21 ms·

'Coup 53' tells the story of 1953 campaign by MI6 and CIA to oust Iran's leader

284 points by AndrewBissell 6y ago

jsjjsjshsh 6y ago
And yet Trump is doing basically same thing. Toppling our government, this time with sanctions. 50 years later when Iranian did see US as enemy, don’t act surprised. This is what Trump sows.
- justicezyx 6y ago
  That's what China and Russia and many great powers in history did to their sphere of influence as well. They all come and go. Some learned their lessons, and some are yet to experience the bitter revenge from those they harm and molested.
- sschueller 6y ago
  As a non US person I don't see anything different between the current administration and the last. Just this one isn't polished behind good speaches and fooling the world that their foreign policy is any different. No one was held accountable, secret prisons continue and drone usegae was normalized. The wars continue and new ones are started.
  - totalZero 6y ago
    > The wars continue and new ones are started. What new wars have been started under the current administration?
    - dbtc 6y ago
      I think maybe there aren't new or old wars anymore, just a single continuous amorphous conflict, against terrorism or whatever.
      - totalZero 6y ago
        To my knowledge Trump hasn't stepped outside the conflicts engaged by his predecessor. According to Bolton's book, Trump called off a strike on Iranian military facilities after a US drone was downed by Iran, because he didn't believe that the US should kill Iranians over the loss of a robot. Even the killing of Soleimani took place in Baghdad, where Soleimani (himself a commander of insurgent forces) was meeting with an Iraqi commander of insurgent forces. Hard to argue that this act fell outside the confines of the Congressionally authorized war in Iraq.
        dbtc 6y ago
        Are Yemen and Somalia part of the congressionally authorized war in Iraq? It's not Trump's endless war, it's America's.
        dragonwriter 6y ago
        > Hard to argue that this act fell outside the confines of the Congressionally authorized war in Iraq. Congress didn't authorize war “in Iraq”, but to protect against threats from Iraq (in context of the resolution, pretty clearly the State not the geographical area.)
    - Zenst 6y ago
      > What new wars have been started under the current administration? Many an internet flame-war, that's for sure. But then - how do you define war. The stage of official declaration all to arms type wars seem to be less clear-cut. Economics has and always will be the biggest weapon of wars these days.
      - totalZero 6y ago
        I'd probably refer to Obama's actions in Syria as an engagement of war. (I'm not saying he was right or wrong to go there, because I don't know all the facts about the Syria conflict.) I probably wouldn't refer to Trump's twitter commentary as warfare, inflammatory and counterproductive though it may be.
  - boudin 6y ago
    I'm not sure people in Iran will agree... The economical crisis caused by trump's government and the impossibility of any other country to invest in the country anymore is a big shift.
    - minimuffins 6y ago
      That certainly did not start in the Trump administration.
      - boudin 6y ago
        Sanctions as they are now are quite different from what they were with the nuclear deal. That didn't start with trump yes, but saying there's no difference is insulting to all the people who are actually paying the price.
        minimuffins 6y ago
        Good thing I'm not saying there's no difference then.
  - post_below 6y ago
    As a US person I appreciate the clear view that US foreign policy has been evil even under popular administrations, and every one of them were complicit in that evil. But tread lightly when comparing this administration to any other in the history of western democracy. It's a horror show up close.
- plandis 6y ago
  We will have to agree to disagree. I’m American and all I’ve ever seen from Iran is people chanting for my death and the death of the people I love. I was born in the 90s and had no bearing on foreign policy. If sanctions prevents Iran from accomplishing those goals then I personally will consider that a good thing.
  - notsureaboutpg 6y ago
    I mean the USA shot down an Iranian passenger plane killing all the civilians inside it. The USA sanctioned medical supplies from a country battling a pandemic. The USA armed Saddam Hussein to invade and fight a decade long war with Iran. The US has been consistently trying to destroy the nation of Iran. Iran holds demonstrations calling for the destruction of America but they never fought the US in any kind of war. When 9/11 happened, they were one of the only countries in the Middle East to have nationwide moments of silence and prayers for victims in America. Iran also has been one of the biggest fighters of ISIS in Iraq. They are able to mobilize civilian volunteers in Iraq in a way any other organization would envy. It's really crazy how much reality you have to ignore to believe there is any justification for US sanctions on Iran or to justify why you think Iranians should not be angry at the US
  - techer 6y ago
    Chanting for your death? Source please..
    - plandis 6y ago
      https://www.reuters.com/article/us-iran-usa-embassy/iranians-chant-death-to-america-to-mark-u-s-embassy-seizure-idUSKBN1XE0KK https://www.reuters.com/article/us-iran-usa-embassy/iranians... Just do a google search there are many many instances.
  - boudin 6y ago
    First, not all Iranian people are chanting your death. This is the propaganda from both sides that says that. Sanctions currently have the effect at making people in Iran even more dependant of the government, and plays well into the Iranian government propaganda.
- pmoriarty 6y ago
  Many Americans are very apolitical, and either don't know or don't care about what the US government does if it doesn't affect them or their friends and families. When they do care about politics, it's mostly about domestic politics, and Americans tend to have a massive ignorance about what's going on in the rest of the world or the history of any other country. Civic education and history are not a high priority in the US. American schools tend to be more interested in pumping out people with STEM degrees and business people than about teaching them anything to do with the humanities. On top of that Americans are constantly lied to and manipulated by their media and politicians, and politicians often act in ways that the American people don't approve of or are not informed of. So I wouldn't blame the American people for Trump's actions. More and half of those Americans who voted (who aren't nearly all Americans old enough to vote), most voted against electing Trump to be President, and many of them despise him. That said, Hillary Clinton was a hawk, so even had she become President it's not clear how favorable US government policy would have been towards Iran. But I wouldn't blame the American people for that either, as America's policy towards Iran was never a major issue in the election (if it was an issue at all), and Americans don't tend to even elect people on policies or issues (which they rarely pay attention to unless it affects them) but on the candidate's image and personality. Anyway, most Americans have no clue what the US foreign policy towards Iran is, couldn't find Iran on the map, and don't have even have the faintest idea about its history or the history of Iranian-American relations. And for those who know something about it, what they do know (or think they know) probably comes from an occasional 2 minute segment on TV news. People (all over the world) generally just want to live their lives and be left alone. They don't deserve to be branded enemies for the actions of their governments.
post_below 6y ago
I love this. Our decades of oil wars still don't seem to be common knowledge. All of the wars have of course been sold to the public as something else and it's a pretty important thing to understand about modern western power.
- jhallenworld 6y ago
  Much is clarified once it is understood that Germany lost WWII due to lack of oil: https://oilprice.com/Energy/Crude-Oil/How-Oil-Defeated-The-Nazis.html https://oilprice.com/Energy/Crude-Oil/How-Oil-Defeated-The-N... https://www.politico.com/magazine/story/2016/06/oil-denial-policy-cia-middle-east-cold-war-united-states-britain-soviet-union-213983 https://www.politico.com/magazine/story/2016/06/oil-denial-p...
  - lostlogin 6y ago
    It lost due to a lot more than that. Britain and her colonies (excluding India) out produced the Germany economy. Once you add in the US and USSR it’s more a question of how Germany lasted so long. This book covers the illusion of ‘the plucky underdog’ who stood ‘alone’ quite nicely. https://www.google.com/amp/s/amp.theguardian.com/books/2011/mar/27/britains-war-machine-david-edgerton https://www.google.com/amp/s/amp.theguardian.com/books/2011/...
    - jhallenworld 6y ago
      It's an oversimplification for sure, but there was definitely no way Germany was going to win without oil and explains why (the one sane reason) they invaded the Soviet Union. https://www.joelhayward.org/Too-Little-Too-Late.2.pdf https://www.joelhayward.org/Too-Little-Too-Late.2.pdf
