These and other well-known facts about the CIA-orchestrated coup are recorded in a "secret history" of these events that the New York Times reported on in a feature article by James Risen in its April 16 issue. The article states that the Times recently obtained a copy of the still-classified 1954 document--"the first detailed government account of the coup to be made public"--from a former CIA official.

The 1953 coup established the shah as a key prop of U.S. domination in the Mideast for a quarter century. That pillar of imperialist rule came crashing down in 1979, when Iranian workers and peasants carried out a revolution that dealt a historic blow to Washington's power in the region. Despite their efforts over the past two decades, the U.S. rulers have never recovered what they lost with the overthrow of the shah and the confidence that working people in Iran gained through their actions.

An editorial in the New York Times published two days after the article argues, "If the United States and Iran are ever to restore good relations, both nations must understand the events that helped drive them apart." The lessons drawn by the Times editors, of course, have nothing to do with the interests of the Iranian people. They only offer tactical advice to the U.S. rulers by pointing out how the CIA coup fueled hatred for Washington with "negative long-term consequences for the United States," and ultimately led to the 1979 revolution.

For working people both in the United States and Iran, however, the true history of the 1953 events helps us identify the U.S. imperialist rulers as the real enemy of working people and oppressed nations the world over, and other important lessons.  
 
Nationalization of oil industry
After World War II, working people unleashed revolutionary struggles throughout Iran. In 1945 workers and peasants established their own government in Azerbaijan for a time, initiating a deep-going land reform. The revolutionary wave was halted by betrayals by the Stalinist misleadership.

These struggles erupted again a few years later. In a mass demonstration in 1951 in front of the Majles (parliament), students and teachers called for the nationalization of the British-controlled oil industry. Oil workers went on a general strike against British Petroleum's wage cuts, and won.

In response to these mass mobilizations, the Majles voted to nationalize the vast oil resources of the country. Mossadegh, who championed nationalization of the oil industry, became the popular prime minister.

London, backed by Washington and other imperialist powers, tried to strangle the country. A military threat staged by the British navy was followed by an international blockade and boycott, and the freezing of Iranian assets by these foreign powers. Iran's oil exports and foreign trade came to a virtual standstill, and the country faced a severe economic crisis.

Inside the country, the imperialist pressures were channeled through the monarchy--the shah and his army. In a dispute with the shah over control of the army, Mossadegh resigned as the premier in July 1952 and was replaced by a pro-imperialist politician, Ahmad Qavam al-Saltaneh.  
 
Working people seek to mobilize
There was immediate mass opposition across the country to this reactionary move. Demonstrations and political strikes culminated in a mass confrontation with the army in Tehran on July 21. There, the discipline of the army troops began to disintegrate as they shot at the demonstrators who stood their ground and took casualties. Faced with the danger of soldiers joining the demonstrators, the army brass ordered the soldiers back to their barracks and the police went into hiding. Young people took over the city streets and directed traffic. The shah was forced to name Mossadegh prime minister again. The country celebrated the victory, known to this day as Sieh Teer (the 30th of Teer in the Iranian calendar).

Sieh Teer was a turning point. Class polarization accelerated in the country. The victory increased the confidence of working people in their ability to bring about change. Workers' strikes increased and peasants became more vocal in demanding land.

The pro-Moscow Tudeh (Masses) party grew. It joined the anti-imperialist movement for the nationalization of the oil industry, reversing its earlier shameful campaign to secure--in defiance of national sentiment for sovereignty--the concession of any oilfields in the north to the Soviet Union. The Tudeh party attracted workers and youth who mistook it to be a communist party in continuity with the Bolsheviks, who had led the 1917 Russian Revolution.

Frightened by the prospect of a social movement of workers and peasants, the ruling landowners, capitalists, and tribal chiefs began to turn against the movement. Some of the founders of Mossadegh's National Front, which had led the struggle for the oil nationalization, and his closest allies broke with him and went over to the reactionary opposition, grouped around the shah. So did major figures in the Islamic clerical establishment who had supported the movement and helped mobilize for Sieh Teer.

Sections of the middle class, feeling the pinch of the economic embargo in their lifestyles, turned away from the movement. More and more deputies in the Majles turned against the anti-imperialist movement and went over to the shah's camp.

In a referendum on Aug. 4, 1953, people overwhelmingly voted in support of Mossadegh dissolving the Majles, which he later did in face of the impending coup. But after Sieh Teer, Mossadegh's liberal bourgeois government took no effective measures in the interests of the working people, such as an urgently needed land reform.

