This diary is the second part in exploring the history of our involvement the region, which serves as backdrop of our historical and current posture within the middle and near east, and one of the larger metaphorical elephants in the room...Iran.
The first part's historical coverage began with the era when the British involvement in Iran started, which was roughly 1872. It details the corrupt Shahs of the Qajar dynasty who sold off concessions to foreign interests, mainly the British and Tsarist Russia, in order to feed their lavish personal lifestyles.
continued below the fold
Part I chronicled the extraordinary deals the British were able to bribe the Shahs into signing off on, ceding control of nearly every aspect of commercial life of Persia into the hands of foreign interests, particularly the exclusive rights to any and all oil in what was to become Iran. It traces the astoundingly unethical deals that these unelected despots made. It moved on to detailing how the Soviet Union and the British saw the rise of military strongman, Reza Shah, as being a threat to their mutual interests when Reza Shah began flirting with European fascist movements and culminated in the Allies invading Iran in 1941 as a preemptive move to secure Caspian and Persian oil fields against the pressing events of Germany's invasion of the Soviet Union. It continues now in Part II with...
"Our" Oil Under "Their" Sand
For the British, World War II underscored the strategic importance of oil as well as the revenues it generated for them. The importance of Anglo-Persian Oil Company, which had changed its name in 1935 to the Anglo-Iranian Oil Company (AIOC) when Reza Shah declared the name of Persia to a stylized version of the word "Aryan", Iran, would grow to blind first the British then later to the United States, to all other considerations. As you will recall, AIOC had grown out of the D'Arcy Concession which had been signed over to the British in 1901 during the reign of Mozzafar-al-Din by the degenerate and corrupt ruler in order to bankroll his extravagant lifestyle.
Germany’s invasion of the Soviet Union in June 1941 and the launching of Operation Edelweiss (which was part of the larger Operation Barbarossa) and its goal of capturing the oil fields of Baku in the Caspian region, made it one of several factors which prompted the British and the Soviets to target the regime of Reza Shah. Despite its declared neutrality in the war, Reza Shah's regime was viewed by the British as being far to sympathetic towards Germany. The other being that the allies had to find the safest route to move lend-leese supplies to the embattled Soviets to the north. Because of geography and virtual control of the Mediterranean by the Axis, coupled with heavy ice flows and the development of the costal ice cap which was rapidly rendering the Murmansk convoy route through the Arctic Ocean to Archangel impassable, made it vital to open up a southern supply-route to the Soviets as Germany advanced eastward. The Trans-Iranian Railway, which would be termed "the Persian Corridor/The Bridge To Victory" was seen as the only viable solution.
To many Iranians, the Anglo-Soviet invasion of August 25, 1941 was simply a consummation of the foreign dismemberment of Iran which had begun centuries before, and which had been codified in the Anglo-Soviet Agreement of 1907, even down to ressuming roughly the same lines of demarcation for the Anglo-Soviet zones of control. It marked not only the beginning of a new era in international oil rivalries, but a thunderclap in modern Iran's already stormy history under foreign subservience. Only five days after the invasion, Moscow began angling to encroach on the British lock on concessions by demanding the development of the Kavir Khurian Oil Company, in which it had a controlling interest, in the northern zone. This signaled the scramble among the occupying powers for oil rights was about to begin in ernest.
The west had finally forced the unreliable Iranian strongman to abdicate. The British needed to consolidate its position and at first considered restoring someone with a claim to the throne from the Qajar dynasty under whose patronage these easily corruptible rulers the British were able to get the concessions which allowed them to loot the nation four-ways-from-Sunday. The idea of placing a Qajar puppet back into power was short-lived however, as the pretender to the throne, whose family had been living in exile in London, didn't even speak Persian. So they decided to allow Reza Shah's son, Mohammad Reza Pahlevi who had been sent abroad to Swiss boarding schools until 1935, and who they deemed adequately pliable, to take the Peacock Throne.
Immediately after his coronation, the British pushed him to appoint the rubber-stamp, pro-British politician by the name of Mohammad Ali Furughi as prime minister. This was his main function for the British, to name a prime minister of their choosing, to which the cowed Majlis (i.e. Parliament) was now expected to to confirm. This appointment of their lackey was done while the British and Soviets revived the same formula of dividing Iran into the sectors as they had done under the Anglo-Russian Agreement of 1907. This meant the Soviet troops controlling the north, with the British holding the southern provinces around the oil-fields, the land route to India, and the largest oil refinery in the world at the time on Abadan island in the Arvand river. Abadan island, is formed by the confluence of the Euphrates and Tigris rivers, dividing the southern portion of the border between Iraq and Iran. Ironically, Abadan is less than than 30 miles down the Arvand from Basra, which is the key oil port the British have been charged to occupy in the 2003 invasion and occupation of Iraq. With the Soviets controlling the north, the british the south and east, the mid-section of Iran and Tehran was left under nominal Iranian rule.
The primary objective of the newly crowned young Shah was to, and as best he could, preserve for himself the prerogatives and privileges with which his father had invested the Peacock Throne. The Shah was acutely aware that the British and Soviets had placed him in a precarious position—that of complete dependency—which threatened to undermine the monarchy's continued existence. The power to assert his will was lost even if the occupiers had left in short order, having dismantled his father's extensive security apparatus--including the complete disbanding the national gendarmerie and the secret police, as well as the disarming of all Iranian army divisions in the Soviet zone of occupation. So even if his presence on the throne had not been contingent upon the approval of the occupying powers, he lacked the means of re-asserting royal control over the diverse and fractious ethnic minorities in the country's various regions.
So it was with mixed feelings Iranians learned of the removal of Reza Shah following the invasion. Many were thrilled to see the autocratic ruler gone, particularly the tribal families who had been forced to live on wretched settlements because the declared that their nomadic tribal culture was incompatible with the modern state. Others who certainly disliked and chaffed at his authoritarian rule and the domestic terrorism he employed to keep the population in line, paradoxically feared that without a strong-hand the country might face chaos. Almost all feared the idea that they would slip forever into the rule of foreigners.
