Piano Red wrote:That's what I was referring to.
Ok.
Piano Red wrote:Doesn't change the fact that such an action was illegal
I don’t challenge it was illegal, but that doesn’t change the fact that his dissolvement of parliament was a consequence of your illegal attempts to bring him down. It doesn’t change the fact that his dissolution of the Majlis was to be followed by free elections for the next Majlis. And it doesn’t change the fact that he was a frim believer in free elections who didn’t even promote pro-National Front candidates.
It’s easy to see his mistakes in retrospect, but conditions in Iran sharply limited his lawful and constitutional options; limits that don’t exist in democratic states you and I live in.
Piano Red wrote:or that he used authoritarian measures and electioneering
Apart from the dissolvement of the Majlis, which authoritarian measures and electioneering are you referring to? The fact that he resigned after the shah refused to give the PM the right to appoint a Minister of Defense, something which is quite normal in a constitutional democracy? The fact that the shah appointed him again after only a few days and granted him the authority to do this?
Piano Red wrote:to grant him emergency powers
The Majlis authorised his demand for extra powers, which were a temporary response to an untenable situation where an unaccountable monarch was the chief player, and which were a meaningful step toward a constitutional government (like extending civilian control over the army).
Piano Red wrote:As for US plot, I feel I need to correct you again.
It was a joint UK/US plot
You misunderstood me. I wrote ‘US plans’ because Mossadeq didn’t believe the British were behind this coup as well, as they were expelled from Iran a year earlier after a failed coup against him. So you don’t need to correct me.
Piano Red wrote:one that was primarily driven by British interests. The US barely had any care for the Middle East at that point in time, hell it was only after the British used a nice touch of "Red Scare" on the Soviets trying to gain a geo-political foothold in Iran (which they actually were) that Eisenhower actually decided to lend support.
As if the US interests weren’t served with the uninterrupted flow of oil from Iran.
As if the US interests weren’t served with using Iran as a buffer-state against Sovjet-expansionism, preventing the Russians to get access to Iran’s oil fields.
As if the US interests weren’t served when it had the opportunity to get access to Iran’s oil and take-over from the British.
As if the US interests weren’t served when they succeeded in liquidating a nationalisation that might have flared up similar sentiments in other Third World nations in which you did have a care.
The Truman administration was very worried about the deteriorating situation in Iran. The only difference is that Truman regarded Mossadeq as part of the solution, not the problem.
The British were also lucky that their exaggerated threats of a possible communist threat happened at a time when the US was extremely touchy about this subject, like you implied. Even though the possibility of a communist take-over was extremely unlikely, but feel free to elaborate if you think it wasn’t so.
And you ignore the fact that the coup - the one which succceeded - was largely planned and carried out by the CIA, although the network which the British had already set up in Iran, turned out to be pretty helpful.
Piano Red wrote:Mossadegh's response, and those of his supporters, were all just as dirty.
Yes, allowing your opponents to plotting against you and slandering you as good as freely, was very dirty indeed! Did Mossadeq bribe people to support him or his supporters? No. Did he order his opponents to be killed? No. Did he pay people to demonstrate in favour of him or against his opponents? No. Did he pay newspapers to hail him or to denounce his opponents? No. Did he pay street gangs to cause mayhem in the streets? No. Did his opponents do all of this? Yes. So your comparison is utterly foolish and ridiculous.
Mossadeq believed in a parliamentary democracy while his opponents only believed in the politics of elimination. He practised extreme liberal government. And without his policiy of tolerance, his domestic and foreign opponents would have found it nearly impossible to engage in their virtually unopposed and unhindered subversive activities.
Piano Red wrote:Do I even need to go into some of the practices utilized by the Tudeh Party?
Oh come on, Mossadeq - who never reversed Tudeh’s quasi-illegal status - exercised no authority over the Tudeh. In fact, until the failed coup of july 1952, the Tudeh fiercely opposed Mossadeq. After the failed coup, the Tudeh took a more ambivalent stance, with the radical wing still opposing Mossadeq, and a pragmatic wing - aware of the fact that Mossadeq indeed had a very big, popular base - tacitly endorsing his policies. But even the support of the pragmatic wing was largely superficial: they didn’t mobilize their military organisation or their large crowds of supporters to try to stop the coup.
