Podcast Episode Details

The Shah of Iran appointed a popular veteran politician, Mohammed Mossadeq, in April of 1951.  Mossadeq quickly announced his intention to nationalize the Anglo-Iranian oil company, prompting the Anglo-Iran hierarchy to withdraw refinery operatives and block Iranian oil from the world market.  The resulting economic downturn was unpopular but the embattled Mossadeq refused to waver.  By 1953, the British were no longer the imperial power that could crush such a quasi-colonial upstart.  But the US, under the newly installed Eisenhower administration, was already involved in Cold War conflicts in Korea and elsewhere and Iran, with a viable domestic Communist party and geographic proximity to the Soviet Union was another country run by an unpredictable individual who might embrace Moscow.  This, and Mossadeq’s October, 1952 severing of all British diplomatic ties, precipitated clandestine US intelligence activity. 

By 1978, even with the advent of the Carter administration and its focus on human rights, the Shah remained an important game piece of American international geopolitics and the US government’s tone deaf attitudes toward the growing national revulsion toward the Shah only intensified the anger of the Iranian people.