Harry Targ
Chalmers Johnson wrote in 2001 about “blowback” that
it “is a CIA term first used in March
1954 in a recently declassified report on the 1953 operation to overthrow the
government of Mohammed Mossadegh in Iran. It is a metaphor for the unintended
consequences of the US government's international activities that have been
kept secret from the American people. The CIA's fears that there might
ultimately be some blowback from its egregious interference in the affairs of
Iran were well founded.…. This misguided ‘covert operation’ of the US
government helped convince many capable people throughout the Islamic world
that the United States was an implacable enemy.” (The Nation, October 15, 2001).
The CIA initiated overthrow of the regime of
Mohammed Mossadegh sixty years ago on August 19, 1953 was precipitated by what
Melvin Gurtov called “the politics of oil and cold war together.” Because it
was the leading oil producer in the Middle East and the fourth largest in the
world and it was geographically close to the former Soviet Union, President
Eisenhower was prevailed upon to launch the CIA covert war on Iran long
encouraged by Great Britain.
The immediate background for the ouster of Mossadegh
was Iran’s nationalization of its oil production. Most Iranians were living in
poverty in the 1940s as the Iranian government received only ten percent of the
royalties on its oil sales on the world market. The discrepancy between Iran’s
large production of oil and the limited return it received led Prime Minister
Mohammed Mossadegh, a liberal nationalist, to call for the nationalization of
the Anglo-Iranian Oil Company in 1951. Despite opposition from Iran’s small
ruling class, the parliament and masses of the Iranian people endorsed the plan
to seize control of its oil. Mossadegh became the symbol of Iranian
sovereignty.
Ironically, Mossadegh assumed the United States
would support Iran’s move toward economic autonomy. But, in Washington, the
Iranian leader was viewed as a demagogue, his emerging rival the Shah of Iran
(the sitting monarch of Iran) as “more moderate.”
After the nationalization, the British, supported by
the United States, boycotted oil produced by the Iranian Oil Company. The
British lobbied Washington to launch a military intervention but the Truman
Administration feared such an action would work to the advantage of the Iranian
Communists, the Tudeh Party.
The boycott led to economic strains in Iran, and
Mossadegh compensated for the loss of revenue by increasing taxes on the rich. This
generated growing opposition from the tiny ruling class, and they encouraged
political instability. In 1953, to rally his people, Mossadegh carried out a
plebiscite, a vote on his policies. The Iranian people overwhelmingly endorsed
the nationalization of Iranian oil. In addition, Mossadegh initiated efforts to
mend political fences with the former Soviet Union and the Tudeh Party.
As a result of the plebiscite, and Mossadegh’s
openings to the Left, the United States came around to the British view;
Mossadegh had to go. As one U.S. defense department official put it:
“When
the crisis came on and the thing was about to collapse, we violated our normal
criteria and among other things we did, we provided the army immediately on an
emergency basis….The guns that they had in their hands, the trucks that they
rode in, the armored cars that they drove through the streets, and the radio
communications that permitted their control, were all furnished through the
military defense assistance program…. Had it not been for this program, a
government unfriendly to the United States probably would now be in power.”
(Richard Barnet, Intervention and
Revolution, 1972).
The Shah, who had fled Iran after the plebiscite,
returned when Mossadegh was ousted. A new prime minister was appointed by him who
committed Iran to the defense of the “free” world. U.S. military and economic
aid was resumed, and Iran joined the CENTO alliance (an alliance of pro-West
regional states).
In August, 1954, a new oil consortium was
established. Five U.S. oil companies gained control of forty percent of Iranian
oil, equal to that of returning British firms. Iran compensated the
Anglo-Iranian Oil Company for its losses by paying $70 million, which Iran
received as aid from the United States. The Iranian ruling class was accorded
fifty percent of profits from future oil sales. President Eisenhower declared
that the events of 1953 and 1954 were ushering in a new era of “economic
progress and stability” in Iran and that it was now to be an independent
country in “the family of free nations.”
In brief, the United States overthrew a popularly
elected and overwhelmingly endorsed regime in Iran. The payoff the United
States received, with British acquiescence, was a dramatic increase in access
by U.S. oil companies to Iranian oil at the expense of the Anglo-Iranian Oil
Company. The overthrow of Mossadegh and the backing of the return of the Shah
to full control of the regime led to U.S. support for one of the world’s most
repressive and militarized regimes. By the 1970s, 70,000 of the Shah’s opponents
were in political prisons. Workers and religious activists rose up against the
Shah in 1979, leading to the rapid revolutionary overthrow of his military
state.
As Chalmers Johnson suggested many years later, the
United States role in the world is still plagued by “blowback.” Masses of
people all across the globe, particularly in the Persian Gulf, the Middle East,
and East Asia, regard the United States as the major threat to their economic
and political independence. And the covert operation against Mohammed Mossadegh
in Iran is one place where such global mistrust began.
