No CrossRef data available.
Article contents
Oil and the US Decision to Overthrow Mosaddeq
Published online by Cambridge University Press: 21 October 2024
Extract
On August 19, 1953, Prime Minister Mohammed Mosaddeq was removed from office by a coalition of Iranians, including Mohammed Reza Shah Pahlavi (r. 1941–79) and members of the armed forces, supported by the United States and Great Britain. The US provided considerable financial, logistical, and organizational support to the coup, which was code-named Operation TPAJAX by the Central Intelligence Agency (CIA). Although the British had been committed, in one form or another, to removing Mosaddeq since he first became prime minister and nationalized Iran's British-owned oil industry in May 1951, the US did not determine to overthrow Mosaddeq by coup d'etat until spring 1953, shortly after the administration of President Dwight D. Eisenhower came to office.
- Type
- Roundtable: Mossadeq's Ouster at 70 – Legacies and Memories
- Information
- Copyright
- Copyright © The Author(s), 2024. Published by Cambridge University Press
References
1 Foreign Relations of the United States, 1952–1954, vol. 10, Iran, 1951–1954 (Washington, DC: US Government Printing Office, 1989), hereafter FRUS 1952–1954 10; Foreign Relations of the United States, 1952–1954, Iran, 1951–1954, 2nd ed. (Washington, DC: US Government Printing Office, 2017), hereafter FRUS 1952–1954 Retro.
2 Wilber, Donald N., Clandestine Service History: Overthrow of Premier Mosaddeq of Iran, November 1952–August 1953 (Washington, DC: Central Intelligence Agency, 1954)Google Scholar, https://nsarchive2.gwu.edu/NSAEBB/NSAEBB28/; CIA History Staff, The Battle for Iran, 1953 (Washington, DC: Central Intelligence Agency, 1981, 2011, 2014), https://nsarchive2.gwu.edu/NSAEBB/NSAEBB476; Scott A. Koch, “Zendebad, Shah!”: The Central Intelligence Agency and the Fall of Iranian Prime Minister Mohammed Mossadeq, August 1953 (Washington, DC: Central Intelligence Agency, 1998), https://nsarchive.gwu.edu/document/16330-document-2-zendebad-shah. The narrative was upheld by interviews with US diplomats; see Harter, John F., “Mr. Foreign Service on Mossadegh and Wristonization: An Interview with Loy W. Henderson,” Foreign Service Journal 57 (1980): 16–18Google Scholar.
3 The declassification of US documents pertaining to the coup has followed a twisted path. See Brew, Gregory, “A Review of Foreign Relations of the United States, Retrospective: Iran, 1951–1954,” Passport: The Society for Historians of American Foreign Relations Review 48 (2018)Google Scholar; and Byrne, Malcolm, “When History Meets Politics: The Challenging Case of the 1953 Coup in Iran,” in United States Relations with China and Iran, ed. Khalil, Osamah F. (London: Bloomsbury Academic, 2019), 121–40Google Scholar. See also Gasiorowski, Mark J., “U.S. Perceptions of the Communist Threat in Iran during the Mosaddeq Era,” Journal of Cold War Studies 21, no. 3 (2019): 1–37CrossRefGoogle Scholar.
4 This argument features prominently in my work on the coup, including my recent coauthored book, The Struggle for Iran, which is the first book-length study to incorporate available US evidence, both older material and recently declassified documents. Versions of this argument appear in Brew, Gregory, “The Collapse Narrative: The United States, Mohammed Mossadegh, and the Coup Decision of 1953,” Texas National Security Review 2 (2019): 38–59Google Scholar; and Painter, David S. and Brew, Gregory, The Struggle for Iran: Oil, Autocracy, and the Cold War, 1951–1954 (Chapel Hill, NC: University of North Carolina Press, 2023)CrossRefGoogle Scholar. For the nationalization crisis, see Elm, Mostafa, Oil, Power, and Principle: Iran's Oil Nationalization and Its Aftermath (Syracuse, NY: Syracuse University Press, 1992)Google Scholar; and Heiss, Mary Ann, Empire and Nationhood: The United States, Great Britain, and Iranian Oil, 1950–1954 (New York: Columbia University Press, 1997)Google Scholar.
