Iran: How the prime minister was overthrown in 1953

Witness History

BBC

History, Personal Journals, Society & Culture

4.4 • 1.6K Ratings

🗓️ 15 August 2023

⏱️ 10 minutes

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Summary

The coup of 1953 changed the course of Iranian history. The USA - with British help - overthrew a nationalist prime minister and installed the Shah in power. In 2010, Alan Johnston heard archive recordings of the CIA officer who played a part and spoke to Hedayat Matine-Daftary, the grandson of Mohammed Mossadeq, the deposed prime minister. (Photo: crowds of people protest against the Iran coup in 1953. Credit: Getty Images)

Transcript

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0:00.0	Hello, you're listening to the Witness History podcast from the BBC World Service.
0:09.6	We're taking you back to the 15th of August 1953, when a coup took place in Iran.
0:15.1	The United States, with assistance from the British, overthrew Iran's Prime Minister
0:20.1	Muhammad Mousadek, and reinstated the Shah, Muhammad Reza Pahlavi, as the nation's leader.
0:26.2	In 2010, Alan Johnston spoke to the grandson of the former Prime Minister, Hadayat
0:30.8	Matin Devhtari.
0:32.5	It is mid-August 1953, and the Iranian monarch, the Shah, has just moved to sack his Prime
0:39.8	Minister, Muhammad Mousadek.
0:42.3	But all is not quite as it seems.
0:45.4	The CIA is deeply involved, so involved in fact that its agents have even written the decree,
0:52.9	ordering Mr. Mousadek's dismissal.
0:55.2	For security reasons, we did the actual writing of, say, I had a guy who wrote perfect
1:02.4	version, and we drafted it and then delivered it to the Shah.
1:08.8	Kermit Roosevelt, a grandson of President Theodore Roosevelt, was the chief American agent
1:14.8	in Tehran, and he was engineering a coup.
1:18.3	The US wanted to leave the pro-Western Shah in complete control of his oil-rich nation.
1:25.1	Most of the plan involved installing a new government that would be headed by a Shah loyalist,
1:30.7	General Fazlala Zahidi.
1:32.8	But in the gathering tension, there was a danger that the general might be arrested before
1:37.2	the coup, so agent Roosevelt stepped in, personally, and made sure his man was safe.
1:44.1	I went and we got him from the apartment and took him under a rug in the back of a car
1:51.3	to the solar agency man's house, and we put him in the solar there, and he was not disturbed.
	...

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