"Coup 53 of Iran is the CIA's (Central Intelligence Agency) first successful overthrow of a foreign government.

But a copy of the agency's secret history of the coup has surfaced, revealing the inner workings of a plot that set the stage for the Islamic revolution in 1979, and for a generation of anti-American hatred in one of the Middle East's most powerful countries. The document, which remains classified, discloses the pivotal role British intelligence officials played in initiating and planning the coup, and it shows that Washington and London shared an interest in maintaining the West's control over Iranian oil.

Dr. Donald N. Wilber, a CIA spy, with the cover of Persian architectural expert, who planned the coup in Iran. The secret history, written by the CIA's chief coup planner, says the operation's success was mostly a matter of chance. The document shows that the agency had almost complete contempt for the man it was empowering, Mohammad Reza Shah Pahlavi. And it recounts, for the first time, the agency's badly tried to seduce and force the shah into taking part in his own coup.

The operation, code-named TP-AJAX, was the blueprint for a succession of CIA plots to foment coups and destabilize governments during the cold war - including the agency's successful coup in Guatemala in 1954 and the disastrous Cuban intervention known as the Bay of Pigs in 1961. In more than one instance, such operations led to the same kind of long-term animosity toward the United States that occurred in Iran.

The history says agency officers orchestrating the Iran coup worked directly with royalist Iranian military officers, handpicked the prime minister's replacement, sent a stream of envoys to bolster the shah's courage, directed a campaign of bombings by Iranians posing as members of the Communist Party, and planted articles and editorial cartoons in newspapers.

But on the night set for Prime Minister Mohammad Mosaddeq's overthrow, almost nothing went according to the meticulously drawn plans, the secret history says. In fact, CIA officials were poised to flee the country when several Iranian officers recruited by the agency, acting on their own, took command of a pro-shah demonstration in Tehran and seized the government.

Two days after the coup, the history discloses, agency officials funneled $5 million to Iran to help the government they had installed consolidate power.

Dr. Donald N. Wilber, an expert in Persian architecture, who as one of the leading planners believed that covert operatives had much to learn from history, wrote the secret history, along with operational assessments in March 1954.

In less expansive memoirs published in 1986, Dr. Wilber asserted that the Iran coup was different from later CIA efforts. Its American planners, he said, had stirred up considerable unrest in Iran, giving Iranians a clear choice between instability and supporting the shah. The move to oust the prime minister, he wrote, thus gained substantial popular support.

Dr. Wilber's memoirs were heavily censored by the agency, but he was allowed to refer to the existence of his secret history. "If this history had been read by the planners of the Bay of Pigs," he wrote, "there would have been no such operation."

"From time to time," he continued, "I gave talks on the operation to various groups within the agency, and, in hindsight, one might wonder why no one from the Cuban desk ever came or read the history."

The coup was a turning point in modern Iranian history and remains a persistent irritant in Tehran-Washington relations. It consolidated the power of the shah, who ruled with an iron hand for 26 more years in close contact with the United States. He was toppled by Iranian Revolution of 1979. Later that year, "Students of Imam Line" went to the American Embassy, took diplomats hostage and declared that they had unmasked a "nest of spies" who had been manipulating Iran for decades."

Continued: http://www.iranchamber.co...

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p.2: "The British, too, sought to sway the shah and assure him their agents spoke for London. A British agent, Asadollah Rashidian, approached him in late July and invited him to select a phrase that would then be broadcast at prearranged times on the BBC's Persian-language program - as proof that Mr. Rashidian spoke for the British.

The exercise did not seem to have much effect. The shah told Mr. Rashidian on July 30 and 31 that he had heard the broadcast, but "requested time to assess the situation." In early August, the CIA stepped up the pressure. Iranian operatives pretending to be Communists threatened Muslim leaders with "savage punishment if they opposed Mosaddeq," seeking to stir anti-Communist sentiment in the religious community."

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p.3: "In one instance, the history indicates, the CIA was apparently able to use contacts at The Associated Press to put on the news wire a statement from Tehran about royal decrees that the CIA itself had written. But mostly, the agency relied on less direct means to exploit the media. "

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http://www.nytimes.com/li...

"Iranians working for the C.I.A. and posing as Communists harassed religious leaders and staged the bombing of one cleric's home in a campaign to turn the country's Islamic religious community against Mossadegh's government."

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http://en.wikipedia.org/w...