      - 082349872349872 6y ago
        I agree, adding that the beginning of the war also had something to do with (ersatz) oil. https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=23612474 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=23612474
oh_sigh 6y ago
By "Iran's Leader", surely they mean "Iran's dictator", right? Mossadegh convinced the government to give him 6 months of "emergency powers", ostensibly to fix the financial problems of Iran. In reality, he did a little of that, but also used his powers to further entrench himself by diminishing the power of the Shah. And then he got another 12 months emergency powers, and used it to redistribute land to the poor. Unfortunately at that time, Iran was also incredibly insolvent (due to the British boycott), and so the poor were not happy. You might argue that Mossadegh would have succeeded if not for the British boycott.. sure, maybe he would have. But what do you expect to happen when you forcibly take all of the British resources? Should they just have said "Oh fine, have them, let's keep doing business together"? The clerics, at this point, were already the proverbial kingmakers in Iran. They backed Mossadegh when he was expedient, and they backed the Shah when Mossadegh failed them. There's no reason to believe that Iran would have continued under Mossadegh into some kind of Socialist paradise - he probably would have just been deposed by the religious nuts a few years later regardless, just as happened with the Shah.
- mmrezaie 6y ago
  Yes and no. I do not think in that time frame that was being considered dictatorship. It was for the lack of legitimacy of Shah's case Mossadegh needed more power specially since parlemant was not that functional either. You take Mossadegh's actions by the measures of the time. When I was reading about the history of the time, I fail to imagine what I could have done. All in all, Iran's liberal movement by this coup might have been distroyed in a way it never did recover yet.
- mmrezaie 6y ago
  I agree on your second point though. Clercs were having so much hidden power at the time. Consdiering for 250 years since the inception of various religious taxes (5th of salary) and donations they were accumulating a wast amount of wealth.
- wz1000 6y ago
  > But what do you expect to happen when you forcibly take all of the British resources? Very strange how oil underneath the Iranian soil can be considered a "British resource".
rshnotsecure 6y ago
I see this story often, and it is basically true. I would like to remind everyone though that for every regime change the US engineered, the KGB was responsible for many times more. Part of the USSR's philosophy after all was worldwide revolution that was to be exported to all countries.
- sudosysgen 6y ago
  The USSR's philosophy was that under Lenin, under Stalin all hopes of worldwide revolution were abandoned and the philosophy shifted to "Socialism in one country". More relevant to your point: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Russia_involvement_in_regime_change https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Russia_involvement_in_regime_c... (This includes the overthrow of Nazi and Imperial Japanese invasion governments, and a good third were post-USSR) https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/United_States_involvement_in_regime_change https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/United_States_involvement_in_r... (This includes only Nazi overthrows) As you can see, the second is significantly longer despite not including regime change attempts against Imperial Japanese governments. If you remove WW2 and WW1, the US list is over twice as long.
  - antiutopian 6y ago
    Did you mean "unlike under Lenin"?
    - sudosysgen 6y ago
      I meant that under Lenin, the philosophy was to export revolution worldwide so that the Soviet Union would integrate into a worldwide, international socialism. Under Stalin, the policy of "Socialism in one country" was implemented, and foreign intervention was no longer a priority nor a philosophical goal. Which is why, under Stalin, the USSR attempted to ally with capitalist nations.
      - antiutopian 6y ago
        I agree, I just think you said it wrong in your original post!
_el 6y ago
A great book on this topic is "All the Shah's Men" by Stephen Kinzer.
- teh_klev 6y ago
  Yes, can confirm this too. It was quite an eye opener when I read it and goes a long way to explaining Iran's relationship with the US and the west.
- 0x262d 6y ago
  Yes, I second this. That was an absolutely critical read for me. As an aside, All The King's Men and All The President's Men are books I recommend too.
- oxymoron 6y ago
  I liked it a lot, although I’ve later found the depiction of the Eisenhower administration a bit simplistic. Another good and fun read on that is Evans’ _Ike’s bluff_, which paints a more detailed picture on John Foster Dulles in particular.
  - 082349872349872 6y ago
    All the Dulles siblings are interesting in their own ways.
- ghostpepper 6y ago
  This book is excellent, if a bit dense. There were many, many players involved in the coup. Kinzer is also interviewed in Coup 53.
  - AndrewBissell 6y ago
    It's not included in the written summary but the NPR audio segment includes some commentary by Kinzer about how exploitative the British oil extraction deals with Iran were.
- edbaskerville 6y ago
lehi 6y ago
There was an interactive graphic novel of these events for iPad/iPhone: http://www.cognitocomics.com/project-ajax.html http://www.cognitocomics.com/project-ajax.html The free apps are still present in the App Store, but are now incompatible with recent iOS versions.
- jessaustin 6y ago
  The fact that this project succumbed to bitrot, and is now being relaunched as a website, seems to say something about the longevity of phone apps.
as300 6y ago
Once again, behind a bad geopolitical situation is a Brit. History is unduly kind to the U.K., ignoring all of the atrocities of their colonialism for the sole reason that they suffered and overcame in WW2. Israel Palestine, India Pakistan, and Iran are all direct results of their racism and chicanery.
- 0x262d 6y ago
  The British have a horrible history of imperialism, but just to be clear, this was mostly carried out the by US, who also have a horrible history of imperialism.
  - as300 6y ago
    Agreed, but I'd argue that the US's imperialism is fairly well-known. The British managed to avoid that via shrewd and destructive campaigns of divide-and-conquer that stacked the odds against future democracies.
    - Ar-Curunir 6y ago
      ? I don’t know if you’ve lived in any British colony, but tons of people despise the British Empire to this day
  - DanBC 6y ago
    People may be interested to read a history of Iran-UK relations: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Iran%E2%80%93United_Kingdom_relations#History_of_Anglo%E2%80%93Iranian_relations https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Iran%E2%80%93United_Kingdom_re... tl;dr Britain has a long history of causing harm to other countries.
  - nmstoker 6y ago
    It would be good to get some specifics applied here rather than vague generalisations like "X were horrible". Scope, proportion of British / US involved, level of "horrible" activities seem like they would help avoid this becoming a stereotype. After all it wouldn't be acceptable to make stereotypes about Persians or others in a similar position.
ajtulloch 6y ago
It's not explicitly mentioned in the article, but the documentary has been released for streaming today at https://coup53.com/ https://coup53.com/.
- k_sze 6y ago
  Unfortunately it seems that it's not an international release. You need to buy a ticket from one of the participating venues, and then your virtual screening would be limited to the country of the venue. I live in Hong Kong, so I'm out of luck. Maybe I could use a VPN, but I don't have any VPN subscription and I don't know how well any of the VPN providers can stream video.
  - ctchocula 6y ago
    There are free VPNs here: https://www.vpngate.net/en/ https://www.vpngate.net/en/ Video quality is not bad. Good enough to watch Netflix over VPN.
    - sanbor 6y ago
      Mulvad is one of the best, if you fill a captcha they give you an account number valid for 3 hours without any restrictions, their vpn client is open source and support wireguard
- blmurch 6y ago
  Thanks for the link! I'm working on the documentary and as we don't have a distributor we're doing what we can. We know that people all over the world would like to see it. We have to develop subtitles and reach out to theaters in each country to partner with them. It's a lot of work. If anyone has suggestions of art houses in the country they are located, please send them to us! We are partnering with independent cinemas because they are really hurting because of the pandemic, so any venue that partners with us gets 50/50 split of profits.
  - ajtulloch 6y ago
lefrenchy 6y ago
For a longer read on the history here, "All the Shah's Men" is a great read.
The_suffocated 6y ago
