All the Shah’s Men (20 page)

Only one important figure in the Eisenhower administration still hoped for compromise with Mossadegh: President Eisenhower himself. Two weeks before his inauguration, he met with Churchill in New York and did not seem at all interested when Churchill mentioned Iran. In fact, he complained that Britain’s efforts to involve the United States in its Iranian troubles had done nothing but “get Mossadegh to accuse us of being a partner in browbeating a weak nation.”

Churchill was wise enough not to press his case at that moment. He knew that planning for a coup was already well underway, and that the Dulles brothers were on his side. In February he dispatched “C,” the chief of British intelligence, Sir John Sinclair, to Washington to convey the intensity of his interest.

While Sinclair was in Washington, Iranian tribal leaders who were on the British payroll, working with General Zahedi, launched a short-lived uprising in the southern provinces. Mossadegh suspected the Shah was involved and suggested that he consider leaving Iran until passions cooled. By all accounts including his own, the Shah was more than willing to go. Minister of Court Hussein Ala described him as being in an “almost hysterical state” and on the brink of a “complete nervous breakdown and irrational action.”

Mossadegh’s foreign-sponsored enemies, however, cleverly turned news of the Shah’s planned trip to their advantage. In sermons, street-corner speeches, and newspaper articles, they charged that Mossadegh was forcing the Shah to leave against his will and that his next step would certainly be to abolish the monarchy. They organized a mob to converge on Mossadegh’s house on the night of February 28, and as the crowd swelled in size, a jeep carrying an army colonel and one of the most colorful gang leaders in Tehran, Shaban “The Brainless” Jafari, smashed through the front gate. Mossadegh, in his pajamas, was forced to flee over his back garden wall. A British diplomat cabled home that the mob “was certainly organized by Kashani, and was not a spontaneous expression of a loyalty deep-seated or significant enough to stiffen the Shah.”

By the next afternoon Tehran was quiet again, partly because the Shah had announced that he was canceling his travel plans. The sudden appearance of a paid mob and its willingness to attack the prime minister, however, contributed to an atmosphere of growing instability. It also gave coup planners more ammunition for their campaign to persuade Eisenhower that Iran was sliding dangerously toward chaos.

Neither Eisenhower nor anyone in his inner circle ever wrote an account of how he came to support the idea of a coup. Evidence suggests, however, that he did so during March, two months after his inauguration. The Dulles brothers seized on the violence that erupted in Tehran on February 28. Even Ambassador Henderson acknowledged that the protest had been organized rather than genuine, but evidently no one told that to Eisenhower. Instead, Allen Dulles sent him an intelligence estimate warning that “the Iran situation has been slowly disintegrating” and “a Communist takeover is becoming more and more of a possibility.”

It was not an easy sell. At a meeting of the National Security Council on March 4, Eisenhower wondered aloud why it wasn’t possible “to get some of the people in these down-trodden countries to like us instead of hating us.” Secretary of State Dulles did not reply directly, but he delivered a sobering analysis of the situation in Iran. His words, as reported by the official note-taker, suggested that the United States could no longer stand by without acting:

The probable consequences of the events of the last few days, concluded Mr. Dulles, would be a dictatorship in Iran under Mossadegh. As long as the latter lives there was little danger, but if he were to be assassinated or removed from power, a political vacuum would occur in Iran and the Communists might easily take over. The consequences of such a takeover were then outlined in all their seriousness by Mr. Dulles. Not only would the free world be deprived of the enormous assets represented by Iranian oil production and reserves, but the Russians would secure these assets and thus henceforth be free of any anxiety about their petroleum situation. Worse still, Mr. Dulles pointed out, if Iran succumbed to the Communists there was little doubt that in short order the other areas of the Middle East, with some sixty percent of the world’s oil reserves, would fall into Communist control.

Later that week, Foreign Secretary Eden visited Washington. At several of his top-level meetings, Eden broached the subject of Iran and the proposed coup. He found everyone except Eisenhower sympathetic. Alton Jones, the oil executive who had traveled to Iran the year before, was a personal friend of Eisenhower’s, and Eisenhower told Eden that he wanted to send Jones back “to make the best arrangement he could to get the oil flowing again.” He said he considered Mossadegh “the only hope for the West in Iran,” precisely the view Truman had held.

