How America made Martyrs of two Iranian Democrats and overthrew Iran’s Liberal Government in 1953

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http://www.juancole.com/2014/08/democrats-overthrew-government.html

How America made Martyrs of two Iranian Democrats and overthrew Iran’s Liberal Government in 1953
By contributors | Aug. 19, 2014
By Farhad Malekafzali

August 19 is the anniversary of the 1953 CIA-MI6 coup in Iran. The coup overthrew a government with a remarkable commitment to the norms of liberal democracy. The fate of Premier Dr. Mohammad Mossadegh has rightfully received a good deal of scholarly and journalistic attention. He was tried for treason, imprisoned for three years, and died under house arrest in March of 1967.

In 1951, the Iranian parliament nationalized the country’s petroleum industry because the predecessor of BP, the Anglo-Iranian Oil Company, refused to pay what parliamentarians felt was a fair share on petroleum profits. They elected Mossadegh prime minister. The US and the UK put Iran’s oil sales under embargo, twisting the arms of countries like Italy and Japan not to buy it. The monarch, Mohammad Reza Pahlevi, was pro-West and increasingly uncomfortable with the Mossadegh government, and he went into exile in Italy. Then in 1953 the US Central Intelligence Agency was authorized by President Dwight Eisenhower to implement a coup plot originally dreamed up by British intelligence, MI-6. Crowds were bought, far right wing generals encouraged, and ultimately Mosaddegh was overthrown.

The stories of two of Mosaddegh’s comrades, Dr. Hussain Fatemi and Brigadier General Mahmoud Afshartous have received little attention outside of the Farsi press. They paid with their lives for their defense of the popular movement Dr. Mossadegh had come to symbolize. Their deaths represent the brutality and pettiness of Mohammad Reza Shah and his domestic and foreign collaborators.

Dr. Hussain Fatemi was a newspaper editor and a founding member of the liberal National Front, formed in 1950 to end British influence in Iran through the nationalization of the Anglo-Iranian Oil Company. He later became a Majlis deputy, a deputy premier, and a foreign minister.