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Muhammad Mossadegh and a Tragic Anglo-American Coup
Harper
May 2012
On Sale: May 15, 2012
320 pages
ISBN: 0061844705
EAN: 9780061844706
Kindle: B006IDG1XS
Hardcover / e-Book
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Non-Fiction
On August 19, 1953, the American and British intelligence
agencies launched a desperate coup in Iran against a cussed,
bedridden seventy-two-year-old man. His name was Muhammad
Mossadegh, and his crimes had been to flirt with communism
and to nationalize his country's oil industry, which for
forty years had been in British hands. To Winston Churchill,
the Iranian prime minister was a lunatic, determined to
humiliate Britain. To President Dwight Eisenhower, he was
delivering Iran to the Soviets. Mossadegh must go. And so he did, in one of the most dramatic episodes in
modern Middle Eastern history. But the countries that
overthrew him would, in time, deeply regret their decision.
Mossadegh was one of the first liberals of the Middle East,
a man whose conception of liberty was as sophisticated as
any in Europe or America. He wanted friendship with the
West—but not slavish dependence. He would not compromise on
Iran's right to control its own destiny. The West therefore
sided against him and in favor of his great foe, Shah
Muhammad-Reza Pahlavi. Who was this political guerrilla of noble blood, who was so
adored in the Middle East and so reviled in the West?
Schooled in Europe of the Belle Epoque, Mossadegh was pitted
against dictatorship at home, a struggle that almost cost
him his life and had tragic consequences for his family. By
the time of the Shah's accession in 1941, Mossadegh had
become the nation's conscience, and he spent the rest of his
life in conflict with a monarch whose despotic regime was
eventually toppled in the Islamic Revolution of 1979. Here, for the first time, is the political and personal life
of a remarkable patriot, written by our foremost observer of
Iran. Drawing on sources in Tehran and the West, Christopher
de Bellaigue reveals a man who not only embodied his
nation's struggle for freedom but also was one of the great
eccentrics of modern times—and uncovers the coup that undid
him. Above all, the life of Muhammad Mossadegh serves as a
warning to today's occupants of the White House and Downing
Street as they commit to further intervention in a volatile
and unpredictable region.
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