Ken Ehrlich: For someone who is unfamiliar with the recent history of Iran, as
I think most Americans unfortunately are, how would you generally just describe
the context of the 1953 coup, which saw the overthrow of Prime Minister
Mosaddeq?
Afshin Matin-Asgari: Personally, I come from a family that is at least partly
political. My father was a member of the Tudeh party in his youth, although he
later became disillusioned like many other of these ex-communists. He remained
a political person. I grew up knowing things from that experience. Many Iranians
had this idea that indeed in 1953 the CIA came into the country and overthrew
our government. So I have a bit more knowledge through my father. He had talked
about the expectation that there might have been more resistance, that in a sense
how strange it was that the coup was so easily successful. I did grow up kind of
looking at that time, especially the period before the coup, as some kind of a golden
age of activism, political openness, and that all of a sudden closed with the coup.
K E Was
your father active in the Tudeh party at the time of the coup?
A M -A At the time of the coup he was a member, and he was active, although his
frustration, like many other people of his age, was that they expected the Tudeh
party to give them instructions to do something to oppose this coup. Nothing
came. He told me, and I have read this in histories of the coup, that party
members, for example, were ready for instructions to do something against the
coup. He was a civilian, but the party also had an underground military network
that could have resisted the right wing side of the coup. No instructions came. So
he told me personal stories of extreme frustration, that many people were just
standing there… waiting for orders that never came. He never understood why
their leadership was immobilized. Obviously what happened afterwards was that
the new regime went most severely after the communists.
K E What
strikes me in my reading of that time and of that context is the way
that the specter of communism and the Tudeh party was held up by the
US and the international community as this kind of threat to the stability
of the country. It seems very much that that was a construction. Even
though the Tudeh was in fact an opposition party, it was more the idea that
somehow the threat of communism required this intervention.
A M -A Exactly. That’s a very good point because even the best studies of the coup,
for example, by Professor Mark Gasiorowski, the ultimate explanation is decision
making in the US that justified and rationalized the coup. For that reason, the
potential of this threat of communism, that if Mosaddeq stayed in power and the
Shah left, Mosaddeq himself and the Nationalists could not have really stabilized
the situation. This would have given an opening to the Tudeh party. That’s the
rationale that was always given.
Realistically, it’s hard to tell because on the one hand the Tudeh party was
very small in terms of membership. At best, maybe 10,000 or 20,000 actual
card-carrying members. It’s influence was much wider because it was very
strategically placed. They had a large following among the best educated, among
the intelligentsia, and also part of the working class, the most organized parts.
The “cream of the crop” of the country were very much left leaning, and many of
them were connected to the Tudeh despite all of the splits and disillusionments.
What would have happened, one cannot tell.
The reasoning of the Tudeh party and their leadership was very close to
the Soviet Union. At that moment in 1953, one could imagine the Tudeh party’s
decision to do something vis-à-vis the coup must have at least been coordinated or
OK’d by the Soviets. That doesn’t seem to have happened either. It’s never clear
why the Soviet Union was so passive against this coup. They could have at least
allowed the Tudeh leaders to do something about this. Maybe they were thinking
it’s not so important. Maybe they thought this would be just a change of regime,
and then they could pursue gains in the aftermath. There’s still a lot of room for
debate as to exactly what happened.
K E In
my understanding, there may have been genuine confusion partly
because the CIA paid thugs who were not associated with the Tudeh
party. Then things that were done were reported to be the Tudeh party’s
responsibility. So there was genuine confusion about who was acting on
behalf of the party and who was simply a paid thug by the CIA.
A M -A That was unclear. There was a campaign that had a history of at least
several years of sowing confusion, hiring crowds, and/or putting false leftist or
communist pieces in the press to create discord and division within the opposition
in Iran between communists and nationalists and Islamists. To exactly do that, to
make this fear of a potential growing communist presence more fearful and more
dangerous and larger than it was.
K E It
seems to me that the exploitation of this perceived threat of communism
was a way that the British and especially the US, pursued geopolitical
interests. The coup was about opening markets and it was about
accumulation. It was about extraction of resources, but there was this
ghost or specter or fear of communism. This history is very interesting
for that reason. It’s impossible to say, but even if Iran had become a
communist country, what business was it of the US? It may have been that
there wasn’t the infrastructure for the communist party to take over.
Probably not. In that context and as you said, the fear of communism or
the potential threat of communist takeover was constantly used for all kinds of US
intervention. It was attempted in Guatemala less than a year later and for the US
military in so many different countries. Iran is not a unique case, but Iran was
important to the US geopolitical interests because of the oil and its proximity to
the Soviet Union and the strategic situation within the Middle East. It was like a
prize in that cold war game.
A M -A K E That’s,
of course, the other side of the equation: the nationalization of the
oil. That’s really what I think spurred the concrete plans for the coup by
the US.
It’s a complicated story, and there’s also a recent kind of revisionism as to
the history of the coup. A book came out recently that argues the most decisive
actors in the coup were Iranians, right-wing conservative forces including clerics.
