http://www.bayarea.com/mld/mercurynews/entertainment/books/6448405.htm

Wednesday, Aug 13, 2003

San Jose Mercury News
Posted on Sun, Aug. 03, 2003

Why 1953 coup resonates 50 years later
U.S., BRITISH INTERVENTION IN IRAN MAY HAVE UNINTENTIONALLY
BRED TODAY'S TERRORISTS
By Ivo H. Daalder
New York Times

Regime change has become the hallmark of President Bush's foreign
policy. In two years Bush has dispatched two regimes (the Taliban
and Saddam Hussein's). He tried to sideline a third (Yasser Arafat's)
and would like nothing better than to dispatch still others
(Kim Jong Il, the mullahs in Iran and the potentates who rule
much of the Arab world).

In seeking to change regimes not to the United States' liking,
Bush travels a well-trodden path. It started a century ago when,
in the aftermath of the Spanish-American War, the United States
found itself in charge of Cuba, Puerto Rico and the Philippines.
Soon thereafter, President Theodore Roosevelt promulgated his
Corollary to the Monroe Doctrine, which led to the occupation
of the Dominican Republic, Haiti and Nicaragua.

With colonialism discredited, the United States adopted a
different approach -- covert regime change -- with the CIA
rather than the U.S. military in the lead. The first of these
attempts, which occurred almost 50 years ago to this day,
is the subject of Stephen Kinzer's riveting new book.
On Aug. 19, 1953, Kermit Roosevelt, a CIA operative and
grandson of Teddy, orchestrated the ouster of the Iranian
prime minister, Mohammad Mossadegh -- a populist leader
who had incurred London's wrath by nationalizing the
British-owned oil industry and frightened Washington
for failing to oppose communist influence vigorously
inside Iran.

The CIA's success in Iran was but the first in a long
list of United States coup attempts -- in Cuba, Chile,
Congo, Guatemala, Vietnam and elsewhere. Some of these
coups succeeded. Others did not. But all suffered
unintended consequences -- perhaps none more than the
coup that ousted Mossadegh.

That is why Kinzer, a veteran correspondent for the
New York Times whose last foreign posting was in Istanbul
(where he also covered Iran), decided to take another
look at this well-known episode. He does so with a keen
journalistic eye, and with a novelist's pen. In a very
gripping read, he recounts the story of the coup and
how it came about. In the process, he reveals much about
Iran's history, paints a sharp portrait of British
colonialism just at the point of its ultimate collapse,
and lays bare the debate on how the United States should
engage the world.

Kinzer leaves no doubt that he thinks the coup was a
mistake. His portrait of Mossadegh is highly sympathetic
-- here is a learned leader who speaks for the oppressed
and willingly risks his life for the betterment of his
own people.

Clearly in the wrong were the British. Kinzer recounts
how the Anglo-Iranian Oil Co. (later known as British
Petroleum) in effect ran Iran for years -- with nearly
all the benefits of oil exploration going to its owners
and the British government and virtually none to the
Iranian people.

In 1951 Mossadegh rose to power on a promise to nationalize
Anglo-Iranian, setting in motion a crisis that two years
later would lead to his ouster. London threatened war and
was dissuaded only by the firm rejection of that option
by Washington. President Truman, instead, sought to mediate
a resolution to the British-Iranian standoff. But neither
side would budge. Britain considered Iran's oil its own and
rejected the nationalization of the industry and assets
as illegal; Mossadegh had no intention of reversing a
decision that put Iran in charge of the resources within
-- or in this case under -- its national territory.

A violent outcome might have been avoided had it not been
for elections in Britain and the United States. In 1951
Winston Churchill returned to power and, after the loss
of India, was in no mood to see the British Empire shrink
still further. A year later Republicans regained the
White House with Dwight D. Eisenhower. Among their
top priorities was stopping communism wherever it
encroached, and rolling it back wherever possible.

The unrest in Iran -- and Mossadegh's ties to the
Communist Party there -- was now a top concern not
only in London but also in Washington.

The August coup ousted Mossadegh and put Iran firmly
in Washington's sphere of influence. But Kinzer argues
that success in the short run came at a very high price
in the long run.

To retain control over an unruly population, the shah
of Iran ruled with an ever more brutal and savage hand.
Oppression bred nationalism, which found an outlet in
Islamic fundamentalism. The result was the Iranian
Revolution in 1979. The decision by students and
revolutionaries to take over the U.S. Embassy was
at least in part designed to avoid a repeat of 1953,
when the CIA used the embassy's diplomatic sanctuary
to plot the coup against Mossadegh.

The revolution and hostage crisis led Washington
to support Saddam Hussein in the Iran-Iraq war and
Tehran to support Islamist terror groups as a way
to attack the United States and its interests.

``It is not far-fetched to draw a line from Operation Ajax''
-- the CIA code name for the 1953 coup -- ``through
the Shah's repressive regime and the Islamic revolution
to the fireballs that engulfed the World Trade Center
in New York,'' Kinzer argues.

Even if that is quite a stretch, Kinzer has a point.
Regime change can have very different consequences than
originally intended. Iran was kept out of Soviet hands
-- but the coup also produced a brutal regime that
fomented a violent and very dangerous revolution,
the impact of which is felt even today.

Kinzer's book offers a cautionary tale for our current
leaders, who have embarked on their own version of
regime change. As many of the 150,000 U.S. troops
in Iraq are discovering every day, not all such changes
go according to plan. And who knows what unexpected
and unintended consequences Bush's regime change still
hold in store for us all, whether sooner or later.

ALL THE SHAH'S MEN:

An American Coup and the Roots of Middle East Terror

By Stephen Kinzer

John Wiley & Sons, 258 pp., $24.95

--------------------------------------------------------------------------------
Ivo H. Daalder is a senior fellow in foreign policy studies
at the Brookings Institution in Washington.