But talking about the Tudeh, the CIA and their Iranian agents also paid mobs to orchestrate anti-shah demonstrations by which they turned the streets into huge battlegrounds. Mobs which pretended to be part of the Tudeh. Granted, real Tudeh supporters joined the riots, unaware of the fact that the instigators were CIA paid gangs. But as soon as the Tudeh leadership found out what really happened, they ordered their supporters to stay home.
Mossadeq himself had no particular love for the Tudeh because he viewed Russian/Sovjet colonialism almost as bad as British colonialism. In fact, the Truman administration regarded Mossadeq’s Third World Nationalism as the best way to counter communism.
Finally, a CIA agent who monitored the Tuedeh at that time admitted “that the Tudeh was really not very powerful, and that higher-level US officials routinely exaggerated its strength and Mossadeq’s reliance on it.â€
Piano Red wrote:Replace Mossadegh with the Shah and you'll be on the right track.
Haha. Mossadeq was the democrat, the shah a Louis XIV-like despot. But then again, a despot who protects your interests is what you prefer, so I won’t bother to go into this.
Piano Red wrote:Sure, his supporters in Parliament, the appointments to the Iranian Ministry of Defense and Foreign Ministry, plenty of members in the Tudeh party, elements in his nationalist movement (not to be confused with the national front), and some of the Islamic clerics that supported him.
I asked to name one corrupt member of the National Front that wasn’t a bribed defector.
Piano Red wrote:Yes, his illegal dissolution of Parliament being one point of evidence on that.
And probably your only point. I already explained why he askek for emergency powers.
Piano Red wrote:And I guess you never learned about the death threats his supporters sent, with his approval, to his political opponents? Not to mention the electioneering tactics he used in order to remain in power?
Ok, then give me a credible source that states that members of the National Front (or its supporters), with Mossadeq’s approval, made death threats to his opponents.
It’s a fact, however, that his opponents made phone-calls in Mossadeq’s name or the Tudeh (I forgot which one) to religious clerics, threatening to kill them. They even bombed a clerics home in the name of the Tudeh.
Piano Red wrote:Because he was a secularist
His secularism has little to do with it. The ayatollah embraced secular movements like the ANC, PLO, IRA, Fidel’s Cuba etc., approved of secularists in Iran’s provisional government (including members of Mossadeq's government) ...
Piano Red wrote:and also because they probably despised him
Some of them yes, among them Khomeini. It would be quite embarrassing to honour someone whom the “founding-father†of the IR strongly objected to.
Piano Red wrote:even more than the British did
The feeling was more than mutual.
Piano Red wrote:Operation Ajax simply beat them to the chase in terms of plans they had to remove him from power. Something which, going by their MO, probably would've resulted in his assassination.
Nonsens, the religious right (Feda’ian) at that time was a small, shadowy group of lower-class zealous religious activists who could never have toppled Mossadeq’s government without substantial help from others. At best they could have assassinated him, which wouldn’t came down to the end of the National Front or the government.
Besides, the grand-ayatollah of that time, Borujerdi, opposed attempts to topple Mossadeq. Another powerful ayatollah, Kashani, initially did the same but he seemed to be more suscebtible to CIA-bribery and defected the National Front.
Maybe his opponents would have killed him anyway, but I guess we will never know this, won’t we?
Piano Red wrote:Considering the absurd of amount of revisionist history that portrays him as a saint of God I doubt i'd be successful.
I guess
Mohammad Mosaddeq and the 1953 Coup in Iran,
All The Shah’s Men, and
The Mossadegh Era are all revisionist books then.
The authors certainly didn’t portray him as a God or something:
“Mossadegh was almost as resistant to compromise as were the British (...) The single mindedness with which he pursued his campaign against AIOC made it impssible for him to compromise when he could and should have.â€
“Another great failure in Mossadegh’s judgment was hin inability or refusal to understand how the world looked to Western leaders. Mossadegh believed that his conflict with AIOL had nothing to do with the global confrontation between East and West.â€
“Mossadegh was also naive in his assessment of the communists who controled Tudeh and were working assiduously to penetrate Iran’s government, army and civil society.â€
“Never during Mossadegh’s twenty-six months in power did he attempt to forge the National Front into a cohesive political movement. It remained a loose coalition without central leadership or an organised political base.â€
“He was unwilling and unable to entertain any compromise that, in his view, infringed upon Iranian sovereign rights.â€
Did you ever wonder why you hardly find information about the coup that suits your way of thinking? Here’s your answer:
“Central Intelligence Agency officials plotting the 1953 coup in Iran hoped to plant articles in American newspapers saying Shah Mohammed Reza Pahlevi's return resulted from a homegrown revolt against a Communist-leaning government, internal agency documents show.