The CIA somehow just tipped the balance. That’s one argument. Obviously there
must have been some kind of a domestic base or context for the coup. After all,
the CIA and whatever money was spent or the number of agents they have or
however they bought the crowds or some clerics or people in the army, it was a
minority. The coup must have had an Iranian base, and it did. I think more and
more Iranians have to admit that. It wasn’t just that everything would have been
hunky-dory except that foreigners came and messed up everything.
Nevertheless, the oil nationalization was a big issue. Some revisionist
historiographers now argue that Mosaddeq internationalists may have been more
successful had they negotiated from a more compromising position: They were
too uncompromising. Vis-à-vis the British, they wanted total control of the whole
oil industry. They had good and legitimate reasons, and they won their case also in
an international court of justice.
That led to the situation becoming polarized and the British deciding that
Mosaddeq had to go. There was no way but to overthrow him. Since they were
expelled from the country and they couldn’t do it themselves, they handed the job
A M -A over to the Americans and the CIA. That is what happened in those years and who
exactly was to blame and what was justifiable is an ongoing controversy. The book
on that is not totally closed yet.
K E That
seems like a very important point because it makes sense that there
had to be an internal infrastructure for something like that to happen. What
would you say were the motivations of the right wing in Iran? What was the
right wing opposition to Mosaddeq? How would you characterize that?
Mosaddeq was the head of a national front. There were conservative and
right wing groupings in the national front who gradually fell off and left. Some of
them joined the opposition, and some of them supported the coup. Some of these
groups were conservative secular nationalists, but somehow both domestically
they were worried about the kind of radicalizing effect of the struggle that was
going on. Many of them were seriously worried about the Tudeh party. It was seen
as kind of an anti-foreign, anti-imperialist struggle that had this dimension, that
at least from the left, there was this force of the Tudeh party that also added to
an agenda: If not social revolution, at least dramatic social change, mobilizing and
organizing this incipient but significant working class.
There was room for worry as to the destabilizing overall effect of the
struggle over the oil issue. On one hand, it was a nationalist cause that everyone
could agree on. On the other hand it was a major radical confrontation with a
major power in the British Empire. Yes, it was on the decline and yet still a very
formidable presence in Iran.
Then there was the Soviet Union and the US. The Cold War was already
very much felt within Iranian domestic politics. To most of the status quo in Iran, if
you had to choose, and many were thinking you did have to choose, they would
have sided with the US and the British with a compromise over the oil issue rather
than risk a potential revolutionary situation with many ordinary people being
drawn into the streets in protest demonstrations and with an active communist
party in the fray.
A M -A K E In
A M -A that sense there’s probably also a strong class dimension to that.
There was a class dimension to it, of course.
K E That
makes sense. One of the things I’m interested in is sort of thinking
about how significant the legacy of the coup is in contemporary Iran and
if you could characterize the collective psyche of contemporary Iran. This
is a very general question, I realize but I’m interested in trying to think
how this history is remembered. I’m just curious what your sense of how
important that moment was for the country and whether or not it remains
an important historical moment for people.
1953 does remain an important historical moment at the present for many
people. The generation that grew up after the revolution, even just listening to the
official line or propaganda, everything goes back to the moment that the CIA or
Americans came into this country and took it over. The usual explanation is they
put the Shah on the throne, and from that moment on the Shah was the puppet,
the pawn. The US took over our country. That narrative has been constantly
harped on. It’s not as simple as that of course.
When we were in the student movement, there was a constant slogan: the
Shah is the US puppet. He wasn’t a puppet in the sense that every morning
someone told him jump, and he would jump. It was a more complex relationship.
At some points he had more independence. When they put him back on his throne,
obviously he was much more dependent. The history of exactly what happened
A M -A during the coup and the kind of open questions that I alluded to remain unresolved.
But unfortunately a more simplified memory of the coup is what the younger
generation of people who go back to it are faced with…
I think there’s also a bit of “and so what”? This happened 50 years ago.
The big question now in Iran is where do we stand in terms of Iran’s domestic
politics vis-à-vis the outside world, especially the US. In the Islamic republic from
day one, the rationale has been their defiance of the US. The previous government,
the Shah’s regime, was a US puppet. The revolution turned it around, and Islamic
republic is justified more than anything else because it’s independent. It especially
defies the US. They’ve created this narrative of defiance as the most important
part of their identity.
For example, when the Green Movement and the protests against
Ahmadinejad’s re-election happened, the regime’s argument was yes, there may
have been some problems, but it’s the foreigners, especially the US, that are
inciting people and causing problems. All of the problems of Iran are attributed
by the regime to foreign interference, especially the US. In that sense, the memory
of the coup and what happened 50 years ago plays into different narratives that
different actors can deploy for sometimes conflicting purposes. It is definitely
around, although since I’m a historian, I follow what historians are writing about
this. Their discussion is more complex, and usually the way 1953 is remembered is
more simplistic versions of it.
