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Opinions

1953 Coup and Other Stories

September 1, 2017
Weekly Roundup
2 min read
1953 Coup and Other Stories

Dear friends 

This is Arash Azizi for Maziar, who’s in Chicago for a week. On August 19, 1953, a military coup backed by the US and UK overthrew the nationalist government of Prime Minister Mohammad Mossadegh in Iran. The coup has defined the country for generations. It is one of the key events in the country’s modern history. It put an end to 12 years of relative freedom in Iran, when the parliament was freely elected and many different political forces took part in a vigorous, lively national scene. 

The 64th anniversary of the coup, marked this year, was special because the US State Department had, for the first time, released its official history of the coup just a few months before, in June 2017 (see IranWire’s previous coverage on the release of the documents).

This is why IranWire has shed further light on that momentous event. We link to Maziar’s 2010 film “An Iranian Odyssey,” which was produced for the BBC. The film tells the story of the coup day by day and features original interviews with a range of characters, including Mossadegh’s bodyguard, a leading communist, a British diplomat and, believe it or not, one of the thugs who worked against the prime minister. 

In the last two weeks, I spoke with eight scholars to present you with a variety of takes on the coup. Malcolm Gasiorowski and Ervand Abrahamian, two experts who have written seminal texts on the coup, give us their take on the new documents and more. Yale University’s Abbas Amanat helps put the coup in a broader context of Iranian modern history. Sociologist Misagh Parsa looks at it from the perspective of democratization in Iran, while retelling an anecdote about Khomeini and the coup. Maziar Behrooz, a historian of the left, speaks of the role of the communists. The Israeli historian historian Lior Sternfeld paints a picture of how Mossadegh was viewed in the Arab world and Israel. Hugh Wilford talks about Kermit Roosevelt, the main CIA organizer of the coup. Andrew Cooper Scott gives us a more pro-Pahlavi take. 

Debates and discussions on nation-defining events are never finished. But we hope this gives you a taste of an event that has defined Iran for years, and will probably continue to shape its future in some way.

As always, please let me know if you have any comments. 

Warm regards 
Arash Azizi

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