> For years, I thought the CIA was the prime mover of the coup, but I was wrong. I think the CIA was indeed the prime mover of the coup, at least according to the CIA's official history. Derbyshire, the person who was in charge of SIS's Iran branch, came up with the idea of a coup, but the Brits had not the capacity to pull it off and so they asked the CIA for help. The whole operation was very well documented by the declassified report entitled "CIA Clandestine Service History, Overthrow of Premier Mossadeq of Iran, November 1952-August 1953", which is downloadable from https://nsarchive2.gwu.edu/NSAEBB/NSAEBB28/ https://nsarchive2.gwu.edu/NSAEBB/NSAEBB28/
- saghm 6y ago
  I think you might have a different understanding of the phrase "prime mover" than the author. Aristotle used the term[1] to refer to the source of all motion, the idea being that motion had to begin with some entity moving without having been moved from something else, and then all other motion flowed from it. According to the history you give, Derbyshire would fit the definition of the prime mover here; he had the idea without it having come from another source, and so the CIA's action only came about as a result of that initial idea. [1]: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Unmoved_mover https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Unmoved_mover
  - The_suffocated 6y ago
    You are right. I did learn this term in high school decades ago but have forgotten it. Thanks for the explanation.
deleted 6y ago
[deleted]
neutrinoq 6y ago
There's a web comic version of this story being developed: http://alpha.operationajax.com/ http://alpha.operationajax.com/
- nagarjun 6y ago
  This deserves more attention that it is getting in this thread
- dimator 6y ago
  There's a good graphic novel as well: https://www.barnesandnoble.com/w/operation-ajax-mike-de-seve/1120723927?ean=9781781689233 https://www.barnesandnoble.com/w/operation-ajax-mike-de-seve... which is based on the book: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/All_the_Shah%27s_Men https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/All_the_Shah%27s_Men
- pirocks 6y ago
  Apparently my browser(firefox) is unsupported. Seems to work fine when I change user agent to chrome.
  - phatfish 6y ago
    I could use Firefox by just clicking the arrow or "continue" i think. But there was a warning. The audio skips and doesn't loop properly for me on Firefox though. Didn't try any other browser. Seems well done, extra marks when Firefox is supported ;)
- the_af 6y ago
  Marjane Satrapi's awesome autobiographical comic "Persepolis" [1] also addresses this as the setup to the chain of events that would lead to Iran's current theocracy. I recommend this comic as well as the movie based on it. [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Persepolis_(comics) https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Persepolis_(comics)
  - ZeroGravitas 6y ago
    Worth noting that Satrapi's family were part of the US supported-side and so the story might be slightly slanted to one side, covering more the time period where a conservative religious group cane in to power as a backlash.
AndrewBissell 6y ago
> How that happens is the heart of the film, which paints a fascinatingly detailed picture of how, in practical terms, you go about toppling a popular foreign leader. It all starts with spreading around money and maybe arranging a couple of assassinations. "The Jakarta Method" by Vincent Bevins delves into how the CIA adapted and shifted course to address some of the weaknesses of its in-plain-sight coup approach in Iran and Guatemala in the 1950s. The ideal is always to preserve as much as possible the impression that the change in regimes is driven by local, endogenous political forces. The recent coup in Bolivia is a good demonstration of how this can be pulled off while almost entirely avoiding accusations of U.S. involvement.
- chishaku 6y ago
  Other recent attempts in "America's backyard" - Venezuela 2019 - Ecuador 2010 - Honduras 2009
  - jessaustin 6y ago
    Personally I would also argue for Brazil, 2016. Operação Lava Jato was publicized as an anti-corruption effort, but more recent information indicates it was more of an anti-socialist coup. Sérgio Moro was in IVLP, and the highlight of his first trip to USA after becoming Justice Minister was a courtesy call at CIA headquarters. [0] This was an unmistakable public statement of Moro's allegiance and actions. [0] https://www.brasilwire.com/in-plain-sight-bolsonaro-moro-and-the-cia/ https://www.brasilwire.com/in-plain-sight-bolsonaro-moro-and...
  - nisse72 6y ago
    - Chile 1973
pmoriarty 6y ago
To anyone interested in this, I'd highly recommend Stephen Kinzer's Overthrow.[1] It covers not just this incident, but many others throughout history when the US has overthrown foreign governments. [1] - https://www.amazon.com/Overthrow-Americas-Century-Regime-Change/dp/0805082409 https://www.amazon.com/Overthrow-Americas-Century-Regime-Cha...
devenblake 6y ago
The most fascinating part of Americanism to me is that America regularly compromises and helps compromise any country that doesn't share the same interests, and America's citizens (mostly) think it's fine. The society lives in fear of its government, its representatives live in fear of its military, and the military is controlled by higher-ups who probably shouldn't have been given power. Often people accuse the leaders of these compromised nations of being dictators as if America doesn't have a track record of instilling even more evil leaders (for example, Pinochet[1]). Why can't America just leave other countries alone and tend to its own sorry affairs? America tries to make other countries "more free" and then treats Blacks, Asians, Native Americans, Mexicans, other people of color, women, transgenders and other gender-nonconformists, homosexuals and anyone else that isn't heterosexual, Communists, Socialists, and anyone who isn't their form of "normal" as second-rate citizens in their own country. America (rightfully) accuses other countries of tampering in their election and then tampers in others' elections.[0] Their actions often contradict the values they claim to purvey. I hear often that if another country was doing as poorly as America is right now, America would have "liberated" it already. [0]: I found a source here: https://www.globalresearch.ca/us-interfered-in-elections-of-at-least-85-countries-worldwide-since-1945/5601481 https://www.globalresearch.ca/us-interfered-in-elections-of-... for my claims, however it's questionable due to accusations of spreading propaganda. Here's a relevant article from a more trustworthy source: https://www.theatlantic.com/ideas/archive/2018/07/the-us-has-a-long-history-of-election-meddling/565538/ https://www.theatlantic.com/ideas/archive/2018/07/the-us-has... [1]: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Augusto_Pinochet#U.S._backing_of_the_coup https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Augusto_Pinochet#U.S._backing_...
- anigbrowl 6y ago
  Power is a hell of a drug.
  - 082349872349872 6y ago
    Due to the structure of the power, also a drug that's hard to taper: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=24071721 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=24071721 (where "the Gulf" refers to the Gulf of Mexico, not the Persian) JFK, seeking an exit from that Catch-22, tried to promote international institutions[1] in order to approach a world "where the strong are just and the weak secure and the peace preserved"[2] ... but he got cancelled. [1] compare late Ezra Pound for 1940's rants almost suitable for the 2020's: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=24208047 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=24208047 [2] https://nationalcenter.org/KennedyInaugural.html https://nationalcenter.org/KennedyInaugural.html
coldtea 6y ago
Now imagine for a second another country overthrowing the US elected government and installing their own dictator. How exactly would Americans feel for that country later? (even just from that incident alone, let's ignore half a century of later meddling). When Americans consider other countries' reactions towards them, they seldom consider the impact of their own actions, as if the toppling some sovereign country's government (the worse thing you can do) is no big deal, and others should just sit and take it...
- throwawaytrump2 6y ago
  We don't have to imagine very hard. Did you read the Senate report (bipartisan) that shows the level of effort Russia put into helping install a President who's policies show an inclination of wanting to be a dictator? That's supported by a party that takes as many steps as possible to deny citizens the right to vote? "The Russian gove[rn]ment directed extensive activity, beginning in at least 2014 and carrying into at least 2017, against U.S. election infrastructure' at the state and local level." "The Committee found that no single group of Americans was targeted by IRA information operatives more than African-Americans. By far, race and related issues were the preferred target of the information warfare campaign designed to divide the country in 2016." "One former employee's description of his work at the IRA is notable: I arrived there, and I immediately felt like a character in the book '1984' by George Orwell-a place where you have to write that white is black and black is white. Your first feeling, when you ended up there, was that you were in some kind of factory that turned lying, telling untruths, into an industrial assembly line. The volumes were colossal-there were huge numbers of people, 300 to 400, and they were all writing absolute untruths. It was like being in Orwell's world." vol. 1: https://www.intelligence.senate.gov/sites/default/files/documents/Report_Volume1.pdf https://www.intelligence.senate.gov/sites/default/files/docu... vol. 2: https://www.intelligence.senate.gov/sites/default/files/documents/Report_Volume2.pdf https://www.intelligence.senate.gov/sites/default/files/docu...