K E I
haven’t really thought about it in that way, but I can see that the coup is
mobilized in very specific ways within Iranian politics as well to different
benefits.
A M -A There’s the argument that the Iranian revolution would not have happened
had the CIA not overthrown Mosaddeq. It’s a strange thing to say because it’s kind
of having a counterfactual understanding of history, which is not what historians
do. That has become an axiom of Iranian politics. You also see this dynamic in
American narratives of those events.
Of course, the US officially apologized to Iran under the Clinton
administration. They acknowledged that there was that interference in 1953 by
the US, and they said in so many words that they apologized and that was not the
right thing to do in the hopes of kind of putting it behind us and moving on. That
was in the 1990s when Khatami was Iran’s president. There was not a
rapprochement between the US and Iran, but something of a thaw in the most
extremely tense relations between the two countries. I don’t think people
remember that acknowledgement because the bitter memory and the wound is
still there, and it’s like an open wound.
K E You
were just talking about this idea, even in some people’s minds in the
west, that the coup is a key to the so called roots of Middle East terror,
along with the US funding of the mujahideen in Afghanistan. There are
these significant moments of American policy that set the stage for this
kind of chain of events. I think what you’re pointing out is you can’t write
history backwards. You can’t say what would have happened if things had
gone differently, and obviously that things could have unfolded in many
different ways if these events hadn’t taken place. But even so, those two
things are pointed to as so significant in the history.
I also want to add something that is part of the discourse of the Islamic
Republic. I think it has a certain kind of validity, their argument that makes 1953
events not so especially unique. The official position of Islamic Republic is that the
US government is bent on regime change Iran, and 1953 is only one instance of
that kind of attempt. They were successful. They changed the regime, and they
brought into power a regime that they controlled. The argument from the Iranian
A M -A regime side is that the US just has not and will not accept the Iranian revolution or
the Islamic republic in all of these years. Throughout the 30 years, the US has
done everything it can to change the regime and overthrow it.
For example, they see the Iran-Iraq war as really a war that was organized
by the US to overthrow the Islamic Republic. In that sense, it is not just 1953. The
entire history of US-Iranian relations, the way they see it is one sided, and the US
constantly tries to impose its will on Iran and is bent on regime change. What they
want from the US in addition to concrete changes in policies such as not
sanctioning Iran and not initiating hostile action is an official recognition that the
US accepts this regime as a legitimate entity both verbally and in action, showing
that they’re not pursuing regime change in Iran.
The difficulty is in a sense the US is interested in regime change in Iran.
That argument is not totally some kind of a paranoia of the Islamic Republic. In
that sense I think the memory or the meaning of 1953 also hinges on present-day
US-Iranian relations. Seen from one Iranian perspective, 1953 is just one step or
phase in this long, ongoing, at least 50-year long relationship between Iran and
the US where the US has constantly and relentlessly been trying to control Iran
and bring into power or keep in power a regime that is subservient. It wants to
change the Islamic Republic because the regime refuses to bend or bow. They
have a point there.
K E Absolutely.
I mean, put in that way it makes perfect sense to me. I mean, of
course the policies of the Islamic Republic are another story, but that logic
seems absolutely…
That logic is valid, and that has nothing to do with whether one agrees with
the domestic or foreign policy of Islamic Republic in other ways. I don’t. I was not a
supporter of Islamic Republic from the very beginning, and I never became a
supporter. I can see at least a partial validity of the logic that they have been living
from day one in defiance of enormous pressure from the US to change this vision.
A M -A K E Part
of what allows them to succeed is people’s appreciation of that basic
fact, right?
That’s enormously significant because their answer to opposition is you
want the same thing that the United States wants. Whoever wants to significantly
change things and run politically is doing the bidding of the US. Therefore, you’re
traitors and you’re pawns of foreign powers, and that’s how the argument goes.
A M -A K E The
project that I’m working on focuses primarily on the character or the
historical figure, Donald Wilber. I wonder if you’ve read or looked at the
documents that he wrote or the CIA in 1954 and that were declassified in
2000.
I know the text, but I haven’t read it. I’ve looked at the book he wrote in
which he mentions his role, but I haven’t seen that particular document. I know that
he has claims and takes credit for being the architect of the coup, not in charge of
its implementation, but in its planning. And since he was an architect, and had an
interest in architecture, he claims to have been the architect of the coup.
A M -A K E I
think it’s very interesting to think about, as you brought up, these
dynamics between foreign intervention, and foreign influence, and then
also what was happening within the country. As you’ve read more about
the CIA’s role, what sticks out to you? Are there things that surprised
you about how they accomplished this or what they did? One of the things
I’m curious about is when Wilber’s report was declassified and it became
widely available and there was writing about it in publications like
The New York Times, what was revealed then that wasn’t known before? I
think probably within Iran the details were very well-known, but outside of
Iran, less so, perhaps.
