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All the Shah's Men: An American Coup and the Roots of Middle East Terror (Paperback)
by Stephen Kinzer (Author) "Most of Tehran was asleep when an odd caravan set out through the darkness shortly before midnight on August 15, 1953..." (more)
Key Phrases: oil dispute, service history, United States, Reza Shah, Operation Ajax (more...)
		
	
 
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Editorial Reviews
From Publishers Weekly
With breezy storytelling and diligent research, Kinzer has reconstructed the CIA's 1953 overthrow of the elected leader of Iran, Mohammad Mossadegh, who was wildly popular at home for having nationalized his country's oil industry. The coup ushered in the long and brutal dictatorship of Mohammad Reza Shah, widely seen as a U.S. puppet and himself overthrown by the Islamic revolution of 1979. At its best this work reads like a spy novel, with code names and informants, midnight meetings with the monarch and a last-minute plot twist when the CIA's plan, called Operation Ajax, nearly goes awry. A veteran New York Times foreign correspondent and the author of books on Nicaragua (Blood of Brothers) and Turkey (Crescent and Star), Kinzer has combed memoirs, academic works, government documents and news stories to produce this blow-by-blow account. He shows that until early in 1953, Great Britain and the Anglo-Iranian Oil Company were the imperialist baddies of this tale. Intransigent in the face of Iran's demands for a fairer share of oil profits and better conditions for workers, British Foreign Secretary Herbert Morrison exacerbated tension with his attitude that the challenge from Iran was, in Kinzer's words, "a simple matter of ignorant natives rebelling against the forces of civilization." Before the crisis peaked, a high-ranking employee of Anglo-Iranian wrote to a superior that the company's alliance with the "corrupt ruling classes" and "leech-like bureaucracies" were "disastrous, outdated and impractical." This stands as a textbook lesson in how not to conduct foreign policy.
Copyright 2003 Reed Business Information, Inc. --This text refers to the Hardcover edition.

Review
”…meticulously documented throughout…essential reading…” (Medicine Conflict and Survival, Vol. 21(4) October 2005)

That the past is prolog is especially true in this astonishing account of the 1953 overthrow of nationalist Iranian leader Mohammed Mossadegh, who became prime minister in 1951 and immediately nationalized the Anglo-Iranian Oil Company. This act angered the British, who sought assistance from the United States in overthrowing Mossedegh's fledgling democracy. Kermit Roosevelt, Teddy's grandson, led the successful coup in August 1953, which ended in the reestablishment of the Iranian monarchy in the person of Mohammad Reza Shah. Iranian anger at this foreign intrusion smoldered until the 1979 revolution. Meanwhile, over the next decade, the United States successfully overthrew other governments, such as that of Guatemala. Kinzer, a New York Times correspondent who has also written about the 1954 Guatemala coup (Bitter Fruit: The Story of the American Coup in Guatemala), tells his captivating tale with style and verve. This book leads one to wonder how many of our contemporary problems in the Middle East may have resulted from this covert CIA adventure. Recommended for all collections. —Ed Goedeken, Iowa S tate Univ. Lib., Ames (Library Journal, June 15, 2003)

"...He does so with a keen journalistic eye, and with a novelist's pen...In what is a very gripping read." (The New York Times, July 23, 2003)

