The CIA And The Ayatollahs: A Match Made In Hell

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An excerpt from, “Iranian Ulama & the CIA: The Key Alliance Behind the 1953 Iranian Coup D’état” by Anthony Lucey, History In The Making, Vol. 12, Article 8, January 2019:

It is August 19, 1953 in Iran’s capital city of Tehran. Demonstrators are in the streets looting, rioting, chanting, and protesting. Beautiful mosques, main government and office buildings are being demolished and a local Tudeh (Iran’s Communist Party) theater and office equipment are burned to the ground. The demonstrators continue their march and attack local newspaper offices, leaving them in ruins. Trucks and buses now arrive flooding the streets with local tribesmen from surrounding areas who join the madness. The will of the people becomes too much, and soon the occupying army units join the movement. Civilians and soldiers, side by side, proceed to take over the main squares of the city and ultimately seize the broadcasting facilities of Radio Tehran. This historic Persian city has officially erupted into total chaos. Tremendous fear from local families caught in the fray fills the air. The demonstrations seem to have taken on a life of their own as they continuously grow in size. The mob moves on to take over the telegraph office, the foreign ministry, press and propaganda bureau, the police and army headquarters. Finally, they come to the home of the man who is the ostensible cause for all of the mayhem, their Prime Minister, Dr. Mohammad Mossadeq. A battle breaks out between Mossadeq’s supporters and the anti Mossadeq crowds, leaving hundreds of people dead on the streets. The overthrow is now complete, and later the same day Army General Fazlollah Zahedi announces that he is Iran’s new Prime Minister and that his forces now control the city. At the time, and for many years following the coup d’état which overthrew Prime Minister Mossadeq almost no one, outside of British and US intelligence and their Iranian operatives and collaborators, would have ever dreamed that this horrific scene was entirely fabricated, designed, and orchestrated by a new world power—the United States of America and their top intelligence agency, the CIA. Hard to believe as it might be, this is no movie scene, but a sad narrative that lies at the heart of modern US-Iranian relations. 

This research seeks to shed light on the relationship between the CIA and prominent Islamic religious figures and their participation in the 1953 Iranian coup. This work will draw much of its information from declassified CIA documents like CIA Operative Dr. Donald Wilber’s contemporary historical account titled “Overthrow of Premier Mossadeq of Iran, November 1952 – August 1953,” CIA Historian Claud Corrigan’s “The Battle for Iran,” CIA Staff Historian Steve Koch’s more recent CIA history titled “Zendebad Shah!,” as well as the newly declassified British memorandums titled “Persia: Political Review of the Recent Crisis,” which provides key information regarding the payoffs of Iranian clerics by the CIA as well the expectations the CIA held for those clerics in return for said payoffs, the actions taken by both the CIA and key members of the Ulama, and the roles played by prominent groups and individuals throughout the major sectors of Iranian society. This research aims to deepen and enhance our understanding of the inner workings of the CIA, their role within the unfortunate tale of the 1953 coup, the motivating factors behind the CIA involvement, as well as the contributions of Iran’s own religious elites towards the toppling of Dr. Mossadeq.  

The first portion of this research will provide a deep historical context of the events leading up to the ousting of Prime Minister Mossadeq from office with the aim of providing sufficient background to facilitate the understanding required to make sense of this complicated course of events. First, it is necessary to return to the beginning in1901 with the notorious D’Arcy oil concession of Iranian oil rights to the British, continue into the early 1950s with the nationalization of Iranian oil, and conclude with the unfolding of the coup itself. The second portion of this study will focus on Mohammad Mossadeq himself, providing a background on the type of man he was and the positions he stood so strongly for. In this section we will also look into why the US and Britain both wanted to remove Mossadeq and their motivations for conducting the coup. This segment also aims to cover the regional and economic goals desired from the removal of Mossadeq and the consequences that followed. The third section of this paper will provide a background on the ulama, their role within Iranian society, and possible motivations for their participation in the coup. Section four will inquire into the relationship between the CIA and members of the Ulama as well as their direct involvement through forming and implementing anti-Mossadeq street demonstrations, by using their influence in the political realm in Iran, in exchange for bribes in the form of cash as well as potential backing for power positions within the Iranian government, and by filtering “black” and “gray” propaganda through the mosques and their religious circles in hopes of toppling Mossadeq. This research will also help to show the inner workings of the CIA at this time and other activities they carried out in congruence with ulama networking and bribery that facilitated the coup. Lastly, I will introduce and analyze the primary source documents from the CIA and British Intelligence (MI6) that give context to the entire process of the coup as well as irrefutable, incriminating evidence of the CIA utilizing money to bribe influential Iranian clerics into participating in the 1953 Iranian coup.   