  - deleted 6y ago
    [deleted]
  - YarickR2 6y ago
DonaldFisk 6y ago
There was a documentary about the coup shown on Channel 4 in the UK in 1985: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xhCgJElpQEQ https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xhCgJElpQEQ Just before it was shown, the role of Norman Darbyshire, the MI6 officer involved in the coup, was leaked to the Observer: https://www.theguardian.com/world/2020/aug/02/mi6-the-coup-in-iran-that-changed-the-middle-east-and-the-cover-up https://www.theguardian.com/world/2020/aug/02/mi6-the-coup-i... The Observer received a D-notice which prevented its publication. The makers of Coup 53 made use of the unpublished Observer material. Briefly, the UK Government wanted Mosaddegh overthrown because he wanted to nationalize a British oil company (Anglo-Iranian). It tried to get the CIA involved but Truman opposed American involvement. This changed when Eisenhower was elected president.
- blmurch 6y ago
  Yup a lot of Age of Empire is used in the documentary. Finding that Observer material in Microfilm set them down the merry path. My father was excitedly telling me about it when they discovered it. He really couldn't believe it.
x87678r 6y ago
Fascinating how demographics change. Back then the UK population was bigger than Iran/Iraq/Syria/Israel/Palestine/SaudiArabia combined and much wealthier and powerful. Now those countries combine to hundreds of millions of people.
- YinLuck- 6y ago
  When you give women rights, the inevitable result is civilizational extinction.
WrongThinkerNo5 6y ago
I would just like to note that this coup against Iran was also considered a "conspiracy theory", a term that was popularized in this very time period, arguably to cover up popular realization of what was going on in this very case. People have to realize this was right after WWII and the US war propaganda machine was in full swing and the men of war were still buzzing with war and looking for their next fight.
haltingproblem 6y ago
The CIA/MI5 coup is fascinating not only because it overthrow a democratically elected government of a Middle Eastern country in 1953 (!) but also because of its consequences. There is not a single democratic government in the ME sans Israel. No, tiny Tunisia does not count, it is in the Maghreb (N. Africa). What would the middle east look like if the Mosaddegh government had continued? No revolution, No Ayatollah, no Iran-Iraq war, no Hezbollah? Instead we got the Shah who forced his people to modernize, secret police pulling veils off women was common and generally unleashed a reign that was anathema to most of the conservative population outside Tehran. Most of the anger you see is towards the US is from that reign rather than the coup. The Iranians who are Persians, and not Arabs, have a civilizational history going back 1000s of years. Expat Persians have achieved great success in the US and UK. Going further back, the Zoroastrians, who fled the Islamic conquest and arrived in India more than a millennia ago are the richest, most educated and economically successful minority group by an order of magnitude, or two. The Shah's reign lasted 25 years. A generation that grew up under the Shah's tyranny led the revolution in 1979. The Islamic revolution is now 40 years old. There have been almost two generations that grew up under the Islamic govt's misrule and grandiose projects of power projection. Hopefully they can take charge and lead Iran back to civilizational greatness. Iran, the middle east and the world needs it. And I would really like to visit the gardens of Shiraz or the markets of Isfahan which have been around for 1000s of years ;) Edit: As pointed out in the comments, instead of Arab world, I should have used Arab speaking. There are Arab speakers who are Arab and there are Arab speakers who are not Arab.
- quercusgrisea 6y ago
  >There is not a single democratic govt in the ME sans Israel The millions of Palestinians unable to vote for the government that controls their movement, trade, and lives in general would probably disagree with your characterization of Israel as a democracy.
  - haltingproblem 6y ago
    Wrong. Try again. There are 450~ million Arabs and you chose to focus on the 4.5 million Palestinians who voted in elections in 2006. These elections bought Hamas to power in in Gaza and PLO in the West Bank. Gaza is autonomous in terms of governance and has chosen to not hold elections since the last one in 2006. Neither has the PLO. They both plead unable to hold elections because they want to hang on to power though the international community wants them to. Edit: Getting down voted for stating facts.
euix 6y ago
Americans are winners as were the Brits before them. History will always favor the winner. The only practical lesson out of this sad story and countless others through history is: learn to be strong and so you can be a winner.
- croes 6y ago
  Learn from history. Every empire falls.
  - hindsightbias 6y ago
    The Roman, Pandyan and Byzantine Empires had pretty good runs.
    - croes 6y ago
      Still fallen
  - euix 6y ago
    True, but we live relative to the lifespan of an empire. A person born in 1842 in China would have lived only known a falling empire his whole life. A person born in 1945 in America will only know an ascendant one. The "long run" of our lives are much shorter, we don't wait around to get satisfaction that empires fall or "justice" gets done, however you define that. If we live in the era of one victor over another then that's reality for us.
- 082349872349872 6y ago
  Learn to mind your own business, and you can have brotherly love, can have five hundred years of democracy and peace, and then get unjustly blamed for the cuckoo clock.
shirakawasuna 6y ago
I don't necessarily trust NPR to do that great of a job telling this story. I do recommend listening to the Iran section (all the sections, really) of Safe for Democracy: http://safefordemocracy.com/podcast/6/ http://safefordemocracy.com/podcast/6/ . (Note: that's part 1 of 9). RSS feed here: http://safefordemocracy.com/feed/podcast http://safefordemocracy.com/feed/podcast
- AndrewBissell 6y ago
  Appreciate the additional sources. I share your skepticism about NPR's take on this sort of thing but have found that sometimes dodgy-but-mainstream sources can still be quite useful for kicking off productive discussions where some of the more salient facts can be explored.
  - shirakawasuna 6y ago
    Useful to start discussions, yes! Sometimes risky because they can spread common myths, and it can be very difficult to supplant them. It's so much harder to unlearn something than to learn the right thing the first time, of course. Safe for Democracy does thorough and sourced deep-dives into the histories of a few American "interventions", disrupting or controlling or supposedly attempting to create democracy in other countries. It goes through the background of the countries, often 100+ years prior to the events in question, and sets the stage thoroughly so that you can get a sense of the cultural forces and context. It also emphasizes the humanity of those involved and what violences were done beyond rattling off death counts so that you can understand the long-term cultural impacts and often genocides involved that are easier to miss if you only hear numbers.
blmurch 6y ago
Thanks for posting this. I'm working on the documentary. We're having a live Q&A in 5 hours with the director Taghi Amirani, the editor and co-writer my father Walter Murch, and actor Ralph Fiennes who portrays Darbyshire. The Q&A is moderated by Jon Snow of Channel 4 news. This is exclusive access if you buy your ticket to our online premiere now! It's on our website. We're having our general release on Friday. It's available in the USA, UK, Ireland and Canada. We're going country by country because we don't have a distributor.
lucas_membrane 6y ago
The story that the CIA did this is mostly myth created by CIA people to enhance the reputation of the CIA in the eyes of US White House and Congress. CIA had Kermit Roosevelt Jr. (Teddy's grandson) in Iran working on it, but he accomplished little, and the CIA sent him orders to stop a couple of days before the coup. He pretended not to get the message and kept trying, but probably without much effect. Mohammad Mosaddegh lost power when the ayatollahs raised their opposition to his rule. Roosevelt then returned to the US and collected all the credit. This PR coup led to Eisenhower giving Dulles of the CIA a couple of fighter planes to use in Guatemala to remove Jacobo Arbenz from power, which was the CIA's pinnacle of success, strengthening the CIA's reputation even more and leading to the agency's mediocre record thereafter.