Tell people today that the United Nations was once the center of the world—the place where struggling nations got a shot at a fair hearing instead of a monkey trial before they were overthrown—and most would probably shake their heads in puzzlement.
Yet it was at the U.N., in October 1953, that one of the greatest dramas of the nascent television age unfolded: The eccentric, hawk-nosed Iranian nationalist leader Mohammed Mossadegh squared off with the aristocratic ambassador of the fading British Empire. At stake was Britain's claim to own Iran's oil in perpetuity.
The press played the showdown like a prize fight, "the tremulous, crotchety Premier versus Britain's super-suave representative, Sir Gladwyn Jebb," in Newsweek's account. The Daily News groused, "Whether Mossy is a phony or a genuine tear-jerker, he better put everything he's got into his show if he goes on television here." Time magazine had made him its Man of the Year. Now came "the decisive act in the dramatic, tragic and sometimes ridiculous drama that began when Iran nationalized the Anglo-American Oil Co. five months ago."
Five centuries ago would be more accurate, in the eyes of veteran New York Times correspondent Stephen Kinzer, who has written an entirely engrossing, often riveting, nearly Homeric tale, which, if life were fair, would be this summer's beach book. For anyone with more than a passing interest in how the United States got into such a pickle in the Middle East, All the Shah's Men is as good as Grisham.
And what a character Mossadegh makes: a fiery, French-educated nationalist with wild eyes, a high patrician forehead and droopy cheeks. His legendary hypochondria—he was prone to fainting and constantly received even diplomatic visitors in bed—seemed to flow from some deep wellspring of Shi'ite martyrdom, Kinzer suggests.
But the author's real accomplishment is his suspenseful account of Persia's centuries-old military, political, cultural and religious heritage, in which Mossadegh's face-off with London comes as the stirring climax to a drama that began with "Cyrus, Darius, and Xerxes, titans whose names still echo through history." By the 1930s, most Iranians had come to regard the abject misery they plunged into with every passing decade of exclusive British control of their one great natural asset as another passing calamity in a long history of the same. But with the global stirring of post-World War II nationalism, Anglo-American Oil pushed them to the breaking point.
In 1947, for example, the company reported an after-tax profit of £40 million—the equivalent of $112 million—and gave Iran just £7 million," Kinzer writes. Meanwhile, the company ignored a 1933 agreement to pay laborers more than 50 cents a day, or to build "the schools, hospitals, roads, or telephone system it promised." Inevitably, riots began breaking out at Abadan, the oil city where hundreds of thousands of Iranians lived amid baked mud and sewage in cardboard hovels in shadeless, searing heat. Their British overseers lived in another world entirely—tending to their green lawns and gardens, watching their well-scrubbed children frolic in the fountains, attending air-conditioned, "no-wogs-allowed" movie theaters, and sipping gin and tonics in their private clubs. The Abadan riots also propelled the fiery Mossadegh to his rendevous with destiny. But although the Iranian leader held his audience at the United Nations Security Council with a moving explication of his country's destitution at the hands of Anglo-Iranian interests, his triumph proved short-lived—and was soon to become a bittersweet memory.
In 1953, President Harry S Truman, whose gut-level sympathy for the impoverished Iranians led him to rebuff British pleas to conspire in Mossadegh's removal, was gone. The incoming Republicans were much more favorably disposed toward the British, especially after Whitehall repackaged its pitch in terms of a communist threat: Iran would fall to the Soviets, they now said, if Mossadegh stayed in office. Within weeks, the Eisenhower administration was plotting to get rid of him.
After all this drama, the machinations of CIA agent Kermit Roosevelt in Teheran to bring down Mossadegh and replace him with the young Reza Shah Pahlevi seems almost like an epilogue. For connoisseurs of covert action, however, there's a hell of a story left, even if some of it will make even the hardest-bitten Cold Warrior wince.
The basic facts of Operation Ajax have been known for some time, in part from "Kim" Roosevelt's own memoir, in part from other sources, most notably a windfall of long-classified CIA documents leaked to Kinzer's New York Times colleague James Risen in 2000.
The author makes good use of the material, toggling his drama between Washington, where CIA desk officers furiously churned out material for bought-off Iranian newspapers and radio stations, to Teheran, where Roosevelt scurried among clandestine meetings with Reza Pahlevi—a man so timorous he flew to Baghdad when the plot seemed to unravel—as well as with various treasonous Iranian Army officers.
Ajax was a triumph in the eyes of many—especially, needless to say, in the CIA. That verdict, of course, discounts the whirlwind of 1979, when the Shah was overthrown by furious Shi'ite mobs whipped up by the Ayatollah Khomeini, who quickly spawned the terrorists of Hezbollah and other groups who plague us today.
"We got 25 years out of the Shah—that's not so bad," a CIA man once said to me, stirring a drink with his finger. As always, the Iranians had a different view. —Jeff Stein is co-author of "Saddam's Bombmaker" and editor of Congressional Quarterly's Homeland Security, a daily news Web site. (The Washington Post, Sunday, August 3, 2003)

