1882-1967
Iranian politician
1. Introduction
Mohammad Mossadegh (pronounced ‘Mosser-DECK’) was the prime minister of Iran from 1951 to 1953, when he was deposed in a coup facilitated by the CIA and MI6, authorised by Eisenhower and Churchill. He had a doctorate in law and held various ministerial offices, including finance, foreign affairs and national defence. He became prime minister on a platform of overturning foreign influence and oversaw the nationalisation of Iran’s oil industry. This was initially popular domestically but international sanctions became a significant factor in his downfall. He was jailed then kept under house arrest for 10 years, dying while still under confinement at age 84.
2. Stories
- Mossadegh and Churchill both liked to work in bed, but Mossadegh took it to an extreme.
- Mossadegh was a leading campaigner for nationalisation of the Iranian oil industry, which took place in 1951.
- Mossadegh was named 1951 ‘Man of the Year’ by Time magazine.
- Nationalisation resulted in British counteraction and an American attempt at mediation by Churchill’s friend Averell Harriman.
- The codename TPAJAX (‘Operation Ajax’) was derived from the CIA code for Iran (‘TP’) and the Ajax brand of cleaning products, indicating the cleaning-up of a messy situation.
- Western support for the shah was a key factor in his downfall in the 1979 Revolution.
- Both Mossadegh and the shah died in isolation: the former under house arrest in Iran and the latter in exile in Egypt.
Mossadegh and Churchill both liked to work in bed, but Mossadegh took it to an extreme.
Whenever he could, Churchill would spend much of the morning in bed, surrounded by papers and books. He would often have meetings with his personal staff in his bedroom, but rarely with others. Mossadegh, however, would often spend most of his working day in bed in pyjamas, with colleagues and important visitors ushered in to see him.
In Mossadegh’s case, it was partly due to illness. In his student days in Paris, he developed stomach ulcers and lay horizontally when at lectures. His son, who was his personal physician, said he developed tuberculosis there and returned to Iran with a damaged lung, with his initial studies incomplete. He sometimes fainted, perhaps due to low blood pressure. He also had a nervous condition and insomnia. All of these left him with little energy, although he would still try to work 14-hour days. His health was also affected by hunger strikes during a jail sentence while out of favour with the shah (although there were claims that he was a secret ‘cookie nibbler’).
Mossadegh was an eccentric showman. He would sometimes shriek, wail, and roll around in his bed, with strange hand gestures; a quite perturbing experience for some of his visitors. He was even more tearful than Churchill, and his grey woollen pyjamas became a form of trademark, like Churchill’s one-piece ‘siren suits’. When examined by two American doctors on different occasions, he was found to have no serious illness, leading some to believe that his bed-ridden state was partly from hypochondria, as well as being a disconcerting way to control the setting for meetings, particularly oil negotiations. Stories about public faints may be exaggerated, but to the extent that the swoons happened, they may have been partly staged. He had rapid mood changes which he used for effect in his dramatic speeches.
He gained a wide reputation for his unusual behaviour. Dean Acheson, US Secretary of State, described him ambiguously as ‘one of the most amazing characters I have ever met.1 Churchill was less equivocal, referring to Mossadegh (or ‘Mussy Duck’, as he called him) as ‘an elderly lunatic bent on wrecking his country and handing it over to the Communists’.2
Mossadegh was a leading campaigner for nationalisation of the Iranian oil industry, which took place in 1951.
Iranian feelings against British control of the oil industry ran high, particularly after World War II. The war had resulted in considerable economic hardship and there was resentment about British and Soviet occupation from 1941 to 1946 (see Reza Shah). In 1947 there was a major labour strike at a large Abadan refinery belong to the Anglo-Iranian Oil Corporation (‘AIOC’), primarily because of poor living conditions which contrasted strongly with those of the foreign workforce.
