All the Shah’s Men (29 page)

I asked if Mr. Takrousta and his neighbors felt different from people in other villages, and he assured me that they did.

“We not only
feel
different, we
are
different,” he told me. “We’re different because of the effect Mossadegh had on us. Visitors come here from far away. They don’t come to any other village. People here are proud that we had the privilege of having such a great man here. We try to behave according to the example he gave us. We have a sense of charity, cooperation, unity, solidarity. We take the hands of people in need. People from other villages know we’re like this, and when they have problems, they come to us and we help them. You can’t think of Ahmad Abad without thinking of Mossadegh. He’s the father of our nation but also the father of this village. It’s really a shame that they destroyed his government.”

I asked who “they” were. Mr. Takrousta paused, unsure of himself. He stared up at the sky for a long moment and then spoke slowly.

“I’m a simple, uneducated villager,” he said. “I don’t know who ‘they’ are. But whoever they are, they don’t want our people to be free and raise ourselves up.”

We had spent more than an hour talking, and my host followed Iranian tradition by inviting me to stay for lunch. I declined as politely as I could, shook his hand, and thanked him profusely. For a while afterward I wandered aimlessly through the village. Later I checked back at the manse to see whether any other guests had appeared to mark this anniversary. None had. A group of Mossadegh’s admirers had considered holding a rally that day, but several were facing prosecution for various political offenses and did not want to provoke the authorities.

Beginning in the 1990s, and especially after the reform-minded Mohammad Khatami was elected president in 1997, Iranians used Mossadegh as a symbol in their political debates. Anyone who paid tribute to him or waved his portrait was implicitly challenging the principles of Islamic rule. Laws forbade calling for a democratic republic to replace the Islamic regime, but praising Mossadegh’s legacy was another way of doing the same thing. I found that many Iranians still associated his name with the idea of freedom.

“Oh, he was a good leader,” one young man told me. “When he was in power, you could say what you wanted. Not like today. Shah killed him, right?” Not exactly, I replied. But in a sense perhaps yes.

Islamic leaders do not know quite what to make of Mossadegh. They take his defeat as proof of their view that Iran is the eternal victim of cruel foreigners. Because he was a secular liberal, however, they cannot embrace him as a hero.

The Iranian press reflected this ambivalence in the way it covered the forty-ninth anniversary of the 1953 coup. One television station broadcast a damning documentary about it, but there was hardly a mention that Mossadegh was the victim. A small group of pro-government students rallied outside what was once the American embassy, but they, too, limited themselves to condemning “the crimes of the Great Satan against the Iranian nation” and did not refer to Mossadegh.

Only two of Tehran’s fourteen daily newspapers ran stories to mark the anniversary. One of them,
Entekhab,
which is a mouthpiece for hard-liners, described the coup as having been launched “against Mossadegh and also Kashani,” a bizarre rewriting of history that portrays Ayatollah Kashani as a victim of foreign intervention rather than as one of its agents. The lesson of the coup, this article said, was that Iranians must support their leaders because dissent only served the interests of “warmongers in the White House.”

The other article, in the moderate paper
Fereydoon Shayesteh
, was quite different. It described August 19, 1953, as “the day despotism returned,” and although carefully avoiding any praise of Mossadegh, it summarized the episode quite well: “The coup was carried out by professionals from both inside and outside Iran, and it cost millions of dollars. It is not at all true that, as some people have said and written, the coup happened because of internal opposition and mistrust of Mossadegh. It became possible when various well-known politicians, many of whom owed their careers to Mossadegh, broke with him and used all their means to ruin his reputation. These accusations have had no lasting effect, and in the years after the coup, those who made them never managed to win back the people’s respect.”

During my stay in Tehran, I tried to find some of the buildings associated with the coup, but without much success. Tehran has grown enormously since then, and as in many big cities, growth has meant the destruction of many old neighborhoods. I did drive slowly past the now-empty American embassy compound from which Kermit Roosevelt worked and where American hostages were imprisoned years later. Slogans were painted in large letters on the outside walls, conveniently translated into English. “We Will Make America Face a Severe Defeat,” one says. Another proclaims: “The Day the US Praises Us, We Should Mourn.”

