The US Destroyed Iranian Democracy to Uphold British Imperialism
Seventy years ago this week, the US and the UK overthrew the Iranian leader Mohammad Mossadegh, who had fought back against British imperialism by nationalizing the oil company now known as BP. The UK has yet to acknowledge its role in this travesty.
National Front of Iran militants demonstrate on July 25, 1953, in Tehran, in support of Prime Minister Mohammad Mossadegh. (AFP Files-Intercontinentale / AFP via Getty Images)
August 19 marks an ignominious anniversary: seventy years since the coup against Mohammad Mossadegh and the snuffing out of Iranian democracy. Popularly remembered largely as a CIA-led operation, the plot to oust Mossadegh was as British as it was American; while the United States has long acknowledged culpability, Whitehall remains resistant to do the same. The course of the coup demonstrates not only the innate desire of successive British governments to preserve power through any means available but their failure to do so independently from the United States.
An Informal Empire
Although British commercial interests in Persia were established as early as the 1500s, the country took on new importance in 1908, when gold magnate William Knox D’Arcy won concessionary rights for the exploitation of oil and struck rich, with the Anglo-Persian Oil Company being founded in 1909. The chief source of oil for the Admiralty, the British government became majority shareholders in 1914 and rechristened it the Anglo-Iranian Oil Company (AIOC) in 1935. Today, it is known as BP.
Although Iran was never a colony, it nonetheless bore the weight of British imperialism. Through capital, corruption, and coercion, the AIOC and the diplomatic service ensured that Iran was subsumed into the “informal empire” and its oil industry operated for Britain’s benefit. In 1937, the AIOC produced over 10 million tons of oil, returning £7.4 million in net profits and £1.6 million in British taxes. The Iranian government received just £3.5 million — and in some respects, this was a good year, since in 1931, they received a figure equivalent to barely 12 percent of the AIOC’s annual profits.
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