Six decades of blowback
In June 2009, United States President Barack Obama made his well-publicized Cairo speech, calling for a more productive relationship between the U.S., Arab states, and “Muslims around the world.” Six years later, that has not come to pass. In fact, with Syria in turmoil, ISIL fanatics on the march, the centuries-old Sunni and Shia Muslim conflict still waging, Israelis and Palestinians no closer to peace, and Iran playing a game of cat-andmouse with developing nuclear weapons, Obama’s Middle East policy has been a failure.
A few weeks ago at the presidential compound at Camp David, Obama convened a goodwill meeting with six major Gulf Arab leaders. The discussions were polite, but hardly decisive: “I am reaffirming our ironclad commitment to the security of our Gulf partners,” Obama said when the conference ended.
For what seems like a very long time, the U.S. has been playing catch-up in the Middle East. Current thinking blames the botched Iraq War unwisely launched by the George W. Bush administration in 2003 as the key destabilizing factor for today’s fiasco with ISIL. Yet you can arguably go much further back to 1953, when the CIA, along with British operatives, engineered a coup in Iran to overthrow the democratically elected government of Mohammad Mosaddegh.
Mosaddegh, who became prime minister in 1951, detested the influence and power of the British-owned Anglo-Iranian Oil Company that controlled Iran’s oil industry. After AIOC refused to submit to an audit, Mosaddegh and his supporters in the Iranian parliament nationalized the country’s oil reserves, distressing officials in London and Washington.
Caught up with his own popularity and his hatred for the AIOC, Mosaddegh refused to compromise. He blindly ignored the rise of pro-Soviet factions in Iran, whom he openly courted. Considering the tremendous American fear of Soviet expansion, the chief obsession of U.S. foreign policy then and for the next four decades, Mosaddegh’s actions were ill-conceived as well as foolish.
For decades, the U.S. denied any involvement in the Iranian coup. In 2000, The New York Times published a leaked copy of a history of the coup by Dr. Donald N. Wilber, an authority on Persian architecture, a U.S. “covert consultant,” and one of the chief planners of the overthrow. Still, it was not until Obama was speaking in Cairo in 2009 that the U.S. finally apologized for American participation in the plot. It took another few years before the CIA declassified key documents — including Wilber’s report — on its clandestine “Homeland”-style operation, known by the code-name, “TPAJAX.”
President Dwight Eisenhower, with lots of encouragement from British prime minister Winston Churchill, sanctioned the secret plot to get rid of Mosaddegh and stop Iran from “falling behind the Iron Curtain,” as Wilber put it. “The aim was to bring to power a government which would reach an equitable oil settlement, enabling Iran to become economically sound and financial solvent, and which would vigorously prosecute the dangerously strong Communist Party,” added Wilber.
The plan he conceived called for an expensive propaganda campaign — to which the AIOC contributed $25,000 — and the organization of antigovernment mobs and riots. Ultimately, Mosaddegh was ousted by General Fazlollah Zahedi, who headed a pro-Western military government and allied with the Shah of Iran, Mohammad Reza Pahlavi. American officials considered the Shah a “man of indecision,” yet essential for a successful change of government. Great pressure was brought to bear on him to acquiesce to American and British demands. The Shah soon imposed autocratic rule that was advantageous for Western interests, though not for most Iranians. As for Mosaddeg, he was subjected to a show trial, given a three-year jail sentence and then spent the rest of his life under house arrest.
Many years ago, the notable sociologist Robert K. Merton identified five potential causes of “unanticipated consequences.” Number three on his list was “immediate interests overriding long-term interests” — a perfect description of America’s Cold War foreign policy. Arguably the best example was American support of the Afghan mujahedeen, which led to upheaval in Afghanistan and the rise of the Taliban and al-Qaida — that produced the preconditions for the 9/11 terrorists attack.
Indeed, according to journalist Stephen Kinzer, the former New York Times correspondent and author of All the Shah’s Men (2003), the Taliban were inspired by Iran’s revolutionary leaders, who seized power in 1979, in part because several generations of American politicians going back to Eisenhower imprudently disregarded the Shah’s despotic rule — all to protect Western oil interests and thwart off any Soviet encroachment in the region.
Hindsight may well be 20-20. But as the U.S. rather desperately attempts to make a nuclear deal with Iran and quell the problems in the Middle East, the unanticipated consequences of decisions and actions made in 1953 continue to cause the Obama administration major headaches.
Obama’s Middle Eastern policy is a disaster. And the blame goes back as far as Eisenhower
Historian and writer Allan Levine’s most recent book is Toronto: Biography of a City.