Less so. I can’t say that there was a surprising revelation, but I think one
thing that makes it even more complicated is that the actual carrying out of the
coup in those crucial days. It seems that you had the one leading person on the
ground in Iran, and that was Kermit Roosevelt. Apparently, at some point, the CIA
in the US gave up on the success of the coup, and it was Roosevelt who just
persevered and said, no, we’re still going to go on with this, and we’re going to turn
things around. He was right. On the one hand, it seems that the initiative or the
efforts of individuals, like one person, Roosevelt, or the planning of Wilber have
been crucial.
I think that is misleading because you have to look at the context. You have
to look at several years of consistent and structured efforts by the US to
destabilize the running government, and the battle they fought against the Tudeh
Party. That context and the structures were in place. For example, the very close
US links with parts of the Iranian armed forces. That was the instrument, the tool
they used for the coup. Without that, no matter how clever Wilber’s plan was, or
how much initiative Roosevelt had, there would not have been the means for the
CIA to make those moves.
I think the role of these kind of individuals who stand out, and I’m not
denying that they played a significant role, but I think when you look at the context
and structures that are in place, that make those decisive moments, and actions,
or the planning of the men possible, then the background is more important than
just a decision or a plan that Wilber gave to his superiors. I think some of those
actors, in a sense, want to take too much credit for it. I think Wilber does that. He
clearly thinks that he has not been given enough credit for this.
A M -A K E Yeah,
that’s right. It’s almost like he wanted to plant the flag or something.
Yes. It’s as if he need to declare that he was the planner, and in some ways
maybe he did play an important role. The idea that you have to get rid of
Mosaddegh, and perhaps even some other parts of the plan that Wilber
suggested, were proposed by others… for example, Ann Lambton, who was a
British scholar. She’s a very solid scholar of medieval Iranian history. She was in
Iran, and she had wide contacts, and spent many years in Iran. It was her decision,
before the British were expelled by Mosaddegh that the British government
should overthrow him, that the British should get rid of this man. Wilber was not
the only one, nor was he the only Western scholar who worked under cover, and
sold their services to their government.
A M -A K E That
brings you to one of the other things that I’m really interested in
talking about, and thinking about with this project, which is exactly that
kind of double life. It interests me, as a writer, and as a research-based
artist, this idea of disinterested scholarship that exists for many academics.
I think someone like Wilber somehow had this notion that he could study
ancient, Persian architecture almost in isolation, that there was this closed
way in which he could study one subject, and then his intelligence work was
somehow separate. I wonder, as an academic, as a scholar, how you think
about this idea of disinterested scholarship, and to what degree? In some
ways, our work always serves certain interests, right?
A M -A Right.
K E That’s
a bit of a chaotic question.
No, that’s a very good question, but it’s a difficult one both to formulate and
to answer. The examples you gave are perfect examples, like Wilber or Ann Lambton.
Lambton, for example, was a pioneering historian of medieval Iran. A lot of her work
has a lot of value. I mean, she studied texts in the original languages, and made
significant contributions to Iranian history. On the one hand, I think one could
separate part of that scholarly work from the politics, or the political framework
that comes with it. Sometimes the work becomes embedded in that politics.
On the other hand, I think they’re not totally separate because when you
look at especially that generation, people like Lambton or Wilber, you find yourself
in the midst of the old orientalist debate. The way they view Iranian history, or
Iranian architecture is also from a position of power to give it meaning, and to tell
others, including Iranians, what it all means. I think the position of someone like
Wilber standing there, and positing an understanding what medieval or ancient
Iranian architecture is definitely connected to the sense of a political stance that
therefore he has a handle over other aspects of Iranian life, Iranian history and
Iranian politics. And in that sense I think they’re connected.
As a historian, I detect in Lambton’s historiography a sense of an outsider’s
interest in power, and control, and organizing, cataloguing, and seeing things that
perhaps Iranians, themselves, cannot see because she imagines herself as
someone who has a more commanding understanding on all of these subjects. I
think at that level there is a connection between their politics and their
scholarship, although when you move into more details and technical aspects of
scholarship, obviously not as clearly. I don’t think that Wilber was looking at every
Mosque and ruin as a way to plan the coup.
A M -A K E Right,
that’s fascinating. What you’re saying is very interesting,
particularly the complex ways that those dynamics interrelate. I believe
Wilber was passionate about his subject, and had affection for, and
admiration for the architecture of Iran. I think you’re right in the sense
that in his mind it was up to someone like him to do the research, to
investigate it, and to unpack this history. In fact, that’s very similar to the
logic that allows someone to think – “I actually have a suggestion for how
the politics of this entire country should run.”
Sure, I mean then he would also know what’s best for Iranians. Is it better
for Iranians to maybe, potentially go to the ‘other’ side, or is it better if we
secretly carry out a coup and keep them on the good side? What’s best for them?
