The summer of 1953 was much like this one. Iran was in a major dispute with the Western powers. The popular government led by Mossadeq nationalized the Anglo-Iranian Oil Company, controlled hitherto by British interests who were siphoning off the bulk of the revenues in a colonial-style operation.
In reaction to this, the British froze Iranian assets, got all the world’s oil companies to boycott Iranian oil and pulled their technicians out of the country. Oil output collapsed, Iran’s economy suffered and public unrest grew. Meanwhile, Britain managed to convince the US of the need for regime change in Teheran. On July 11th President Eisenhower secretly signed an order to overthrow Iran's fledgling democracy. After a well-organized secret campaign, involving people like the grandson of President Theodore Roosevelt and the father of Gen. Norman Schwarzkopf, and in which CIA agents did everything from posing as Communists in order to bomb the house of a prominent Muslim leader to forging royal decrees dismissing Mossadeq and getting Associated Press to wire it in the course of an extended propaganda campaign in the media, the Western powers finally managed to purge Iran of democracy and install their chosen vassal, the Shah, inaugurating a quarter century of a reign of terror, before the Islamic revolution put an end to the brutal regime in 1979. (According to ex-US Foreign Service officer William Blum, one of the artifacts recovered by the Iranians after the Shah had been deposed was a CIA film made for his secret service, the SAVAK, on how to torture women.)
The CIA’s secret history records that August 19, 1953 "was a day that should never have ended. For it carried with it such a sense of excitement, of satisfaction and of jubilation that it is doubtful whether any other can come up to it." So giddy did the CIA get with its first smell of success in toppling Third World governments that it followed this up with numerous successful coups across the world over the next five decades.
http://www.zmag.org/content/showarticle.cfm?SectionID=67&ItemID=6039
In reaction to this, the British froze Iranian assets, got all the world’s oil companies to boycott Iranian oil and pulled their technicians out of the country. Oil output collapsed, Iran’s economy suffered and public unrest grew. Meanwhile, Britain managed to convince the US of the need for regime change in Teheran. On July 11th President Eisenhower secretly signed an order to overthrow Iran's fledgling democracy. After a well-organized secret campaign, involving people like the grandson of President Theodore Roosevelt and the father of Gen. Norman Schwarzkopf, and in which CIA agents did everything from posing as Communists in order to bomb the house of a prominent Muslim leader to forging royal decrees dismissing Mossadeq and getting Associated Press to wire it in the course of an extended propaganda campaign in the media, the Western powers finally managed to purge Iran of democracy and install their chosen vassal, the Shah, inaugurating a quarter century of a reign of terror, before the Islamic revolution put an end to the brutal regime in 1979. (According to ex-US Foreign Service officer William Blum, one of the artifacts recovered by the Iranians after the Shah had been deposed was a CIA film made for his secret service, the SAVAK, on how to torture women.)
The CIA’s secret history records that August 19, 1953 "was a day that should never have ended. For it carried with it such a sense of excitement, of satisfaction and of jubilation that it is doubtful whether any other can come up to it." So giddy did the CIA get with its first smell of success in toppling Third World governments that it followed this up with numerous successful coups across the world over the next five decades.
http://www.zmag.org/content/showarticle.cfm?SectionID=67&ItemID=6039
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