
Coalition were generally in favour of more
democracy, more civil liberties, and a functional
constitutional government.
Critically, especially for this story, they
were also against foreign exploitation of
Iran's natural resources, specifically oil.
I’m sure you can guess the direction this
is all heading...
Hazhir himself was not able to examine the
election results as he was assassinated in
November by Fadaiyan-e-Islam but the Shah
himself decided that new elections would be
held in February of 1950.
While the National Front Coalition only won
between 7 and 11 seats, depending if you want
to qualify certain groups as part of the coalition
or just allies, their message about the nationalization
of the oil industry was gaining a lot of traction.
When Haj Ali Razmara, the Prime Minister-elect
and an opponent of oil nationalization, was
assassinated by a member of Fadaiyan-e-Islam
in March of 1951, a new Prime Minister was
needed.
Mohammad Mossadegh was selected.
Now we need to explain Fadaiyan-e-Islam.
An Islamist oragnization founded in 1946,
it looked to bring a more fundamentalist practice
of Islam to Iran, in the face of growing foreign
influence.
Drawing support from the economically disadvantaged
youth of Iran, it is recognized as an early
influence on the religious terrorist organizations
that would come.
But more on that later!
The spiritual leader of Fadaiyan-e-Islam was
Abol-Qasim Kashani, who was appointed as the
speaker of the new parliament.
Critical to our current story, he was an ardent
supporter of the nationalization of the oil
industry.
The mutual desire between Kashani and Mossadegh
to nationalize Iranian oil created an interesting,
albeit temporary alliance between the religious
leader and and strident secularist.
MOssadegh hoped the Kashani would help mobilize
the religious forces in the country to back
the nationalization program while Kashani
hoped that Mossadegh would help to establish
Sharia law in Iran.
Clearly, this was an alliance of convenience
and as you can well imagine, really didn’t
last long!
Interestingly, the Shah also understood and
tried to take advantage of the religious factions
present in the country and called on Ayatollah
Seyyed Hossein Borujerdi (Bor-u-jer-di) to
convene his supporters and convince them of
the need for religious quietism, the disinvolvement
of religion in politics.
In exchange, the Shah promised to remain uninvolved
in religious matters.
A meeting of leading clerics in the city of
Qom on February 20, 1949 resulted in a consensus
of non-interference.
Keep in mind of course that there were still
some clerics who favoured religious involvement
in political life, notably the future Ayatollah
Khomeini.
We’ll have LOTS more about him later in
our series!
Ok, so Mossadegh, a firm believer in democracy
and parliamentary power, is now the Prime
Minister.
As such, he viewed the Shah as symbolic figure.
The Shah on the other hand didn’t agree
with this and wanted real power of his own.
Understanding the widespread popularity surrounding
the idea of nationalization of the oil industry,
the Shah threw his support behind this.
While he knew this would likely increase support
for Mossadegh, he also knew he would gain
support of his own.
On May 1, 1951 the oil industry in Iran was
nationalized.
Mossadegh, not wanting to completely alienate
Britain, offered a 50-50 profit sharing scheme
between Iran and the Anglo-Iranian Oil Company.
A similar deal had recently been achieved
in Venezuela and Mossadegh hoped for something
similar.
Despite the United States urging London to
accept the proposal, the British refused and
instead started making plans for the removal
of MOssadegh and his supporters from power.
But before we get to those plans, what was
the impact of nationalization on oil production
itself?
To be straight-forward, it was terrible.
The Iranian oil industry had been highly reliant
on equipment and expertise that had been supplied
by Britain.
Iran also lacked its own fleet of tankers
so what oil was being extracted had no easy
way of getting to markets.
Oil production in the Abadan oil field was
actually brought to a halt.
Compounding the economic impact was a sanction
regime imposed by the British which included
a ban on key imports like sugar and steel,
the freezing of Iranian bank accounts and
orders to the Royal Navy to stop any ships
transporting Iranian oil.
Bipartisan support in the British Parliament,
led by the recently reelected Winston Churchill,
favoured harsh treatment of Iran.
Mossadegh as a result, turned to the US looking
for support, and although President Truman
initially favoured supporting the Iranians,
he did end up favouring the British position,
as the United States was reliant on British
support for the ongoing conflict in Korea.
One thing, by the way, and I’ll be very
clear here, when we say the US ended up supporting
the British position in Iran, that means the
United States began to help undermining the
Iranian government.
Back in Iran, with living conditions worsening
as the economic situation spiraled, fresh
parliamentary elections were held.
Despite Mossadegh’s democratic credentials,
these elections were also marred by controversy.