The only other landmark I could find that Mossadegh would have recognized was the Saad Abad Palace. On the lawn outside, he sat for three days in 1949, demanding that the Shah annul that year’s fraudulent election. Inside are rooms where he met often with the Shah, including on the day in 1952 when he had his dramatic fainting fit. The palace is now open to visitors. As I approached, I asked my driver to pull to the side of the long driveway before we reached the entrance. He was mystified, but I had calculated that this must have been where the car carrying Kermit Roosevelt stopped on the nights when he had his clandestine meetings with the Shah. I could easily visualize the Shah walking down the steps ahead, coming through the darkness, and sliding into the car beside him.

Inside, the palace is opulent to the point of excess. Marble, fine woods, old paintings, and richly woven carpets define its décor. I spent much time looking around the Shah’s private reception room, which I guessed was where he received Roosevelt on the night they celebrated their victory and bid each other farewell. A large salon upstairs might have been the place where the Shah sat on a table during his meeting with General Schwarzkopf, but of course there was no one who could tell me for sure.

Even though I had been forbidden to interview Iranians about Mossadegh and his regime, the casual conversations I had with ordinary people made it abundantly clear that most held him in high regard. Someday his house in Ahmad Abad will be a museum and will draw streams of pilgrims from across Iran and beyond. I mentioned this to the caretaker while I was there, and she told me that creating such a museum was exactly what the Mossadegh family wished.

“The Mossadegh family?” I asked. During a visit to London, I had met Hedayat Matine-Daftary, the grandson who had fled Iran one step ahead of a vigilante mob. Now I learned that another grandson, Mahmoud Mossadegh, had stayed behind and become a prominent physician in Tehran. It was he who paid to maintain the house at Ahmad Abad, including building the caretaker’s cottage and paying her salary. She did not have his telephone number, but with the help of my guide I located him in Tehran. Mahmoud Mossadegh agreed to come to my hotel for dinner that night.

I came down from Room 911 a few minutes before the appointed time. For the better part of an hour I sat waiting near the hotel’s main entrance. Just as I began wondering if I had somehow missed my guest, he appeared. I had no idea what he would look like but recognized him immediately. He was tall and fair-skinned, with a strong, self-confident air about him. Most striking of all were his clothes. He wore a business suit and tie, a fashion I had never seen in Iran. As I approached him, I saw that the tie was from Harvard. It turned out that he had just returned from celebrating his forty-fifth class reunion.

“Actually, the whole thing was Averell Harriman’s idea,” he told me. “I translated for a few of Harriman’s meetings with my grandfather. One day he asked me where I wanted to go to college. I told him I assumed I would go somewhere in England, but he said the United States would be better. I asked him where in the United States. He was a Yale man, but for whatever reason he suggested Harvard. So when the time came I applied, and that was that!”

Even before we reached the elevator, Doctor Mossadegh had taken me back to the days when his grandfather was in power. His father was none other than Gholan-Hussein Mossadegh, who had been the prime minister’s physician and had accompanied him on his trips to the United Nations in New York and the World Court in The Hague. Gholan-Hussein Mossadegh had passed away years earlier, as had all of the prime minister’s five children except one, his daughter Majid, who had spent most of her life at a mental hospital in Switzerland. Grandchildren and great-grandchildren had scattered and, for the most part, avoided politics. Doctor Mossadegh told me that he had never been involved in anything other than medicine. The only public position he ever held was general secretary of the Iranian Society of Fertility and Sterility.

Doctor Mossadegh did not turn up alone that night. With him, dressed in jeans and a white T-shirt, was his son Ali, who was in his mid-twenties. Most of our conversation centered on Prime Minister Mossadegh. The doctor was full of stories and memories. Some were sad, particularly those about how morose Mossadegh became during his decade of enforced isolation. Even the trivial stories were insightful. Mossadegh, for example, used to peel Kleenex tissues apart because he thought that using them at full two-ply strength was a wasteful extravagance.

A few of the doctor’s recollections were of true historic interest. He told me that a few weeks before the 1953 coup, he attended a reception at the home of an Iranian diplomat in Washington and overheard the wife of Colonel Abbas Farzanegan, a military attaché who was on the CIA’s secret payroll, boast that her husband was involved in a plot that would soon make him a cabinet minister. The next morning Mahmoud Mossadegh cabled this intelligence home to his grandfather.