284 points by AndrewBissell 6y ago

And yet Trump is doing basically same thing. Toppling our government, this time with sanctions. 50 years later when Iranian did see US as enemy, don’t act surprised. This is what Trump sows.

justicezyx 6y ago
That's what China and Russia and many great powers in history did to their sphere of influence as well. They all come and go. Some learned their lessons, and some are yet to experience the bitter revenge from those they harm and molested.
sschueller 6y ago
As a non US person I don't see anything different between the current administration and the last. Just this one isn't polished behind good speaches and fooling the world that their foreign policy is any different. No one was held accountable, secret prisons continue and drone usegae was normalized. The wars continue and new ones are started.
- totalZero 6y ago
  > The wars continue and new ones are started. What new wars have been started under the current administration?
  - dbtc 6y ago
    I think maybe there aren't new or old wars anymore, just a single continuous amorphous conflict, against terrorism or whatever.
    - totalZero 6y ago
      To my knowledge Trump hasn't stepped outside the conflicts engaged by his predecessor. According to Bolton's book, Trump called off a strike on Iranian military facilities after a US drone was downed by Iran, because he didn't believe that the US should kill Iranians over the loss of a robot. Even the killing of Soleimani took place in Baghdad, where Soleimani (himself a commander of insurgent forces) was meeting with an Iraqi commander of insurgent forces. Hard to argue that this act fell outside the confines of the Congressionally authorized war in Iraq.
      - dbtc 6y ago
        Are Yemen and Somalia part of the congressionally authorized war in Iraq? It's not Trump's endless war, it's America's.
      - dragonwriter 6y ago
        > Hard to argue that this act fell outside the confines of the Congressionally authorized war in Iraq. Congress didn't authorize war “in Iraq”, but to protect against threats from Iraq (in context of the resolution, pretty clearly the State not the geographical area.)
  - Zenst 6y ago
    > What new wars have been started under the current administration? Many an internet flame-war, that's for sure. But then - how do you define war. The stage of official declaration all to arms type wars seem to be less clear-cut. Economics has and always will be the biggest weapon of wars these days.
    - totalZero 6y ago
      I'd probably refer to Obama's actions in Syria as an engagement of war. (I'm not saying he was right or wrong to go there, because I don't know all the facts about the Syria conflict.) I probably wouldn't refer to Trump's twitter commentary as warfare, inflammatory and counterproductive though it may be.
- boudin 6y ago
  I'm not sure people in Iran will agree... The economical crisis caused by trump's government and the impossibility of any other country to invest in the country anymore is a big shift.
  - minimuffins 6y ago
    That certainly did not start in the Trump administration.
    - boudin 6y ago
      Sanctions as they are now are quite different from what they were with the nuclear deal. That didn't start with trump yes, but saying there's no difference is insulting to all the people who are actually paying the price.
      - minimuffins 6y ago
        Good thing I'm not saying there's no difference then.
- post_below 6y ago
  As a US person I appreciate the clear view that US foreign policy has been evil even under popular administrations, and every one of them were complicit in that evil. But tread lightly when comparing this administration to any other in the history of western democracy. It's a horror show up close.
plandis 6y ago
We will have to agree to disagree. I’m American and all I’ve ever seen from Iran is people chanting for my death and the death of the people I love. I was born in the 90s and had no bearing on foreign policy. If sanctions prevents Iran from accomplishing those goals then I personally will consider that a good thing.
- notsureaboutpg 6y ago
  I mean the USA shot down an Iranian passenger plane killing all the civilians inside it. The USA sanctioned medical supplies from a country battling a pandemic. The USA armed Saddam Hussein to invade and fight a decade long war with Iran. The US has been consistently trying to destroy the nation of Iran. Iran holds demonstrations calling for the destruction of America but they never fought the US in any kind of war. When 9/11 happened, they were one of the only countries in the Middle East to have nationwide moments of silence and prayers for victims in America. Iran also has been one of the biggest fighters of ISIS in Iraq. They are able to mobilize civilian volunteers in Iraq in a way any other organization would envy. It's really crazy how much reality you have to ignore to believe there is any justification for US sanctions on Iran or to justify why you think Iranians should not be angry at the US
- techer 6y ago
  Chanting for your death? Source please..
  - plandis 6y ago
    https://www.reuters.com/article/us-iran-usa-embassy/iranians-chant-death-to-america-to-mark-u-s-embassy-seizure-idUSKBN1XE0KK https://www.reuters.com/article/us-iran-usa-embassy/iranians... Just do a google search there are many many instances.
- boudin 6y ago
  First, not all Iranian people are chanting your death. This is the propaganda from both sides that says that. Sanctions currently have the effect at making people in Iran even more dependant of the government, and plays well into the Iranian government propaganda.
pmoriarty 6y ago
Many Americans are very apolitical, and either don't know or don't care about what the US government does if it doesn't affect them or their friends and families. When they do care about politics, it's mostly about domestic politics, and Americans tend to have a massive ignorance about what's going on in the rest of the world or the history of any other country. Civic education and history are not a high priority in the US. American schools tend to be more interested in pumping out people with STEM degrees and business people than about teaching them anything to do with the humanities. On top of that Americans are constantly lied to and manipulated by their media and politicians, and politicians often act in ways that the American people don't approve of or are not informed of. So I wouldn't blame the American people for Trump's actions. More and half of those Americans who voted (who aren't nearly all Americans old enough to vote), most voted against electing Trump to be President, and many of them despise him. That said, Hillary Clinton was a hawk, so even had she become President it's not clear how favorable US government policy would have been towards Iran. But I wouldn't blame the American people for that either, as America's policy towards Iran was never a major issue in the election (if it was an issue at all), and Americans don't tend to even elect people on policies or issues (which they rarely pay attention to unless it affects them) but on the candidate's image and personality. Anyway, most Americans have no clue what the US foreign policy towards Iran is, couldn't find Iran on the map, and don't have even have the faintest idea about its history or the history of Iranian-American relations. And for those who know something about it, what they do know (or think they know) probably comes from an occasional 2 minute segment on TV news. People (all over the world) generally just want to live their lives and be left alone. They don't deserve to be branded enemies for the actions of their governments.

post_below 6y ago

I love this. Our decades of oil wars still don't seem to be common knowledge. All of the wars have of course been sold to the public as something else and it's a pretty important thing to understand about modern western power.

jhallenworld 6y ago
Much is clarified once it is understood that Germany lost WWII due to lack of oil: https://oilprice.com/Energy/Crude-Oil/How-Oil-Defeated-The-Nazis.html https://oilprice.com/Energy/Crude-Oil/How-Oil-Defeated-The-N... https://www.politico.com/magazine/story/2016/06/oil-denial-policy-cia-middle-east-cold-war-united-states-britain-soviet-union-213983 https://www.politico.com/magazine/story/2016/06/oil-denial-p...
- lostlogin 6y ago
  It lost due to a lot more than that. Britain and her colonies (excluding India) out produced the Germany economy. Once you add in the US and USSR it’s more a question of how Germany lasted so long. This book covers the illusion of ‘the plucky underdog’ who stood ‘alone’ quite nicely. https://www.google.com/amp/s/amp.theguardian.com/books/2011/mar/27/britains-war-machine-david-edgerton https://www.google.com/amp/s/amp.theguardian.com/books/2011/...
  - jhallenworld 6y ago
    It's an oversimplification for sure, but there was definitely no way Germany was going to win without oil and explains why (the one sane reason) they invaded the Soviet Union. https://www.joelhayward.org/Too-Little-Too-Late.2.pdf https://www.joelhayward.org/Too-Little-Too-Late.2.pdf
    - 082349872349872 6y ago
      I agree, adding that the beginning of the war also had something to do with (ersatz) oil. https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=23612474 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=23612474

