Abrahamian - The Coup 1953, The CIA, and The Roots of Modern U

THE COUP

THE COUP

ALSO BY ERVAND ABRAHAMIAN

A History of Modern Iran

Tortured Confessions:
Prisons and Public Recantations in Modern Iran

Khomeinism: Essays on the Islamic Republic

The Iran Mojahedin

Iran Between Two Revolutions

THE COUP

1953, THE CIA, AND THE ROOTS OF MODERN

U.S.-IRANIAN RELATIONS

Ervand Abrahamian

2013 by Ervand Abrahamian

All rights reserved.

No part of this book may be reproduced, in any form,
without written permission from the publisher.

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Published in the United States by The New Press, New York, 2013
Distributed by Perseus Distribution

LIBRARY OF CONGRESS CATALOGING-IN-PUBLICATION DATA

Abrahamian, Ervand, 1940
The coup : 1953, the CIA, and the roots of modern U.S.-Iranian relations /
Ervand Abrahamian.
pages cm
Summary: A history of the CIAs 1953 coup in Iran and its aftermath
Provided by publisher.

Includes bibliographical references and index.

ISBN 978-1-59558-862-3 (e-book)

1. IranHistoryCoup dtat, 1953. 2. United States. Central
Intelligence AgencyHistory20th century. 3. IranPolitics
and government19411979. 4. IranForeign relationsUnited
States. 5. United StatesForeign relationsIran. 6. IranForeign
relationsGreat Britain. 7. Great BritainForeign relations
Iran. 8. Petroleum industry and tradePolitical aspectsIran
History20th century. 9. Petroleum industry and tradePolitical
aspectsUnited StatesHistory20th century. I. Title.
DS318.6.A26 2013

955.05'3dc23 2012031402

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Composition by dix!

This book was set in Walbaum MT

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To Emma and Rafi

I would like to thank the History Department at Baruch College for giving me the opportunity over the last ten years to write this book; the Research Committee at the City University of New York and my union, the Professional Staff Congress, for travel grants to Britain; and the Center for Persian Studies at the University of Maryland for inviting me to present some of my findings at their Biennial Ehsan Yarshater Lecture Series. I would also like to thank librarians at the British Petroleum archives at Warwick University for their assistance, and Dr. Hamid Ahmadi and Dr. Habib Ladjevardi for providing me with easy access to their oral history projects in Berlin and Cambridge (Massachusetts). Thanks also go to Andr Schiffrin for encouraging me to complete this book, to Sarah Fan for production editing, and to Rachelle Mandik for copyediting.

The vexing problem of transliteration needs some explanation. To ease the problem, I have modified the elaborate system developed both by the Library of Congress and the International Journal of Middle East Studies. I have dispensed with diacritical marks and adopted spelling used by the mainstream mediafor example, Tehran instead of Teheran, Mashed instead of Mashhad, Hussein instead of Husayn. I have also spelled the name of the central figure as Mossadeq rather than Mossadegh as used at the time by the New York Times, Moussadek by the London Times, or Musaddiq by the Foreign Office and the State Department.