Iran
Operation Ajax (1953) (officially TP-AJAX) was a covert operation by the United Kingdom and the United States to remove the nationalist[1] cabinet of Iranian Prime Minister Mohammed Mossadegh from power, to support the Pahlavi dynasty and consolidate the power of Mohammed Reza Pahlavi in order to preserve the Western control of Iran's oil infrastructure[2]. Former U.S. Secretary of State Madeleine Albright, during the administration of President Bill Clinton, made an apology to the Islamic Republic of Iran in 2000 for the United States' role in the overthrow.[3] Origins The idea of overthrowing Mossadegh was originally conceived by the British. They asked President Truman for assistance, but when he refused, the British proposed the idea once again to Eisenhower who became president in 1953. The new administration agreed to participate. Mossadegh reasoned that Iran ought to begin profiting from its vast oil reserves, although Iran lacked the capacity and infrasructure to produce its own oil. Following the British/U.S. operations, western oil companies were invited back into Iran.[4] He took the steps to nationalize the oil industry which had previously been controlled by the Anglo-Iranian Oil Company (later changed to the British Petroleum Company). Britain alleged that Iran was violating the company's legal rights and actually spearheaded a worldwide boycott of Iran's oil that submerged the regime into financial crisis.[4] Background Early Oil Development During the British imperial period known as The Great Game, Mozzafar al-Din Shah Qajar, the Shah of Iran, sought to partially alleviate debts he owed to Britain by granting a 60-year concession to search for oil to William Knox D'Arcy in May 1901. D'Arcy struck oil in May 1908 which was the first commercially significant find in the Middle East. Due to financial hardships, controlling interest was sold to Burmah Oil Company who incorporated the Anglo-Persian Oil Company in 1909 to exploit this find. The company grew slowly until World War I when its strategic importance led the British Government to acquire controlling interest in the company, essentially nationalizing British oil production in Iran for a short period of time, and it became the Royal Navy's chief source of fuel oil in defeating the Central Powers during WWI. During this period, British troops occupied strategic parts of Iran. Post-World War I There was growing dissent within Persia for the oil concession and royalty terms whereby Iran received 16 percent of net profits which was exacerbated by British involvement in the Persian Constitutional Revolution as well as British Empire's use of Iran to invade Russia in an attempt to reverse the October Bolshevik Revolution. In 1921, a military coup organized by the British placed Reza Pahlavi as Shah of Iran. Reza undertook a large number of modernization measures, many of which were advantageous not only to the British, the Iranians as well, such as the Persian Corridor railroads for military and other transportation. In the 1930s, Nazi Germany heavily courted the Shah in order to secure access to oil, for use in their war effort and the Final Solution. Reza terminated the APOC concession. The concession was resettled within a year, covering a reduced area with an increase in the Persian government's share of profits. In 1935, the Shah insisted that the name Iran be used instead of Persia and, so, APOC became the Anglo-Iranian Oil Company (AIOC). In 1941, Britain invaded Iran, exiled the Shah, and secured both Iranian oil production and strategic railways. The British installed Reza's 22 year old son Mohammad Reza Pahlavi as Shah of Iran. Post-World War II In the constitutional republic of Iran, nationalist leaders were becoming increasingly powerful as they sought to reduce the long-time foreign intervention in their country, including the highly-profitable oil arrangements which profited the British significantly. A particular point of contention was the refusal of the AIOC to allow an audit of the accounts to determine whether the Iranian government received the royalties it was due. Intransigence on the part of the Anglo-Iranian Oil Company led the nationalist government to escalate its demands, requiring an equal share in the oil revenues. A final crisis was precipitated when the oil company ceased operations in Iran rather than accepting the Iranian government's interference in its business affairs. AIOC and the Iranian government resisted nationalist pressure to come to a renewed deal in 1949. 1950s In March 1951, the pro-western Prime Minister Ali Razmara was murdered by assassins. In April, the Iranian parliament passed a bill to nationalize the oil industry, under the leadership of western-educated Dr. Mohammed Mossadegh, who thought that nationalization was the only way to preserve the sovereignty of Iran against the intervention of British Intelligence. By May, Mossadegh had been elected Prime Minister. The newly state-owned oil companies saw a dramatic drop in productivity as a result of Iranian incompetence and also, consequently, exports; this resulted in the Abadan Crisis, a situation that was further aggravated by its export markets being closed when the British Navy imposed a blockade around the country in order to force the Iranian regime to honor its previous oil agreements. Of course, royalties to the Iranian government were significantly higher than before nationalization, since nationalization, by definition, caused oil profits to be directed into the regime's coffers rather than into the hands of oil companies; however, the British Naval blockade succeeded and the Iranian regime was brought to heel. The United Kingdom took a case against the nationalization to the International Court of Justice at The Hague on behalf of AIOC, but lost the case. However the government of Britain, concerned about its interests in Iran, and alarmed about the growth of Iran's burgeoning Soviet-backed, communist-leaning "nationalist" movement, convinced the US of the fact that Iran was slowly coming under Soviet influence. This was the perfect strategy for the British, since the US was in the middle of