“Later on, after the coup, I asked him if he had received my cable. He said, ‘Of course I did.’ When I asked him why he hadn’t done something about it, he told me there was nothing he could have done. He said he knew full well that this coup was coming. His choice was to surrender or arm his supporters and call them out to civil war. He hated to think about giving up everything he believed in, but the other alternative was out of the question.”

As we spoke, Ali Mossadegh, the late prime minister’s great-grandson, listened intently but said little. As dessert was served, I tried to draw him out. In fluent English, he told me that he was studying international relations. Nothing, I thought, could be more appropriate for an intelligent young man with such a pedigree. So did he dream of a career in public life?

The two Mossadeghs, father and son, looked at each other after I asked this question. Obviously they had discussed it between themselves, probably many times. The doctor remained silent as we both waited for the answer.

“No, I won’t go into politics,” Ali Mossadegh told me. “I’m afraid of the risk. Not the risk to me, but to our family name. We have a very family-oriented society in this country. Wherever you go, even before people ask who you are, they ask whose son you are. Everything you do reflects on your family. If any of us commits even the slightest error, it tarnishes the name of our family and of Prime Minister Mossadegh. I’m just an ordinary human being. I make mistakes like everyone else. That’s fine as long as I’m just a private person, but if I become a politician, my mistakes will be held against the family, even against family members who are dead. My life is going to be like my father’s life. All we want to do is preserve the heritage of our family. I want to practice honesty, generosity, and the other qualities that people associate with the name Mossadegh. Public life is not for me. I doubt it will be for anyone else in our family. It’s too great a responsibility.”

NOTES

Chapter 1: Good Evening, Mr. Roosevelt

Firsthand accounts of the events of August 15–19, 1953, appeared in the
New York Times
and in newspapers served by the Associated Press, among them the
Chicago Tribune
. An official account is included in the CIA’s clandestine service history,
Overthrow of Premier Mossadeq of Iran, November 1952–August 1953
, written by Donald M. Wilber and referred to here as “Service History.” A summary of this history was published in the
New York Times
on April 16, 2000, and the full document is available at
www.nytimes.com
. Kermit Roosevelt’s memoir is
Countercoup: The Struggle for Control of Iran
(New York: McGraw-Hill, 1979). Other accounts of the coup appear in Ambrose, Stephen, with Immerman, Richard H.,
Ike’s Spies: Eisenhower and the Intelligence Establishment
(Garden City, N.Y.: 1981); Diba, Farhad,
Mohammad Mossadegh: A Political Biography
(London: Croom Helm, 1986); Dorril, Stephen,
MI6: Inside the Covert World of Her Majesty’s Secret Intelligence Service
(New York: Free Press, 2000); Elm, Mostafa, Oil, Power and Principle: Iran’s Oil Nationalization and Its Aftermath (Syracuse, N.Y.: Syracuse University Press, 1992); Gasiorowski, Mark J.,
U.S. Foreign Policy and the Shah: Building a Client State in Iran
(Ithaca, N.Y.: Cornell University, 1991); Goode, James F.,
The United States and Iran: In the Shadow of Mussadiq
(New York: St. Martin’s, 1997); Katouzian, Homa,
Mussadiq and the Struggle for Power in Iran
(London: I. B. Tauris, 1999); Mosley, Leonard,
Power Play
(Baltimore: Penguin, 1974); Prados, John,
Presidents’ Secret Wars: CIA and Pentagon Covert Operations Since World War II
(New York: William Morrow, 1986); Woodhouse, C. M.,
Something Ventured
(London: Granada, 1982); and Zabih, Sepehr,
The Mossadegh Era: Roots of the Iranian Revolution
(Chicago: Lake View Press, 1982); in articles, including Abrahamian, Ervand, “The 1953 Coup in Iran,” in
Science & Society
, vol. 65, no. 2 (Summer 2001); Gasiorowski, Mark J., “The 1953 Coup d’Etat in Iran,” in
International Journal of Middle East Studies
, no. 19 (1987); Louis, William Roger, “Britain and the Overthrow of the Mossadeq Government,” in Gasiorowski, Mark J., and Byrne, Malcolm (eds.),
Mohammad Mossadeq and the 1953 Coup in Iran
(Syracuse, N.Y.: Syracuse University Press, forthcoming 2003); Gasiorowski, Mark J., “The 1953 Coup d’Etat Against Mossadegh” in that same volume; and Love, Kennett,
The American Role in the Pahlavi Restoration on August 19, 1953
(unpublished), the Allen Dulles Papers, Princeton University (1960); and in two videos, History Channel,
Anatomy of a Coup: The CIA in Iran
, Catalogue No. AAE-43021; and
Mossadegh
, Iranian Movies (
www.IranianMovies.com
), Tape No. 3313.

