Brainless's mob began chanting slogans in support of the Shah early on August 19, slipping banknotes under windscreen wipers and giving others to all who would join them. It was a cynical tribute to the CIA's tactics soon all the streets around Parliament Square were squeezed tight with pro-Shah demonstrators. Orators miraculously sprang from the crowd and called for the downfall of Mossadeq. The Shah's portrait was hung on a banner across the railroad station.
At about 10 p.m., a fantastic procession of wrestlers, mountebanks and clowns emerged from the bazaar and struggled through the crowd. Suddenly they halted and--ripping off their disguises--transformed themselves into a group of about 300 young Iranians with guns and clubs who stormed the ministries nearby. A CIA agent on a rooftop above the square described the scene later as out of Cecil B. De Mille movie with a "cast of thousands" milling about in all directions.
The army was not yet won over although its loyalty to Mossadeq was feebler than Roosevelt and the generals had dared to hope. For when Zahedi arrived in a tank at Parliament Square a few tense moments passed and then the troops defending Foreign Minister Fatemi threw their caps in the air and declared for the Shah. By mid-afternoon Tehran was under the control of General Zahedi.
In Rome the Shah was despondent. A gynecologist provided by the CIA was giving a course of injections to his wife, Soroya, in a vain attempt to reverse her childlessness. He badgered her so often to make love with her husband that she finally lost her temper. "Doctor," she snapped, "all I'm asking you to do is find something to break my eggs. I'll see the Shah goes on making omelettes." The news of the successful coup cheered the Shah over this contretemps, however, and he returned triumphantly to Iran.
CRITICS of the Shah, American imperialism and the CIA present the 1953 coup as the result of the agency's effort alone. The Shah saw it as a spontaneous movement on the part of the people. The truth lies between the two. Roosevelt certainly played an invaluable coordinating role (and the Shah rewarded him for it by taking him on a skiing holiday, all expenses paid, every year since the coup). The CIA provided money to buy the loyalty of the crowd and beyond this furnished the most important element of all for those loyal to the Shah--confidence that the United States supported them. But without a change in the direction of the political tide the CIA was powerless.
In fact the agency's effort in Iran was modest, especially by later standards. It cost no more than $20 million to restore the Shah to the throne and ensure (if only in the short term) American influence in the area. Dulles cleverly hid the importance of luck in the successful coup and revelled in the image of invincibility acquired by the CIA. The CIA mythe was born in Iran and the 1953 coup bears much responsibility for the subsequent expansion of covert activities so that they came to dominate the agency.
If only because the outcome of the coup is not wholly attributable to the US, America should not be held responsible for all the excesses of the Shah since that time. The Shah was dominated by the United States in the 1950s and early '60s but even at this time he was adept at balancing America against Russia, hinting that he might at any time sign treaties with the Soviets. As a secret CIA National Intelligence Estimate phrased it in 1961: "a continuing problem for the U.S. will be how to give the Shah sufficient support to preserve his present pro-Western policy without encouraging excessive demands for aid." With the massive oil deposits and valuable intelligence sites made available in Iran growing in importance the U.S. came to exert little pressure for reform and the Shah became less and less susceptible to it.
America also failed to encourage reforms in Iran for a different reason. The CIA did not provide the U.S. government with sufficient, accurate intelligence about both the growth of opposition and its causes--among them repressive domestic policies. This was because the CIA saw SAVAK, the Iranian secret police, as a friendly intelligence service on the lines of the British or French models with whom it exchanges information, rather than an instrument of political oppression akin to the KGB.
How different would Iran be in 1979 if the CIA had not intervened. Mossadeq's aims were not as laudable as many now believe: in June and July 1953 he was almost certainly planning to abolish the Iranian parliament. As support slid from beneath his feet he was also being forced to rely unduly on the Iranian Communist Party. The CIA probably replaced one emerging dictator by another but in the long run by doing so it increased hatred of the United States. Kermit Roosevelt would have been saddened. The operation begun with moral fervor to save the Iranians for democracy resulted in a totalitarian regime which crushed the very freedom the coup of 1953 was supposed to create.
Trevor Barnes is a Kennedy Fellow from Ipswich, England, currently researching the CIA in Europe, 1945-55.