the Cold War. U.S. President Harry S. Truman did not join the British in its intervention. However, a new leader would soon be elected in the United States. General Dwight Eisenhower was elected as President in 1952, and the British convinced the new American administration to join them in overthrowing the Soviet-backed Prime Minister, Mohammed Mossadeq, and re-establish British control of Iranian oil profits. As a former Supreme Commander of Allied Forces during World War II, the new American President was thoroughly familiar with world events, and was therefore agreeable to the British plan to overthrow Iran's Soviet-backed regime. This overthrow was named Operation Ajax. Planning Operation Ajax As a condition of restoring the Anglo-Iranian Oil Company, the U.S. required that the AIOC's oil monopoly should lapse. Five major U.S. oil companies, plus Royal Dutch Shell and French Compagnie Française des Pétroles were designated to operate in the country alongside AIOC after a successful coup. In planning the operation, the CIA organized a guerrilla force in case the communist Tudeh Party seized power as a result of any chaos created by Operation Ajax. According to formerly "Top Secret" documents released by the National Security Archive, Undersecretary of State Walter Bedell Smith reported that the CIA had reached an agreement with Qashqai tribal leaders in southern Iran to establish a clandestine safe haven from which U.S.-funded guerrillas and intelligence agents could operate. The leader of Operation Ajax was Kermit Roosevelt, Jr., a senior CIA agent, and grandson of the former U.S. President Theodore Roosevelt. While formal leadership was vested in Kermit Roosevelt, the project was designed and executed by Donald Wilber, a career CIA agent and acclaimed author of books on Iran, Afghanistan and Ceylon. The operation centered around having the increasingly impotent Shah dismiss the powerful Prime Minister Mossadegh and replace him with General Fazlollah Zahedi, a choice agreed on by the British and Americans after careful examination for his likeliness to be anti-Soviet. Despite the high-level coordination and planning, the coup d'etat briefly faltered, and the Shah fled Iran. After a short exile in Italy, however, the Shah was brought back again, this time through follow-up operations, which were successful. Zahedi was installed to succeed Prime Minister Mossadegh. The deposed Mossadegh was arrested, given what some have alleged to have been a show trial, and condemned to death. The Shah gracefully commuted this sentence to solitary confinement for three years in a military prison, followed by house arrest for life. In 2000 the New York Times made partial publication of a leaked CIA document titled, "Clandestine Service History - Overthrow of Premier Mossadeq of Iran - November 1952-August 1953." This document describes the planning and execution conducted by the American and British governments. Due to reasons relating to the safety of former CIA personnel and their families, and because of Iran's long history of terrorism, the New York Times published this critical document with the names censored. The New York Times also limited its publication to scanned image (bitmap) format, rather than machine-readable text. It was through the actions of Iranians sympathetic to the current Iranian Islamic dictatorship, not the New York Times, that this document was eventually published properly - in text form, and fully unexpurgated. The complete CIA document is now web published. The word 'blowback' appeared for the very first time in this document. Outcome On August 19 1953, the Prime Minister, Mohammed Mossadeq, was forced from office and replaced by Zahedi and the Shah was recalled. The AIOC became the British Petroleum Company (BP) in 1954, and briefly resumed operations in Iran with a forty percent share in a new international consortium. BP continued to operate in Iran until the Islamic Revolution. However, due to a large investment program (funded by the World Bank) outside Iran, the company survived the loss of its Iranian interests at that time. The success of North Sea oil exploration contributed to BP's fortunes and the company recovered swiftly, and continues to be one of the world's foremost oil companies to this day. Repercussions Popular discontent with the erosion of Iran's social mores, its sluggish economy, and other developments caused widespread dissatisfaction with the regime of the Shah, leading to the 1979 Islamic Revolution The occupation of the U.S. embassy also took place during the coup, which caused diplomatic relations to be severed between the new Iranian dictatorship and the United States. The role that the U.S. embassy had played in the 1953 coup led the revolutionary guards to suspect that it might be used to play a similar role in suppressing the revolution, some revolutionary guards reported. Cold war For the U.S., an important factor to consider was Iran's border with the Soviet Union. A pro-American Iran under the Shah would give the U.S. a double strategic advantage in the ensuing Cold War, as a NATO alliance was already in effect with the government of Turkey, also bordering the USSR. In addition, even though the appropriation of the companies resulted in Western allegations that Mossadegh was a Communist and suspicions that Iran was in danger of falling under the influences of the neighboring Soviet Union, Mossadegh declined to change course under moderate international pressure. Asadollah Rashidian (also Asodollah Rashidian) was an Iranian national who played a critical role in the 1953 overthrow of Iranian Prime Minister Mohammed Mossadegh. He was a principal covert agent of the British Secret Intelligence Service (SIS) and through him the U.S. Central Intelligence Agency (CIA) was able to convince the Shah, Mohammed Reza Pahlavi, to endorse the operation (codenamed Operation Ajax). Rashidian's main contributions to the operation were his encouragement of the Shah's sister, Princess Ashraf Pahlavi, to obtain her brother's approval of the plan, and acting as a liaison between the SIS/CIA team and the Shah once the operation was underway.