. . .Claud H. Corrigan, member of the CIA’s History Staff provides the CIA’s most blatant admission of guilt to date in his detailed history of the 1953 coup in Iran titled The Battle for Iran where he states:  

“The point that the majority of these accounts miss is a key one: the military coup that overthrew Mosadeq and his National Front cabinet was carried out under CIA direction as an act of U.S. foreign policy, conceived and approved at the highest levels of government. It was not an aggressively simplistic solution, clandestinely arrived at but was instead an official admission by both the United States and United Kingdom that normal, rational methods of international communication and commerce had failed. TPAJAX was entered into as a last resort.”

Kermit Roosevelt, head of the CIA’s Near East and Africa Division and grandson of US President Theodore Roosevelt, was selected by President Eisenhower, CIA Director Dulles, as well as the British MI6 and given complete authority to command and carry out the overthrow and removal of Mossadeq in Tehran by any means necessary. Along with the British, and other US operatives, Kermit Roosevelt and the CIA used a plethora of techniques to influence Iran’s bureaucrats, clerics, merchants, workers, criminals, religious community, and the remainder of the masses, in an effort to shift their views regarding Mossadeq, in as negative a way as possible, in order to undermine the massive amount of power he held in Iran at the time. Long before Roosevelt and the CIA had arrived in Iran, the British had been building a large network of inside agents, including key figures such as the powerful Rashidyan Brothers, prominent businessmen and pro-British loyalists, who they could rely on for key intelligence information, to disseminate propaganda, and to help influence and mobilize the masses when needed.55 However, once the British had been ousted by Mossadeq in October 1952, they were forced to share the identities of their inside agents with the US and had to rely on the Americans to carry out the groundwork while Britain assisted behind the scenes. The CIA built some of their own relationships once in Iran but most of the key players that the CIA would utilize in the removal of Mossadeq were apart of Britain’s vast network of insiders. Many of the covert techniques and dealings that were used by the CIA can be found throughout Claud Corrigan’s Battle for Iran, CIA Historian and head coup propagandist Dr. Donald Wilber’s Clandestine Service History: Overthrow of Premier Mossadeq of Iran – November 1952-August 1953, CIA History Staff member Scott A Koch’s “Zendebad, Shah!”:The Central Intelligence Agency and the Fall of Iranian Prime Minister Mohammed Mossadeq, August 1953, along with the newly declassified top-secret CIA documents and British Memorandums from the Foreign Relations of the United States 1952-1954, Iran, 1951-1954, Volume X, titled Persia: Political Review of the Recent Crisis,” September 2, 1953 which lie at the heart of this core analysis.  

The main focus and foundation of my analysis will rely on Dr. Donald Wilber’s Overthrow of Premier Mossadeq of Iran which provides a contemporary first-hand account of the actions that were taken by the CIA, including its alliance with the ulama, the details regarding how many of those actions were carried out, as well as context for the thinking that motivated them. While Wilber’s work provides an abundance of important information regarding the 1953 coup in Iran, it must be understood that a good portion of the original text is still redacted, therefore we do not have all the details and certain aspects must be logically pieced together from information gathered from other primary documents and the many works of past scholars specializing in this field. Corrigan’s Battle for Iran and Koch’s Zenbedad Shah! will share the important role of helping to fill in any gaps found within Wilber’s work, as well as to help confirm or deny the details Wilber offers.  

Once the US government and the CIA had come to the conclusion that they would commit completely to Mossadeq’s removal by any means necessary, CIA Director Allen Dulles approved a $1,000,000 budget on April 4, 1953 “which could be used by the Tehran Station in any way that would bring about the fall of Mossadeq.”56 According to Wilber, one of the very first aims of the CIA and ways in which they chose to allocate this money was to steadily intensify their anti-Mossadeq and pro-Shah propaganda. They wanted to saturate the country as quickly and effectively as possible through a multi-layered approach by targeting the population religiously, politically, economically and socially. “In Iran, CIA and SIS propaganda assets were to conduct an increasingly intensified propaganda effort through press, handbills, and the Tehran clergy in a campaign designed to weaken the Mossadeq government in any way possible.” The United States government then went on to have some of their high-ranking officials make public statements that made clear that American economic aid would not be given to Iran as long as Mossadeq was in power. This was done with the goal to diminish any confidence the people of Iran had in Mossadegh and to eliminate the idea that he was on good terms with the US and had the country’s support.

