by Janet Levy, American Thinker:
Playing the game of What if…? with history is usually futile. But sometimes it yields valuable lessons. For instance, What if the CIA and MI6 had not orchestrated the overthrow of Iranian prime minister Mohammad Mosaddegh in 1953? Consider one possibility – that Iran might have become a bastion of democracy and not what it is today, a threat to the interests of the U.S. and its allies and the biggest cause of instability in the Middle East.
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Coup 53, an exciting, exhaustively researched docudrama about the joint effort to effect regime change in Iran, makes viewers ponder that question. The Americans called it Operation Ajax, the British Operation Boot. At its core, it was all about oil. But while the CIA formally admitted its role in the operation in 2013, declassified related documents, and even helped the Coup 53 team with information, the British still maintain silence.
The film is directed by Taghi Amirani, an Iranian-born physicist and documentary maker, and co-written and edited by Walter Murch, an Academy award winner famed for editing masterworks like The Godfather, Apocalypse Now, and The English Patient. It also has Ralph Fiennes playing Norman Darbyshire, an MI6 spy who had boastfully admitted in an interview for the Iran segment of Channel 4’s 1985 docuseries End of Empire that he masterminded the op although the CIA was in formal control. The interview never made it to End of Empire and its transcript disappeared.
The ten years in Coup 53’s making were not without drama. The End of Empire team was initially very forthcoming with information, and in 2018, in a breakthrough for Amirani and Murch, cameraman Humphry Trevelyan recounted three interviews with Darbyshire. Meanwhile, Mosaddegh’s grandson had given Amirani a copy of the transcript, now at George Washington University’s National Security Archive. But in a remarkable turnabout, Trevelyan declared that his memory of filming Darbyshire was false, almost two years after his initial account, and after having congratulated the makers of Coup 53 at its 2019 European premier. The creators of End of Empire also threatened to sue Amirani and Murch if they used the Darbyshire interview. MI6 may have been at work.
Some history, to get a perspective on the coup.
British and Soviet troops occupied Iran in 1941 to keep supply routes to the Soviet Union open, build a stronger base in the Middle East, and prevent the oil resources of Iran from falling into Axis hands. The then-monarch, Reza Shah Pahlavi, who was seen as pro-German, was replaced by his son, Mohammad Reza Pahlavi. The troops left in 1946, after the war ended. The economy had deteriorated in the war years. To add to that, Iranian oil was controlled by the Anglo-Iranian Oil Company (AIOC), owned by the British government. All this seeded anti-Western sentiment among Iranians.
Like his father, Shah Mohammad Reza Pahlavi manipulated elections to ensure he remained the de facto ruler. But in 1951, Mosaddegh, a staunch nationalist and democrat riding on the anti-colonial and anti-Western mood, was elected prime minister. Among his first decisions, very popular among Iranians and their elected representatives, was to nationalize AIOC, prompted by its refusal to submit to audits of royalty payments. This action jeopardized the U.K.’s oil supplies and economy. He also expelled foreign corporate representatives. The U.K. retaliated by organizing a worldwide boycott of Iranian oil, banning exports to Iran, and freezing Iranian accounts in British banks. Eventually, it was felt Mosaddegh must go.
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