On Aug. 15, 1953, a. group of anxious C.I.A. officers huddled in a safe house in Tehran, sloshing down vodka, singing Broadway songs and waiting to hear whether they'd made history. Their favorite tune, "Luck Be a Lady Tonight," became the unofficial anthem of Operation Ajax - the American plot to oust Iran's nationalist prime minister, Mohammed Mossadegh, and place the country firmly in the authoritarian hands of Mohammed Reza Shah.
In fact, luck was not much of a lady that night; as Stephen Kinzer's lively popular history of the 1953 coup recounts, Mossadegh's chief of staff got word of the conspiracy and rushed troops to defend the prime minister, thereby panicking the feckless young shah into fleeing to Baghdad and plunging the carousing Central Intelligence agents into gloom. The coup succeeded four tense days later, only after a C.I.A.-incited mob (led by a giant thug known memorably as Shaban the Brainless) swept Mossadegh aside. Luck was even less kind to the Ajax plotters in the longer haul; in 1979, the despotic shah fell to Islamist revolutionaries bristling with anti-American resentment.
Even the president who approved the coup, Dwight Eisenhower, later described it as seeming "more like a dime novel than an historical fact." Sure enough, "All the Shah's Men" reads more like a swashbuckling yarn than a scholarly opus. Still, Kinzer, a New York Times correspondent now based in Chicago, offers a helpful reminder of an oft-neglected piece of Middle Eastern history, drawn in part from a recently revealed secret C.I.A. history.
The book's hero is the enigmatic Mossadegh himself. In his day, British newspapers likened Mossadegh to Robespierre and Frankenstein's monster, while The New York Times compared him to Jefferson and Paine. Kinzer full-throatedly takes the latter view, seeing Mossadegh's achievements as "profound and even earth-shattering." But he acknowledges that the great Iranian nationalist was also an oddball: a prima donna, prone to hypochondria, ulcers and fits, who met the urbane American diplomat Averell Harriman while lying in bed in pink pajamas and a camel-hair cloak.
Mossadegh's Iran faced formidable foes: British oil executives, the C.I.A. and the brothers Dulles, all of whom come off wretchedly here. The least sympathetic of all are Iran's erstwhile British rulers, who continued to gouge Iran via the Anglo-Iranian Oil Company. When the Truman administration prodded it to share the wealth with Iran, its chairman sniffed, "One penny more and the company goes broke." In 1951, to London's fury, Mossadegh led a successful campaign to nationalize the oil company, drove the British to close their vital oil refinery at Abadan and became prime minister. The British began drafting inv... --This text refers to the Hardcover edition.

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Product Details

    * Paperback: 272 pages
    * Publisher: Wiley (August 12, 2004)
    * Language: English
    * ISBN-10: 0471678783
    * ISBN-13: 978-0471678786
    * Product Dimensions: 9.1 x 6.1 x 0.9 inches
    * Shipping Weight: 13.4 ounces (View shipping rates and policies)
    * Average Customer Review: based on 117 reviews. (Write a review.)
    * Amazon.com Sales Rank: #17,480 in Books (See Bestsellers in Books)

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Inside This Book (learn more)
First Sentence:
Most of Tehran was asleep when an odd caravan set out through the darkness shortly before midnight on August 15, 1953. Read the first page
Key Phrases - Statistically Improbable Phrases (SIPs): (learn more)
oil dispute, service history
Key Phrases - Capitalized Phrases (CAPs): (learn more)
United States, Reza Shah, Operation Ajax, New York, Anglo-Iranian Oil Company, National Front, Foreign Office, Kermit Roosevelt, General Zahedi, Middle East, Ahmad Abad, United Nations, Soviet Union, Allen Dulles, Security Council, President Truman, State Department, Ayatollah Kashani, Colonel Nasiri, John Foster Dulles, Mohammad Mossadegh, Prime Minister Mossadegh, Supplemental Agreement, General Riahi, World Court
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Citations (learn more)
This book cites 58 books:

    * Middle East (World in View) by Ian A. Morrison on 4 pages
    * The Mossadegh Era: Roots of the Iranian Revolution by Sepehr Zabih in Back Matter (1), Back Matter (2), and Back Matter (3)
    * Roots of Revolution: An Interpretive History of Modern Iran (Yale Fastback Series) by Nikki R. Keddie in Back Matter (1), and Back Matter (2)
    * The History of the British Petroleum Company, Vol. 2: The Anglo-Iranian Years, 1928-1954 by J. H. Bamberg in Back Matter (1), and Back Matter (2)
    * Eastern Approaches by Fitzroy MacLean in Back Matter (1), and Back Matter (2)