The Shah hoped to solidify Iran's sovereign position as a member of the newly formed United Nations by signing a treaty of alliance with the British and the Russians—the Tripartite Treaty. Although the Tripartite Treaty ostensibly recognized Iran's sovereignty and its territorial integrity, Iranians placed little trust in the pledges of the Russians and the British. Not only because Iran was now under the physical occupation by their armies, but also due to lasting effects of generations of imperial exploitation at their hands. Furthermore, if Britain had felt no compunction in violating the Atlantic Charter (that stated among other things that no territorial gains were to be sought by the United States or the United Kingdom, any territorial adjustments must be in accord with wishes of the peoples concerned and the people, had a right to self-determination) which it signed just 11 days before it invaded in order to secure its self-proclaimed "right" to protect the AIOC's concession against the hypothetical threat of Nazis doing likewise, what guarantee was there that Britain would feel compelled to observe Article Five of the Tripartite Treaty--which stipulated that all Allied forces would be withdrawn from Iran "not more than six months after the cessation of hostilities"...? Particularly when it would have to ensure a steady flow of oil and money to facilitate its reconstruction? What guarantee was there that the Soviets would also abide by Article Five? None.
For the Shah to have any chance whatsoever at regaining the crown's sovereignty, it had to find the counterbalance of a third party which was powerful enough to hold the British economically, and Russians militarily, at bay. Many Iranians, including the Shah saw the the United States as that counter-weight. By the time Americans actively began their participation in World War II, the Soviets and the British had for almost all practical purposes, completely dismantled the Iranian state. Both powers had cultivated the support of sycophants and local allies whose allegiances they had bought—through investment, bribes, or armaments. In order to further insure that the Iranian parliament remained fractured, the occupying powers had supplied many of Iran's myriad growing political factions with varying degrees of support--both overt and covert; material, financial, and political. In the Anglo-Soviet view, the indigenous Iranian political, ideological, and ethnic factions were to be cultivated and manipulated into proxies who would--once hostilities ceased--execute the bidding of their sponsors to keep any real power from the Shah, or each other.
During the autocratic reign of Reza Shah, several dozen left-leaning professors and political organizers had been imprisoned. When they were released from prison following his forced abdication, they organized themselves into the "Group of Fifty-Three" and began coalescing as a loose group of liberals, reformers, and social activists to form Iran's first real political party, called Tudeh (Masses). At its founding convention in 1942 it adopted a progressive program based on the principle that government should protect exploitation by the rich. It advocated widespread reform but did not advocate for either revolution or single-party rule. The British allowed it as did their war-time ally the Soviets who were pleased by the presence of communists within its membership, and actively supported it.
The Allied occupiers made the most out of Iran during the war. Oil production grew rapidly, from 6.6 million tons in 1941, to 16.5 million tons by 1945. But it was not just securing the oil fields and extracting vast amounts of oil to supply western forces which was of strategic value, it also served as a supply base for launching military operations across the Middle East and into North Africa in support of Montgomery's defense then counterattack against Rommel. As planned, it proved crucial as the corridor through which lend-leese supplies where shuttled to the Soviet Union. Throughout 1942, the US steadily increased its presence in Iran as it moved as rapidly as possible to escalate its participation in the war. With little expertise in oriental affairs, much less the any lengthy history with Iran the US was entreated by both the Shah and the British, for somewhat different reasons, to embrace the Shah and use the monarchy as the focal point of its Iranian policies.
As 1943 dawned, the US began to asses how far it should become directly engaged in Iran. The most revealing (and extensive) review of America's options, obligations, and priorities towards Iran was a January 1943 report entitled "American Policy in Iran," compiled by the State Department's special advisor on Middle Eastern affairs, John Jernegan. While it acknowledges that Iran's primary importance stemmed from "its value as a supply route to Russia, its strategic location, and its vast production of petroleum products" it also noted regarding the Anglo-Soviet situation vis-á-vis subversion of Iran:
"I should like to suggest that Iran constitutes a test case for the good faith of the United Nations and their ability to work out among themselves an adjustment of ambitions, rights and interests which will be fair not only to the Great Powers of our coalition but also to the small nations associated with us or brought into our sphere by circumstances. Certainly, nowhere else in the Middle East is there to be found so clearcut a conflict of interests between two of the United Nations, so ancient a tradition of rivalry, and so great a temptation for the Great Powers concerned to give precedence to their own selfish interests over the high principles enunciated in the Atlantic Charter." — January 23, 1943
The flood of reports which the State Department was receiving from newly-arrived American advisors supplemented the ample evidence of the occupying powers' disregard for the individual rights of Iranians, as well as their contemptuous scorn for the sovereignty which the Iranian government had ostensibly retained under the Tripartite Treaty. Not only did the Anglo-Soviet occupiers treat the Iranians with scorn, but distrusted each other as well. In an attempt to defuse an increasingly tense situation, the US established the Persian Gulf Command (PGC) and by April 1943, the PGC had assumed full control over the delivery of British and American lend-lease supplies through Iran and Iraq to the Soviets, from British control. The PGC consisted of 30,000 Americans in uniform--officers, advisors, soldiers, and engineers--whose mission was to restore a semblance of stability and sovereignty to Iran. In order to further safeguard Iranian sovereignty and territorial integrity, and prepare it for the assumption of full control over the country upon the Allies withdrawal, the Shah, who saw the US as a counterweight to the Anglo-Soviet occupation, eagerly signed an agreement whereby the US would train and equip Iran's national police force, the gendarmerie.
As the turn of events in the war slowly improved conditions for the allies, in contrast the living standards for ordinary Iranians fell dramatically. Large amounts of food were being diverted to the military. Trucks and the railroads were used almost exclusively for military purposes. Price gouging and speculation rose dramatically and unusually poor harvests only made matters worse. It was a situation which left many Iranians to go hungry. Prime Minister Furughi who had been appointed by the Shah under the direction of the British, was dismissed in response to the public anger over the shortages. However his successors did little better to deal with the situation or quell public dissatisfaction. A crucial factor which prevented it from boiling over into open revolt was the widely held view that allied occupation and the situation was only temporary due to the war.
Because of its key strategic location as a corridor to the Soviets, Iran was chosen as the site where a high-level conference between the three main allied heads-of-state, Churchill, Roosevelt and Stalin would be held in Tehran from November 28 to December 1, 1943. This conference was to decide not just how and where the invasion of German occupied Europe would proceed, in order to open up a second front, but also formulate the designs on the post-war landscape in the region by the allies. Part of the jointly signed statement which resulted was as follows:
With respect to the post-war period, the Governments of the United States, the USSR, and the United Kingdom are in accord with the Government of Iran that any economic problems confronting Iran at close of hostilities should receive full consideration, along with those of other members of the United Nations, by conferences or international agencies held or created to deal with international economic matters.
