Kermit Roosevelt and the Iranian Coup of 1953

How the CIA Toppled Mossadegh and Put the Shah in Power

Jul 26, 2009

The CIA operation to overthrow Dr. Mohammed Mossadegh was motivated by oil but sold to the public as an attempt to stop the Iranian Communist Tudeh Party.

Over a three week period in 1953, CIA operative Kermit Roosevelt and General H. Norman Schwarzkopf helped to stage a coup in Iran that overthrew the pro-communist Prime Minister Mohammed Mossadegh. Although the restored Shah of Iran wrote that “the cold war really began in Iran,” the coup had more to do with oil than with Communism. It would also mark the beginning of United States active participation in the Middle East as part of global security concerns.

Nationalization of the Anglo-Iranian Oil Company

Prior to the 1951 nationalization of Iranian oil, Great Britain benefited from its monopoly of Iranian oil. Although Teheran received generous yearly stipends or royalty fees, the British built and maintained the oil fields. Iran possessed neither the expertise to do this not did it have the capacity to refine, transport, or market its oil.

Following the nationalization decree, passed by the Iranian parliament and signed by Prime Minister Mossadegh, the British withdrew all personnel from the oil fields, sent soldiers to Cyprus, and began to flex its colonial muscles. Mossadegh was portrayed as a pro-communist stooge, although he had been Time magazine’s man of the year in 1951.

It was at this point that a 37-year old Kermit “Kim” Roosevelt met with Secretary of State John Foster Dulles and his brother Allen W. Dulles to discuss “Operation Ajax,” the plan to topple Mossadegh. Allen Dulles headed the CIA but both Dulles brothers were also senior partners in the law firm Sullivan & Cromwell. One of the firm’s clients was Anglo-Iranian Oil.

The Almost Failed Iranian Coup of 1953

Prior to the arrival of Roosevelt in Iran, both Britain and the U.S. began a vicious propaganda campaign against Mossadegh. The Prime Minister was portrayed as a madman who would ultimately sell his nation to the Soviet Union. The anti-communist aspect of the propaganda was particularly timely in 1953. In the U.S., Wisconsin Senator Joseph McCarthy’s “witch hunts” were leaving a legacy of fear.

In Teheran, the Shah issued several decrees, replacing Mossadegh with General Zahedi. But the decrees were declared false by Mossadegh and his supporters. Riots broke out and the Shah fled to Rome, meeting with Allen Dulles in the Hotel Excelsior. Kermit Roosevelt, assisted by General Schwarzkopf (who had helped to train the Shah’s secret police), used $100,000 in bribe money as well as propaganda leaflets to turn the tide, just when all seemed lost. Police and royalist troops, many on the CIA payroll, gained control of the streets and surrounded the Prime Minister’s heavily fortified residence.

According to Shah Reza Pahlavi’s published account, Mossadegh fled across a roof top in his pajamas. The Shah’s memoir, published in 1979 (the same year Kermit Roosevelt published his own account, Countercoup), barely mentioned the CIA role. Both books coincide with the tumultuous events occurring in Iran at the time when the Carter Administration ended support for the man who called himself the staunchest ally of the United States.

The Oil Settlement

New agreements with the Shah gave Great Britain 40% and the United States 40% of total Iranian oil production. The fact that Josef Stalin had conveniently died in early 1953 also helped to diffuse the communist Tudeh Party, much as his death hurt Communist causes in other nations. For the United States, it was one of the first adventures in the Middle East that would highlight the crucial factor of oil, an important commodity the U.S. needed and had been running out of since the end of World War I. By 1956, the U.S. demonstrated its antipathy of Middle East colonialism as well as pursuing global security considerations with the Suez Crisis.

The copyright of the article Kermit Roosevelt and the Iranian Coup of 1953 in Modern US History is owned by Michael Streich. Permission to republish Kermit Roosevelt and the Iranian Coup of 1953 in print or online must be granted by the author in writing.