They may not know or realize this, but this is the best deal we can give them. We
can give it to them just like we can tell them what’s the meaning of their
architecture. I mean, people like Wilber or Lambton obviously were not thinking
that if we overthrow Mosaddegh we are doing harm to Iranians. They were
thinking this is in the best interest of Iranians also.
A M -A K E Do
you think that attitude persists in contemporary American
foreign policy towards Iran? It’s almost like a colonial, or neocolonial
administrative mindset. Do you think that tendency persists?
Yes, obviously it does. Obviously, it does. I mean you see it in every single
kind of official pronouncement of the President or the Secretary of State. That’s
part of the official discourse. It’s hard to tell how aware certain figures are in
terms of these dynamics. Maybe some of these people know in the back of their
mind, but also have some kind of a self-interest in this. Obviously, they want what’s
in the best interest of the US as they see it and this somehow must coincide with
what’s best for Iranians.
It’s only if you have a critical perspective on the meaning of US national
interest or foreign policy that you could say, well no, there’s not necessarily a
coincidence of interest here. It’s one side imposing it’s interests on the other. That
cannot be an officially admitted position of the United States.
A M -A K E I’m
thinking about this partly because you articulated so well the
complexities within Iran around the coup, is that as much as the US would
like to dictate what Iranian policies are, even if they had their way it would
never really work in the way that America would like. There is always the
reality of a difference between the plan of a foreign power, and then what
happens in a sovereign nation, which is full of people making decisions.
A M -A You can say that is a lesson that is to be learned constantly in all of these
major interventions and wars. Take Afghanistan or Iraq, when you try to, in a sense,
dictate what you think is best for that country, it almost never works, even if you
assume that the intentions are altruistic and justified. It seems that the best
course needs to be some kind of an honest negotiation of mutual interests, and not
the insistence on what we think is best for us also happens to be best for you.
That lesson seems to never be driven home because US foreign policy
seems to constantly repeat this idea that you go in there, and you perhaps put
boots on the ground, or invest heavily on one part of the population or
government. You get things done, and that is what is best for us and for that
country. It constantly turns out to be a failure or a colossal mistake. It is repeated
again, and again, and again.
Afshin Matin-Asgari is Associate Professor of
History and Religious Studies at California
State University, Los Angeles. His areas of
specialization include the 20th-century Middle
East, modern Iran, and modern Islamic political
and intellectual movements. He has published
articles in Iranian Studies, Critique, South Asia
Bulletin and numerous other academic journals.
His book, Iranian Student Opposition to the
Shah, was published in 2001.
Ken Ehrlich: In terms of the coup, one of the things that I’m interested in is this
tension around the way it is historicized.
Sasan Fayazmanesh: Yes?
K E There
seems to be various tensions between the struggle to control oil
resources and the fear of Communism in narratives about the coup.
S F Right.
K E These
two kind of figures, almost like ghosts, stand out to me in the
reading of history about that time. How would you assess the tension
between the US and England’s interest in controlling oil resources, and this
legitimate, or not legitimate, fear of Communism?
SF
Both elements, of course, played a role. If it wasn’t for oil, the British
probably would not have been so involved in Iran. It was the Anglo-Iranian Oil
Company that became the center of the fight between Mosaddegh and the British.
Of course, the British Empire was on the decline, and the US empire was trying to
replace it. That’s how the coup happened.
After the nationalization of oil, the British were the ones who were trying
to force Mosaddegh out, and of course they asked for an international boycott of
oil. The US, at the beginning, didn’t go along with the British plan, but eventually
they came around.
The US ultimately got dragged in to the coup, and even though they were
working with the British, at the same time they were trying to replace them. They
were hiding secrets and facts from them, and they were working on their own,
trying to replace them. So, the issue of oil definitely played a role. If it wasn’t for
oil, they probably would have left Iran alone.
The issue of Communism, too—fighting Communist forces and all that—took
part in Iran. The Soviet Party also played a role. Of course, they used it during the
coup to do what they wanted to do.
The US agents, as well as the British agents, even burned a cleric’s house,
and they attributed it to the Tudeh Party—the Communist Party of Iran. They were
actually using that argument—that they were fighting Communism in Iran—as an
excuse to try to dominate Iran.
I don’t think the issue of either fighting Communism or gaining access to
the oil of this or that country is the major reason for domination. There must be
something else. It seems to be the issue of domination, because the US pursued
similar policies in other countries later on, and many of them didn’t have oil.
The year after the coup in Iran, 1953, you see the US getting engaged in
Guatemala. Later on, it’s the Bay of Pigs. Later on, again, it’s Chile, etcetera,
etcetera. It goes on and on, so it’s not just the issue of oil. Communism could be
some aspect of it, but it seems to be, for the most part, as far as the US is
concerned the issue of dominating another country.
The same can be said about Iraq as well. The invasion of Iraq, twice, was not
simply about oil. It was something else. It was somebody challenging the empire,
not going along. So, you get rid of Saddam Hussein at the cost of hundreds of
thousands of individuals killed, and millions of people displaced.