The Governments of the United States, the USSR, and the United Kingdom are at one with the Government of Iran in their desire for the maintenance of the independence, sovereignty and territorial integrity of Iran. They count upon the participation of Iran, together with all the peace-loving nations, in the establishment of international peace, security and prosperity after the war, in accordance with the principles of the Atlantic Charter, to which all four Governments have subscribed.
Tangible cracks in the Alliance in Iran, which were cemented at the Teheran Conference, began to appear by the autumn of 1944. Iranians in an attempt to involve a new competitor into the long-standing Anglo-Soviet rivalry, moved to grant Sinclair Consolidated Oil Company, an American company a concession to cover Iran’s northern provinces, those bordering the Soviet Union.
To both the Shah and his cabinet, as well as Iranian patriots within the parliament, the Americans seemed to be sincerely committed in extending to Iran the protections of FDR's Four Freedoms which the Atlantic Charter, and then Tehran Declaration, and not merely in self-aggrandizement. Of course, it also helped that the American domestic oil-reserve discovery tapped out and prompted the Americans to already seek entry into Middle Eastern oil through the Aramco company in Saudi Arabia.
Such an attempt to use an American oil concession to break the British grip on Iranian oil was unsuccessful as it met with fierce Anglo-Soviet opposition. The British were worried this would undercut AIOC's concession since it fell outside the territory it specifically covered by it, and the Soviets were even more outraged as not only did they consider the north their unique sphere of influence, but also every past attempt by the Russians to negotiate an oil concession under the previous Shah had been rejected.
The Russian Foreign Minister met with Prime Minister Saed, and demanded an oil concession in Iran’s northern provinces. Despite Saed’s promise to raise the issue within Iran’s cabinet, the Soviets wanted an immediate clear answer. Saed defused the situation temporally by replying that Iran would be deferring all negotiations for new concessions until the end of the war and the cessation of hostilities. The Soviet's aggressive stance over oil concessions cast an ominous cloud over the future viability of the Alliance. The imbroglio also served to reinforce the State Department's commitment to consolidating power in a strong central Government in Iran. State Department cables back to Washington on October 25, 1944 making this point thusly:
"A primary consideration in our policy toward Iran is a desire to strengthen that country so that it can maintain internal security and avoid the dissensions and weaknesses which breed interference and aggression. A corner-stone of this policy should be the building up of Iran's security forces,"
In December, Iranian nationalists in parliament, lead by Mossedegh passed a law forbidding the government to discuss oil concessions before the end of the war. By 1945 when the war in Europe did end, the British colonial territories and those under nominal or economic control were vast though precarious, stretching from the eastern reaches of India though Iran to Iraq, where the Hashemite rulers were placed on the throne by the British following World War I, onward through the British mandate in Palestine and into North Africa with its long standing interests in Egypt. To the British it was beyond all doubts "their oil" no matter whose sand it was under. Nor did the abject corruption of person who had signed away the Iranian peoples natural resources in order to keep himself in pulchritude, register with the British Foreign Office much less the Board of AIOC. With the ongoing independence movement in India, and the "quit India" campaign there, inspired by Gandhi, coming into full steam, holding the line on its other colonial assets, particularly one in which Britain depended on for its oil, was deemed as vital. The British had grown into an empire through its colonialism and had no interest in shutting off the torrent of cash which flowed out of these holdings as it was rebuilding London after World War II. Democracy and the will of the Iranian people would most assuredly have to take a back seat to "the west's" obsession with controlling this vital asset.
Going "Long" To Get the Soviets Out
The end of the war swept the British Labour Party into power in Britain, but did little to change Iran's status as a fractured political entity. While the Tudeh party had thrived as a party of modernity and European ideas since its formation in 1942, its pro-Soviet faction had grown steadily stronger and by 1945 they seized control of Tudeh turning it decidedly Marxist and had launched a large organizing campaign among the urban poor and also agitating in favor of the Soviet oil concession. While the US and Soviets eyed each other warily over Europe--and prepared for the distinct possibility of an armed conflict--the British were quietly reasserting their economic dominance over Iran. The AIOC's complex of refineries in southwestern Iran were the largest in the world, and the British sought both to quietly--yet firmly--began increasing oil production in Iran. Such an increase would not only reap the AIOC massive profits, but as the British Government had a controlling interest in the company, it helped Britain rebuild its shattered infrastructure at home and overseas.
In December 1945, a group which had close links with the Tudeh, the Azarbaijan Democratic Party, which was led by Jafar Pishevari, announced the establishment of an autonomous republic in the north. In a similar move, activists in neighboring Kordestan province in the north along the Iraqi border, established the Kurdish Republic of Mahabad. Both autonomous republics enjoyed the support of the Soviets. In February 1946, with his country’s domestic resources being insufficient for the purpose, Stalin announced that he needed Soviet oil production capacity to be doubled and the oil issue came up once again. The Shah's Minister entreated the United States to intervene over the break-away provinces, and the Truman administration insisted that the fledgling UN was the was the legal body to resolve disputes of territorial sovereignty.
At the same time, George Kennan, who was deputy head of the U.S. mission in Moscow on February 22, wrote the famous 5,300 word "long telegram" back to Secretary of State James Byrnes in Washington, which advanced the theory that the Soviet regime was inherently expansionist and that its influence had to be "contained" in areas which were deemed to be of vital strategic importance to the United States. This became the foundation undergirding the what would become the "Truman Doctrine" of "containment" which was the basic strategy behind the United States' cold war posture.
As if to prove Kennan's theory, Moscow announced on March 2, 1946, the deadline for withdrawal of its troops from Iran, that only a partial withdrawal had taken place. The Shah's Prime Minister Ahmad Qavam, who had replaced the previous Prime Minister after the 1944 oil crisis, was dispatched to Moscow to try and persuade Stalin to pull its troops fully out. Three days later, when Qavam returned, he reported that Stalin still demanded an oil concession and refused to back down on autonomy for the break-away provinces. On the demand for an oil consession, Qavam had fallen back on the 1944 law passed by the parliament that which forbade the granting of a concession as long as the country is occupied. Negotiations continued, even including a trip to Moscow by the Shah's twin sister to plead for troop withdrawal.
