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OpEdNews Op Eds    H3'ed 8/26/16

The Banality of Evil and the Ivory-Tower Masterminds of the 1953 coup d'etat in Iran

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In that time the Rashidians orchestrated assorted acts of subterfuge and public sabotage against Mossadegh's government, including organizing and financing various networks of provocateurs. They also bought off an assortment of local journalists and the press and for months planted all kinds of false, damaging stories in local newspapers against the Mossadegh government. In an already volatile national situation, and besides the negative impact on segments of the Iranian public, such acts also succeeded in driving fatal wedges within the ranks of Mossadegh's own Iranian National Front coalition (not to mention seriously destabilizing the Iranian majlis of the time), especially following Mossadegh's second term during those months after the 21 July 1952 uprising (30 Tir 1331). According to Zaehner, "the detaching of [Ayatollah] Kashani [the veritable driving force of the July 1952 uprising] and [Hussein] Makki [as well as Mozzafar Baqa'i] from Musaddiq were 'due to the factors' created and directed by the brothers Rashidiyan" [22]. The cumulative damage inflicted by these activities directed by Zaehner and executed by his Iranian mafia contacts, not to mention its far-reaching implications beyond even that era, cannot be underestimated.

Many of the vagaries and nitty-gritty details around the 1953 coup d'etat are only now -- sixty-plus years later -- starting to come to light. Officially the British MI6 continues to deny any involvement in the event, but pertinent documentation connected to the British Foreign Office is slowly beginning to see the light of day. From what we are beginning to learn only now, the role of the Anglo-American ivory tower was a decisively pivotal one, and without its advice and expertise one can only speculate whether the coup would have even succeeded. This is an angle to the story that requires much further scrutiny, study and fleshing out. Here the mastermind roles of A.K.S. Lambton and R.C. Zaehner have been briefly laid out in summary. It is hoped that others may soon piece together with the evidence more of the details, and especially the involvement of all those other Western ivory-tower academics whom Abrahamian names -- or ones we may even yet learn about.

Notes

[1] Ervand Abrahamian The Coup, the CIA, and the Roots of Modern U.S.-Iranian Relations, New York & London, 2013.

[2] Ibid., 202.

[3] See Artemy M. Kalinovsky, "The Soviet Union and Mosaddeq: A Research Note," Iranian Studies, 2014: Vol. 47, No. 3, 401--418.

[4] See The National Security Archive http://nsarchive.gwu.edu/index.html (retrieved 23 August 2016).

[5] See "Iran 1953: The Strange Odyssey of Kermit Roosevelt's Countercoup," The National Security Archive, http://nsarchive.gwu.edu/NSAEBB/NSAEBB468/ (retrieved 23 August 2016).

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Wahid Azal is an independent scholar and political commentator living in Berlin, Germany.

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