The Riches of the World - 5
Mosaddeq, Iranian Oil and the Coup of 1953
By Professor Nazeer Ahmed
Concord , CA
The coup that toppled the Iranian nationalist leader Mohammed Mosaddeq had all the ingredients of a James Bond movie: a charismatic but fallible democratically elected popular hero, international intrigue and spy agencies, turncoat mullahs, thugs, street gangs, patriots and a despotic but handsome young king with a scheming sister and a beautiful queen. There is a prize at the end of the movie, that is, the riches of Iranian oil.
The difference is that in the deadly game of geopolitics, the events of 1953 determined the fate of a proud, ancient nation and fueled the pent up energies that erupted with volcanic convulsions in the Iranian revolution of 1979, followed by the deadly Iran-Iraq war (1979-87) and the ghastly events that led to the invasion and destruction of Iraq (1992-2010).
The primary players in this drama were the Anglo Iranian Oil Company (AIOC), the Iranian nationalists led by Mosaddeq, the religious establishment led by Kashani, the communist Tudeh party, and Shah Reza Pevlavi of Iran. There were clients and followers. The British government backed AIOC. The nationalist support base was the urban middle class in Tehran and the major cities. The mullahs had their base in the impoverished slums of the cities and in the countryside. The communists, supported by the Soviet Union, looked to the workers and the artisans for support. The Americans were reluctant entrants to the melee, but when they did intervene, they sealed the fate of Iran and launched it on a trajectory, which in historical hindsight, led to the Khomeini revolution of 1979. The democratically elected leader of Iran, Mosaddeq, was toppled, arrested, tried and sentenced, and the voice of the nationalists was silenced.
There were winners and losers in the fray. The Americans were the clear winners. In the post-coup oil grab, an oil consortium was formed to replace the Anglo Iranian Oil Company and divided up the riches. American oil companies took 40% shares in the consortium where they had no prior stake. Standard of New Jersey, Socony, Standard Oil of California, Texas Company and Gulf, each received 8%. The British retained a substantial interest with a 40% stake. The rest was divided up between Dutch and other international oil companies. The communist Tudeh party was decimated. The mullahs were suppressed. But the success came with a heavy price. Resentment built up in Iran over the American intervention, and when it did blow up in 1979, it was the far right religious establishment that was the beneficiary of the revolution. Unlike the nationalists who knew how to speak the language of compromise, the religious right was uncompromising in its relations with the West. American influence, hoisted on Iran on the back of the despotic Shah, disappeared after 1979.
History is a guide but it is only a guide. It does not repeat itself. Wisdom demands that individuals and nations learn from history and do not try to replicate it. The Will of God moves on the canvas of history with inexorable momentum, creating new facts, revealing the Divine hand in the affairs of man and nature alike. Men and women of intellect observe these Signs, learn from them and guide their destinies with equity and justice. Those who violate justice suffer, and ultimately perish. That is the law of history.
We take our point of departure the Constitutional Revolution of Persia in 1906. It was a momentous event which shaped the history of Iran in the 20 th century. It was the first such revolution in the Middle East and it presaged the Young Turks Revolution in the Ottoman Empire in 1908. It awakened an entire nation to its existential possibilities. It touched all segments of Iranian society and made them politically aware. It established a majlis (parliament), elected by popular suffrage, and transformed a despotic, absolute kingship to a constitutional monarchy.
The constitutional reforms did not alter the intrigues of foreign powers or their schemes to dominate, control and subjugate Iran. The principal players were the British who were firmly entrenched in India and the Russians who, having consolidated their colonies around the Caspian Sea, were looking for an outlet to the warm waters of the Arabian Sea. Both powers preferred a weak Iran ruled by a pliant Shah than a resilient one energized by democratic institutions. Without consulting the majlis or the Shah, the two powers signed the Anglo-Russian Convention of 1907 in St. Petersburg, Russia, partitioning Iran between a Russian sphere of influence in the north and a British sphere of influence in the South. A small area around Tehran was left as a buffer state between the two zones. Russian Cossack troops moved in from the north and occupied Azerbaijan and Kurdistan while Anglo-Indian troops moved into Baluchistan and the districts around the Persian Gulf. Similar understandings were reached about Afghanistan and Tibet. The Convention replaced the Great Game between the British Empire and Imperial Russia for control of Central Asia and Afghanistan and forged a détente between the two imperial powers which allowed the two to focus on the challenge from the rising power of a unified Germany in continental Europe.
In 1908, the British geologist Reynolds struck oil in Masjed Soleiman, Iran, This was the first of the large oil finds that changed the history of the Middle East, and indeed the history of the world. The British were the first to exploit the discovery. The Burmah Oil Company formed the Anglo-Persian Oil Company (the precursor of British Petroleum) as a subsidiary. In 1913, the British Government bought a 50% stake in the company. APOC thus became a commercial venture of the British Government. The oil concession, granted under duress in 1901 by a weak Iranian government, was lopsided in favor of the British with Iran receiving 16 percent of the net profits, calculated using suspicious accounting practices. The Iranians had no way of knowing what these profits were because they did not have access to the books. APOC grew rich while Iran remained poor.
World War I broke out in 1914. Iran was wooed by Turkey, Germany, Russia and Britain as an ally but Iran wisely decided to remain neutral. This decision, however, did not protect it from the imperial chess game. Iranian territory was used as battleground. The War ended with the capitulation of Germany and the Ottomans. The stresses of the War exacerbated the tensions within Czarist Russia which exploded in the Bolshevik Revolution of 1917 and pulled out of the War. The French and the British, heady in their triumph, imposed harsh terms on Germany and carved up the Ottoman territories. By the Sykes-Picot agreement of 1919, Britain took Palestine and Iraq while France helped itself to Syria and Lebanon. Arabia was captured by the Saudis. Britain tried to establish a protectorate over Iran. However, the majlis and Shah successfully resisted this attempt. In 1924-25, the Saudis, encouraged by Britain, moved in from the desert and captured the Hejaz which included the cities of Mecca and Madina. Thus was born the modern state of Saudi Arabia which was to play a pivotal role in the oil equations of the twentieth century.
Iran , weak, corrupt and bankrupt, was fertile ground for foreign intrigue. The Bolsheviks continued to meddle in Iran and tried to set up puppet communist governments in Rasht and Azerbaijan while the British firmed up their control of Iranian oil and maintained their military presence in the south. The last of the Khajar monarchs, Ahmed Shah was unable to contain the chaos. Iran was coming apart at the seams. Alarmed by the spreading anarchy, a young colonel Reza Khan, marched on Tehran in 1921 at the head of a Cossack brigade, and brought a semblance of stability to the capital. He gradually expanded his powers, first becoming the War Minister and then the Prime Minister. In 1923, the majlis deposed Ahmed Shah Khajar and appointed Reza Shah as the monarch. Thus was born the Pehlavi dynasty. (To be continued)
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