To make matters worse for the British side, in the south, laborers at Abadan went on strike. Marching through the filthy streets of the worker shanty towns they chanted slogans and carried signs demanding better housing, decent health care and a commitment by the British "employers" to abide by Iranian labor laws. The British not only refused to negotiate an end to the shut-down, they organized ethnic Arab and separatist tribes from nearby regions to form a bogus "union" to try and break the strike. Rioting broke out leaving dozens dead. Churchill ordered two British warships to stage maneuvers within sight of Abadan as a show of force to demonstrate their resolve, which only further enraged public opinion against foreign servitude. The strike only ended however when the British paid lip-service to an agreement to abide by Iranian labor laws, which it promptly ignored.
On April 5, an agreement was reached with the Soviets that troops would be withdrawn within six weeks. In exchange, a concession for a joint Irano-Soviet oil venture was to be submitted to the legislature for approval within seven months. It was sold to Stalin on the basis that since a new parliamentary election was approaching, the Shah's Minister promised they would pack the parliament with Tudeh representatives certain to vote for the agreement.Tehran also agreed to negotiate a peaceful settlement to the Azarbaijan crisis with the Pishevari government. To help convince the Stalin, the Shah took three Tudeh members into his cabinet. The Russians pulled out and the last Soviet troops left Iran on May 5, 1946 four days after Tudeh organized demonstrations on May Day which brought out tens of thousands of supporters.
Tehran ended up not holding to any of the agreements with the Soviet Union, however. A tribal revolt in the south, proclaimed by Tehran as a protest against communist influence, provided an opportunity to dismiss the Tudeh cabinet officers. In late November, under the pretext to supervise the new parliamentary elections, he sent the Iranian army into Azarbaijan. Without Soviet backing, the Pishevari government had collapsed, and Pishevari himself fled to the Soviet Union. Government troops who had been trained by United States General Norman Schwarzkopf (whose son would lead U.S. forces in Operation Desert Storm in Iraq some 45 years later), met very little resistance when they arrived and locals suddenly became anti-separatist and pro-Shah. A mob captured Mohammad Beria, who ran a sort of goon squad known as the Society of Friends of Soviet Azerbaijan, then proceeded to drag him behind a jeep back and forth over the city, finally leaving his unrecognizable body in the middle of the public square.
A similar fate befell the Kurdish Republic of Mahabad. Several separatist Kurdish leader of the Qazi clan surrendered to Iranian General Fazlollah Homayuni in December 1946. Most other fled to Iraq or the Soviet Union, though skirmishes with the Iranian Army continued in February and March 1947. By April most of the former Kurdish separatists had reached Iraq, and the ones who had gone to the Soviet Union arrived in Iraqi territory by the late 1950s. The Qazi family was not so fortunate. On January 23 they were sentenced to be shot. The Shah agreed to a plea by the U.S. ambassador to not have them shot, so on March 31 they were hanged.
When the newly elected parliament convened, a strong bloc of deputies organized by what would eventually become the National Front and led by Mohammad Mossadeq, helped defeat the Soviet oil concession agreement by 102 votes to 2. The parliament also passed a bill forbidding any further foreign oil concessions and moving for the government to exploit oil resources directly. As the Soviets were being pushed out, the British-run AIOC boosted oil production in Iran to 19,190,000 tons. This was more than half the total production of all oil in the Middle East.
The Playboy Almost Cashes In His Chips, When The Number Comes Up "Red"
At the British owned and run oil facility at Abadan, the riots that had broken out led many Iranians to rally to the worker's cause, not only out of legitimate sympathy for their plight, but also because of the grossly unequal terms under which the AIOC operated. For example, the company reported an after-tax profit of 40 million pounds—the equivalent of $112 million dollars—and gave Iran just 7 million pounds in return in 1947, the same year India finally gained its independence and the British turned over its British Mandate in Palestine it held since it took the area as spoils after World War I, to the UN to resolve the long contentious issue of Palestine. Yet even this was only the tip of the iceberg since the company refused to open its books up for review. To compound the issue, it never complied with previous agreements to give laborers better pay, chance of advancement, nor had it built the schools, hospitals, roads or telephone system it promised and reneged on its agreement to abide by Iranian labor laws. Manucher Farmanfarmaian, who in 1949 became director of Iran's petroleum institute was appalled by what he found at Abadan:
Wages were fifty cents a day. There was no vacation pay, no sick leave, no disability compensation. The workers lived in a a shanty-town called Kaghazabad, or Paper City, without running water or electricity, let alone such luxuries as iceboxes or fans. In winter the earth flooded and became a flat, perspiring lake. The mud in town was knee-deep, and canoes ran alongside the roadways for transportation. When the rains subsides, clouds of nipping, small winged flies rose from the stagnant waters to fill the nostrils, collecting in black mounds along the rims of cooking pots and jamming the fans at the refinery with an unctuous glue.
Summer was worse. It descended suddenly without a hint of spring. The heat was torrid, the worst I've ever known—sticky and unrelenting—while the wind and sandstorms whipped off the desert hot as a blower. The dwellings of Kaghazabad, cobbled from rusted oil drums and hammered flat, turned into sweltering ovens... in every crevice hung the foul, sulfurous stench of burning oil—a pungent reminder that every day twenty thousand barrels, or one million tons a year, were being consumed indiscriminately for the functioning of the refinery, an AIOC never paid the government a cent for it.
To the managment of AIOC in their pressed ecru shirts and air-conditioned offices, the workers were faceless drones... in the British section of Abadan there were lawns, rose beds, tennis courts, swimming pools and clubs; in Kaghazabad there was nothing—not a tea shop, not a bath, not a single tree. The tiled reflecting pools and shaded square that were part of every Iranian town, no matter how poor or dry, were missing here. The unpaved alleyways were emporiums for rats. The man in the grocery store sold his wares while standing in a barrel of water to avoid the heat. Only the shriveled, mud-brick mosque in the old quarter offered any hope in the form of divine redemption.
