All the Shah's Men: An American Coup and the Roots of Middle East Terror

While Mossadegh dealt with this challenge, he also had to face another that most Iranians considered far more urgent. Their country was spiraling into bankruptcy. Tens of thousands had lost their jobs at the Abadan refinery, and although most understood and passionately supported the idea of nationalization, they naturally hoped that Mossadegh would find a way to put them back to work. The only way he could do that was to sell oil.

The divisive election, the tightening British oil embargo, and the World Court case all weighed on Mossadegh’s mind as he returned home from The Hague at the end of June.

Mossadegh had already proven himself adept at reaching the American public. He appeared several times on television, and the seeming logic of his case, which he always compared to the struggle for American independence, won him considerable sympathy. His personal quirks—the long, aristocratic face that would suddenly explode into laughter, the way he rested his seemingly weary head on his cane, the grand sweeps of his long arms—added to his appeal.

How did Iran reach the tragic crossroads of August 1953? The main responsibility lies with the obtuse neocolonialism that guided the Anglo-Iranian Oil Company and with the British government’s willingness to accept it. If the company had shown even a modicum of good sense, it could have reached a compromise with the Iranian authorities.

Mossadegh had naively ordered police officers not to interfere with people’s right to demonstrate, so the mob was able to rampage more or less at will. This was a great boon to [Kermit] Roosevelt, since any riots at all, even ones that he did not control, served to persuade Iranians that their country was sinking into chaos and needed a rescuer.

The great mob that surged through the streets of Tehran on August 18 was partly mercenary and partly a genuine expression of people’s loss of faith in Mossadegh.

During that year of 1951, Mossadegh vaulted onto the world stage and came to dominate it. He had become a defining figure whose ideas, for better or worse, were reshaping history. No one was surprised when Time magazine chose him — not Harry Truman, Dwight Eisenhower, or Winston Churchill — as its Man of the Year.

Mossadegh never saw any contradiction between his boundless respect for Britain’s constitutional tradition and his contempt for its government and imperial history.

Islamic leaders do not know quite what to make of Mossadegh. They take his defeat as proof of their view that Iran is the eternal victim of cruel foreigners. Because he was a secular liberal, however, they cannot embrace him as a hero. The Iranian press reflected this ambivalence in the way it covered the forty-ninth anniversary of the 1953 coup.