On one side, were the claims of British interference
including widespread bribery of candidates
and regional leaders in an effort to create
a pro-western bloc in Parliament.
On the other side, Mossadegh himself was accused
of interference when he decided to halt the
multi-day election process as soon as he had
reached a quorum of seats, a mere 79 out of
the total 136 seats available.
The National Front took 30 seats while Royalists
and pro-British groups took 49.
Tudeh, the Soviet-backed leftists you will
remember, failed to win a single seat despite
having the second largest number of overall
votes.
The position of the Royalists regarding nationalization
was...ambiguous.
Although the Shah publicly supported nationalization,
he was very much hoping that the crisis would
result in Mossadegh being removed from office,
allowing the Shah to assert greater influence.
Mossadegh’s position was becoming more...complicated,
as time went on.
Oil production had dropped almost 10-fold
and his efforts to launch an “economy-without-oil”
campaign, aimed to decrease dependency on
oil was extremely hard to implement in the
middle of the crisis.
Mossadegh’s support from the Islamists was
also beginning to crumble as Kashani’s hopes
of the introduction of Sharia law went unrealized.
Mossadegh increasingly became the focus of
blame for the both the economic and political
crisis.
Violence in the form of street clashes became
rampant and by August of 1952, Mossadegh made
the decision to rule via emergency powers.
After a failed assasination attempt on himself
and one of his cabinet members, he ordered
the jailing of dozens of his political opponents.
As you may well imagine, this created further
anger in the populous and accusations of Mossadegh
establishing himself as a dictator.
After the resignation of many Mossadegh supporters
in Parliament, he decided to hold a referendum
on dissolving the Mejlis and ruling by executive
decree.
The widespread rigging of the referendum resulted
in a 99.9 percent approval rating for this
plan which you can be sure was well received...To
add further fuel to this political mess, Tudeh
switched is opposition to Mossadegh and began
to support him, launching violent attacks
on anti-government opponents.
Mossadegh protested this but Tudeh continued,
further undermining Mossadegh’s position.
So that is the mess inside of Iran, but we
all know these things don’t ever happen
in a vacuum, especially when oil is involved.
The election of Dwight D. Eisenhower in 1952
saw the American’s taking a more...involved...approach
in Iran and pursued the removal of Mossadegh
from office.
Although the Shah initially refused to take
part in the coup, he eventually changed his
mind and dismissed Mossadegh from office,
replacing him with General Fazlollah (Faz-lo-llah)
Zahedi (zah-he-DI).
Mossadegh refused the dismissal and millions
of his supporters, as well as those from Tudeh
took to the streets in protest.
Fearing the outcome, the Shah and his family
fled the country while many of the coup’s
plotters and supporters were jailed.
Mossadegh, believing the plot to have failed,
called his supporters home.
The plotters on the other hand, had other
ideas.
Zahedi met with the wealthy pro-Shah Ayatollah
Behbahani (Beh-ba-Han-i) and other royalists.
They arranged for a confrontation to be staged
in Tehran, which took place on August 19,
1952.
Paid infiltrators, claiming to be members
of Tudeh, started a protest calling for a
communist revolution.
Genuine members of Tudeh soon joined in the
protest and before too long, widespread destruction
of shops and businesses was underway.
At the same time this was happening, Zahedi
and the plotters had a second group of paid
infiltrators posing as supporters of the Shah,
gathering and calling for large scale opposition
to the communist revolution.
As you can expect, violence between the groups
ensued.
This allowed General Zahedi to call in the
army to restore order.
The army forces, with support from the anti-Tudeh
groups, quickly took control of government
buildings and Mossadegh, fearing more bloodshed,
refused to escalate the situation any further.
Mossadegh was arrested upon the return of
the Shah, who it should be noted, was accompanied
by CIA director John Foster Dulles.
Pure coincidence, I'm sure!
The coup completed, the nationalization of
the Iranian oil industry was reversed, but
with the Anglo-Iranian Oil Company monopoly
being broken up.
Five American oil companies were allowed into
the market as well as the Dutch company Royal
Dutch Shell and the French French Oil Company.
The Western-backed coup in Iran cemented a
pro-Western direction for the country for
the foreseeable future.
However, it also soured support for the West
greatly amongst the Iranian people.
In the wake of the coup, the Shah assumed
single-handed governance of Iran for the next
26 years, but the failure of democracy in
the country combined with dictatorial rule
and the meddling of both capitalist and socialist
forces in Iranian affairs set the country
on the path to catastrophic change.
The West, for it’s part, found that covert
regime-change could be an effective option
in projecting its power and influence into
regions, something that they would gain a
great deal more practice with as the Cold
War progressed.
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