As Iran was being racked by separatist rebellion, and being bled dry by the Anglo-Iranain Oil Company, the passing of UN Resolution 181 over the British held Mandate on Palestine precipitated the creation of the State of Israel and the 1948 war, the young Mohammad Reza Shah focused his attentions on important things, like sports cars, race horses and women. He became a fixture of the international party set, preferring nightclubs in London and dating B-Movie stars than improving conditions of workers laboring under de-facto foreign rule. Several times he made half-hearted efforts to consolidate his shaky position at home, through vote-rigging and repression of anti-monarchist groups. However his efforts only made him a figure for public ridicule. Newspapers, finally free after decades of repressive rule under his father, rightly called him a lackey of the British. Public rallies were held to denounce him. He was blissfully unaware of the contempt in which many Iranians held him.
Snow fell on February 4, 1949 as the Shah stepped out of his car to attend an anniversary celebration at the University of Tehran. As he approached a staircase, a young man posing as a photographer pulled out a pistol and began shooting at him. Separated by just six feet, the gunman however proved himself to be a poor shot. His first three shots only managed to hit the Shah's military cap. In a reflexive response the Shah had turned toward the gunman as a forth shot hit him in the right cheek. Bodyguards, generals, and police officers, apparently not thinking the Shah's life was worth saving, dove for cover instead of jumping the gunman. The Shah ducked as a fifth shot rang out and grazed his shoulder and as the gunman aimed his last bullet at the Shah's chest, the gun jammed.
With the gunman's pistol jammed, the security agents jumped up and quickly clubbed and shot the would-be assassin to death. The Shah, then twenty nine years old, breathing heavily as he recovered, announced that he had been saved by divine intervention. He may have believed it, and the next day sent his blood-stained uniform to the Officers Club and ordered it to be put on display in a case. He soon afterwards decided that he needed to try and impose his will on Iran as his father had done.
The Shah had long been fearful of nationalists and in particular that of the Tudeh which was strongly anti-monarchist, but even after the Azerbaijan uprising in the north he could not find a way to do much in curbing their influence. After the attempt on his life he found one. Despite all the evidence that the gunman was a religious fanatic with ties to the slowly emerging Muslim Brotherhood, the Shah ignored that and proclaimed that the Tudeh with Soviet/communist backing had organized the attempt on his life. He banned it, and imprisoned dozens of its leaders.
Seizing on public sympathy the assassination attempt generated, the Shah took several steps to increase his power and position. He ordered the creation of a second legislative chamber, the Senate, which had been authorized by the 1906 constitution when the Iranians first tried to form a legitimate representative government, but had never implemented. The Shah looked to this as a means to increase his power since provisions within it made it so he could appoint half the senators. In addition, and most crucially for the British, he won from the parliament a change in the way Prime Ministers were appointed. Under the constitution, the Majlis chose them and the Shah gave his assent. Now the system would be reversed with the Shah choosing the prime minister and the parliment voting afterwards to confirm or reject his nominee.
The Shah took these steps with the discreet and explicit advice and support of the British who simply saw this as a means to help stabilize and solidify its position in controlling such a vital commercial sector, which like the Suez canal, were its last and most economically crucial colonial assets left. Without the British nod, he would not have been allowed to ascend to the throne in the first place, and he fully understood the debt he owed them. When forces within Iran threatened the British interests in AIOC, they came to collect that debt from the Shah.
British Puppets and Something New
Britain had risen to a world power in large part because of its success in exploiting the natural resources of subject nations. From the early American colonies, to that of the west indies, to India through the East-India Company and most dramatically in the aftermath of World War II in Iran. More than half of Anglo-Iranian Oil Company profits went directly to the British Government which owned a 51 percent share. It paid millions of additional pounds to the Government each year in taxes and it also supplied the Royal Navy with all the oil it needed at a fraction of market price. British Foreign Secretary Ernest Bevin was not exaggerating when he observed that without oil form Iran, there would be "no hope of our being able to achieve the standard of living at which we are aiming in Great Britain."
Iranians held little sympathy for the British position, having had their resources and national assets being subjugated to the demands of foreign rule either directly or indirectly for over a century, with the British being the most prominent power to exploit them. Members of the Iranian parliament began demanding that the oil company offer a more equitable deal and by 1949, ten of them went so far as to submit a bill that would revoke the British oil concession entirely. The pressure from parliament and the threat of continued rioting at Abadan became too evident to ignore so they sought a new offer to re-legitimize their position in Iran.
Three months after the attempt on the Shah's life, the bull-headed leader of AOIC, Sir William Fraser, arrived in Tehran to make the company's offer. The proposed contract was known as the Supplemental Agreement, since it was intended to supplement the one Reza Shah had signed in 1933. It offered Iran several minor improvements such as a guarantee that royalty payments would not drop below 4 million pounds, a reduction in the area of land in which AOIC was allowed to drill, and a promise that more Iranians would be trained for administrative positions. It did not, however, offer the Iranians any better split over the oil revenues, give them any more of a voice in the company's management, or give them a right to audit the company's books where accounting tricks were rampant, hiding the virtual theft of money in Iran's share of revenue which in the end what amounted to the looting of its oil assets.
The Iranian prime minister took this proposal as a starting point for discussion and negotiation but Fraser dismissed him, declaring the offer was final and promptly flew back to london aboard his private plane. As Iranian Finance Minister Abbasgholi Golshayan lamented after Fraser stormed out of Tehran "The British want the whole world." Despite the acknowledgment of his Prime Minister's own cabinet about the incredibly arrogant and unfair deal AOIC was proposing, the Shah knew he had to appease his British backers and ordered the cabinet to accept the Supplemental Agreement. On July 17, 1949 it did so, but in order for it to take effect it had to be approved by the Majlis which was beyond the Shah's control.
Many in the parliament had already denounced the Supplemental Agreement before the cabinet signed off on it. Others subsequently turned against it once the accounting tricks used by AIOC to cheat Iran out of huge sums of money came to light in a report commissioned by the very cabinet which acquiesced to sign the Supplemental Agreement the parliment was now being asked to ratify. With the Majlis's term set to soon expire and with elections approaching, members of parliament found themselves in a difficult position. Agreeing to an odious deal which would outrage the public or angering the Shah and his British backers by rejecting the "deal". In a move that would be familiar to American's over the recent "do nothing" 109th Congress, members of parliament made perfunctory impassioned speeches and denouncing the bad deal for the Iranian people, yet deferred the vote on the matter to the next Majlis.