It’s not just about oil. It seems to be something more than that, and I have
been thinking and struggling with this issue, “What is it that the empire is after?”
and domination seems to be a major factor—that somebody is defying the empire,
not going along. It doesn’t matter whether they are democratic or undemocratic,
violating human rights or not, as long as they don’t defy the empire, we can get
along with them.
K E You
brought up the wars in Iraq. In my reading, one of the things that
really struck me, was how few Americans, even if they know about it in
the abstract, really understand how involved we were in the coup. The fact
that the US supported Iraq during the Iran-Iraq war in the 1980’s is also
something that Americans seem to have completely forgotten about—or
don’t know about at all…
SF
Actually, it was more than the US supporting Saddam Hussein in the war.
As I have argued in my book, I’m one of those who believes that the US actually
gave the green light to Saddam Hussein to invade Iran. There is plenty of evidence
to suggest that Zbigniew Brzezinski actually played a major role in pushing
Saddam Hussein in the direction of invading Iran.
One reason for that was that they were trying to end the so-called hostage
crisis, and they thought that if Saddam did invade Iran, then they could approach
Iran and say, “We are going to help you, if you release the hostages.”
So, that was one aspect of it. Of course, once the war had started, yes,
they did everything they could to help Saddam Hussein, including the fact that
they closed their eyes to the issue that Saddam had started to use chemical
agents on the Iranians as early as, I believe, the fall of 1983. The US knew about
that, and they kept it secret for a long time.
Then of course indirectly they were providing Saddam with armaments
through Latin America. They were playing a double-agent role. At times they were
trying to kind of help both sides of the equation, giving false information to
Saddam—he realized that they were doing that at times—or giving arms to Iran
through Israel, so that’s a long story. It comes out through my book, as to what
they were doing, especially with the sanctions.
K E I
SF
guess that takes us in a slightly different direction.
Yes. It’s going to be a very long story.
K E In
terms of the legacy of the coup within contemporary Iran, in your
opinion, how large would you say those events loom? How important is the
coup, if you can say, in the psyche of contemporary Iran? In the mind of the
public? Do you think that’s significant history?
SF
I wrote in a short piece for Counterpunch in the year 2003, on the
anniversary of the coup that you can’t write easy history. Nevertheless, you can’t
imagine how things would have developed if it wasn’t for the coup. If it wasn’t for
the coup, you might not have had the 1979 revolution occur, or at least it might
not have taken the direction it did.
If you look back at the history of Iran, from…let’s say the Tobacco
Movement, which was a 19th-century anti-colonial, anti-domination movement
related to the tobacco trade, which the British were trying to monopolize—if you
go back to that, you see the clergy as trying to have real inroads in the
government, trying to play a dominant role in the Iranian government, but they
didn’t succeed.
In the Constitutional Revolution of 1905 to 1911, the clergy played a role,
but not a dominant role. They never really succeeded until 1979. They turned a
popular revolution into an Islamic revolution, because they were the only force, as
far as I could see, that had survived and had organization. The Shah could destroy
every other opposition to his rule, but he couldn’t get rid of the mosques and the
clergy. They had the organization, and they came out on top in 1979.
That memory of what the US had done in 1953 looms large, and as you said,
it never escaped the psyche of the Iranians. So, when the so-called Students of the
Line of Imam, in 1979, took over the embassy, the clergy in Iran decided—at the
beginning, actually they were against it, but they soon realized that that could be
very good for their own movement, and they started to support it. They started
to push this anti-American, anti-Israeli line, and they used it very effectively.
Of course, you know, in 1979 you have the asset freeze by the US, and then
sanctions after sanctions. Some, of course, as I mentioned, had to do with the
Iran-Iraq War. They didn’t want Iran to win the war, but at the same time they
didn’t want Iraq to win the war. The US wanted to have a stalemate going on for a
long time, playing that double-agent role. Sanctions after sanctions were imposed.
Once the war was over, the US turned against Saddam, to finish him off,
imposing sanctions on Iraq. Then the Israeli lobbyists started to push for
sanctions against Iran in the 1990’s. One thing led to another. You have the 1953
coup d’etat in Iran, and then you have the 1979 revolution in Iran also, and so on
and so forth. It goes on and on. It has never been forgotten. It’s still there.
Of course, the Iranian clergy nowadays doesn’t so much want to push this
nationalist movement, and so they are not really mentioning the coup as much as
possible anymore. They are into Islamic revolutions, so they want that to be
somewhat in the background, but many Iranians have never forgotten that issue.
K E I
can imagine. I was thinking that probably most of the people who were
alive during the coup are getting to be quite old or have passed away, so it’s
interesting to think about it at this point, right? When the entire
generation of people who experienced it first-hand have disappeared, it’s
an important time to think about the legacy of that history.