The same year, the majlis (parliament), ordered a renegotiation of the AIOC contract. AIOC was paying more in British taxes than in Iranian royalties. It made a few concessions but nothing substantive and it continued to refuse to allow its books to be audited, creating suspicions of funds being siphoned off. In 1949, Mossadegh formed the National Front party, with the primary goal of nationalising the oil industry. Meanwhile Saudi Arabia and Venezuela were negotiating oil contracts with foreign companies which would result in 50/50 profit shares, a split that AIOC flatly refused for Iran, pointing out that much of its investment was outside the country in the form of distribution and marketing networks, including a large shipping fleet.
In March 1951, Prime Minister Razmara made a statement to the majlis, warning of the dangers of nationalisation and expropriation. Four days later he was shot dead by an assassin from a fundamentalist group, but he was not mourned much as he was seen by many as being under British control.
The majlis promptly voted to nationalise the oil industry and expropriated AIOC’s Iranian assets, handing them to the new National Iranian Oil Company (‘NIOC’). Mossadegh was appointed prime minister by Mohammed Reza Shah (son of Reza Shah), against the shah’s will, but popular and parliamentary support for Mossadegh was too strong to resist. Within a few days of his appointment, the nationalisation law took effect, fulfilling Mossadegh’s greatest ambition.
UK prime minister Clement Attlee considered implementing Operation Buccaneer, a plan to occupy Abadan and take control of the refinery, as did Churchill who succeeded him in October 1951. However, it did not have US support and both decided against it.
Mossadegh was named 1951 ‘Man of the Year’ by Time magazine.
The description under Mossadegh’s picture on Time’s front cover was: ‘He oiled the wheels of chaos’, referring to his role in Iran’s oil industry nationalisation and the subsequent disruption. It viewed Mossadegh as being willing to ruin his own country rather than give in to the British and saw him as representing ‘the New Menace’: extreme anti-Western sentiment in the Middle East where the West no longer knew its role and where communism could take hold if instability increased.
Churchill was mentioned as an also-ran for Man of the Year: ‘The outstanding comeback of 1951 was Winston Churchill’s. In his first two months of office he moved with the utmost caution, apparently trying to prove that he could be almost as colorless as a Socialist. This might be good politics, but it did not make big news.’3 Other candidates were General Dwight Eisenhower, later US president, and John Foster Dulles, later US secretary of state. These three authorised a coup against Mossadegh two years later.
During 1951, Mossadegh visited the USA for six weeks, attending meetings at the United Nations and holding discussions with President Truman and his senior officials. While in Washington, D.C., for a week, instead of staying at a hotel he checked in to the presidential suite at the Walter Reed General Hospital, well known for its treatment of senior dignitaries. He conducted a number of meetings from bed there and took the opportunity for some medical attention from President Truman’s personal physician. A few years later, both Eisenhower and Dulles died in the hospital while being treated there.
The oil nationalisation initially increased Mossadegh’s popularity in Iran. He resigned as prime minister in 1952 in protest at the shah’s refusal to allow him to appoint the head of the military. Riots broke out in support of Mossadegh and he was soon reinstated and given the powers he demanded. These were then expanded, allowing him to make sweeping reforms which weakened and infuriated the landed aristocracy, the pro-western monarchy and Shia Muslim clerics who opposed his ideal of a secular democracy. On the other hand, the Iranian communist party, Tudeh, did not see him as being radical enough.
Nationalisation resulted in British counteraction and an American attempt at mediation by Churchill’s friend Averell Harriman.
The Iranian government intended to provide compensation to shareholders from 25 percent of NIOC profits. Nevertheless, the Attlee government in Britain viewed the Iranian actions as theft and as an extremely concerning precedent for western interests elsewhere. AIOC blocked NIOC from the former’s distribution system and markets and threatened any buyers of Iranian oil with legal action on the basis that it belonged to AIOC. Mossadegh expelled British AIOC workers but Iran did not have enough knowledgeable staff to replace them. Oil production and sales collapsed, and Britain soon also imposed other sanctions, crippling the Iranian economy.
