DH

This post is written once and for all to address the false narratives surrounding Mohammad Mossadegh and 1953, narratives pushed for decades by the Islamic Republic, the MEK, reformists, leftists, and repeated uncritically by uninformed foreign commentators such as Dave Smith and Scott Horton. What follows is not opinion. It is historical context: before, during, and after Mossadegh. With a focus on oil, because oil is the key to everything that followed. Oil before it mattered In the late 19th century, oil was not strategic. Coal powered industry. Oil only became critical around the turn of the 20th century. At that point, global oil was dominated by three players: Standard Oil (US), Royal Dutch (Netherlands), and Shell (Britain). Shell originally traded in seashells and antiques. When oil’s future became clear, it merged into Royal Dutch Shell, shifting effective control away from Britain. Britain now needed new oil sources under British influence. Why Britain turned east Oil was known to exist in the Middle East long before modern drilling. History books described surface seepages and oil lamps lighting streets in Arab cities at night. Much of the region was under the Ottoman Empire. Britain first tried to secure concessions there. William Knox D'Arcy approached the Ottomans. He failed. The Ottomans had already aligned major infrastructure and prospective oil development with Germany. Britain was shut out. This Anglo-German rivalry over resources became one of the early fault lines feeding into World War I. But that is a story for another day. Britain shifted focus. The Qajar concession That focus became Persia. Persia was politically weak, indebted, and fragmented. In 1901, Mozaffar al-Din Shah, one of the last Shah's of the Qajar Dynasty, granted D’Arcy a sweeping oil concession: • Duration: 60 years • Iran received £20,000 cash, £20,000 in shares, and 16% of net profits • All extraction, accounting, transport, and sales controlled by the British The Qajars had no infrastructure and no understanding of oil’s future value. This became the Anglo-Persian Oil Company (later BP). The inherited reality When Reza Shah Pahlavi took power, the concession remained legally binding. In 1933, he renegotiated it. Terms improved slightly, but remained unfavorable. States inherit contracts. Post-1941 Iran After the Allied invasion of 1941, Iran remained a constitutional monarchy under Mohammad Reza Pahlavi. Parliament gained greater authority. Prime ministers governed. Both the Shah and Mohammad Mossadegh supported Iranian control over oil. The dispute was method, not principle. Who Mossadegh actually was Mossadegh was not a populist outsider. He was: • Born into Qajar aristocracy • Married into the Qajar dynasty • One of Iran’s largest private landowners He was not an industrial planner or economic state-builder. Why Mossadegh was popular Mossadegh’s popularity did not come from governance or results. He framed the oil issue as follows: - “The Shah is giving Iran’s oil to foreigners.” - “Britain is stealing our wealth.” - “Nationalisation means Iran keeps 100% of its oil revenue.” To a population that did not yet understand oil economics, this was persuasive. What was not explained to the public: - Iran could not extract its own oil - Iran could not refine it - Iran could not insure, transport, or sell it - Iran had no alternative revenue source Oil income funded the state, the army, and imports In other words, nationalisation was presented as instant prosperity, not as a long, technical state-building process. Mossadegh deliberately personalized the issue and portrayed the Shah as the obstacle - Contracts were portrayed as betrayal - Legal constraints were ignored This turned a structural problem inherited from the Qajars into a moral accusation against the monarchy. - National sentiment rose. - Economic reality was deferred. So, his popularity was real. The foundation of it was not. Mossadegh’s miscalculation Mossadegh demanded immediate cancellation of the concession and expulsion of the British. The Shah opposed this for one reason: Iran lacked: - Engineers - Refineries - Tankers - Insurance - Buyers - Replacement revenue Oil was Iran’s main hard-currency income. Mossadegh ignored this. - Britain withdrew personnel and infrastructure. - Oil exports collapsed. - State revenue collapsed. - Iran approached bankruptcy and could not pay the army or civil servants. This happened before any foreign intervention. As for 'operation AJAX', it existed. No one denies this. It was a joint British-American covert effort to exploit an existing collapse, not invent one. It involved propaganda, coordination with pro-Shah figures, and paid demonstrations at peak instability. Foreign involvement played a role, but it was not omnipotent. Intelligence agencies amplify fractures. They do not manufacture mass opposition from nothing. Now for the often heard catchphrase: "The democratically elected prime minister, Mohammad Mossadegh". Mossadegh was not democratically elected. Iran had NO national election for prime minister. Under the constitution: - The Shah nominated a PM - Parliament confirmed him The Shah appointed Mossadegh. He did this because yes, he was popular. And he hoped Mossadegh would be able to strike a better oil deal. No “CIA-installed Shah” The Shah was already head of state. A coup is a seizure of power from outside or below the constitutional order. A monarch dismissing his own prime minister is not a coup. If it were, every dismissal of a PM anywhere would be a coup. What happened next Mossadegh was tried under Iranian law and placed under house arrest. He played no further political role. Iran re-entered the oil market through a 50–50 consortium agreement, set to expire in 1979. The part people always omit By the mid-1970s, the Shah publicly declared Iran would not renew the concession. That meant 100% Iranian control of oil after 1979. This was: - Legal - Contractual - Non-disruptive He announced this around 1975 because Iran now had: - One of the world’s strongest militaries - Independent oil infrastructure - Economic and strategic leverage absent in 1951 This was the sovereignty the Shah had built, not shouted with zero-backbone. Why this leads directly to 1979 As full oil sovereignty approached, Iran became less manageable. Under Jimmy Carter, U.S. policy shifted. Support cooled. Human-rights narratives replaced strategic backing. Western media focused heavily on SAVAK. Claims of “hundreds of thousands” or “one million” political prisoners circulated. They were false. Even Mohsen Sazegara, founder of the IRGC, later stated that at its peak SAVAK held 2,500 political prisoners. Which were mainly people and groups backed by the Soviet Union. Such as the Tudeh Party, MEK and other separatist groups during the height of the Cold War. The numbers of political prisoners spread by the US and Amnesty at that time, were 'millions'. Delegitimisation peaked just as Iran was about to secure full oil sovereignty. The miscalculation of the US Washington assumed Khomeini would be a symbolic figurehead, while real power remained manageable. That assumption was very much wrong. This is the distinction people refuse to make 1951 was ideology without capacity. 1975–1979 was capacity without ideology. One ended in bankruptcy and collapse. The other would have ended in full, legal oil independence. And that outcome was not acceptable to those who still had economic and strategic stakes in Iranian oil.

🧵 The Mossadegh Myth: One of the biggest modern historical distortions repeated. Why the late Shah of Iran was NOT installed by a coup in 1953 and Iran NEVER had a democratic government.