5 FRUS 1950 5, doc. 233, Memo for the Files, undated; doc. 234, McGhee to Acheson, 25 April 1950.
6 Leffler, Melvyn P., A Preponderance of Power: National Security, the Truman Administration, and the Cold War (Stanford, CA: Stanford University Press, 1992)CrossRefGoogle Scholar; Leffler, Melvyn P., “The Emergence of an American Grand Strategy,” in The Cambridge History of the Cold War, vol. 1, ed. Leffler, Melvyn P. and Westad, Odd Arne (New York: Cambridge University Press, 2010), 67–88CrossRefGoogle Scholar.
7 FRUS 1952-1954 5, doc. 102, NIE-14, “The Importance of Middle East Oil to Western Europe under Peacetime Conditions,” 8 January 1951; David S. Painter, “The Marshall Plan and Oil,” Cold War History 9, no. 2 (2009): 159–75.
8 Gregory Brew, Petroleum and Progress in Iran: Oil, Development, and the Cold War (Cambridge, UK: Cambridge University Press, 2022), 77–82.
9 David S. Painter, Oil and the American Century: The Political Economy of U.S. Foreign Oil Policy, 1941–1954 (Baltimore, MD: Johns Hopkins University Press, 1986), 167–71.
10 Painter and Brew, Struggle for Iran, 34–36.
11 Ibid., 37–52.
12 For changes in the US position, particularly surrounding the July 1952 crisis, see ibid., 65–144.
13 Mark J. Gasiorowski, “The CIA's TPBEDAMN Operation and the 1953 Coup in Iran,” Journal of Cold War Studies 15, no. 4 (2013): 4–24.
14 FRUS 1952-1954 Retro, doc. 20, Memo Prepared in Office of National Estimates, CIA, 1 May 1951; doc. 23, Tehran Desp. 899, 5 May 1951; doc. 24, Telegram from Station in Iran to CIA, 6 May 1951; doc. 25, Minutes of CIA Director Smith's Meeting, 9 May 1951.
15 FRUS 1952-1954 Retro, doc. 126, Memo from [name not declassified] to Roosevelt, 1 October 1952, note 3.
16 Mary Ann Heiss, “The International Boycott of Iranian Oil and the Anti-Mosaddeq Coup of 1953,” in Mohammad Mosaddeq and the 1953 Coup in Iran, ed. Mark J. Gasiorowski and Malcolm Byrne (Syracuse, NY: Syracuse University Press, 2004), 187–89.
17 Brew, Petroleum and Progress, 86–116.
18 Brew, “Collapse Narrative,” 43–44; Brew, Petroleum and Progress, 128–34.
19 Painter and Brew, Struggle for Iran, 117–44.
20 Ibid., 133–38.
21 British Embassy US 217, 1 February 1953, FO 371/104611, UK National Archives.
22 Tehran 2948, 30 January 1953, 888.2553/1-3053, RG 59, US National Archives.
23 Tehran 2865, 24 January 1953, 888.2553/1-2453, RG 59, US National Archives; Note to Dulles, 5 March 1953, 888.2553/3-553, RG 59, US National Archives.
24 FRUS 1952-1954 10, doc. 296, State 5294, 10 February 1953.
25 British Embassy US 288, 10 February 1953, FO 371/104612, UK National Archives.
26 Allen Dulles to John Foster Dulles, 18 February 1953, 888.2553/2-1853, RG 59, US National Archives.
27 Painter and Brew, Struggle for Iran, 138–43.
28 FRUS 1952-1954 Retro, doc. 171, NSC Meeting, 4 March 1953.
29 Maziar Behrooz, “Tudeh Factionalism and the 1953 Coup in Iran,” International Journal of Middle East Studies 33, no. 3 (2001): 365–66; Painter and Brew, Struggle for Iran, 159–61.
30 Brew, Petroleum and Progress, 135–47.
31 FRUS 1952-1954 Retro, doc. 256, Statesman Memo, undated; doc. 299, Nash to Cutler (draft), undated; doc. 301, Zahedi to Eisenhower, 26 August 1953; doc. 302, Eisenhower to Zahedi, 26 August 1953.
32 Ibid., doc. 299, Nash to Cutler (draft), undated; doc. 304. NSC Meeting, 27 August 1953.
33 FRUS 1952–1954 10, doc. 369, State 853, 23 September 1953.
34 FRUS 1952–1954 10, doc. 369, State 853, 23 September 1953; Memo of Conversation, “Discussion Regarding the Iranian Oil Problem,” 25 September 1953, 888.2553/9-2553, RG 59, US National Archives; Heiss, Empire and Nationhood, 191.
35 Painter and Brew, Struggle for Iran, 185–93.