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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
by 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 agoYes 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 agoI 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".
- bananabreakfast 6y agoNot strange at all when you consider the Iranians had absolutely no means of extracting it themselves. They gave willing access to their natural resources in exchange for a relatively massive revenue windfall then seized the sizable British capital investments with no compensation.
- as300 6y agoRight, so if BP drills for oil in South Texas that means that the Texas oil reserves should be under their control? This viewpoint reeks of racism and Anglo-Saxon exceptionalism.
- heavenlyblue 6y agoThose investments were made in a country which was unstable so I don’t see how these companies are owed anything back.
- Ar-Curunir 6y agoYes, let’s destroy a country’s sovereignty because a few oil rigs were lost. The imperialism in your comment is disgusting.
- oh_sigh 6y agoThe oil rigs, refineries, and pipelines were the British resource, not the oil.
- sudosysgen 6y agoThen surely all the British were asking for was a fair market price for the nationalized equipment, right?
- totalZero 6y agoBritish companies would not have purchased/built that equipment without the resource access that had been established via contractual agreements with the Iranian government.
- refurb 6y agoDownvoted to oblivion, but factually correct!