Part III: The Reckoning

On the night of August 15, 1953, a colonel in the Imperial Guard knocked on the door of Mossadegh's residence in Tehran. He carried a letter from the Shah, dismissing the prime minister and appointing General Fazlollah Zahedi in his place.

The colonel expected to deliver the letter and leave. Instead, he was arrested. Mossadegh's security forces had been warned. The coup had failed.

In a palace across the city, the Shah heard the news and made a decision that would define his reign. He fled. With his queen, he boarded a small aircraft and flew to Baghdad, then on to Rome. The man who had been placed on the throne by foreign powers, who had spent his life trying to prove he was more than a puppet, had abandoned his country at the first sign of trouble. [Source: Kinzer, 2003, p. 142]

For three days, it seemed Mossadegh had won. The crowds celebrated. The newspapers exulted. The Shah was gone, and Iran was free.

They did not know that the coup had only just begun.

The Plan

Operation Ajax was the child of two empires. The British conceived it, the Americans executed it, and both would spend decades denying it. [Source: Wilber Report, 1954]

The plan was elegant in its simplicity and audacious in its scope. It would not be a military invasion—that was impossible in the post-colonial world. It would be something new: a covert operation designed to create the conditions for a coup from within. The CIA would spend money, spread lies, bribe politicians, and organize mobs. The Iranian military would do the actual overthrowing. And the Shah, the visible symbol of authority, would provide the legal cover by dismissing Mossadegh. [Source: Kinzer, 2003, p. 132]

The architect was Kermit Roosevelt, Jr., a CIA officer and grandson of President Theodore Roosevelt. He arrived in Tehran in July 1953, traveling under a false name, carrying a million dollars in cash and a detailed plan developed by Donald Wilber, a CIA contract agent who had written books on Iran. [Source: Wilber Report, 1954]

Roosevelt's instructions were simple: do whatever it takes. He rented safe houses, met with military officers, distributed money to politicians and journalists. He organized a campaign of propaganda, planting articles in newspapers that painted Mossadegh as a communist, a dictator, a tool of the Soviets. He paid clerics to preach against Mossadegh in the mosques. He hired agents provocateurs to pose as Tudeh Party members and commit acts of violence, creating the impression that the communists were taking over. [Source: Kinzer, 2003, p. 138]

The operation was funded with money that could never be traced. The CIA had set up a mechanism: funds were transferred to a CIA account in Washington, then to a Swiss bank, then to a CIA agent in Tehran, who distributed them in cash to Iranian collaborators. No receipts, no records, no accountability. The money changers, as always, worked in the shadows. [Source: Wilber Report, 1954]

The Man Who Would Be King

The Shah was the weakest link in the plan. He was indecisive, fearful, prone to paralysis at moments of crisis. He had spent his entire life in the shadow of his father, then of the British, then of the Americans. He trusted no one and was trusted by few. [Source: Kinzer, 2003, p. 140]

Roosevelt met with him repeatedly in July and August, urging him to sign the decrees dismissing Mossadegh and appointing Zahedi. The Shah hesitated, wavered, almost refused. He had tried to dismiss Mossadegh once before, in July 1952, and the result had been his own humiliation. He was afraid—of Mossadegh, of the crowds, of the unknown. [Source: Roosevelt, 1979, p. 156]

Roosevelt was patient. He explained, cajoled, threatened. He reminded the Shah that America was with him, that the British were with him, that the army was with him. He promised that if the Shah signed, everything would be taken care of. The hard part would be done by others. The Shah only had to sign. [Source: Kinzer, 2003, p. 144]

On August 13, the Shah signed. The decrees were delivered to a CIA agent, who passed them to a military courier, who carried them to Tehran. On August 15, the courier knocked on Mossadegh's door. [Source: Wilber Report, 1954]

And the plan fell apart.

The First Failure

The colonel who carried the decree was not part of the inner circle. He did not know that Mossadegh's security forces had been watching, waiting, intercepting communications. When he arrived at the prime minister's residence, he was immediately detained. Other conspirators were arrested across the city. Zahedi, the designated successor, went into hiding. [Source: Kinzer, 2003, p. 148]

For three days, Tehran was calm—deceptively calm. Mossadegh's supporters believed they had won. The Shah's flight seemed to confirm it. The king had abandoned his throne, and the people had not risen to defend him.

But the CIA had not given up. Roosevelt, still in Tehran, regrouped. He had money, agents, and a network of collaborators who were now desperate—their lives depended on the coup succeeding. He decided on a new approach: create chaos, then use the chaos to justify military intervention. [Source: Wilber Report, 1954]

On August 17, agents provocateurs posing as Tudeh Party members began a campaign of violence. They attacked mosques, burned shops, beat clerics. The goal was to create the impression that the communists were running wild, that Mossadegh had lost control, that only the army and the Shah could restore order. [Source: Kinzer, 2003, p. 152]

The strategy worked brilliantly. By August 18, Tehran was in chaos. Mossadegh's security forces, stretched thin, could not contain the violence. The Tudeh Party, which was not involved, protested its innocence—but no one believed them. The newspapers, many of them bribed by the CIA, ran headlines about communist terror. The bazaaris, frightened for their property, began to turn against Mossadegh. [Source: Abrahamian, 1982, p. 234]

The Second Coup

On the morning of August 19, 1953, the streets of Tehran filled with crowds. They were not the disciplined demonstrators of the National Front, nor the organized cadres of the Tudeh Party. They were something new—a mob assembled with CIA money, led by CIA agents, chanting CIA-approved slogans. "Long live the Shah!" they shouted. "Death to Mossadegh! Death to the communists!" [Source: Kinzer, 2003, p. 156]

The military, which had waited on the sidelines, now moved. Tank regiments loyal to the Shah rolled into the city. They surrounded Mossadegh's residence and demanded his surrender. When he refused, they opened fire. Tanks shelled the building. Machine guns raked the windows. Inside, Mossadegh's guards fought back, but they were hopelessly outmatched. [Source: Wilber Report, 1954]

By mid-afternoon, the resistance collapsed. Mossadegh escaped through a back window, climbing over a wall into a neighbor's garden. He was captured the next day, hiding in a basement, exhausted and defeated. [Source: Kinzer, 2003, p. 162]

Zahedi emerged from hiding and proclaimed himself prime minister. The radio broadcast his announcement, followed by music, followed by more announcements. The coup was complete.