Mossadegh fried in Persian oil:
Frankfurter Neue Presse
, October 17, 1952.

Woodhouse emphasizes communist threat: Woodhouse, C. M., op. cit., p. 117.

Philby on Roosevelt: Roosevelt, op. cit., p. 110.

Roosevelt’s feeling at border crossing: Roosevelt, ibid., pp. 138–40.

Roosevelt at tennis: Roosevelt, ibid., p. 154.

Zahedi receives over $100,000: Service History, p. B2; and Gasiorowski, Mark J., “The 1953 Coup d’Etat Against Mossadegh,” in Gasiorowski and Byrne, op. cit.

Groups CIA wished to influence, Service History, ibid., p. 7.

Cottam on Iranian press:
Anatomy of a Coup
(video), op. cit.

Shah hates taking decisions: Falle, Sam,
My Lucky Life in War, Revolution, Peace and Diplomacy
(Lewes, Sussex: Book Guild, 1996), p. 80.

Shah sent Ashraf away:
Foreign Relations of the United States 1952–1954, Volume X, Iran 1951–1954
, (Washington, D.C.: Government Printing Office, 1989), p. 675.

Ashraf’s eyes lit up: Dorril, op. cit., p. 586.

Ashraf’s meeting with Shah: Service History, op. cit., p. 24.

Schwarzkopf brings bags of money: Mosley, op. cit., pp. 216–219; and Roosevelt, op. cit., p. 147.

CIA gave Shah cover mission: Service History, op. cit., p. 25; and Katouzian, op. cit., pp. 39–40.

Schwarzkopf meets Shah: Service History, op. cit., p. 29.

Roosevelt presumed meeting Shah would be necessary: Roosevelt, op. cit., p. 149.

Roosevelt authorized to speak: Roosevelt, ibid., p. 154.

Roosevelt’s costume: Roosevelt, ibid., p. 155.

Roosevelt’s first meeting with Shah: Roosevelt, ibid., pp. 156–157.

Roosevelt tells Shah United States will not accept second Korea: Service History, op. cit., pp. 33–34.

Roosevelt meets agents in cars: Roosevelt, op. cit., p. 162.

Roosevelt’s later meetings with Shah: Roosevelt, ibid., pp. 163–166.

Shah feels stubborn irresolution: Service History, op. cit., p. 35.

Shah will fly to Baghdad: Roosevelt, op. cit., p. 161.

Fake message from Eisenhower: Roosevelt, ibid., p. 168.

Firmans
arrive: Roosevelt, ibid., pp. 170–171.

Time moved slowly: Roosevelt, ibid., p. 171.

CIA report on coup preparations: Service History, op. cit., pp. 36–38.

Nothing to do but wait: Service History, ibid., p. 38.

“Luck Be a Lady”: Roosevelt, op. cit., p. 172.

Roosevelt drives past Riahi’s home: Roosevelt, ibid., p. 172.

Shah will look for work:
Foreign Relations of the United States 1952–1954, Volume X
, op. cit., p. 747.

Roosevelt close to despair: Roosevelt, op. cit., p. 173.

Waller telegram: Waller’s remarks at conference in Oxford, England, June 10, 2002.

Fatemi speech:
New York Times
, August 17, 1953.

Chapter 2: Curse This Fate

Ferdowsi lament: Mackey, Sandra,
The Iranians: Persia, Islam and the Soul of a Nation
(New York: Plume, 1996), p. 62.

Hidden Imam: Tabatabai, Allamah Sayyid Muhammad Husayn,
Shi’ite Islam
(Albany: State University of New York, 1977), p. 214.