oh_sigh 6y ago

By "Iran's Leader", surely they mean "Iran's dictator", right? Mossadegh convinced the government to give him 6 months of "emergency powers", ostensibly to fix the financial problems of Iran. In reality, he did a little of that, but also used his powers to further entrench himself by diminishing the power of the Shah. And then he got another 12 months emergency powers, and used it to redistribute land to the poor. Unfortunately at that time, Iran was also incredibly insolvent (due to the British boycott), and so the poor were not happy. You might argue that Mossadegh would have succeeded if not for the British boycott.. sure, maybe he would have. But what do you expect to happen when you forcibly take all of the British resources? Should they just have said "Oh fine, have them, let's keep doing business together"? The clerics, at this point, were already the proverbial kingmakers in Iran. They backed Mossadegh when he was expedient, and they backed the Shah when Mossadegh failed them. There's no reason to believe that Iran would have continued under Mossadegh into some kind of Socialist paradise - he probably would have just been deposed by the religious nuts a few years later regardless, just as happened with the Shah.

mmrezaie 6y ago
Yes and no. I do not think in that time frame that was being considered dictatorship. It was for the lack of legitimacy of Shah's case Mossadegh needed more power specially since parlemant was not that functional either. You take Mossadegh's actions by the measures of the time. When I was reading about the history of the time, I fail to imagine what I could have done. All in all, Iran's liberal movement by this coup might have been distroyed in a way it never did recover yet.
mmrezaie 6y ago
I agree on your second point though. Clercs were having so much hidden power at the time. Consdiering for 250 years since the inception of various religious taxes (5th of salary) and donations they were accumulating a wast amount of wealth.
wz1000 6y ago
> But what do you expect to happen when you forcibly take all of the British resources? Very strange how oil underneath the Iranian soil can be considered a "British resource".

rshnotsecure 6y ago

I see this story often, and it is basically true. I would like to remind everyone though that for every regime change the US engineered, the KGB was responsible for many times more. Part of the USSR's philosophy after all was worldwide revolution that was to be exported to all countries.

sudosysgen 6y ago
The USSR's philosophy was that under Lenin, under Stalin all hopes of worldwide revolution were abandoned and the philosophy shifted to "Socialism in one country". More relevant to your point: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Russia_involvement_in_regime_change https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Russia_involvement_in_regime_c... (This includes the overthrow of Nazi and Imperial Japanese invasion governments, and a good third were post-USSR) https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/United_States_involvement_in_regime_change https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/United_States_involvement_in_r... (This includes only Nazi overthrows) As you can see, the second is significantly longer despite not including regime change attempts against Imperial Japanese governments. If you remove WW2 and WW1, the US list is over twice as long.
- antiutopian 6y ago
  Did you mean "unlike under Lenin"?
  - sudosysgen 6y ago
    I meant that under Lenin, the philosophy was to export revolution worldwide so that the Soviet Union would integrate into a worldwide, international socialism. Under Stalin, the policy of "Socialism in one country" was implemented, and foreign intervention was no longer a priority nor a philosophical goal. Which is why, under Stalin, the USSR attempted to ally with capitalist nations.
    - antiutopian 6y ago
      I agree, I just think you said it wrong in your original post!

_el 6y ago

A great book on this topic is "All the Shah's Men" by Stephen Kinzer.

teh_klev 6y ago
Yes, can confirm this too. It was quite an eye opener when I read it and goes a long way to explaining Iran's relationship with the US and the west.
0x262d 6y ago
Yes, I second this. That was an absolutely critical read for me. As an aside, All The King's Men and All The President's Men are books I recommend too.
oxymoron 6y ago
I liked it a lot, although I’ve later found the depiction of the Eisenhower administration a bit simplistic. Another good and fun read on that is Evans’ _Ike’s bluff_, which paints a more detailed picture on John Foster Dulles in particular.
- 082349872349872 6y ago
  All the Dulles siblings are interesting in their own ways.
ghostpepper 6y ago
This book is excellent, if a bit dense. There were many, many players involved in the coup. Kinzer is also interviewed in Coup 53.
- AndrewBissell 6y ago
  It's not included in the written summary but the NPR audio segment includes some commentary by Kinzer about how exploitative the British oil extraction deals with Iran were.
edbaskerville 6y ago

lehi 6y ago

There was an interactive graphic novel of these events for iPad/iPhone: http://www.cognitocomics.com/project-ajax.html http://www.cognitocomics.com/project-ajax.html The free apps are still present in the App Store, but are now incompatible with recent iOS versions.

jessaustin 6y ago
The fact that this project succumbed to bitrot, and is now being relaunched as a website, seems to say something about the longevity of phone apps.

as300 6y ago

Once again, behind a bad geopolitical situation is a Brit. History is unduly kind to the U.K., ignoring all of the atrocities of their colonialism for the sole reason that they suffered and overcame in WW2. Israel Palestine, India Pakistan, and Iran are all direct results of their racism and chicanery.

0x262d 6y ago
The British have a horrible history of imperialism, but just to be clear, this was mostly carried out the by US, who also have a horrible history of imperialism.
- as300 6y ago
  Agreed, but I'd argue that the US's imperialism is fairly well-known. The British managed to avoid that via shrewd and destructive campaigns of divide-and-conquer that stacked the odds against future democracies.
  - Ar-Curunir 6y ago
    ? I don’t know if you’ve lived in any British colony, but tons of people despise the British Empire to this day
- DanBC 6y ago
  People may be interested to read a history of Iran-UK relations: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Iran%E2%80%93United_Kingdom_relations#History_of_Anglo%E2%80%93Iranian_relations https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Iran%E2%80%93United_Kingdom_re... tl;dr Britain has a long history of causing harm to other countries.
- nmstoker 6y ago
  It would be good to get some specifics applied here rather than vague generalisations like "X were horrible". Scope, proportion of British / US involved, level of "horrible" activities seem like they would help avoid this becoming a stereotype. After all it wouldn't be acceptable to make stereotypes about Persians or others in a similar position.

ajtulloch 6y ago

It's not explicitly mentioned in the article, but the documentary has been released for streaming today at https://coup53.com/ https://coup53.com/.

k_sze 6y ago
Unfortunately it seems that it's not an international release. You need to buy a ticket from one of the participating venues, and then your virtual screening would be limited to the country of the venue. I live in Hong Kong, so I'm out of luck. Maybe I could use a VPN, but I don't have any VPN subscription and I don't know how well any of the VPN providers can stream video.
- ctchocula 6y ago
  There are free VPNs here: https://www.vpngate.net/en/ https://www.vpngate.net/en/ Video quality is not bad. Good enough to watch Netflix over VPN.
  - sanbor 6y ago
    Mulvad is one of the best, if you fill a captcha they give you an account number valid for 3 hours without any restrictions, their vpn client is open source and support wireguard
blmurch 6y ago
Thanks for the link! I'm working on the documentary and as we don't have a distributor we're doing what we can. We know that people all over the world would like to see it. We have to develop subtitles and reach out to theaters in each country to partner with them. It's a lot of work. If anyone has suggestions of art houses in the country they are located, please send them to us! We are partnering with independent cinemas because they are really hurting because of the pandemic, so any venue that partners with us gets 50/50 split of profits.
- ajtulloch 6y ago

lefrenchy 6y ago

For a longer read on the history here, "All the Shah's Men" is a great read.

