Iran - Eisenhower - Columbia University / U.S. foreign policy comes full circle.

[american_typeculture]

Eisenhower was President of Columbia University from 1948 to 1953. In 1953, during the admistration of U.S. President Dwight D. Eisenhower, the democratically elected government of Prime Minister Mohammed Mossadegh was overthrown in a coup instigated by the American Central Intelligence Agency. Ironic that Eisenhower's failed foreign policy was responsible for Ahmadinejad speaking at a university where Eisenhower himself was once president.




http://www.nytimes.com/library/world/mideast/041600iran-cia-index.html

The Central Intelligence Agency's secret history of its covert operation to overthrow Iran's government in 1953 offers an inside look at how the agency stumbled into success, despite a series of mishaps that derailed its original plans.

Written in 1954 by one of the coup's chief planners, the history details how United States and British officials plotted the military coup that returned the shah of Iran to power and toppled Iran's elected prime minister, an ardent nationalist.

[Malikshah]

1. You...you...you....

Historian you. One of those inty-lekshuls...

:)

Michael Kinzer's work All the Shah's Men is a must read

Especially for many on this site.

Would that they actually read a bit o history on the subject.

[eleny]

2. And another link if anyone wants to read the Dr. Weber materials

"CLANDESTINE SERVICE HISTORY
OVERTHROW OF PREMIER MOSSADEQ OF IRAN"

http://cryptome.org/cia-iran-all.htm#note

"This paper, entitled Overthrow of Premier Mossadeq of Iran, was written in March 1954 by Dr. Donald N. Wilber who had played an active role in the operation. The study was written because it seemed desirable to have a record of a major operation prepared while documents were readily at hand and while the memories of the personnel involved in the acitivity were still fresh. In addition, it was felt advisable to stress certain conclusions reach after the operation had been completed and to embody some of these in the form of recommendations applicable to future, parallel operations."

[whoneedstickets]

3. The Mossadegh coup may be THE single biggest modern event...

..in Middle East history. At that moment the US selected a policy path that advanced authoritarian regimes over secular, progressive (soft socialist), nationalist, Muslim governments. WE (and our British lap dogs) mortally wounded secular Islam in 1953 and handed those societies to the RW dictators to satisfy Big Oil. In 1956, Anthony Eden took another stab at Nasser's secular, nationalist regime in Egypt. Though Eisenhower stopped the UK-Israeli plot, the writing was on the wall; Islamic societies were to be ruled, not governed.

Imagine if today we were given a chance to respond to the emergence of a secular, social democratic regime in Iran! We and the population of the middle east are the victims of our repeated blundering attempts at power manipulation.

[american_typeculture]

5. U.A.R really scared the shit out of the U.S.

Not to mention Israel. The United Arab Republic was a short lived pan-Arabic movement which culminated in an alliance between Syria and Egypt. Oh no, that wasn't going to happen, it is better for U.S interests' that Arabs and Muslims fight in bloody wars among one another.

[Canuckistanian]

4. Wow, ironic indeed

BTW, here's an excerpt from a review of All the Shah's Men:

At an NSC meeting in early 1953, President Dwight Eisenhower said "it was a matter of great distress to him that we seemed unable to get some of these down-trodden countries to like us instead of hating us."1 The problem has likewise distressed all administrations since, and is emerging as the core conundrum of American policy in Iraq. In All the Shah's Men, Stephen Kinzer of the New York Times suggests that the explanation may lie next door in Iran, where the CIA carried out its first successful regime-change operation over half a century ago. The target was not an oppressive Soviet puppet but a democratically elected government whose populist ideology and nationalist fervor threatened Western economic and geopolitical interests. The CIA's covert intervention—codenamed TPAJAX—preserved the Shah's power and protected Western control of a hugely lucrative oil infrastructure. It also transformed a turbulent constitutional monarchy into an absolutist kingship and induced a succession of unintended consequences at least as far ahead as the Islamic revolution of 1979—and, Kinzer argues in his breezily written, well-researched popular history, perhaps to today.

From the CIA website, no less. (now encrypted to assure visitor confidentiality):
https://www.cia.gov/library/center-for-the-study-of-intelligence/csi-publications/csi-studies/studies/vol48no2/article10.html