CIA
Updated 2024-08-25
2024-08-14 Seeds of Today’s Middle East Disaster Were Sown by the CIA | Opinion Seventy-one years ago this week, a pair of energetic American brothers carried out a plan to overthrow a pesky Middle Eastern government, setting in motion a chain of events that has the region on the cusp of all-out war. The convoluted tale offers a clear illustration of a truism we tend to ignore: Beware most of all the consequences that are unintended.
In the summer of 1953, the target of U.S. Secretary of State John Foster Dulles and his brother, CIA director Allen Dulles, was Iranian Prime Minister Mohammad Mossadegh, who had nationalized Iran’s oil industry. It was a popular move that was part of a broader effort to assert Iranian sovereignty and please Iranians frustrated with foreign control of their resources.
Mossadegh set about reforming the system to diminish the power of the pro-Western head of state, Mohammad Reza Pahlavi, who had been in power for just a decade and was the latest incarnation of centuries of monarchic rule. Having come of age in World War II, the “Shah of Iran” was mindful of the preferences of the victors, chiefly the United States and Britain, and knew well that they preferred their oil close at hand.
As the government seized more and more of the shah’s authority, he attempted to dismiss Mossadegh through a royal decree—but the premier refused to step down, leading to a political crisis. Fearing for his safety, the shah fled Iran, going first to Baghdad and then to Rome, leaving Mossadegh briefly fully in charge.
Enter the brothers Dulles, aided by Britain’s spy agency, MI6. Only declassified in recent years, their Operation Ajax included all the hallmarks: Psychological warfare, bribes, orchestrated street protests and dark propaganda warnings of a world where the Soviet Union could gain a foothold in the oil-rich Middle East if Mossadegh’s nationalist agenda prevailed. The effort began in earnest on Aug. 15, 1953, and reached its climax four days later when pro-shah forces stormed Mossadegh’s residence, leading to his arrest. The shah was reinstated with U.S. and British backing, his return celebrated with orchestrated jubilation. https://www.msn.com/en-us/news/world/seeds-of-today-s-middle-east-disaster-were-sown-by-the-cia-opinion/ar-AA1oNzhM?
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