"Iranian fascists and Nazis played prominent roles in the coup regime. Gen. Fazlollah Zahedi, who had been arrested and imprisoned by the British during World War II for his attempt to establish a pro-Nazi government, was made Prime Minister on August 19, 1953. The CIA gave Zahedi about $100,000 before the coup and an additional $5 million the day after the coup to help consolidate support for the coup. Bahram Shahrokh, a trainee of Joseph Goebbels and Berlin Radio's Farsi program announcer during the Nazi rule, became director of propaganda. Mr. Sharif-Emami, who also had spent some time in jail for his pro-Nazi activities in the 1940s, assumed several positions after 1953 coup, including Secretary General of the Oil Industry, President of the Senate, and Prime Minister (twice). [22] [23]

"A historian who was a member of the C.I.A. staff in 1992 and 1993 said in an interview today that the records were obliterated by a culture of destruction at the agency. The historian, Nick Cullather, said he believed that records on other major cold war covert operations had been burned, including those on secret missions in Indonesia in the 1950's and a successful C.I.A.-sponsored coup in Guyana in the early 1960's. Iran -- there's nothing, Mr. Cullather said. Indonesia -- very little. Guyana -- that was burned. [31]"

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http://www.democracynow.o...

"STEPHEN KINZER: There’s a fantastic cast of characters in this story and one of them is Norman Schwarzkopf, who had been the head of the investigation into the Lindhburg kidnapping while with the New Jersey state police, had spent many years in Iran during the 1940s, and was a very flamboyant figure with great influence on the Shah. He was one of the people that Kermit Roosevelt brought in to pressure the timid Shah into signing this fateful decree. Now, the decree finally failed to have its desired effect, as I said. And then Roosevelt on his own devised this plan where, first of all, he sent rioters out into the streets to pretend that they were pro-Mossadegh. They were supposed to yell “I love Mossadegh and communism. I want a people’s republic!” and then loot stores, shoot into mosques, break windows, and generally make themselves repugnant to good citizens. Then he hired another mob to attack his first mob, thereby creating the impression that Iran was falling into anarchy. And finally on the climactic day, August 19, 1953, he brought all his mobs together, mobilized all of his military units, stormed a number of government buildings and then, in the climactic gunbattle at Mossadegh’s house, a hundred people were killed until finally the coup succeeded, Mossadegh had to flee and was later arrested, and the Shah, who had fled in panic at the first sign of trouble a few days earlier, returned in triumph to Tehran and began what became 25 years of increasingly brutal and
repressive rule."
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"ERVAND ABRAHAMIAN: Yes, I think oil is the central issue. But of course this was done at the height of the Cold War, so much of the discourse at the time linked it to the Cold War. I think many liberal historians, including of course Stephen Kinzer’s wonderful book here, even though it’s very good in dealing with the tragedy of the ‘53 coup, still puts it in this liberal framework that the tragedy, the original intentions, were benign.—that the U.S. really got into it because of the Cold War and it was hoodwinked into it by the nasty British who of course had oil interests, but the U.S. somehow was different. U.S. Eisenhower’s interest, were really anti-communism. I sort of doubt that interpretation. For me, the oil was important both for the United States and for Britain. It’s not just the question of oil in Iran. It was a question of control over oil internationally. If Mossadegh had succeeded in nationalizing the British oil industry in Iran, that would have set an example and was seen at that time by the Americans as a threat to U.S. oil interests throughout the world, because other countries would do the same. Once you have control, then you can determine how much oil you produce in your country, who you sell it to, when you sell it, and that meant basically shifting power from the oil companies, both British Petroleum, Angloversion, American companies, shifting it to local countries like Iran and Venezuela. And in this, the U.S. had as much stake in preventing nationalization in Iran as the British did. So here there was not really a major difference between the United States and the British. The question really was on tactics. Truman was persuaded that he could in a way nudge Mossadegh to give up the concept of nationalization, that somehow you could have a package where it was seen as if it was nationalized but, in reality, power would remain in the hands of Western oil companies. And Mossadegh refused to go along with this facade. He wanted real nationalization, both in theory and practice. So the Truman administration, in a way, was not that different from the British view of keeping control. Then, the Truman policy was then, if Mossadegh was not willing to do this, then he could be shoved aside through politics by the Shah dismissing him or the Parliament in Iran dismissing him. But again, it was not that different from the British view. Where the shift came was that after July of ’52, it became clear even to the American ambassador in Iran that Mossadegh could not be got rid of through the political process. He had too much popularity, and after July ’53, the U.S. really went along with the British view of a coup, indeed to have a military coup. So even before Eisenhower came in, the U.S. was working closely with the British to carry out the coup. And what came out of the coup was of course the oil industry on paper remained Iranian, nationalized, but in reality it was controlled by a consortium. In that consortium the British still retained more than 50 percent, but the U.S. got a good 40 percent of that control."