Concerned about Iran falling into Soviet hands, President Truman sent a mediator, Averell Harriman, to Tehran. During World War II, Harriman had been President Franklin D. Roosevelt’s special envoy to the UK, during which he became friends with Churchill and had an affair with Pamela (née Digby), who was married to Churchill’s son Randolph. Harriman sat regularly by Mossadegh’s bed while Vernon Walters, a presidential aide, sat on the end of the bed, a bemusing sight for other officials. Walters later became deputy director of the CIA and an ambassador.
At one point, Mossadegh seemed to be demanding more than 100 percent of the oil revenue. Harriman said that they needed to agree that nothing can be larger than the sum of its parts. ‘That is false,’ said Mossadegh. ‘Consider the fox. His tail is often much longer than he is.’4 He rolled around on his bed, laughing wildly, with his pillow over his head.
Discussions continued for weeks, with Harriman travelling to London twice to try and seek common ground between Iran and Britain. Many British officials were opposed to the American mediation altogether, fearing that they would give Mossadegh more confidence. A British delegation visited Tehran, but discussions failed.
The British became increasingly convinced that there would be no solution while Mossadegh was in power. The Americans grew ever more anxious about Iran turning to the Soviets. In June 1953, the CIA and MI6 developed Operation Ajax to bring about regime change.
The codename TPAJAX (‘Operation Ajax’) was derived from the CIA code for Iran (‘TP’) and the Ajax brand of cleaning products, indicating the cleaning-up of a messy situation.
The UK made overtures to the USA in late 1952 about instigating a coup but Truman was ambivalent and the timing was not right during a presidential election campaign. Eisenhower won the election and soon overcame his initial concerns about taking action in Iran.
Although prompted by MI6, with the unsubtle codename ‘Operation Boot’, the plan became a joint but primarily CIA operation, named ‘Ajax’ on the American side. It was spearheaded by CIA agent Kim Roosevelt, ex-president Theodore Roosevelt’s grandson who had recently been involved in a covert operation in Egypt (see Gamal Abdel Nasser).
Mossadegh dissolved parliament in August 1953, taking on its powers and reducing those of the shah, a move which became the ostensible reason for the coup. The CIA asked the shah to dismiss Mossadegh, which he initially refused to do, but feared for his own position and changed his mind. He appointed General Zahedi as the new prime minister, triggering large and violent demonstrations by Mossadegh supporters. The shah fled to Baghdad, then to Italy.
Mossadegh thought that he had regained power but Zahedi and pro-shah Ayatollah Behbahani organised counter-demonstrations. The army occupied government buildings, facilitated by CIA money and logistical support. Mossadegh’s house was shelled by a tank and he gave himself up. Major-General Norman Schwarzkopf Senior (father of ‘Stormin’ Norman’ who led Coalition forces in the 1990-91 Gulf War) persuaded the shah to return to Iran, which he did in the company of Allen Dulles, head of the CIA and brother of John Foster Dulles, by then US secretary of state.
In his reports and memoirs, Kim Roosevelt may have exaggerated his and the CIA’s role in the coup but he impressed Churchill nevertheless when visiting him a few days later in Downing Street. Churchill was still recovering from a major stroke and drifted in and out of consciousness but concluded by saying that he wished he had been younger so he could have served under Roosevelt in such a venture.
Western support for the shah was a key factor in his downfall in the 1979 Revolution.
The restoration of the shah and his powers was initially welcomed by cheering crowds in Tehran. Mossadegh was sentenced to death but the shah commuted this to three years in prison followed by house arrest. The USA agreed to fund various aspects of the new regime to give it momentum and insisted that AIOC become a consortium. Named ‘Iranian Oil Participants’, its ownership was 40 percent British, 40 percent American, 14 percent Anglo-Dutch and six percent French. The British entity was called ‘British Petroleum’ (today simply ‘BP’) which was originally a German company’s brand for its UK operations, appropriated during World War I. Profits were split 50/50 with NIOC, but they were unaudited and suspicions of creative accounting lingered.