The Shah was not happy with this turn of events and resolved to do whatever was necessary to assure that the next parliament would heed his wishes and pass the Agreement. In order to secure the pliable parliament he needed to get passage of the Agreement the British demanded, he used a variety of tactics ranging from recruitment of royalist candidates, to bribery, to blatant election fraud. Several cities exploded in protest, particularly in Tehran, where several candidates, including the hugely popular Mohammad Mossadegh, were fraudulently declared losers.
Mossadegh made a public call for all those who believed in free and fair elections to gather in front of his home on October 13th. Thousands showed up and Mossadegh led them in a march through the streets to the royal palace. When the throng reached the gates, Mossadegh turned to face them and delivered a fiery speech and declared he would not move until the Shah agreed to hold new and fair elections. For three days and nights Mossadegh and several other dozen other democratic supporters sat on the palace lawn in protest. Facing this hugely embarrassing situation on the eve of his long-awaited trip to the United States seeking military and development aid, the Shah relented and agreed that there would be new elections held.
Due to the events in World War II, the United States emerged as a new superpower on the world stage. Both economically and because of it being the sole nuclear power at the time, the new world power would come to shape Iranian modern history in ways nobody could foresee at the time. President Truman hoped to persuade the Shah to focus on improving the lives of his people as a bulwark against expansionist Communist ideology. This was in line with the new Truman Doctrine presaged in Keenan's "long-telegram" and which was put into practice under the Marshall Plan. For the Shah, he sought equipment and training so he could expand and build up his military, which was what he saw as the key to his power since under the Iranian constitution, it was really all he had explicit control over under the law. While outwardly, the Shah's extended trip was met with public goodwill, behind the scenes his trip did not go well. The newly appointed U.S. Secretary of State Dean Acheson, and the Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, Omar Bradley (of Allied Command fame during the war) implored the Shah to focus on Iran's social needs, and pay heed to what happened to Chinese Nationalist Leader Chiang Kai-shek who was driven off of the Chinese mainland during the Shah's visit to the United States, because he had sought a purely military solution to the social unrest his people faced. Truman sent his guest home without the military aid he sought.
After failing to persuade the United States to pay for his military buildup, the Shah returned home to find his opposition better organized and invigorated. His need to agree to cancel the rigged elections had shown the limits of his power, but it also helped to coalesce a true opposition against him. After the successful sit-in led by Mossadegh, twenty nine of his fellow protesters convened at Mossadegh residence and resolved to build a new coalition movement, which would have a profound impact in the years to come. At this meeting they established the National Front and elected Mossadegh to be the coalition's leader. Seven founders of the National Front, including Mossadegh, were elected to parliament in the new elections they had forced the Shah to call. Their victories marked the arrival of something new in Iranian politics; an organized, sophisticated opposition bloc which had broad public support and fired with a nationalist and patriotic passion to regain control of Iran for the Iranian people. With a formal organization behind him and with overwhelming public opinion on his side, Mossadegh and the National Front were poised to embark on a historic challenge to the political order of Iran, and launch a shattering campaign to throw off the yoke of foreign colonialism, the effect of which would radically alter global politics and reverberate to this day.
The British usually preferred a weak Iranian prime minister who would not be a threat to their interests. They would soon conclude however that they needed a strong Prime Minister who would be powerful enough to force the parliament, and the emerging popular nationalists as personified in Mossadegh, to ratify the stalled Supplemental Agreement. The current prime minister, Mohammad Saed was not enthused about the prospect and even went so far as refusing to present it for a vote to the parliament. After two months, the Shah replaced him with Ali Mansour, but Mansour also proved unwilling to fight for the Supplemental Agreement. In April of 1950, the British sent a new ambassador to Tehran, Sir Francis Shepherd, whose diplomatic experience had been in portfolio of countries run by tyrants or outside foreign powers; El Salvador, Haiti, Peru, the Belgian Congo, and the Dutch East Indies. In one of the first cables sent back to the Foreign Office in London, Shepherd reported that although the Shah ordered Mansoiur to secure as soon as possible a vote and passage of the Supplemental Agreement, Mansour seemed to have "no intention of carrying out his master's orders."
It did not take long for the British Foreign Office and Anglo-Iranian to conclude that Mansour was not their man. On June 20, 1950 the parliament voted to create an eighteen-member committee to study the Supplemental Agreement. The British saw it as a an act of defiance and a move that would derail passage of the Agreement. They concluded they needed a tougher prime minister who had the fierce determination and personal ambition to face down Mossadegh and the National Front, and force passage of the Supplemental Agreement. They believed they found their man in the person of General Ali Razmara, who unlike previous civilian candidates, which had been the tradition, was part of the Shah's military and had been trained by and one of General Schwarzkopf's most loyal officers who had risen to become chief of staff of the army. Razmara, like many Iranian's in the officer corps had taken advantage of many corrupt opportunities and was a man on the rise. His hero had been Reza Shah, with whom he had shared the belief that Iran could only rise to greatness under an autocratic rule, and had no use for the give and take of the parliamentary process. Unlike the thuggish Reza however, he was sophisticated and educated at the French Military academy and understood the realpolitik of foreign power in the calculus of control of Iran. He had risen to power by winning their support, but was astute enough to try and play competing interests against each other to make himself vital. To the British he promised quick passage of the Supplemental Agreement. To the Russians he had promised freedom for the Tudeh leaders who the Shah had arrested after the failed assassination attempt which the Shah blamed on the Soviet backed party. To many in the parliament, he had shrewdly helped fund the campaigns of more than half the members. To the Americans, he positioned himself as sympathetic to the growing concern of communist encroachment in the region and vowed to help them with their anti-communist crusade.
When the parliament met at the end of June to debate Razmara's nomination, nobody was surprised by Mossadegh's blistering speech denouncing him as a tool of foreign powers, which he was, and as a dictator in the making, which in essence he was. But because of the backing Razmara had from the royalists and the British, and because he called in the debts of the deputies in parliament which owed their seats in part to his backing, nobody was surprised that he won confirmation by a healthy margin. So as Razmara took office, he was convinced that it was his destiny to lead Iran back to greatness. Mossadegh believed much the same thing about himself and his nationalist crusade. So did the Shah who wanted the power of the Peacock Throne restored. Only one of these three could emerge from the looming conflict as winner.
