Mosaddeq: America’s first major target of colonialist aspirations in the Middle East
A reader from Louisville has asked what I mean when I’m talking about American colonialism in the Middle East. Since I am talking about Iran all week leading up to their presidential election on Friday, I thought it might be a good idea to discuss a very important event when America interfered in the affairs of another Middle Eastern nation. There are other examples, to be sure, but this one is critical for at least two reasons. One, it was first time the CIA had carried out a full blown coup in the Middle East; two, the coup began a 26 year process that eventually led to the Iranian Revolution, which has in the 30 years since caused more problems for America than if they would have left Iran alone in the first place.
To begin, let me give a definition of colonialism that is fairly standard. This was requested by the Louisvillian since, in his mind, the Iraq situation does not constitute colonialism. Now, I’m pretty sure what this reader means when he is thinking of colonialisation, and it is probably that old definition which I will get to in a moment. But in his mention of Iraq, I find it hard to imagine a more colonialist situation than a powerful nation invading another, toppling its leader, setting up a transition team lead by a military commander of the invading nation, and then hand-picking the candidates to lead the invaded country in the new direction (this direction, of course, in line with US interests). There is an important point to make here: positive consequences do not erase the hard reality of what colonialism is and what it does. And isolated examples of the improvement of life cannot nullify the harm done to the people over the long haul if they are set up to be a puppet for US interests. There is no doubt that much good was done for the Iraqi people and that many are grateful. Nonetheless, by failing to care how Iraqis saw themselves and their own heritage, US soldiers began finding themselves loathed and portrayed as colonialists. The long term damage to that country is difficult to see from our plush seats in the West. But for many, life now is worse than it was under Saddam. There are some signs that things are stabilising, but we will not know for years whether the cost was worth it.
Below, I don’t want to look at this emotionally, but rationally and intellectually. I want to define what I’m talking about and then give an example of how this happened in the 1950s since I’ve been challenged to ‘name one example.’
Colonialism, or neocolonialism if you like that better, is when a powerful nation interferes in the affairs of a weaker nation in order to ensure the former’s interests are met, but at the expense of the latter’s sovereignty and without consideration of the latter’s self-declared interests.
Let me unpack that for a bit. First, it is not colonialist when a powerful nation enters into the affairs of a weaker nation when it is doing so for the benefit of that weaker nation, a benefit the weaker nation very clearly recognises. So when the US came into Kuwait to defend them against Iraq, it was very obviously in the Kuwaitis’ interests. There is no doubt there were other aims in that region for the US, among which were oil and prevention of Hussein establishing hegemony over the region; but it cannot be considered colonialist when the smaller, weaker nation welcomes the larger, more powerful nation into their territory to fight against another tyrant.
On the other hand, when that more powerful nation is uninvited and institutes regime change that looks more like itself than the makeup of the people it claims to have delivered, it can surely be called colonialist. In the recent past, colonialism was exemplified by Britain and France, and because of these models, some do not recognise the US’s own intrusions as qualitatively similar. The classic model of colonialism is most simply understood as the management of a colony by a nation or territory elsewhere. But colonialism is more complex than that, and to avoid confusion some have moved on to using the term ‘neocolonialism’ to talk about this in new ways. The new colonialism includes economic imperialism as well as political, military, and others. The neocolonialist may not be setting up a government in that country in the same way the Brits did India or the French did Greater Lebanon; but they are interfering in different ways that ultimately have the same effect: the more powerful nation gets what it wants from the subjected people.
Often, those not willing to admit to colonialist designs will speak of the good that has come to the weaker nation as a result of the involvement of the more powerful. To be sure, it is good news whenever a dictator or tyrant loses his grip and his oppression of his people ceases. But more often than not, negative consequences follow colonialist intrusion. Dinesh D’Souza’s essay in defense of colonialism is an example of how to view history through the lenses of the victors. His outrageous nonsense (“The descendants of colonialism are better off than they would be if colonialism had never happened.”) deliberately ignores the countless numbers of individuals who were enfeebled by systematic exploitation. He tries to argue, for example, that since India is more educated and prosperous now, they should be thankful for British colonialism. To D’Souza, it seems that growth in the GDP means a nation is “better off” than before; never mind the upheaval of timeless traditions and local culture that perish along the way to economic prosperity. (As you can imagine, for many scholars of the ancient world, the US invasion of Iraq which brought about the looting and destruction of many of the world’s most treasured holdings of antiquities was an example of this barbaric disregard for a nation’s heritage in pursuit of what the stronger nation feels is more important to them.) This is asininity at its best. Indeed, there will always be ‘positive’ effects whenever a more powerful nation spends time running the affairs of the weaker nation, but to ignore the injustices done to arrive at that stage is not just irresponsible, it is immoral.
I’d like now to talk very briefly about America’s involvement in the Mosaddeq coup.
In 1951, Mohammed Mosaddeq became Prime Minister of Iran and shortly thereafter began the nationalisation of the oil industry. The company now known as British Petroleum, or simply BP, formerly the Anglo-Iranian Oil Company (AIOC), controlled all the oil in Iran. When Mosaddeq was appointed to the Premiership, dissatisfaction with AIOC was at a peak. As Stephen Kinzer notes in his excellent book on the coup, in 1947 AIOC profitted £40 million (at the time about $120 million), but gave Iran only £7 million. Not only was the payout menial, so were the conditions for Iranian oil workers and their families. There can be no defense of the way AIOC treated Iran and Iranians during these years, and rightly so, the Iranians had had enough. Thus, Mosaddeq planned to take control of the oil through nationalisation.
Americans living under Obama are not the only ones fearful of the word ‘nationalisation.’ At a very low point for the man who had become so beloved as a result of his WWII leadership, Winston Churchill deviously drew the US into the conflict. The Americans had just elected a Republican to the White House. At the beginning of the Cold War era, Dwight D. Eisenhower was persuaded by his British counterpart that Mosaddeq had communist intentions. Here are three declassified US documents that show the strategy of the administration in 1953:
With the US now believing that Mosaddeq was turning communist—though this was a patent lie and/or excuse for intervention into the battle for the control over the oil—Kermit Roosevelt, Jr. was tapped by the CIA to develop a scheme to overthrow Mosaddeq so that a more pro-American/British puppet-leader could be installed in his place.
In August of 1953, that is what happened. Mosaddeq was overthrown in a coup on Iranian soil, the first time the United States had slumped to that low of a place in order to establish its own agenda in the Middle East. One of the most embarassing of all the events that happened was the discovery that the masses of protesters marching on Tehran, who were supposedly demonstrating that the coup was the will of the people, were actually actors being paid by the CIA.
The rest of the history is not really relevant to my point here, but it is worth reading anyway, either in Kinzer’s book mentioned above, or here in Gasiorowski and Byrne.
It is most important to realise that this coup planted the seeds of discontent in the hearts of many Iranians who felt violated by the intervention of the US and Britain, seeds which eventually produced the Islamic Revolution of 1979. One could also point to Ronald Reagan’s friendship with the Mujahideen in Afghanistan (due to another American president’s communist fears) as another example of US plans going into the dumps: these buddies of Reagan were the predecessors of the Taliban.
So one is justified in asking: when will the US learn that such interference in the affairs of another nation, especially in a part of the world that is little understood by America, has a record of fostering radicalism? Can we add the insurgencies of Iraq to this list of fueled radicalism, or have we seen the worst of it yet?
My intention has been to demonstrate what I mean when I refer to American colonialist aspirations. I cannot see this history of August 1953 as anything other than that which fits the definition.