The oil and revenues flowed again which helped the pro-western shah to make sweeping modernisations known as the White Revolution (‘white’ indicating non-communist and bloodless), particularly land reforms, large infrastructure projects and social liberalisation including female suffrage. The latter put him on a collision course with Shia clerics, as did land reforms, detracting from the clerics’ traditional authority in rural areas.
The shah became increasingly repressive, cracking down on dissidents with his brutal secret police, SAVAK (‘National Organization for Security and Intelligence’), allegedly established with CIA assistance. He exiled the popular cleric Ayatollah Khomeini and adopted the ancient title Shahanshah (‘King of Kings’).
The 1979 Revolution was the culmination of over a year of protests against the shah. He had become increasingly unpopular because of his heavy-handedness, secularism and being seen by many as a Western puppet. He was also blamed for wealth inequalities. Some protests turned into major riots which included symbols of the West as their targets, including cinemas and the British embassy, which was partially burned in November 1978.
A newly appointed military government failed to contain huge demonstrations, with crowds of several million. The shah fled Iran in January 1979 and Khomeini returned in February. Prime Minister Shapour Bakhtiar fled in disguise but was assassinated in Paris in 1991. After a referendum, the country became the Islamic Republic of Iran in October 1979, and Khomeini became its supreme leader in December of the same year.
Both Mossadegh and the shah died in isolation: the former under house arrest in Iran and the latter in exile in Egypt.
After release from jail, Mossadegh spent his house arrest in a family property around 60 miles (100 km) from Tehran. He developed mouth cancer and was granted permission to travel to Tehran for radiation treatment. He died in March 1967 in hospital, aged 84, with a hospital spokesman announcing that he had died of intestinal bleeding. He wanted to be buried in Ibn-e Baabevey cemetery in Rey, southern Tehran, next to his supporters who had died during political violence in 1952. This was refused by the shah, as was a funeral ceremony for his family and a death announcement in the newspapers. He was buried under one of the rooms in his house to prevent his grave from becoming a place of public interest.
A memorial ceremony was held for Mossadegh at his empty grave site in Ibn-e Baabevey in 1980 and a memorial stone was installed. A week later, the stone was toppled and broken by Islamist opponents.
Although airbrushed from many versions of Iranian history, he still has some admirers. His grandson Adbol Madjid Bayat Mossadegh established the Mossadegh Foundation in Geneva, Switzerland, dedicated to preserving the memory of his grandfather and to providing information about Iran.
The shah’s flight from Iran took him to Egypt, Morocco, the Bahamas and Mexico. He had been diagnosed with stomach cancer five years earlier and his condition was deteriorating. President Jimmy Carter approved treatment in the USA, against warnings of reprisals in Iran. Despite attempts to keep the visit secret, news reached Iran and the US embassy in Tehran was stormed and occupied for 444 days (nearly 15 months) in 1979 to 1981, with 53 Americans being held hostage.* The shah was hurriedly expelled from the USA, staying first in Panama, then moving to Egypt, where he was given asylum by President Anwar Sadat. Following surgery, he undertook chemotherapy but died in July 1980. Sadat accorded him a state funeral and he was buried at the Al-Rifa’i mosque in Cairo, which had previously been his father’s temporary resting place (see Reza Shah).
* US diplomatic relations have not been restored and it is represented informally by Switzerland. The UK was represented by Sweden until the UK embassy reopened in 1989 on former Winston Churchill Street, renamed in 1981 as Bobby Sands Street, after the IRA hunger striker. The official UK embassy address switched to 198 Ferdowsi Avenue as a result of the street name change. For a story about how the name change came about, see Pedram Moallemian, ‘The Night We Named Bobby Sands Street’, Bobby Sands Trust.
