August 20, 2023
The 1953 coup d’etat in Iran ushered in
a period of exploitation and oppression that has continued – despite a
subsequent revolution that led to huge changes – for 70 years. Each year on
August 19, the anniversary of the coup, millions of Iranians ask themselves
what would have happened if the US and UK had not conspired all those years ago
to overthrow Iran’s democratically elected leader.
Iran, the Middle East and, arguably, the
whole world may well have been profoundly different. Apart from rewriting the
destiny of Iran and its neighbours, the coup paved the way for a series of
imperialist interventions and the toppling of democratically elected
governments across the global south. Perhaps Washington might have thought
twice before plotting coups in Guatemala in 1954, Congo in 1961 or Chile in
1973, if they’d been unable to overthrow Iran’s prime minister, Mohammad
Mosaddegh, so easily and profitably.
As the democratically elected leader of
Iran from 1951 to 1953, Mosaddegh championed nationalisation of Iran’s oil
industry. This had previously been in the hands of the Anglo-Persian Oil
Company – a British company, founded in 1909 after the discovery of a large oil
field in Iran, which would later become BP.
In March 1951, Iran’s parliament voted
to proceed with nationalisation. This caused consternation in the west – most
notably in Britain, where the prospect of nationalisation was seen as
potentially hugely damaging to the economy. Furthermore, it would have
undermined Britain’s influence in the Middle East. Plotting to depose Mosaddegh
began in earnest.
In the event, the coup – named Operation
Ajax – was a joint venture between the CIA and MI6. The shah, Mohammad Reza
Pahlavi, who had recently fled the country after an earlier plot to remove
Mossadegh had failed, returned to Iran.
Within a short period, he had tightened
his grip on the country’s security services and imposed a dictatorial regime
which ruled through brutality and fear. Pahlavi banned all opposition political
parties, and many of the activists who participated in the movement for
nationalisation of oil were arrested or fled the country.
Government by fear
In 1957, the shah established an
internal security service, Sazman-e Ettel’at va Amniyat-e Keshvar (Savak),
which essentially ran Iran at the shah’s bidding. From then until 1975, only
two major political parties were allowed to operate, the People’s Party (Ḥezb-e
Mardom) and the New Iran Party (Ḥezb-e Iran-e Novin), and all parliamentary
candidates had to be approved by Savak.
Both parties in reality were wholly
under the shah’s control. The parliament only existed to rubber-stamp his
decisions, as did the prime minister – who the shah appointed.
In 1975, the shah took his domination of
Iranian politics further, establishing a single party, the Party of
Resurrection of the Iranian Nation (Hezb-e Rastakhiz), which all Iranians were
obliged to join. By 1979, when Iran rose up in a popular revolution, it was a
virtual absolute monarchy, with the shah’s will enforced by the dreaded Savak
secret police.
Within months of the revolution, though,
Iran’s religious authorities took control under the leadership of Ayatollah
Ruhollah Khomeini. The Islamic Republic quickly established its own secret
police, Savama – [Sazman-e Ettelaat Va Amniat Meli Iran](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ministry_of_Intelligence(Iran))_
– which used many of the same brutal methods as Savak.
‘Woman, Life, Freedom’
This week, Iranians will recall the 1953
coup as they prepare protests ahead of the anniversary of the “Woman, Life,
Freedom” uprising. This movement began in September 2022 after the death of
Mahsa Amini at the hands of the morality police – who patrol the streets tasked
with enforcing the laws on Islamic dress code in public – for the “crime” of
not wearing her hijab (headscarf) in the approved manner.
The resulting explosion of unrest has
posed the most serious challenge to the Islamic Republic in its history.
Although the state tried to crush the demonstrations from the beginning, the
protesters have defied police brutality and the prospect of severe punishment,
which included public executions and hundreds of deaths of protesters at the
hands of the security forces.
At the same time as battling the
oppression of their own state apparatus, ordinary Iranians are also suffering
under the brutal US-imposed regime of sanctions. In the past five years, these
sanctions – reimposed by Donald Trump after he unilaterally pulled the US out
of the Iran Nuclear Deal, which had been signed by his predecessor Barack Obama
in 2015 – have devastated the Iranian economy. Soaring inflation and
devaluation of the national currency have caused serious hardship for ordinary
Iranians.
As they fight for a better future,
Iranians clearly grasp how, 70 years after the coup snuffed out their fledgling
democracy, their internal struggles are still being influenced by foreign
powers.
And they ask themselves if Mahsa Amini,
and also Nika Shahkarami and Sarina Esmailzadeh – two other women beaten to
death by members of the state apparatus for protesting – as well as hundreds of
other young Iranians, would still be paying with their lives in Iran’s struggle
for basic rights today if the 1953 coup had not happened.
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