Fischer on Shiites: Fischer, Michael M. J.,
Iran: From Religious Dispute to Revolution
(Cambridge, Mass.: Harvard University Press, 1980) pp. 24–27.

Battle cry of Ismail: Mottadeh, Roy,
The Mantle of the Prophet: Religion and Politics in Iran
(New York: Pantheon, 1985), p. 173.

Ismail adopts Shiism: Arjomand, Said Amir,
The Shadow of God and the Hidden Imam
(Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1984), p. 109.

Modern author on Isfahan:
Nagel Encyclopedia Guide
, quoted in Arab, Gholam Hossein,
Isfahan
(Tehran: Farhangsara, 1996), p. 1.

Curzon on Qajars: Ghods, M. Reza,
Iran in the Twentieth Century: A Political History
(Boulder, Colo.: Lynne Rienner, 1989), p. 2.

Chapter 3: The Last Drop of the Nation’s Blood

Curzon on Reuter concession: Curzon, George Nathaniel,
Persia and the Persian Question, Vol. 1
(London: Longmans, Green and Co., 1892), p. 480.

Tobacco revolt and fatwa: Afary, Janet,
The Iranian Constitutional Revolution, 1906–1911: Grassroots Democracy, Social Democracy, and the Origins of Feminism
(New York: Columbia University Press, 1996), pp. 29–33.

Shah borrows half a million pounds: Keddie, Nikki,
Roots of Revolution: An Interpretive History of Modern Iran
(New Haven, Conn.: Yale University Press, 1981), p. 67.

D’Arcy concession: Ferrier, R. W.,
The History of the British Petroleum Company, Vol. 1: The Developing Years
1901–1932 (London: Cambridge University Press, 1982), p. 42.

Demand for national assembly: Martin, Vanessa,
Islam and Modernism: The Iranian Revolution of 1906
(Syracuse, N.Y.: Syracuse University Press, 1989), p. 74.

British secretary accepts
bast
: Afary, op. cit., p. 55.

Majlis must decide: Martin, ibid., p. 99.

British diplomat: Martin, ibid., p. 199.

Thrown out law of the Prophet: Martin, ibid., p. 125.

Constitutional government not advisable: Martin, ibid., p. 114.

Overthrow of Islam: Martin, ibid., p. 62.

Two enticing words: Martin, ibid., p. 128.

Openness against insularity: Mackey, op. cit., p. 136.

We want the Koran: Mackey, ibid., p. 152.

Lying between life and death: Bayat, Mangol,
Iran’s First Revolution: Shi’ism and the Constitutional Revolution of 1905–6
(New York: Oxford University Press, 1991), p. 244.

Prize from fairyland: Churchill, Winston,
The World Crisis 1911–1914
(New York: Charles Scribner’s Sons, 1923), p. 134.

Curzon on Persia’s importance:
Documents on British Foreign Policy 1919–1939
, First Series, Vol. IV (London: Government Printing Press), pp. 1119–1121.

Reza Khan in disturbances: Farmanfarmaian, Manucher, and Farmanfarmaian, Roxane,
Blood and Oil: Inside the Shah’s Iran
(New York: Modern Library, 1999), p. 115.

Reza’s speech: Elwell-Sutton, L. P., “Reza Shah the Great: Founder of the Pahlavi Dynasty,” in Lenczowski, George,
Iran Under the Pahlavis
(Stanford, Calif.: Hoover Institute, 1978), p. 18.

Involvement of British officers: Katouzian, Homa, op. cit., pp. 16–17.

Nicholson on Persia: Ferrier, op. cit., p. 589.

Khorasan massacre: Mackey, op. cit., p. 182.

Hamedan baker: Author’s interviews in Iran, 2002.

Reza orders mail returned: Mackey, op. cit., p. 178.

Reza largest landowner in Iran: Mackey, ibid., p. 173.

Only one thief in Iran: Ghods, op. cit., p. 93.

Newspaper on common goals in Iran and Germany: Ghods, ibid., p. 166.

Allied leaflet: Goode, James F.,
The United States and Iran: In the Shadow of Mussadiq
(New York: St. Martin’s, 1997), pp. 9–10.

Chapter 4: A Wave of Oil

Helpless crew: Longhurst, Henry,
Adventure in Oil: The Story of British Petroleum
(London: Sidgwick and Jackson, 1959), p. 21.