The Unthinkable Happens
By the time Razmara had taken office as the Iranian prime minister, the anger many Iranians had over foreign interference in their countries internal affairs was beginning to reach fever pitch. Rioting broke out at the mere appearance of what seemed to be outside machinations of foreign control. Razmara realized that this rising nationalism had to be factored into his political strategy. He told the British he could win approval of the Supplemental Agreement if they would sweeten the deal by agreeing to open the AIOC books to Iranian auditors, train Iranians for managerial jobs in the Abadan operation, and make some of its royalty payments in advance as a sign of support for national development. The British would have none of it and rejected it out of hand. Ambassador Shepherd going so far as to derisively say that the only sweetener they would accept "was perhaps free medical treatment of certain hysterical deputies who continued to denounce the Supplemental Agreement." The British simply could not recognize that the colonial era was at an end and that they could only maintain their world power by working with the rising forces of nationalism. A lesson it would painfully fail to learn later in Egypt over the Suez Canal, and the French would also learn in Algiers and Vietnam.
Razmara, despite the shrewd compromise he proposed, had to reconcile himself to the Anglo-Iranian position which adamantly rejected it. He named a pro-British finance minister and resumed his campaign to secure ratification of the Supplemental Agreement. One of Razmara's key allies in the effort was a radio celebrity named Bahrim Sharogh, who had previously risen to fame as a Nazi propagandist during the early 40s when the British and Soviets invaded Iran to depose Reza Shah and install his son onto the throne. He had been a part of Berlin's Persian Radio Service giving his enthusiastic voice to Axis victories and the glorious future of German-Iranian relations. Not long after the British invaded and he mysteriously lost his job, he turned up on Radio Tehran and began broadcasting lavishly pro-British commentaries. Now Razmara named him director of "radio and propaganda" and had begin applying Sharogh's talents to the AIOC cause with the same fervor he had for the Nazis a decade earlier. In addition he helped AIOC single out and bribe pliable newspapers and media outlets.
The British, by their refusal to even negotiate a compromise, managed to unwittingly unite a broad cross-section of the politically active population against their interests. Their tone-deaf intractable attitude had even pushed religious groups committed to agitating for Islamic law into a coalition with the secular and liberal Mossadegh's National Front. Some mullahs' including Ayatollah Abolqasem Kashani, who was the mentor of a young Ruhollah Khomeni, who thirty years later would emerge as the countries supreme leader after the 1979 Iranian Revolution, would enter a tactical alliance with the National Front.
Kashani's father had been killed fighting the British in Mesopotamia during World War I and he himself was held by the British in a prison camp during World War II. After his release he emerged as an incendiary popular leader. The Shah tried to silence him by sending him into exile to Lebanon after the previous years assassination attempt. But popular pressure forced his return when he ran for a seat to parliament from Beirut, and won. Hundreds of thousands turned out to welcome him back into the country. Kashani was certainly no progressive, as he was fiercely anti-western, hated liberal ideas and believed that Muslims should only obey secular laws if they were consistent with Islamic law or sharia. But like the mullahs who supported the Constitutional Revolution at the turn of the 20th century, he saw the anti-British campaign as a sacred duty. Such was the antipathy with which foreign control over Iran had become for Iranians, that a bearded holy man spewing fiery rhetoric of the anti-British variety, would become allies with the swiss-educate secular aristocratis politican, who also wanted to end foreign interference with Iranian affairs.
With such a wide ranging coalition, all united against continued subservience to foreign interests, opinion within parliament turned even stronger against ratification of the Supplemental Agreement. On November 25, 1950 Mossadegh brought the Supplemental Agreement to a vote in the oil committee which was set up to study the proposal. Final debate began, and Mossadegh and four other members of the committee who belonged to the National Front proposed the even more incendiary proposal of nationalizing Anglo-Iranian, but the rest of the committee was not ready to go that far. They were however, unanimously resolved to reject the Supplemental Agreement. Events began to take on momentum of their own, both within Iran and outside of it. By the end of December, news reached Tehran that the Arabian-American Oil Company (ARMACO) had reached a new deal with Saudi Arabia which would share its profits with the Saudi's on a fifty-fifty basis.
Ambassador Shepherd urgently cabled London after hearing the Armaco deal and urged the British Foreign Office to consider getting AIOC to make a similar offer. Both the Foreign Office and the AIOC rejected the idea outright. The British position was so far removed from reality that AIOC's manager Ernest Northcroft's most senior Iranian employee, Mostafa Fateh, wrote an impassioned twenty-three page letter to the AIOC board pleading with them to reassess their position and recognize the breadth and depth of the nationalist movement and that there was still enough support within parliament that it would ratify the Agreement if it were altered to a fifty-fifty split and to shorten its term, like the deal the Americans had reached in Saudi Arabia, otherwise the agreement was doomed. Once again the British dismissed such a proposal out-of-hand and the British once again missed a chance to head-off the looming disaster if it had simply been willing to negotiate in good faith. Confrontation now seemed unavoidable.
For the coalition of nationalists it was a thrilling prospect. To finally have the chance to pull their country out from under the rule of British imperialists. In January of 1951 they began a mass-campaign to rally support for nationalizing of Anglo-Iranian which they saw as the lynch-pin of foreign control and subjugation. Huge crowds turned out for their rally. The first speakers were from the National Front and the crowd cheered as they laid out their case. After the politicians, the mullahs came to the podium to proclaim that it was the sacred duty of every good Muslim to support nationalization. The last mullah read a fatwa asserting that the Razmara government was condemned for selling Iran's birthright to infidel foreigners. Despite the growing sentiment against him, Razmara desperately soldiered on to deliver the agreement for the British. He even tried to dissuade the oil committee from going forward and voting for nationalizing Anglo-Iranian, delivering a speech crafted by Ambassador Shepherd on March 3, 1951 which warned that such a move would be illegal, and that the repercussions of making such a move would devastate the Iranian economy.
In response, another mass rally took place on March 7th, this time the calls for nationalization were replaced with "Death to the British!". Razmara was out of time and even the Shah knew it. Quietly he began asking politicians of every stripe whom they would suggest as a new prime minister to help resolve the crisis. Each gave the same answer, Mossadegh.
