Iran coup: Tudeh’s inglorious role

international | anti-war / imperialism | other press Friday December 07, 2012 13:46 by Elric

Torab Saleth reviews: Ervand Abrahamian, 'The coup: 1953, the CIA and the roots of modern US-Iranian relations', New Press, 2013, pp304, £16.84. Instead of physically opposing the Coup the Tudeh were out distributing leaflets and getting people to sign petitions. Remind you of anyone? Full text at link.

With the continuing efforts made by the self-proclaimed global imperial power, the USA, to achieve ‘regime change’ in Iran, it is timely that a book about the 1953 coup - in which the US, with the help of the British government, carried out exactly such regime change - has been published. The coup was aimed against Mohammad Mosaddegh’s National Front1 government, which had nationalised the British-controlled Iranian oil industries.

If Los Angeles-based Iranian TV stations or Facebook campaigns have given the imperialists a false impression that a nation is waiting to be liberated by the US and its allies, this book should remind them why there is in fact still a deep and widespread hostility in Iran towards the USA and Britain: precisely because of this event.

Mohamed Mossadegh: took wind out of sails of opportunist ‘official communists’

The historical irony is that the forefathers of the current dictators in Tehran were indeed part of the very same ‘pro-democracy’ coalition of forces that helped the US in its 1953 coup. The Shi’ite hierarchy was instrumental in it. Indeed the coup succeeded at the second attempt because of the help accorded by Shi’ite rent-a-crowd mullahs. The same rabble-rousers who were instrumental in helping the CIA save the shah in 1953 organised riots two decades later in support of ayatollah Ruhollah Khomeini. Indeed, the whole calamity called the ‘Islamic Republic of Iran’ would not have come into existence if it had not been for that coup. ...