Petroliferous territory: Longhurst, ibid., p. 17.

Ahmad Shah as elderly child: Yergin, Daniel,
The Prize: The Epic Quest for Oil, Money and Power
(New York: Simon and Schuster, 1991), p. 136.

Telegram to Reynolds: Longhurst, op. cit., p. 31.

Mastery itself was the prize: Churchill, op. cit., p. 136.

Sunshine, mud, and flies: Longhurst, op. cit., p. 45.

Curzon on wave of oil:
London Times
, November 22, 1918.

Production increases at Abadan: Heiss, Mary Ann,
Empire and Nationhood: The United States, Great Britain, and Iranian Oil
, 1950–1954 (New York: Columbia University Press, 1997), p. 6.

Royalty payment in 1920: Heiss, ibid., p. 6.

Reza burns file: Elm, op. cit., p. 31.

Cadman had attended Reza’s coronation: Bill, James A.,
The Eagle and the Lion: The Tragedy of American-Iranian Relations
(New Haven, Conn.: Yale University Press, 1988), p. 59.

Terms of 1933 oil accord: Heiss, op. cit., p. 13.

Cadman cable: Longhurst, op. cit., p. 78.

Strike at Abadan: Farmanfarmaian, op. cit., p. 186.

Increase in oil production during 1940s: Bamberg, J. H.,
The History of the British Petroleum Company: Vol. II: The Anglo-Iranian Years, 1928–1954
(Cambridge, U.K.: Cambridge University Press, 1994), p. 242.

Assessment of young Mossadegh: Katouzian, op. cit., p. 1.

Mossadegh’s reaction to Anglo-Persian Agreement: Katouzian, ibid., p. 13.

Cousin’s view of Mossadegh: Farmanfarmaian, op. cit., pp. 166–170.

If subjugation were beneficial: Azimi, Fakhreddin, “The Reconciliation of Politics and Ethics, Nationalism and Democracy: An Overview of the Political Career of Dr. Mohammad Musaddiq,” in Bill, James A., and Louis, William Roger (eds.),
Mussadiq, Iranian Nationalism, and Oil
(London: I. B. Tauris, 1988), p. 50.

Cut off my head: Katouzian, op. cit., p. 25.

Mossadegh taken prisoner: Katouzian, ibid., p. 33.

Chapter 5: His Master’s Orders

The notation FO refers to numbered documents of the British Foreign Office.)

Shah’s affairs: Forbis, William H.,
Fall of the Peacock Throne: The Story of Iran
(New York: Harper and Row, 1980), p. 53.

Chauffeur in one-way street: Arfa, Hassan,
Under Five Shahs
(New York: William Morrow, 1965), p. 305.

Succession to Reza Shah: Farmanfarmaian, op. cit., pp. 141–142; and Katouzian, pp. 39–40.

General Schwarzkopf’s background: Schwarzkopf, H. Norman,
It Doesn’t Take a Hero
(New York: Bantam, 1992), pp. 3–4.

Anglo-Iranian’s 1947 profits and Iran’s share: Farmanfarmaian, op. cit., p. 212.

Conditions at Abadan: Farmanfarmaian, ibid., pp. 184–185.

Bevin on British standard of living: Yergin, op. cit., p. 427.

Fraser proposes Supplemental Agreement: Heiss, op. cit., p. 7.

British want the whole world: Elm, op. cit., p. 55.

Iskandari threat to nationalize oil: Katouzian, op. cit., pp. 67–68.

Shah’s visit to United States: Bill, op. cit., p. 40.

Visit did not go well: McGhee, George,
Envoy to the Middle World: Adventures in Diplomacy
(New York: Harper and Row, 1983), pp. 66–71.

Joint communiqué: Alexander, Yonah, and Nanes, Allen (eds.),
The United States and Iran: A Documentary History
(Frederick, Md.: Alethia Books, 1980), p. 208.

No intention of carrying out orders: FO 371/91448, quoted in Elm, op. cit., p. 63.

British will treat hysterical deputies: FO 371/91512.

Sharogh role: Elm, op. cit., p. 70.

Work of oil committee: Farmanfarmaian, op. cit., pp. 241–242.