The_suffocated 6y ago

> For years, I thought the CIA was the prime mover of the coup, but I was wrong. I think the CIA was indeed the prime mover of the coup, at least according to the CIA's official history. Derbyshire, the person who was in charge of SIS's Iran branch, came up with the idea of a coup, but the Brits had not the capacity to pull it off and so they asked the CIA for help. The whole operation was very well documented by the declassified report entitled "CIA Clandestine Service History, Overthrow of Premier Mossadeq of Iran, November 1952-August 1953", which is downloadable from https://nsarchive2.gwu.edu/NSAEBB/NSAEBB28/ https://nsarchive2.gwu.edu/NSAEBB/NSAEBB28/

saghm 6y ago
I think you might have a different understanding of the phrase "prime mover" than the author. Aristotle used the term[1] to refer to the source of all motion, the idea being that motion had to begin with some entity moving without having been moved from something else, and then all other motion flowed from it. According to the history you give, Derbyshire would fit the definition of the prime mover here; he had the idea without it having come from another source, and so the CIA's action only came about as a result of that initial idea. [1]: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Unmoved_mover https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Unmoved_mover
- The_suffocated 6y ago
  You are right. I did learn this term in high school decades ago but have forgotten it. Thanks for the explanation.

deleted 6y ago

[deleted]

neutrinoq 6y ago

There's a web comic version of this story being developed: http://alpha.operationajax.com/ http://alpha.operationajax.com/

nagarjun 6y ago
This deserves more attention that it is getting in this thread
dimator 6y ago
There's a good graphic novel as well: https://www.barnesandnoble.com/w/operation-ajax-mike-de-seve/1120723927?ean=9781781689233 https://www.barnesandnoble.com/w/operation-ajax-mike-de-seve... which is based on the book: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/All_the_Shah%27s_Men https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/All_the_Shah%27s_Men
pirocks 6y ago
Apparently my browser(firefox) is unsupported. Seems to work fine when I change user agent to chrome.
- phatfish 6y ago
  I could use Firefox by just clicking the arrow or "continue" i think. But there was a warning. The audio skips and doesn't loop properly for me on Firefox though. Didn't try any other browser. Seems well done, extra marks when Firefox is supported ;)
the_af 6y ago
Marjane Satrapi's awesome autobiographical comic "Persepolis" [1] also addresses this as the setup to the chain of events that would lead to Iran's current theocracy. I recommend this comic as well as the movie based on it. [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Persepolis_(comics) https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Persepolis_(comics)
- ZeroGravitas 6y ago
  Worth noting that Satrapi's family were part of the US supported-side and so the story might be slightly slanted to one side, covering more the time period where a conservative religious group cane in to power as a backlash.

AndrewBissell 6y ago

> How that happens is the heart of the film, which paints a fascinatingly detailed picture of how, in practical terms, you go about toppling a popular foreign leader. It all starts with spreading around money and maybe arranging a couple of assassinations. "The Jakarta Method" by Vincent Bevins delves into how the CIA adapted and shifted course to address some of the weaknesses of its in-plain-sight coup approach in Iran and Guatemala in the 1950s. The ideal is always to preserve as much as possible the impression that the change in regimes is driven by local, endogenous political forces. The recent coup in Bolivia is a good demonstration of how this can be pulled off while almost entirely avoiding accusations of U.S. involvement.

chishaku 6y ago
Other recent attempts in "America's backyard" - Venezuela 2019 - Ecuador 2010 - Honduras 2009
- jessaustin 6y ago
  Personally I would also argue for Brazil, 2016. Operação Lava Jato was publicized as an anti-corruption effort, but more recent information indicates it was more of an anti-socialist coup. Sérgio Moro was in IVLP, and the highlight of his first trip to USA after becoming Justice Minister was a courtesy call at CIA headquarters. [0] This was an unmistakable public statement of Moro's allegiance and actions. [0] https://www.brasilwire.com/in-plain-sight-bolsonaro-moro-and-the-cia/ https://www.brasilwire.com/in-plain-sight-bolsonaro-moro-and...
- nisse72 6y ago
  - Chile 1973

pmoriarty 6y ago

To anyone interested in this, I'd highly recommend Stephen Kinzer's Overthrow.[1] It covers not just this incident, but many others throughout history when the US has overthrown foreign governments. [1] - https://www.amazon.com/Overthrow-Americas-Century-Regime-Change/dp/0805082409 https://www.amazon.com/Overthrow-Americas-Century-Regime-Cha...

devenblake 6y ago

The most fascinating part of Americanism to me is that America regularly compromises and helps compromise any country that doesn't share the same interests, and America's citizens (mostly) think it's fine. The society lives in fear of its government, its representatives live in fear of its military, and the military is controlled by higher-ups who probably shouldn't have been given power. Often people accuse the leaders of these compromised nations of being dictators as if America doesn't have a track record of instilling even more evil leaders (for example, Pinochet[1]). Why can't America just leave other countries alone and tend to its own sorry affairs? America tries to make other countries "more free" and then treats Blacks, Asians, Native Americans, Mexicans, other people of color, women, transgenders and other gender-nonconformists, homosexuals and anyone else that isn't heterosexual, Communists, Socialists, and anyone who isn't their form of "normal" as second-rate citizens in their own country. America (rightfully) accuses other countries of tampering in their election and then tampers in others' elections.[0] Their actions often contradict the values they claim to purvey. I hear often that if another country was doing as poorly as America is right now, America would have "liberated" it already. [0]: I found a source here: https://www.globalresearch.ca/us-interfered-in-elections-of-at-least-85-countries-worldwide-since-1945/5601481 https://www.globalresearch.ca/us-interfered-in-elections-of-... for my claims, however it's questionable due to accusations of spreading propaganda. Here's a relevant article from a more trustworthy source: https://www.theatlantic.com/ideas/archive/2018/07/the-us-has-a-long-history-of-election-meddling/565538/ https://www.theatlantic.com/ideas/archive/2018/07/the-us-has... [1]: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Augusto_Pinochet#U.S._backing_of_the_coup https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Augusto_Pinochet#U.S._backing_...

anigbrowl 6y ago
Power is a hell of a drug.
- 082349872349872 6y ago
  Due to the structure of the power, also a drug that's hard to taper: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=24071721 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=24071721 (where "the Gulf" refers to the Gulf of Mexico, not the Persian) JFK, seeking an exit from that Catch-22, tried to promote international institutions[1] in order to approach a world "where the strong are just and the weak secure and the peace preserved"[2] ... but he got cancelled. [1] compare late Ezra Pound for 1940's rants almost suitable for the 2020's: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=24208047 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=24208047 [2] https://nationalcenter.org/KennedyInaugural.html https://nationalcenter.org/KennedyInaugural.html

coldtea 6y ago

Now imagine for a second another country overthrowing the US elected government and installing their own dictator. How exactly would Americans feel for that country later? (even just from that incident alone, let's ignore half a century of later meddling). When Americans consider other countries' reactions towards them, they seldom consider the impact of their own actions, as if the toppling some sovereign country's government (the worse thing you can do) is no big deal, and others should just sit and take it...

throwawaytrump2 6y ago
We don't have to imagine very hard. Did you read the Senate report (bipartisan) that shows the level of effort Russia put into helping install a President who's policies show an inclination of wanting to be a dictator? That's supported by a party that takes as many steps as possible to deny citizens the right to vote? "The Russian gove[rn]ment directed extensive activity, beginning in at least 2014 and carrying into at least 2017, against U.S. election infrastructure' at the state and local level." "The Committee found that no single group of Americans was targeted by IRA information operatives more than African-Americans. By far, race and related issues were the preferred target of the information warfare campaign designed to divide the country in 2016." "One former employee's description of his work at the IRA is notable: I arrived there, and I immediately felt like a character in the book '1984' by George Orwell-a place where you have to write that white is black and black is white. Your first feeling, when you ended up there, was that you were in some kind of factory that turned lying, telling untruths, into an industrial assembly line. The volumes were colossal-there were huge numbers of people, 300 to 400, and they were all writing absolute untruths. It was like being in Orwell's world." vol. 1: https://www.intelligence.senate.gov/sites/default/files/documents/Report_Volume1.pdf https://www.intelligence.senate.gov/sites/default/files/docu... vol. 2: https://www.intelligence.senate.gov/sites/default/files/documents/Report_Volume2.pdf https://www.intelligence.senate.gov/sites/default/files/docu...
- deleted 6y ago
  [deleted]
- YarickR2 6y ago