Those hopes were largely disappointed. The C.I.A.'s history of the coup says that its operatives had only limited success in manipulating American reporters and that none of the Americans covering the coup worked for the agency.â€It worked for you though.
Piano Red wrote:The man was as much (not) a villain just as he was not a hero either, regardless of the hindsighted rhetoric that most people (and you) allude to with regard to Mossadegh.
Yes, attempting to give your country democarcy, self-sufficiency and sovereignity against the will of one of the largest empires in the world - which at the time still practised 19th century style colonialism - was nothing but an ordinary act ... You are villifying him simply because he believed that nations can and must struggle for the right to govern themselves in freedom. But like I said before, this would not be in your country’s interests, so I forgive you your vapidity about him.
But I’m sure that when in march 1979, one of the largest gatherings seen in Iran’s history flooded into Ahmad Abad to honour Mossadeq, this crowd was hindsighted too.
Or when in 1962 200 000 people gathered in Tehran for a National Front (despite the National Front’s illegal status) rally dedicated to Mossadeq, the participants must have been hindsighted as well. The shah never allowed a National Front rally afterwards.
Piano Red wrote:Fine, blame the Shah and the Revolution then, not much of a difference as far as i'm concerned.
Most people acknowledge there’s a direct link between the coup, 25 years of US-backed repression and the seizure of the US embassy, but apparently this is too hard for you to get.
Piano Red wrote:Iran has been locked in a virtual tug of war between competing interests ever since it's contemporary inception.
Funny you say this because political parties were banned when Reza Khan was in charge.
Piano Red wrote:Uh, some of those opposition groups didn't use legal means to oppose the Shah long before Mossadegh ever came to power, or was removed.
If you’re referring to Mohammed Reza Shah, then tell me which opposition groups, apart from the Tudeh, the religious right, and secessionist groups, opposed his rule using non-legal means?
Piano Red wrote:Beggars can't be choosers, the risk of Iran viewing the US as such was viewed as an acceptable loss at the time.
Only in the minds of greedy, inflexible cold war ideologues.
Piano Red wrote:We didn't, the US and UK both worked with the support and consent of the Shah
Coup d’etat:
“Forcible takeover of the government of a country by elements from within that country, generally carried out by violent or illegal means. It differs from a revolution in typically being carried out by a small group (for example, of army officers or opposition politicians) to install its leader as head of government, rather than being a mass uprising by the people.â€
“A coup d’état (also coup) (pronounced /kuːdeɪˈtɑː/ AHD: [ko͞o"dā tä]) is the sudden, illegal overthrowing of a government by a part of the state establishment — usually the military — to replace the branch of the stricken government, either with another civil government or with a military government.â€
And there were already CIA agents operating in Iran clandestinely before the shah’s approval or even his knowledge.
Piano Red wrote:as well as other elements in the Iranian political sphere that were opposed to Mossadegh
Elements which, with their powerful backers, resorted to illegal and unlawful means to undermine his government.
Piano Red wrote:So? Regardless of such reasoning, it never excused or gave them the authority to execute a defacto act of war against the US by invading the embassy.
“Business as usual within the great game of international relations.â€
Piano Red wrote:And as I said, it was something well within the US' rights. Considering the huge degree with which the Provisional government remained impotent through most of the affair, or were later sidelined, the US was right not to open a dialogue with them.
You already opened a dialogue with them before the seizure of the US-embassy. It was your decision to discontinue the talks - which I fully respect and understand - which undermined the provisional government’s authority and turned it into a lame duck.
Piano Red wrote:Come now, "principles" in international relations are all relative. Sometimes they can mean something, other times...less so. I fail to see how that issue has much to do with the point I raised.
For you they obviously are extremely relative. The same for Reagan who also contravened US law, and I’m not just talking about Iran-Contra.
Piano Red wrote:Correct.
Hypocrite.
Piano Red wrote:In order to avoid the greater of two evils? You're damn right.
Blindly supporting the shah didn’t prevent a bigger evil taking Iran over.
Piano Red wrote:Better to tolerate certain regimes in the Arab world at the expense of their limited oppression
Not to mention at the expense of democratic movements. Like I said, if there’s one thing that the coup taught despots in the world is that powerful governments are willing to tolerate them as long as they are friendly to the West and its interests.