On Aug. 19, 1953, the democratically elected Prime Minister of Iran, Mohammad Mossadegh, who had seized Iran’s vast oil fields from the British and put them under Iranian control, was removed from power in a coup organized and financed by the British and U.S. governments. He was replaced by the dictatorial Shah who immediately signed over forty percent of Iran’s oil fields to U.S. companies. The coup ushered in a long nightmare of repression, buttressed by Iran’s brutal secret police, Savak, trained and equipped by the CIA. The Shah not only crushed the democratic aspirations of Iranians, but enriched U.S. oil companies and purchased billions of dollars of weapons from U.S. weapons manufacturers.
The CIA and the British intelligence used bribery, libel, black propaganda that accused Mossadegh of being a communist, assassinations and orchestrated riots by paid mercenaries to overthrow the democratic government. They hired agents to pose as communists to threaten religious leaders, while the U.S. ambassador lied to the prime minister about alleged attacks on American nationals. They oversaw the assassination of the chief of police, Mahmoud Afshartous, a Mossadegh loyalist, leaving his mutilated body on the street as a warning to others who might defend the democracy. At least 300 people were killed in fighting in the streets of Tehran. Mossadegh’s house was surrounded by and attacked, killing many of his security detail. Mossadegh was sentenced to three years in prison followed by house arrest for life.
The dictatorship of the Shah fueled the virulent anti-American backlash that led to the 1979 revolution and the establishment of a militant Islamic government. The Iran coup became the template used by the CIA to overthrow other governments around the globe that challenged U.S. imperialism and exploitation by global corporations. The list of CIA orchestrated coups that installed compliant right-wing dictatorships includes not only Iran but Guatemala, Indonesia, South Vietnam, the Congo, the Dominican Republic, Iraq, Indonesia, Cambodia, Chile, Bolivia, Ethiopia, Angola, East Timor, Argentina and Afghanistan. Hundreds of million people suffered because of U.S. interference the loss of their freedom, impoverishment and repression because of these interventions. They were sacrificed on the altar of U.S. power and corporate profit. Joining me to discuss his documentary, Coup 53, is the is Iranian filmmaker Taghi Amirani. His film uses newly discovered archival material to expose how the CIA worked clandestinely to overthrow Mossadegh, providing us as well with the blueprint for the numerous other CIA coups carried out in the last few decades.
The Chris Hedges Report Pocast with Iranian filmmaker Taghi Amirani on his documentary Coup 53 about the CIA coup that overthrew the democratic government in Iran seventy years ago this week.