“I would like to give the guy ten million bucks,” Eisenhower told the surprised Eden.

Eden tried gently to change Eisenhower’s mind, telling him at one point that “we would be better occupied looking for alternatives to Mossadegh, rather than trying to buy him off.” In the best diplomatic tradition, however, he left the real work to the intelligence officers he had brought with him. While he spoke softly at the White House, they were honing their plot with comrades at the CIA and the State Department.

The Dulles brothers had developed an excellent sense of how to bring their boss around to their way of thinking. On March 7 John Foster Dulles and Eden issued a joint communiqué saying they had agreed on a new offer that would allow Iran to “retain control of its own oil industry and of its own oil policies.” That sounded fine to Eisenhower, but it did not honestly reflect the offer itself, which, like every other one the British had made over the past two years, was based on the premise that they would return to run the Iranian oil industry. Mossadegh rejected it and told Ambassador Henderson that he was disappointed that the Eisenhower administration had “allowed the United Kingdom to formulate United States policies concerning Iran.” He made several counterproposals, even offering at one point to submit to mediation by Switzerland or Germany, but the British and their new friends in Washington ignored them.

While Eden was in Washington, the Rashidian brothers were doing their best to stir up trouble in Iran. Partly through their efforts, prominent figures who had been part of Mossadegh’s coalition began to turn against him. Ayatollah Kashani, the most outspoken defector, damned Mossadegh with the vitriol he had once reserved for the British. He began using thugs to intimidate his rivals and even pushed a bill through the Majlis pardoning Khalil Tahmasibi, the convicted assassin of Prime Minister Razmara. Other former Mossadegh allies who broke with him to pursue their own agendas included Muzzaffar Baqai, head of the worker-based Toilers party, and Hussein Makki, who had helped lead the takeover of the Abadan refinery and was at one point considered Mossadegh’s heir apparent. Robin Zaehner wrote in a report to London that the successful effort to pull Kashani, Baqai, and Makki away from the National Front was “created and directed by the brothers Rashidian.”

These defections greatly weakened the National Front and left Mossadegh isolated and vulnerable. They also immeasurably strengthened the Dulles brothers in their effort to persuade President Eisenhower that the time had come for the United States to act. At a National Security Council meeting on March 11, Secretary of State Dulles asserted that Americans must become “senior partners with the British in this area.” Eisenhower expressed no disagreement.

“The President said that he had very real doubts whether, even if we tried unilaterally, we could make a successful deal with Mossadegh,” the note-taker at that meeting reported. “He felt that it might not be worth the paper it was written on, and the example might have grave effects on United States oil concessions in other parts of the world.”

Eisenhower had come to the conclusion that Iran was collapsing, and that the collapse could not be prevented as long as Mossadegh was in power. He stopped inquiring about the prospects for compromise. Those around him took his change in tone as a sign that he would not resist the idea of a coup. On March 18 Frank Wisner sent a message to his British counterparts saying that the CIA was now prepared to discuss the details of a plot against Mossadegh. Two weeks later, Allen Dulles approved the dispatch of $1 million to the CIA station in Tehran, for use “in any way that would bring about the fall of Mossadegh.”

These developments greatly encouraged the British. During April, the Foreign Office formally embraced Operation Ajax. Then, in what amounted to explicit recognition that command was passing from their hands to the Americans, British agents sent word to the Rashidian brothers that they should now work with the CIA.

Iranians connected to the Rashidian network decided that they could push Iran further toward chaos by kidnapping high government officials. Their preferred targets, Foreign Minister Fatemi and General Riahi, the newly appointed chief of staff, traveled with too many bodyguards, so they settled on the Tehran police chief, General Mahmoud Afshartus. Some of the plotters had personal ties to Afshartus, and one invited the chief to his home on April 19. There he was seized, blindfolded, and spirited to a cave outside of town. Police officers identified the kidnappers almost immediately, but as the officers closed in, one of Afshartus’s captors shot and killed him.