Wilber’s report continues on to explain how the CIA played a crucial role in choosing who was to replace Mossadeq once he was out of the way. General Fazlollah Zahedi, who had previously been a member of Mossadeq’s cabinet, was seen as the best choice to step in as Iran’s new Prime Minister. This was due to Zahedi being the only reputable figure in Iran who had consistently spoken out in opposition to Mossadeq and at the same time had a large enough following to permit his new upcoming position as prime minister.61 While supporting Zahedi had its faults, such as his a pro-German stance during WWII, he had a solid record as a leader and combat officer, was staunchly devoted to the Shah, and he had an “aggressive desire to change the course of his country’s destiny.”62 The CIA went on to approach Zahedi personally and explain their goal of implementing him as the new prime minister along with orders that he was to name a new military secretariat, at which point the CIA would provide a “detailed staff plan of action.”63 While the CIA had chosen the man they wished to place as Iran’s new Prime Minister, they also knew that this would not be possible without the cooperation of the Shah. The Shah’s support would provide two requisite actions that were necessary to carry out a smooth transition between Mossadeq and Zahedi: the first was to ensure the backing of the Tehran military garrisons, and the second was to provide for the legal succession of Zahedi as Prime Minister.64  The  only  glaring issue with this plan of action was that the Shah of Iran was an indecisive, timid, and fearful man who was deathly scared of the repercussions of a failed coup attempt that he was complicit in.

It was no secret to the CIA or US government that the Shah would not be so easily persuaded to go along with the coup due to this specific set of character traits. Therefore, the CIA took it upon themselves to call on the Shah’s much more confident and aggressive twin sister, Princess Ashraf Pahlavi, for some assistance in coercing her brother to fall in line with the joint US-British plans. The Princess was brought in reluctantly from Europe back to Tehran to push the Shah towards the removal of Mossadeq as prime minister and to make clear that she had been communicating with the US and the British who had requested her support on this matter. The Central Intelligence officials also decided to try to persuade the Shah into participation by setting up a visit from General H. Norman Schwarzkopf, who the Shah knew personally and had grown to like and respect. It was Schwarzkopf’s job to explain the upcoming plans of the CIA and to guide the Shah towards signing three firmans (royal decrees), which would provide the needed legal basis for the new change in government.65 66 The first firman was meant to dismiss Mossadeq from office, the second was to appoint General Zahedi as his successor, and the third to call for the Army to stay loyal to the Shah. Through their agents in the Tehran military, the CIA made as certain as possible, the support of the Army for the Shah and for the acceptance of General Zahedi as prime minister.67 However, Corrigan’s history shows that Kermit Roosevelt lowered the number of firmans to be signed by the Shah from three to two. The first to dismiss Mossadeq from his position as Prime Minister and the second would name Zahedi as his successor. The information in the paragraph following this section has been completely redacted.

. . .It was not until the beginning of July 1, 1953 that the Director of the MI6, the British Foreign Secretary, and the British Prime Minister signed off on the official operation plans for  the coup. Then, finally on July 11, 1953 the Director of the CIA, the Secretary of State, and President Eisenhower approved the final plans which was an action based on National Security Council Report 136/1 “U.S. Policy Regarding the Present Situation in Iran.” Prior to this official authorization however, the Tehran station was continuing it’s covert activities and gained authorization to spend one million rials per week, which at the time was at a rate of 1 US dollar for every 90 rials ($90,000 USD), in order to purchase the support and cooperation of the members of the Majlis. Around this same time one of the two main groups within the CIA, who were working together but on different areas on the project of the coup, put together an exhaustive military plan, which was given to Zahedi and his military secretariat, providing them a detailed roadmap for action. In fact, the CIA was so well prepared that they had three separate plans of actions depending on the different scenarios that could potentially play out. The second group within the CIA, which was headed by Dr. Donald Wilber (the author of this document), was given the responsibility of carrying out the psychological warfare portion of the plan.

To further degrade the level of respect and trust the people of Iran felt towards Mossadeq, the US government orchestrated a series of three publications and speeches that were meant to diminish his public standing. The first of this series of publications, released July 9, 1953, was a copy of President Eisenhower’s letter written to Dr. Mossadeq on June 29, 1953 which made it explicit that increased economic aid for Iran would not be provided to help with the loss of Iran’s oil sales due to British blockades. The second publication came from the Secretary of State’s press conference on July 28, 1953, where the US stated that the growth and toleration of the activities of Iran’s Communist Tudeh Party made it almost impossible for any further US aid or assistance.76 This was intended negatively affect US public opinion regarding Mossadeq as well as to shape international views of the situation. Finally, President Eisenhower gave a speech in Seattle at the Governor’s convention where he stated that, “the United States would not sit by and see Asian countries fall behind the Iron Curtain.”77 This speech would prove to have a significant effect on the situation in Iran. The CIA, in cooperation with the Department of State, created and published several articles in major American newspapers and magazines, which they knew would be reproduced in Iran. The reproduction of these scripted articles would carry heavy influence over the opinions of Iran’s population and would help to slightly loosen the grip Mohammad Mossadeq held over his people.