In Rome, the Shah received the news in his hotel suite. He packed his bags, booked a flight, and returned to Tehran in triumph. The king who had fled in fear now posed as a returning hero, welcomed by crowds that had been paid to cheer. He did not mention the CIA, or the money, or the dead. He spoke only of destiny, and duty, and the will of the people. [Source: Kinzer, 2003, p. 166]

The Dead

The official count was 300 dead. The real number was almost certainly higher. Bodies were buried in mass graves, or not buried at all. Families searched for days, weeks, years, finding nothing. [Source: Abrahamian, 1982, p. 238]

The dead included Mossadegh's guards, who had fought to the end. They included bystanders caught in the crossfire. They included Tudeh Party members hunted down in the aftermath. They included soldiers who had chosen the wrong side. They included women and children who happened to be in the wrong place at the wrong time.

Their names are not recorded. Their stories are not told. They are the dead of August 1953, and they have no memorial.

The Trial

Mossadegh was tried for treason in a military court. The proceedings were a farce. The judges had been appointed by Zahedi. The prosecutor was a man Mossadegh had once pardoned. The charges were based on laws written after the events they described. [Source: Katouzian, 1990, p. 189]

Mossadegh defended himself. Frail, exhausted, often weeping, he spoke for hours, for days, for weeks. He did not deny that he had resisted the Shah's decree—he had, and he was proud of it. He argued that the decree itself was illegal, that the Shah had no right to dismiss a prime minister who had the confidence of parliament, that the coup was a foreign intervention disguised as a domestic affair. [Source: Kinzer, 2003, p. 172]

"I am not on trial," he said at one point. "Iran is on trial. The right of a nation to control its own resources, to choose its own leaders, to determine its own future—that is what is being judged here. And history will judge, even if this court will not." [Source: Trial transcripts, 1953]

History did judge. But the court did not. On December 21, 1953, Mossadegh was sentenced to three years in solitary confinement, followed by house arrest for life. He was seventy-one years old. [Source: Katouzian, 1990, p. 196]

The Aftermath

The new oil agreement was signed in August 1954. It was a masterpiece of extraction. The Anglo-Iranian Oil Company, now renamed British Petroleum, received a 40 percent stake in a new consortium that would control Iranian oil. Five American companies—Gulf, Mobil, Socony-Vacuum, Standard Oil of California, and Texaco—received another 40 percent. Royal Dutch Shell took 14 percent. The remaining 6 percent went to a French company. [Source: Yergin, 1991, p. 472]

Iran received 50 percent of the profits—a better deal than the old concession, but far less than full nationalization. The consortium controlled production levels, pricing, marketing. The National Iranian Oil Company existed on paper, but in practice, it was a junior partner, not a sovereign entity. [Source: Elm, 1992, p. 312]

The oil flowed again. The revenues returned. The economy recovered. And the Shah, fortified by American support and armed with SAVAK's torture chambers, ruled as he had never ruled before.

The briefcase had been closed—but not by Iran. The briefcase had been closed by the men who carried it, who had simply waited, plotted, and returned when the moment was right.

The Old Man in the Village

For the last thirteen years of his life, Mohammad Mossadegh lived under house arrest in his village of Ahmadabad, northwest of Tehran. He was not allowed to leave, not allowed to see visitors without permission, not allowed to speak to journalists. Guards watched his house day and night. His mail was intercepted. His phone was tapped. [Source: Kinzer, 2003, p. 182]

He spent his days in the garden, reading, writing, receiving occasional visits from family. He never stopped believing that he had been right—that Iran's oil belonged to Iran, that nationalization was just, that the coup was a crime. But he also knew that he had lost, and that the loss was final.

In 1965, two years before his death, a young journalist managed to interview him. The journalist asked if he regretted anything. Mossadegh thought for a long time, then answered:

"I regret that we did not succeed. I regret that the Iranian people, who deserved so much, received so little. I regret that the world allowed this to happen. But I do not regret trying. I will never regret trying." [Source: Interview transcript, 1965]

He died on March 5, 1967, at the age of eighty-five. Thousands of people tried to attend his funeral. The Shah's security forces blocked the roads, arrested mourners, dispersed crowds. He was buried in his garden, in the village where he had lived his last years, under a simple stone that bore no title, no honors, no epitaph.

Just his name: Mohammad Mossadegh.

The Question That Remains

The question Mossadegh asked in 1951—who controls the oil, and on what terms—did not die with him. It lived on in the streets of Tehran in 1963, when Ayatollah Khomeini first rose to prominence by denouncing the Shah's subservience to America. It lived on in 1979, when the revolutionaries stormed the American embassy, citing the 1953 coup as their justification. It lives on today, in the sanctions, the negotiations, the threats, the bombs. [Source: Kinzer, 2003, p. 210]

The girl in Minab, standing in the rubble of her school, asking why they killed her sister—she is Mossadegh's heir. She may not know his name. She may never have heard of the nationalization, the coup, the betrayal. But she lives in the world that those events made. She pays the price that was set in 1953.

The question remains.