DonaldFisk 6y ago

There was a documentary about the coup shown on Channel 4 in the UK in 1985: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xhCgJElpQEQ https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xhCgJElpQEQ Just before it was shown, the role of Norman Darbyshire, the MI6 officer involved in the coup, was leaked to the Observer: https://www.theguardian.com/world/2020/aug/02/mi6-the-coup-in-iran-that-changed-the-middle-east-and-the-cover-up https://www.theguardian.com/world/2020/aug/02/mi6-the-coup-i... The Observer received a D-notice which prevented its publication. The makers of Coup 53 made use of the unpublished Observer material. Briefly, the UK Government wanted Mosaddegh overthrown because he wanted to nationalize a British oil company (Anglo-Iranian). It tried to get the CIA involved but Truman opposed American involvement. This changed when Eisenhower was elected president.

blmurch 6y ago
Yup a lot of Age of Empire is used in the documentary. Finding that Observer material in Microfilm set them down the merry path. My father was excitedly telling me about it when they discovered it. He really couldn't believe it.

x87678r 6y ago

Fascinating how demographics change. Back then the UK population was bigger than Iran/Iraq/Syria/Israel/Palestine/SaudiArabia combined and much wealthier and powerful. Now those countries combine to hundreds of millions of people.

YinLuck- 6y ago
When you give women rights, the inevitable result is civilizational extinction.

WrongThinkerNo5 6y ago

I would just like to note that this coup against Iran was also considered a "conspiracy theory", a term that was popularized in this very time period, arguably to cover up popular realization of what was going on in this very case. People have to realize this was right after WWII and the US war propaganda machine was in full swing and the men of war were still buzzing with war and looking for their next fight.

haltingproblem 6y ago

The CIA/MI5 coup is fascinating not only because it overthrow a democratically elected government of a Middle Eastern country in 1953 (!) but also because of its consequences. There is not a single democratic government in the ME sans Israel. No, tiny Tunisia does not count, it is in the Maghreb (N. Africa). What would the middle east look like if the Mosaddegh government had continued? No revolution, No Ayatollah, no Iran-Iraq war, no Hezbollah? Instead we got the Shah who forced his people to modernize, secret police pulling veils off women was common and generally unleashed a reign that was anathema to most of the conservative population outside Tehran. Most of the anger you see is towards the US is from that reign rather than the coup. The Iranians who are Persians, and not Arabs, have a civilizational history going back 1000s of years. Expat Persians have achieved great success in the US and UK. Going further back, the Zoroastrians, who fled the Islamic conquest and arrived in India more than a millennia ago are the richest, most educated and economically successful minority group by an order of magnitude, or two. The Shah's reign lasted 25 years. A generation that grew up under the Shah's tyranny led the revolution in 1979. The Islamic revolution is now 40 years old. There have been almost two generations that grew up under the Islamic govt's misrule and grandiose projects of power projection. Hopefully they can take charge and lead Iran back to civilizational greatness. Iran, the middle east and the world needs it. And I would really like to visit the gardens of Shiraz or the markets of Isfahan which have been around for 1000s of years ;) Edit: As pointed out in the comments, instead of Arab world, I should have used Arab speaking. There are Arab speakers who are Arab and there are Arab speakers who are not Arab.

quercusgrisea 6y ago
>There is not a single democratic govt in the ME sans Israel The millions of Palestinians unable to vote for the government that controls their movement, trade, and lives in general would probably disagree with your characterization of Israel as a democracy.
- haltingproblem 6y ago
  Wrong. Try again. There are 450~ million Arabs and you chose to focus on the 4.5 million Palestinians who voted in elections in 2006. These elections bought Hamas to power in in Gaza and PLO in the West Bank. Gaza is autonomous in terms of governance and has chosen to not hold elections since the last one in 2006. Neither has the PLO. They both plead unable to hold elections because they want to hang on to power though the international community wants them to. Edit: Getting down voted for stating facts.

euix 6y ago

Americans are winners as were the Brits before them. History will always favor the winner. The only practical lesson out of this sad story and countless others through history is: learn to be strong and so you can be a winner.

croes 6y ago
Learn from history. Every empire falls.
- hindsightbias 6y ago
  The Roman, Pandyan and Byzantine Empires had pretty good runs.
  - croes 6y ago
    Still fallen
- euix 6y ago
  True, but we live relative to the lifespan of an empire. A person born in 1842 in China would have lived only known a falling empire his whole life. A person born in 1945 in America will only know an ascendant one. The "long run" of our lives are much shorter, we don't wait around to get satisfaction that empires fall or "justice" gets done, however you define that. If we live in the era of one victor over another then that's reality for us.
082349872349872 6y ago
Learn to mind your own business, and you can have brotherly love, can have five hundred years of democracy and peace, and then get unjustly blamed for the cuckoo clock.

shirakawasuna 6y ago

I don't necessarily trust NPR to do that great of a job telling this story. I do recommend listening to the Iran section (all the sections, really) of Safe for Democracy: http://safefordemocracy.com/podcast/6/ http://safefordemocracy.com/podcast/6/ . (Note: that's part 1 of 9). RSS feed here: http://safefordemocracy.com/feed/podcast http://safefordemocracy.com/feed/podcast

AndrewBissell 6y ago
Appreciate the additional sources. I share your skepticism about NPR's take on this sort of thing but have found that sometimes dodgy-but-mainstream sources can still be quite useful for kicking off productive discussions where some of the more salient facts can be explored.
- shirakawasuna 6y ago
  Useful to start discussions, yes! Sometimes risky because they can spread common myths, and it can be very difficult to supplant them. It's so much harder to unlearn something than to learn the right thing the first time, of course. Safe for Democracy does thorough and sourced deep-dives into the histories of a few American "interventions", disrupting or controlling or supposedly attempting to create democracy in other countries. It goes through the background of the countries, often 100+ years prior to the events in question, and sets the stage thoroughly so that you can get a sense of the cultural forces and context. It also emphasizes the humanity of those involved and what violences were done beyond rattling off death counts so that you can understand the long-term cultural impacts and often genocides involved that are easier to miss if you only hear numbers.

blmurch 6y ago

Thanks for posting this. I'm working on the documentary. We're having a live Q&A in 5 hours with the director Taghi Amirani, the editor and co-writer my father Walter Murch, and actor Ralph Fiennes who portrays Darbyshire. The Q&A is moderated by Jon Snow of Channel 4 news. This is exclusive access if you buy your ticket to our online premiere now! It's on our website. We're having our general release on Friday. It's available in the USA, UK, Ireland and Canada. We're going country by country because we don't have a distributor.

lucas_membrane 6y ago

The story that the CIA did this is mostly myth created by CIA people to enhance the reputation of the CIA in the eyes of US White House and Congress. CIA had Kermit Roosevelt Jr. (Teddy's grandson) in Iran working on it, but he accomplished little, and the CIA sent him orders to stop a couple of days before the coup. He pretended not to get the message and kept trying, but probably without much effect. Mohammad Mosaddegh lost power when the ayatollahs raised their opposition to his rule. Roosevelt then returned to the US and collected all the credit. This PR coup led to Eisenhower giving Dulles of the CIA a couple of fighter planes to use in Guatemala to remove Jacobo Arbenz from power, which was the CIA's pinnacle of success, strengthening the CIA's reputation even more and leading to the agency's mediocre record thereafter.