American Coup

In August of 1953 Iran had a democratic government.

Its parliament and prime minister,

the popular Mohammad Mosaddegh,

had nationalized the oil industry

to control the country's chief asset.

Then, the CIA intervened.

I am honored to be in the timeless city of Cairo.

We meet at a time of great tension

between the United States and Muslims around the world.

Tension rooted in historical forces

that go beyond any current policy debate.

For many years Iran has defined itself in part

by its opposition to my country and there is,

in fact, a tumultuous history between us.

Since the Islamic revolution Iran has played

a role in acts of hostage taking and violence

against US troops and civilians.

In the middle of the Cold War the United States

played a role in the overthrow

of a democratically elected Iranian government.

This history is well known.

I have never heard anything about the CIA,

especially in 1953.

I don't know anything about it.

I'm sorry, I don't know anything about that.

I have no knowledge of that whatsoever.

Something I've never heard of, never known anything about.

I have no clue.

Uh...

Uh...

Uh... can you repeat that?

Well I wasn't born in 1953 so I've never heard of the coup.

That was a little bit before my time.

After the Eisenhower administration made its decision

to overthrow Mosaddegh, Allen Dulles selected Kermit Roosevelt

to carry out the coup. At the beginning of august 1953

Kermit Roosevelt arrived in Tehran

and began this covert operation.

It's really a fascinating operation to study

because it answers this odd question.

How do you overthrow a government?

Former Premier Mosaddegh’s ruined house is a mute testimony

to three days of bloody rioting culminating in a military coup.

Suppose you get sent to a country and you're told

"overthrow the government" so what do you do on the first day?

What do you do on the second day?

In the quick shift of power, Mosaddegh

was finally apprehended and awaits trial for treason.

The Shah, who had fled to Rome, comes home

backed by General Zedekiah, military strongman,

who engineered his return to power.

The general will now have a strong voice

in the newly formed government whose cabinet

is seen here with Shah Pahlavi.

How do you overthrow a government?

Many countries in the Middle East are what you might call

fake countries or invented countries.

They're countries that were created by outside powers,

usually in the wake of World War I and I think

there's a temptation for people that aren't familiar

with the region to see Iran in that category

but that's not true. Actually the opposite is true.

Iran, formerly known as Persia,

is one of the world's oldest civilizations.

At a time when Europeans are still living in caves

and wearing animal skins people in Persia

were conducting experiments in astronomy

and learning about mathematics

and writing beautiful poetry.

So this is a civilization that has a great deal of sense

of its history, a sense of self confidence, a sense of identity

and a sense of being rooted

in the long course of world history.

This is not a country that just arrived and it is trying

to figure out who or what it is.

In 1908 the British discovered oil in Iran.

Geologists soon learned that Iran sits on an ocean of oil.

The British decided that they needed oil to run their cars,

to power their Navy and to fuel their economy.

But Britain has no oil.

When oil was discovered there the British decided

that they would like to control that entire resource.

Soon after the discovery this Anglo Iranian Oil Company

was formed and it purchased the majority stake

and then the oil company arranged a concession with Iran.

The entire stock of Iranian oil was the property

of this British company and all the rights to exploit oil

in Iran belonged to this company.

Oil, of course, became very profitable

from the 1920s onwards

and the way the division was, was abysmal.

For instance, Iran was getting sometimes

16 percent of the profits

and the profits were defined in such a way

that it actually short changed Iran.

Books were not open to the public,

even to the Iranian government.

In 1951, Mohammad Mosaddegh was chosen Prime Minister of Iran.

Mosaddegh was a tireless social reformer,

fiercely nationalistic and incorruptible.

No account of the 20th century

is complete without a chapter on him.

Mohammad Mosaddegh was an outstanding politician,

political figure in Iran for a long, long time.

He had relatives who were part of the previous dynasty,

The Qajar dynasty and he was a prominent figure

for a number of decades in Iran.

Before he became Prime Minister in 1951 he was

a vocal opponent of British control over Iran's oil industry

and generally Britain's control over Iran as a country.

We have to remember this is at a time

when there's a wave of nationalism going through Iran.

There's been long struggle against the British

since the late 1800s and there was a feeling in the country

that it was time for Iran to really be independent.

As Iran's vast petroleum reserves aroused nationalists

following seizure by the Iranian government

of the British operated refineries

and distribution facility.

Demonstrations at the huge oil port of Ibadan culminate

in the tearing down of signs over company offices

and the raising of the Iranian flag over the installations.

- And here comes Gossamer, a very well respected person,

a lawyer, who managed to get himself

in this very powerful position in the country.

Mosaddegh was a fascinating figure.

He must be one of the towering figures

in the 20th century history of the developing world.

Bear in mind that when he emerged there had never been

a figure from a poor country who had risen up in such

a visible way to challenge the masters of the universe.

Nobody from a poor country had ever stood up and said

"we own this resource, it belongs to us,

it doesn't matter what companies you've imposed on us

or what agreements you've imposed on us;

all of that was unjust.

We have this resource and we are miserably poor.

We need the money from this resource

and we insist on having it."

Mosaddegh is very much interested

in national sovereignty but there's something more

than that. He's not just a national leader.

He was very sincerely committed

to the notion of liberal democracy.

Time Magazine made Mohammad Gossamer

its man of the year for 1951.

They chose him over Douglas MacArthur, Harry Truman,

Winston Churchill and a number of other

towering world figures and they were right.

He was the most important person in the world at that time.

And he did what a lot of Iranians strongly agreed with,

which was to make sure that Iran would keep

the revenues of its own oil, at least a big portion of it,

whereas in the past it didn't keep any of it.

So people in Iran began challenging

Anglo Iranian Oil Company and saying

"you've got to change your contract with us

and give us 50 percent, you keep 50 percent",

not keep 90 percent or more, whatever it was,

no one ever knew since Iranians were never allowed

to audit the books.

The Anglo Iranian Oil Company refused.

They would not concede an inch. They were quite pigheaded.

I think they were still maybe caught

in the colonial mentality of the past and thought that

the idea that some poor country could try

to pressure them or dictate terms to them was unthinkable.

The important thing is who actually controls oil production

because if you control oil production then you can decide

whether you're going to increase it or lower it

and that then determines, of course, price.

What Mosaddegh was doing was threatening that

because by nationalizing he was saying MANIOC is not going

to be in charge of production, Iran will be in charge.

We can decide how much to produce,

who to sell it to and that could influence the market.

So that's where it became the threat.

The ability of a foreign company to control oil

in the Middle East was also important, not just

for the British but also in the American's eyes.

They didn't want other countries in the Middle East

to begin thinking that all you have to do is make trouble

and foreign companies are going to have to

make concessions to you.

The pretense was that they were willing to compromise

but the Brits from right at the beginning

they didn't want to give up control.

They started spending some money on, you know,

parks, swimming pools and stuff.

So by '51 they were saying "the Iranians should be

grateful to us because we've built you

swimming pools and stuff."

Well of course a swimming pool might cost

the oil company 2,000 pounds.

What's that when you know profits are like

50 million pounds a year or something like that.

They were treating them kind of like the way

we treated black Americans in per civil war south,

or even post civil war south when we put them in

economic slavery instead of real slavery and persisted,