This murder had the desired effect. It shocked the country and also eliminated a popular officer who might have been a formidable obstacle to the success of the forthcoming coup. General Zahedi, who had resurfaced after treason charges against him were dropped, was implicated in the killing. He took refuge in the Majlis, under Ayatollah Kashani’s protection.

Unaware of how decisively the Americans had turned against him, Mossadegh next decided to appeal directly to Eisenhower. In a letter dated May 28 he said that Iranians were “suffering financial hardships and struggling with political intrigues carried on by the former oil company and the British government.” They would be deeply grateful for “prompt and effective aid” from the United States, or for American support for a stalled $25-million loan that Mossadegh was seeking from the Export-Import Bank, or at least for permission to sell oil to American companies. Eisenhower took a month to reply. When he did, it was to suggest that Mossadegh could best repair Iran’s economy by resolving his dispute with the British:

The failure of Iran and the United Kingdom to reach an agreement with regard to compensation has handicapped the Government of the United States in its efforts to help Iran. There is a strong feeling in the United States, even among American citizens most sympathetic to Iran and friendly to the Iranian people, that it would not be fair to the American taxpayers for the United States Government to extend any considerable amount of economic aid to Iran so long as Iran could have access to funds derived from the sale of its oil…. I note the concern reflected in your letter at the present dangerous situation in Iran, and sincerely hope that before it is too late, the Government of Iran will take such steps as are in its power to prevent a further deterioration in that situation.

This letter told Mossadegh what Eisenhower’s intimates already knew: that the new administration had reversed American policy toward Iran. No longer would there be efforts to make the best of the situation, as under Truman, and no longer would there be criticism of the British for favoring a coup. In fact, by the time Eisenhower sent his reply to Mossadegh, both men knew what was afoot.

Eisenhower had already given tacit approval to the coup plot, but because of its momentous scope, tacit approval was not enough. On June 14 Allen Dulles went to the White House to brief him. Sensing the president’s desire not to know too much, Dulles gave him only what Kermit Roosevelt called “the most ‘broad brush’ outline of what was proposed.” That was all Eisenhower needed, and he gave his blessing. Around the same time Churchill gave his own secret—and much more enthusiastic—approval.

Planning for the plot was already quite advanced by the time Eisenhower and Churchill formally endorsed it. Two veteran intelligence officers, one American and one British, had met in Cyprus to draw up a detailed blueprint. Both were old Iran hands. The CIA man was Donald Wilber, who had worked for years as an archaeologist and an architect in the Middle East, served in Iran during World War II as an OSS agent, and then divided his time between advanced studies at Princeton and work as a consultant to the CIA specializing in psychological warfare. In 1952 Wilber had spent six months running the CIA’s “political action” office in Tehran, an assignment that gave him a firsthand view of political and military factions favoring and opposing Mossadegh. His British counterpart, Norman Darbyshire, had served extended tours of duty in Iran and worked closely with Robin Zaehner. When the British intelligence station in Tehran was forced to close, it was moved to Cyprus and Darbyshire was named to head it.

These two agents, now working for governments that shared the same goal in Iran, struck up a close working relationship, as a CIA history of the coup—written by Wilber himself—later reported:

It soon became apparent that Dr. Wilber and Mr. Darbyshire held quite similar views of Iranian personalities and had made very similar estimates of the factors involved in the Iranian political scene. There was no friction or marked difference of opinion during the discussions. It also quickly became apparent that the SIS was perfectly content to follow whatever lead was taken by the Agency. It seemed obvious to Wilber that the British were very pleased at having obtained the active cooperation of the Agency and were determined to do nothing which might jeopardize US participation. At the same time there was faint envy expressed over the fact that the Agency was better equipped in the way of funds, personnel and facilities than was SIS.

Wilber and Darbyshire agreed that although General Zahedi had his weaknesses, he was the only Iranian with enough “vigor and courage” to rally opposition forces. Their plan to place him in power, which would be altered several times before the blow was struck, was carefully considered and straightforward: