The Plot to Overthrow Venezuela by Dan Kovalik

Author:Dan Kovalik
Language: eng
Format: epub, mobi
ISBN: 9781510750739
Publisher: Hot Books
Published: 2019-06-02T16:00:00+00:00

The riots that shook Tehran on Monday intensified on Tuesday. Thousands of demonstrators, unwittingly under CIA control, surged through the streets, looting shops, destroying pictures of the Shah, and ransacking the offices of royalist groups. Exuberant nationalists and communists joined in the mayhem. The police were still under orders from Mossadegh not to interfere. That allowed rioters to do their jobs, which was to give the impression that Iran was sliding towards anarchy. Roosevelt caught glimpses of them during his furtive trips around the city and said that they “scared the hell out of him.”

The riots were working to a point, but now Roosevelt needed an overreaction by Mossadegh to justify what amounted to a military coup in the name of restoring order and democracy. This is where Ambassador Henderson comes in. Thus, as Kinzer explains, Henderson was told by Roosevelt to go to Mossadegh and to ask him for police to crack down on the rioters in Tehran in order to protect the lives of Americans who were allegedly under threat and attack.

In so doing, Roosevelt and Henderson were appealing to Mossadegh’s better angels to undo him. As Kinzer puts it, “Roosevelt had perfectly analyzed his adversary’s psyche. Mossadegh, steeped in a culture of courtliness and hospitality, found it shocking that guests in Iran were being mistreated. That shock overwhelmed his good judgment, and with Henderson still in the room, he picked up a telephone and called his police chief. Trouble in the streets had become intolerable, he said, and it was time for the police to put an end to it. With this order, Mossadegh sent the police out to attack a mob that included many of his own most fervent supporters.”

The fuse had been lit, and Roosevelt was ecstatic. As he wrote in a telegram from the station in Iran to the Central Intelligence Agency, dated August 19, 1953, “Overthrow of Mossadegh appears on verge of success. Zahedi now at radio station.”32 By August 20, 1953, the coup had been successful, with Mossadegh’s home being stormed and looted, and with Mossadegh taken away under arrest.33 The Shah was then summoned back from his own self-imposed exile at the time prescribed by Kermit Roosevelt.

As planned, the Shah’s monarchy was fully restored and the US’s hand-picked successor, General Zahedi, was installed as prime minister in Mossadegh’s stead. The coup government now installed, though still precariously, any pretenses to such lofty goals as democracy and freedom were quickly abandoned.

Meanwhile, the UK and the US both got what they wanted all along with the fall of Mossadegh. Thus, the Anglo Iranian Oil Company was reorganized into British Petroleum, or BP for short.34 And, according to an appendix in the newly-released documents, it received 40% of the Iranian oil industry.35 The US received another 40% of the industry, split between five companies—according to the appendix, Gulf-International Company (8%), Standard Oil Company of California (now, Chevron) (8%), Standard Oil of New Jersey (8%) (now, ExxonMobil), Texas Company (now, a subsidiary of Chevron) (8%) and Socony-Vacuum Overseas Supply Company (now, ExxonMobil) (8%).

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