Under these conditions, Washington and London moved to overthrow Mossadegh's government and bring about a client regime that would suppress workers and peasants and safeguard imperialist interests in the region, acting as a bulwark of reaction against the Soviet Union.  
 
Washington installs shah
The U.S. and British spy agencies resorted to elaborate plans to spread lies and carry out assassinations and other terrorist tactics to destabilize the country and create conditions for a military coup. The New York Times writes that Iranian CIA agents "pretending to be Communists threatened Muslim leaders with 'savage punishment if they opposed Mossadegh,' seeking to stir anti-Communist sentiment in the religious community." The paper also reports that according to the "secret history," the "house of at least one prominent Muslim was bombed by CIA agents posing as Communists."

The coup began the night of August 15 after a reluctant shah, with the memory of Sieh Teer still fresh in his mind, under "relentless pressure" from Washington, signed a decree replacing premier Mossadegh with Gen. Fazlollah Zahedi, whom the CIA agents had groomed for the job.

But this immediately backfired. As pro-shah soldiers went around the city arresting senior officials, the Imperial Guard troops on their way to arrest Mossadegh were intercepted by pro-government troops and were themselves arrested.

The next morning, Tehran radio announced that a military coup against the government had failed. The next day the shah fled to Baghdad, then to Rome. The CIA station in Tehran cabled headquarters for advice: continue with the coup attempt or withdraw? The Times quotes the "secret history" as saying, "The message sent to Tehran on the night of Aug. 18 said that 'the operation has been tried and failed,' and that 'in the absence of strong recommendations to the contrary, operations against Mossadegh should be discontinued."

After the shah fled, some supporters of the Tudeh party demonstrated in the streets around the country, symbolically toppling the statues of the shah and his father. But no leader or organization made any call for the people to come into the streets to consolidate the victory, depose the shah, and chart a way forward. The Mossadegh regime ordered most pro-government troops, stationed around Tehran during the coup attempt, to their barracks. But the forces that had been put in motion by the CIA coup plot continued to unfold.

On the morning of August 19, pro-shah, pro-coup papers published the shah's decree deposing Mossadegh. And some of the CIA's local agents--"without specific orders," according to the "secret history"--organized violent pro-shah demonstrations, attacking pro-Mossadegh and pro-Tudeh newspapers as they moved toward the Majles. Demonstrators at the outset were hired thugs and lumpen elements. Then, as the word spread, pro-shah officers and soldiers joined them.

At the time of these events, I was a high school student living on Galamestan Avenue in south Tehran. As the news came that pro-shah thugs and lumpens were on a rampage, young people in the neighborhood gathered to figure out how to stop the reactionaries. The prevalent idea was that they had to be stopped physically in the streets. Some of those who had finished their two years of compulsory service in the army said they could use guns, and one said he could drive a tank. As far as I knew, no one there was a member of any political party. Then someone came saying we were to wait for orders from the Tudeh party to move into action.

Later I found out that gatherings of young people like the one in my neighborhood, who were looking to the Tudeh party for leadership, were not exceptional that day. Those orders never came, however. The Tudeh party leadership made no attempt to fight the coup. The counterrevolution succeeded and the masses suffered a defeat without a battle.

Donald Wilber, author of the 1954 "secret history," complained years later that plotters of similar U.S. operations around the world did not absorb the lessons of the Iran coup. He pointed to the 1961 U.S.-organized mercenary invasion of Cuba at the Bay of Pigs, which was quickly defeated by the armed Cuban people. He can't understand that the U.S. rulers have failed to overthrow the Cuban revolution because the communist leadership there has led millions of working people in mobilizations in face of every challenge and threat.

For the Stalinist and bourgeois nationalist leaderships in Iran, the prospect of mass mobilizations against the 1953 coup, which would have put the taking of governmental power by the toilers on the agenda, proved more frightening than a pro-imperialist victory by the shah.

Not only reactionaries but many liberals welcomed the overthrow of Mossadegh's government at the time. A year later, the New York Times editors, referring to the struggle of the Iranian people to nationalize the oil industry, gloated that "underdeveloped countries with rich resources now have an object lesson in the heavy cost that must be paid by one of their number which goes berserk with fanatical nationalism."

Twenty-five years later, the Iranian people made a revolution and overthrew the U.S.-backed shah. They proved working people can defeat imperialism. And the events both of 1953 and 1979 through today underscore the need for working people to develop their own leadership, one that can lead them to the end in the struggle for emancipation.  
 
 
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