SF
Right. Many have passed away. I was only three years old when the coup
happened, and obviously I remember it. My son, who was born in this country, and
has grown up in this country, he knows about it. He is a medical doctor nowadays,
but even he wrote a little something on the sanctions in Iran, and I remember he
was really reading about and trying to understand the history of that coup.
It is not something that you will forget. It will go from one generation to
another, as to what the US did. The price that the US has paid, also, is enormous.
The US corporations paid a heavy price after the US government passed sanctions
against Iran. They’ve been cut off from a very lucrative market for over 30 years,
and they can’t get back in there.
Not only just the oil companies, but the aerospace and agricultural
industries—they have all been cut off from Iranian markets. Now it’s happening to
Europe as well. The corporations are being dragged out of that market as well.
The Asians and the Chinese are trying to occupy that niche, so a lot of people have
paid a heavy price for that.
K E Can
we talk just a minute about the piece you wrote for Counterpunch, and
the material that was released by James Reisen in The New York Times—
that classified CIA document that he got ahold of that was written by
Wilber—what was new in that to you?
You said you were aware of the US involvement, and the British
involvement in the coup. When that information was made public by the
CIA, was there material in it that was new to you? And if so, was anything
particularly significant?
SF
There was really nothing new there, as far as I saw. I actually do have
relatives, and am now married to somebody who was related to one of the ministers
of Mosaddegh. His name was Ali Shayegan, and he lived in New York—in exile in New
York. He was the cultural minister of Mosaddegh.
Through that relation, I understood the details of what had happened in
Iran during the coup, so there was really nothing much that was new, except as
some historians have mentioned, some tidbits were there that we didn’t know
about—for example, Wilber being such a racist or that perhaps it was the
Americans who pushed for the burning of some cleric’s house, and they attributed
it to the Communist Party of Iran. These little bits of information came out, but
there was really nothing that much that was new and significant to us.
I already knew that much of what had happened. I remember growing up, as
a child sometimes, I would ask my mother, and she would tell me some details. She
would tell me about mobs that came to the street, and they were obviously paid.
She knew all about these stories before they came out in the newspaper, about how
the CIA paid the mobs to come to the streets with clubs, and beat individuals.
I remember she was telling me they brought prostitutes into the streets,
and things like this. People knew about what had happened. They had observed
it, and they would pass it on to their kids. It was like a little story that people
would tell.
Of course, I wrote the piece for Counterpunch in 2003, on the anniversary
of the event of August 1990, but the piece in The New York Times had come out in
2000, right after the speech given by Madeleine Albright, but again, there was not
much that was new to me. It was merely confirming what we already knew.
K E What
do you think about this strange double life that Donald Wilber lived,
where on the one hand, he seemed to be a respected scholar, and on the
other he was an intelligence officer for the CIA? How do you make sense
that strange double life?
SF
I’m not a historian, and I’m not really familiar with the the life of Donald
Wilber, but I’m not surprised. People seem to do what the office or their
environment might make them do. Why did President Obama, who is so intelligent,
so articulate, so educated, follow so many of the same policies that the Bush
Administration followed? The fact is, the office is molded him, and pushed him in
certain directions.
He seems to be an ethical person in many ways, but then he didn’t seem to
mind the fact that his government assassinated individuals via drones, which is
contrary to international law, or that he supported the occupation of Palestinians
in the West Bank and Gaza—He didn’t seem to mind that. He did the sort of things
that the office required him to do. I’m not surprised that somebody who is
intelligent and an academic would be also involved in writing the script for the coup.
We have our personal life and we have the office life. We’ll do certain things
that we are not supposed to do. It’s hard, sometimes, not to do it.
K E Right.
SF
I see that all around me. Why does this person do this, which is quite
unethical and immoral? Because they have to do the work.
K E It’s
interesting. I imagine, in my mind, anyway, Wilber was probably
someone who genuinely believed that he was doing the right thing. He
thought he was saving Iran from Communism.
SF
He actually thought it was a glorious day. A day that should not have ended.
I remember, as I was reading it, I was thinking, “Well, to us, it was a day of infamy.
It should have never begun.” So, we read it very differently. You never really
experienced what we experienced in Iran.
Under the Shah, life was very difficult. It was extreme repression. Some
people say today that Iran is awful, which is probably is, but in today’s Iran, at
least you can sit in a cab and curse the mullahs and the clergy without fear.
Nothing happens.
In the Shah’s time, you could never do such a thing. You could never sit in a
cab and curse the Shah, because you were always worried that, “He belongs to the
secret police.” It was extreme repression. As I have mentioned here and there,
people would disappear. Many were tortured. Many were killed. As members of the
student organization, part of our job was continuously to find lawyers that would
go to Iran, to find this individual or that individual, whether they are in jail, or
whether they are dead or alive.
Wilber never experienced what we experienced. Perhaps if he had known
what sorrow we knew, he wouldn’t find it to be such a glorious thing. We all have a
way of justifying what we do. I guess as human beings, we always find a way to
justify our own actions, and so we will. You do this to fight Communism. Something
was out there called Communism. They were fighting it. Even though in Iran, I
believe, the Tudeh Party was never a viable force—a force that could really take
over the government. It never appeared to be such a powerful force in Iran.
