Iran - Andrew Burke [17]
In 1971 the shah organised lavish celebrations for the 2500th anniversary of the founding of the Persian Empire, hoping to make himself more popular by fanning the flames of nationalism. More than 60 international monarchs and heads of state came to the party, held in a purpose-built tent city Click here at Persepolis. The news coverage brought Iranian culture to the world, but at home it encouraged those who saw the shah as wasteful and became a rallying call for opposition groups.
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MOHAMMAD MOSSADEGH & THE CIA’S FIRST COUP
Before Lumumba in Congo, Sukarno in Indonesia and Allende in Chile, Mohammad Mossadegh was the first democratically elected leader toppled by a CIA coup d’etat. Mossadegh, a highly educated lawyer, paid the price for seeking a better deal for Iran from the hugely profitable oilfields run by the Anglo-Iranian Oil Company. When the British refused Iran a fairer share, he nationalised the company and expelled British diplomats, whom he rightly suspected of plotting to overthrow him. The significance of this act went far beyond the borders of Iran, and Mossadegh was named Time magazine’s Man of the Year in 1951 for his influence in encouraging developing nations to shake off the colonial yoke.
The British were desperate to get ‘their’ oil back. They encouraged a worldwide boycott of Iranian oil and worked hard to muddy Mossadegh’s name in Iran and internationally. After arch-colonialist Winston Churchill was re-elected in 1952, he managed to persuade the new Eisenhower administration in the USA that Mossadegh had to go. The CIA’s Operation Ajax was the result. Kermit Roosevelt, grandson of former president Theodore Roosevelt and one of the agency’s top operatives, established a team in the basement of the US Embassy in Tehran and soon won the shah’s support. But that alone wasn’t enough and another US$2 million was spent buying support from senior clerics, military officers, newspaper editors and thugs.
The CIA was new at the coup game – it started badly when Mossadegh loyalists arrested the coup leaders on 16 August. The shah promptly fled to Rome, but three days later there was a second attempt and Mossadegh was toppled. The shah returned and the oil industry was denationalised, but the British monopoly was broken and for its trouble the USA claimed a 40% stake.
Check out www.nytimes.com/library/world/mideast/041600iran-cia-index.html for the 96-page CIA history of the coup.
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Ironically, the 1974 oil price revolution also contributed to the shah’s undoing. In just one year the income from oil shot from US$4 billion to US$20 billion, but the shah allowed US arms merchants to persuade him to squander much of this vast new wealth on weapons that then stood idle in the desert. As the world slipped into recession, oil sales slumped and several planned social reforms were cut. The public was not happy.
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THE REVOLUTION
Since the beginning of the Pahlavi dynasty, resistance had smouldered away and occasionally flared into violence. Students wanted faster reform, devout Muslims wanted reforms rolled back, and everyone attacked the Pahlavis’ conspicuous consumption.
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In 1971 the Arabic Islamic calendar was replaced by a ‘Persian’ calendar Click here.
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The opposition came from secular, worker-communist and Islamic groups whose common denominator was a desire to remove the shah. Exiled Ayatollah Khomeini was an inspirational figure, but contrary to the official Iranian portrayal other people did most of the organising. Among the most prominent was Ayatollah Mahmoud Taleqani, a popular Islamic reformist whose ideas were considerably less fundamental than Khomeini’s.
As the economy faltered under the shah’s post oil-boom mismanagement, the opposition grew in confidence and organised massive street demonstrations and small-scale sabotage. The shah responded with