3. Biographical summary
| Occupation | Lawyer, administrator, politician |
| Country | Iran |
| Career | Vali (Governor) of Fars Province (1920-21). Minister of Finance (1921-22). Vali of Azerbaijan Province (1922). Member of Parliament (1924-28, 1944-46, 1950-51). Minister of Foreign Affairs (1921, 1923). Oil industry nationalisation (1951). Minister of National Defence (1952-53). Prime Minister (1951-52, 1952-53). |
| Born | 1882 in Tehran, Persia (8 years younger than Churchill) |
| Father | Hedayatollah Vazir Daftar Ashtiani (1818-92), finance minister; died of cholera when Mohammad was aged 10 |
| Mother | Malek Taj Khanom (1854-1932), princess; great-granddaughter of a shah; Hedayatollah was the second of her three husbands |
| Siblings | Younger of two siblings: 1. Amena (sister) 2. Mohammad (1882-1967) At least four step-siblings from mother’s other marriages. |
| Education | Paris Institute of Political Studies (incomplete); University of Neuchâtel (PhD in law) |
| Spouse | Zahra Khanum (1879-1965), granddaughter of a shah; m. 1901 until her death in 1965; married 64 years |
| Relationships | |
| Children | Five adult children: two sons and three daughters; two other sons died in infancy. 1. Ahmad (son), engineer 2. Ghulam Hussein (son), professor and his father’s physician 3. Mansura (daughter) 4. Zia Ashraf (daughter); her son Bayat runs the Mossadegh Foundation in Switzerland 5. Khadija (daughter) |
| Died | 1967 at Najmieh Hospital, Tehran, Iran, aged 84 (2 years after Churchill); intestinal bleeding; mouth cancer |
| Buried | Under his house in Ahmadabad-e Mosaddeq, Iran |
| Nickname | Mussy Duck (Churchill); Old Mossy (American officials) |
| Height | |
| Time magazine | Man of the Year 1951. Front cover: 1951 (twice including Man of the Year). |
4. See also
Middle East nationalists
- Al-Gaylani, Rashid Ali (Iraq)
- Al-Husseini, Amin (Palestine)
- Nasser, Gamal Abdel (Egypt)
Iran
- Shah, Reza
Churchill’s American friends connected with Iran
- Harriman, Averell
- Truman, Harry
Churchill controversies
- Imperialism
5. Further reading
Mossadegh
- De Bellaigue, Christopher, Patriot of Persia: Muhammad Mossadegh and a Tragic Anglo-American Coup (HarperCollins, 2013)
- Gasiorowski, Mark J., and Malcolm Byrne, Mohammad Mosaddeq and the 1953 Coup in Iran (Syracuse University Press, 2015)
- Mossadegh Project, ‘Dr. Mohammad Mossadegh Biography’, The Mossadegh Project
The CIA and MI6
- Abrahamian, Ervand, The Coup: 1953, the CIA, and the Roots of Modern U.S.-Iranian Relations (New Press, 2013)
- Kinzer, Stephen, All the Shah’s Men: An American Coup and the Roots of Middle East Terror (Wiley, 2008)
- Wilford, Hugh, America’s Great Game: The CIA’s Secret Arabists and the Shaping of the Modern Middle East (Basic Books, 2013)
Oil industry
- Bamberg, James, The History of the British Petroleum Company: Volume 2, The Anglo-Iranian Years, 1928-1954 (Cambridge University Press, 1982)
- Farmanfarmaian, Manucher, and Roxane Farmanfarmaian, Blood & Oil: A Prince’s Memoir of Iran, from the Shah to the Ayatollah (Random House Publishing Group, 2007)
The last Shah of Iran
- Milani, Abbas, The Shah (St. Martin’s Publishing Group, 2011)
- Scott Cooper, Andrew, The Fall of Heaven: The Pahlavis and the Final Days of Imperial Iran (Henry Holt and Company, 2016)
6. References
1. Robert L. Beisner, Dean Acheson: A Life in the Cold War (Oxford University Press, 2009).
2. Stephen Kinzer, All the Shah’s Men: An American Coup and the Roots of Middle East Terror (Wiley, 2008), p. 132.
3. TIME, ‘Man of the Year: Challenge of the East’, TIME, 1952.
4. Vernon A. Walters, Silent Missions (Doubleday, 1978), p. 250.