K E It
SF
was a manipulation.
Right. They used it as an excuse to perhaps dominate.
K E Maybe
this is a little bit speculative, and veering off the subject to a certain
degree, but as I mentioned, one of the themes that I’m interested in is this
relationship between art and politics. Among artists, this is a very loaded
conversation, because there are artists who feel like art should engage
politics of this or that sort, and there are other artists who say that art
which explicitly addresses politics sort of closes off this other space that
art can occupy.
One of the things that’s interesting to me about Wilber is that he was
obviously, truly obsessed as an individual with Persian architecture. With
rugs. He founded the Persian Rug Society at Princeton University. He
collected Persian bronzes. He had this kind of deep—and, I believe,
meaningful—affection for these kinds of cultural practices.
Do you have thoughts about these kinds of complex relationships
between cultural life and the sphere of politics? I realize it’s a bit of a vague
question, but can you reflect on these kind of dynamics between cultural
production and political life?
SF
I remember in my youth, I once wrote an article for a newspaper—a
student newspaper—which had to do with the Marxist concept of art and politics.
That was a very difficult paper. You know, whether, as you said, art can be political,
or has to be completely free of politics. So, you are taking me in a direction which
is very difficult. I remember writing that article, and I was probably arguing
against the issue of art being political.
Wilber might have been interested in the architecture or the designs and
all of that in Iran, but at the same time, as I mentioned, he was such a racist. He
mentioned at the end of his book that one problem with Iranians is that they’re
indecisive. They can never make a decision. So, a man that apparently is a racist
seems to also, at the same time, admire certain aspects of their artistic life.
I myself actually came from an artistic background. My whole family were
painters and sculptors. Before I became a mathematician or an economist, I was
making some income with painting and sculpting. That’s why I actually became
interested in the relationship between art and daily life, but it really didn’t go far.
It became too complicated. My issue was: to what extent the economic foundation
of society would influence artistic sensibilities.
I remember this was a question, and actually it seems to have been a
question for Marx—you know, why is it that in an advanced, let’s say capitalistic
economy, you still read Shakespeare? It’s so irrelevant in a certain way, you know?
Or why do you enjoy the paintings of a 16th century Dutch painter? How do you
relate these things to each other? Does the economic foundation influence what
Marx called the superstructure of the economy, such as, for example, the legal
foundation, artistic relations, even consciousness itself. Does it do that? That was
the angle I tried to take when I was writing that article: to what extent is art
influenced by economic relations, if at all? It’s something that I struggled with at
the time and I think Marx left these questions unanswered in some ways.
So, you are asking me a question which is extremely difficult and requires
quite a bit of thinking. There are such correspondences, to use a term of
Marx’s—from A Contribution to the Critique of Political Economy. In his preface,
he discusses this relationship between what he calls the structure, which is the
economic relations, and the superstructure, in which everything else seems to
fall—where there is a correspondence.
The issue that became important for me is, what does correspondence
mean? Nowadays, when I teach the history of economic thought, I really have very
little explanation for the students as to what that correspondence is all about.
You can see the complexity of the subject matter.
K E Yes,
well to circle back to the coup, this was the first time the US had
overthrown a foreign government in this way—without the military,
without invasion, but through these kind of covert means.
SF
Correct. That’s right. This was neo-colonialism. You really don’t have to
send an army and invade and take over. You can do it in other ways. You can install
governments that are friendly to you, regardless of what they do otherwise.
So yes, that was the beginning of this circle, that we can actually overthrow
governments that way. They have been trying to do that for 30 years in Iran. They
have been trying to overthrow the government. However bad this government
might be, it’s the job of the Iranian people to overthrow it. They have a long
history of overthrowing despots, and if they want to, they can overthrow this one
as well. It is not the job of another government.
Dr. Sasan Fayazmanesh is Professor Emeritus
of Economics at California State University,
Fresno. Dr. Fayazmanesh’s writings have
appeared in such publications as Journal of the
History of Economic Thought, Research in the
History of Economic Thought and Methodology,
the Encyclopedia of Political Economy, and
Review of Radical Political Economics. He is the
author of several books, including The United
States and Iran: Sanctions, Wars and the
Policy of Dual Containment; Money and
Exchange: Folktales and Reality and
Containing Iran: Obama’s Policy of Tough
Diplomacy.
Incursions and Excursions
A project by Ken Ehrlich
This book was created in an open edition
for The 2017 California-Pacific Triennial:
Building As Ever
organized by the
Orange County Museum of Art
curated by OCMA Senior Curator
Cassandra Coblentz
May 6 – September 3, 2017
To download copies, please visit:
ocma.net/exhibition/2017-california-pacific-triennial
Designed in collaboration with
Juliette Bellocq, Handbuilt studio
www.kenehrlich.net