Everyone knew Razmara's days in office were numbered, but nobody anticipated how catastrophically it would end for him. On the same day the violently anti-British chants were occurring at the mass rally, Razmara and a friend of the Shah drove to a Tehran mosque for the funeral of a religious leader. A young man stepped out from the crowd with a pistol and shots rang out. Police officers seized the gunman, a carpenter named Khalil Tahmasibi who was a member of a group called Fedayeen-i-Islam or "Devotees of Islam", an unofficial offshoot of the Muslim Brotherhood. The circumstances of Razmara's assassination were never clear however. Evidence later emerged that the fatal shot may not have been fired by Tahmasibi but by a soldier actong on behalf of the monarchy.
With Razmara gone, a collision course between the forces pushing for nationalization and those backed by the British interests were now all but unavoidable. The day after Razmara was shot, the oil committee took the fateful step it had been moving ever closer to. By unanimous vote it recommended to the parliament that it nationalize the Anglo-Iranian Oil Company. Now it was up to the full body to decide the matter. The next day thousands of people turned out for a jubilant rally to hear Ayatollah Kashani applaud the committee vote and demand that the parliament act quickly and follow the committees recommendation. No public figure would oppose nationalization without fear of provoking outrage among the people, or worse. Even the newly sworn in Prime Minister Hussein Ala, the British-educated diplomat who had grave reservations about the consequences of nationalization, would dare not speak out against it. Even a last ditch attempt by the British to indicate they might be open to the fifty-fifty split on the profits, could do anything rescue the British position.
On March 15th, 1951, the die was cast as parliament made its historic vote. Despite getting the Shah to use all his influence with monarchist and conservative leaning deputies to stay away and deny the parliament a quorum, ninety-six members showed up, including some that had promised the Shah to stay away, and they unanimously voted in favor of nationalization of the Anglo-Iranian Oil Company. Five days later, even the largely ceremonial Senate, which had come into existence only few years earlier in an attempt to counterbalance the power of the Majlis, with half its members who were appointed by the Shah, voted unanimously to approve the bill.
Mossadegh was now a hero of epic proportions for ordinary Iranians. Tribal leaders in the rural areas celebrated his triumph, Ayatollah Kashani lionized him as a liberator on the scale of Cyrus and Darius of the early middle ages, even the communists of Tudeh embraced him for the bold move to push-out the British. His popularity prompted the parliament to pass any bill he presented.
Despite the set-back, the British were not about to surrender the fight. By April, both the Prime Minister of Iran, and the British Foreign Secretary had resigned from their respective offices. The latter replaced by the woefully unprepared Herbert Morrison. Morrison had spent thirty years working his way up through the Labour Party ranks, but had no real expertise in international affairs. He considered the crisis in Iran in terms that modern American right-wingers and Bush supporters would gladly embrace, that of the problem being simply a matter of "ignorant natives rebelling against the forces of civilization." In one of his first public statements as foreign secretary, he urged that British troops be moved to Iran and "stand ready if necessary to intervene in Persian oil fields." At Morrison's urging, top-level policymakers from the Foreign Office, the Admiralty, the Bank of England, and the Ministry of Fuel and Power formed a "Working party on Persia" to deal with the crisis.
The Foreign Office devised a three-prong strategy to bring Iran back under control. First, the Shah would be persuaded to dissolve the parliament. Second, he should appoint Sayyed Zia, the aging British favorite who had helped Reza Shah come into power some thirty years prior as Prime Minister. Third, the Truman administration in Washington should be urged "at least not to indicate any disagreement or divergence from our point of view." As this policy was being formulated, Anglo-Iranian decided to prove its resolve and turn up the pressure by reducing the already pitiful living allowances it paid Iranian workers. Thousands walked off the job in protest.
In response to the strike, the British dispatched warships to the waters of Abadan and by mid-April three frigates and two cruisers were lurking within sight of the refinery. This escalated tensions and protesting oil-workers poured onto the streets and rioting erupted leaving six Iranians, two British oil-workers and a British sailor dead. Many Iranians began to suspect that the British were seeking a campaign of provocation to use as a pre-text for military intervention.
As part of their strategy to bring the situation back under control, the British and Ambassador Shepherd moved to have the more decisively pro-British prime minister Sayyed Zia be named, and the Shah dutifully put his name forward as his nomination for the parliament to approve. All eyes moved to the Majlis as they took up debate over the nomination. Everyone expected Mossadegh to lead the opposition against Zia's nomination with one of his withering tirades against the British and their bought-off lackeys. But when the speaker asked who wished to begin debate, Mossadegh sat silent and expressionless. A right-wing deputy by the name of Jamal Emami who was on the British payroll took to the floor instead and without even mentioning Sayyed Zia's name launched into a bitter attack on Mossadegh, lambasting him for pushing the parliament and the country into crisis with his constant carping. Scornfully dismissing Mossadegh as a tired old windbag who delights it making overwrought speeches about how wrong everyone else is, but never offering anything positive as a solution. Going on to say that if the old man wanted to understand the challenges of true governance he should try the thankless task of being Prime Minister instead of just bashing others.
The chamber fell silent as Emami finished his blistering attack on Mossadegh. Mossadegh waited for a long moment then slowly rose to his feet and then said he was honored and grateful for the suggestion that he become prime minister and would in all humility accept. Everyone was stunned, Emami most of all since Mossadegh had several times turned down the prime minister's seat in the past. Pandemonium ensued as a formal motion was made that Mossadegh be named prime minister and the speaker called for an immediate vote on the matter, which passed by a margin of seventy-nine to twelve. Then, what was unthinkable to the British, happened. Mossadegh seizing the power of the moment said he would serve as prime minister only if the parliament also voted to approve an act he had drawn up to implement the nationalization of Anglo-Iranian. Under its provisions, a parliamentary committee would audit Anglo-Iranian's books, weigh the claims of both sides for compensation, begin sending Iranians abroad to learn the skills of running an oil industry, and draw up articles of incorporation for a new National Iranian Oil Company. The parliament approved it unanimously that very afternoon. It was a disaster for the British and the Shah. Iran, the Shah, the British, the Americans... everyone was now in uncharted waters.
Our story will continue in Part III, with...
The Gathering Storm