Read Abbas Milani's biography of the last Shah. It's all there. Milani was an Iranian student dissident in the US in the late 1970s and believed the nonsense about Iran served up by the New Left (and recycled by the mullahs). Later, he uncovered the truth as he worked his way toward becoming a professional historian at Stanford. (A career like his would be impossible today.) The funny thing is that the facts were always available. It's just that many chose to ignore them in favor of an ideological concoction.
Iran in 1953 was a constitutional monarchy, and what happened was simply the machinations of parliament, king, and prime minister. There was no coup, American-engineered or otherwise. The two outsiders traditionally interfering in Iranian politics were Britain and Russia, which was still true then. The Shah was far from an American puppet, as his later career demonstrated. The phony "narrative" was always a hoax.
P.S. A very important related book is Michael Doran's Ike's Gamble, about the 1956 Suez Crisis, a terrible mistake by Eisenhower, under the sway of bad ideas and John Foster Dulles. They forgot (but belatedly remembered) the first rule of foreign policy: reward your friends and punish your enemies.
Recent (fairly recent) history will remind us that Iran typically gets poor leaders.
And the Iranian people are often complicit in these bad choices.
Britain and Russia felt compelled to occupy Iran during WW2. A smarter leader might have steered his country away from this fate (see Turkey in the same period).
The Ayatollahs that followed the Shah are determined to push the country back 500 years (socially and in standard of living).
The ayatollahs came in with the enthusiastic support of many Iranians and the acquiescence of the Carter administration.
It's hard to resist the autocrats and mullahs when they control the oil revenue. The mullahs also now import revolutionary guards because they don't trust Iranians. In essence, the whole country, like Lebanon, is being held hostage by kooks and fanatics.
Frankly most of the leftists were upset because they were hoping Iran would go Communist.
Read Abbas Milani's biography of the last Shah. It's all there. Milani was an Iranian student dissident in the US in the late 1970s and believed the nonsense about Iran served up by the New Left (and recycled by the mullahs). Later, he uncovered the truth as he worked his way toward becoming a professional historian at Stanford. (A career like his would be impossible today.) The funny thing is that the facts were always available. It's just that many chose to ignore them in favor of an ideological concoction.
Iran in 1953 was a constitutional monarchy, and what happened was simply the machinations of parliament, king, and prime minister. There was no coup, American-engineered or otherwise. The two outsiders traditionally interfering in Iranian politics were Britain and Russia, which was still true then. The Shah was far from an American puppet, as his later career demonstrated. The phony "narrative" was always a hoax.
P.S. A very important related book is Michael Doran's Ike's Gamble, about the 1956 Suez Crisis, a terrible mistake by Eisenhower, under the sway of bad ideas and John Foster Dulles. They forgot (but belatedly remembered) the first rule of foreign policy: reward your friends and punish your enemies.
Really interesting article, Thomas. I don’t know much about this and appreciate the information. Thank you.
And thank you for reading.
Recent (fairly recent) history will remind us that Iran typically gets poor leaders.
And the Iranian people are often complicit in these bad choices.
Britain and Russia felt compelled to occupy Iran during WW2. A smarter leader might have steered his country away from this fate (see Turkey in the same period).
The Ayatollahs that followed the Shah are determined to push the country back 500 years (socially and in standard of living).
The ayatollahs came in with the enthusiastic support of many Iranians and the acquiescence of the Carter administration.
It's hard to resist the autocrats and mullahs when they control the oil revenue. The mullahs also now import revolutionary guards because they don't trust Iranians. In essence, the whole country, like Lebanon, is being held hostage by kooks and fanatics.