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29 of 36 people found the following review helpful:
British intransigence, American obtuseness, December 8, 2004
By 	N. Tsafos (Washington, DC) - See all my reviews
(REAL NAME)   
This review is from: All the Shah's Men: An American Coup and the Roots of Middle East Terror (Hardcover)
It is impossible to read this book without feeling sympathy for the Iranians and their leader, Mossadegh Mohammad, for whom Stephen Kinzer has special affection, and without developing a sense of distaste first at the British, and then at their accomplices, the Americans. All the same, it is also impossible not to cast a doubt on the book's main conclusion-that the US-led coup in Iran in 1953 lies at the root of Middle East terror.

Stephen Kinzer, a veteran reporter for the New York Times, is no stranger to American coups, having contributed to the writing of the history of the CIA coup in Guatemala in 1954. In "All the Shah's Men," Mr. Kinzer chronicles another coup, one that preceded Guatemala and laid the foundation for America's thinking that coups can be a useful and effective tool of foreign policy.

The book narrates the history of foreign involvement in Iran that culminated in the toppling of Mossadegh Mohammad and the re-coronation of Reza Shah as Iran's leader. Mr. Kinzer goes back centuries to choreograph the details of foreign involvement in Iranian politics, and pays particular attention to the last century and a half: in 1872, for example, Nasir al-Din Shah offered a most sweeping concession to Baron Julius de Reuter to, among others, exploit Iran's natural resources, a privilege revoked a year later. After that came other concessions, extended and then revoked, agreed and then renegotiated, on oil and other business.

What made the landscape explosive was the resignation, in 1941, of Reza Shah, Iran's king, and the subsequent emergence of Mossadegh, and a person who rested much of his political fortune on the nationalization of the Anglo-Iranian Oil Corporation (in 1951). His passionate belief that his country had been exploited by the British, and his unwillingness to compromise, coupled with the intransigence of the British created a perfect setting for confrontation.

Perfect, yes. But not inevitable. For that, one has to credit the re-election of Winston Churchill, an ardent Empire enthusiast, who was much keener on resolving the dispute between Iran and the AIOC, by force if necessary, than was his predecessor. Equally important was the election of Dwight Eisenhower, who replaced the skeptical and sympathetic to Iran Harry Truman, and adopted a more assertive pro-British line (courtesy of the Dulles brothers, Allen and John Foster, who ran the CIA and State Department, and who feared Iran might turn communist).

The narrative is eloquent, with enough attention on detail as to offer a vivid account of what happened and why. Mr. Kinzer has an eye for drama, building up the sequence of events with a novel-like quality (including the details of the coup, and Mossadegh's visit to the USA and UN). No doubt, the reader will feel rather conversant on the details of the foreign involvement in Iran leading up to the 1953 coup.

What is less obvious, however, is Mr. Kinzer grand conclusion: "It is not far-fetched," he writes, "to draw a line from Operation Ajax [the coup codename] through the Shah's repressive regime and the Islamic Revolution to the fireballs that engulfed the World Trade Center in New York." As a history book, "All the Shah's" has many attractions; and, no doubt, there are lessons in 1953 to be learned today about meddling in other countries' businesses. But to link the 1953 with September 11 feels more like authoring overstretched, and should be best left at that.

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44 of 63 people found the following review helpful:
Interesting History, but Some Specious Conclusions, June 18, 2004
By 	doomsdayer520 (State College, PA USA) - See all my reviews
(TOP 500 REVIEWER)   
This review is from: All the Shah's Men: An American Coup and the Roots of Middle East Terror (Hardcover)
This is a mostly intriguing account of a specific episode in history with some far-reaching lessons. In the early 1950's Iran was a developing democracy but was being oppressed by British oil interests. The newly-formed American CIA engineered a scheme to overthrow Iran's popularly elected Prime Minister Mossadegh and prop up the much less popular monarchy of the Shah. Here Kinzer describes the intrigue and international political shenanigans that led to the coup, which was fueled by anti-Communist paranoia based on Mossadegh's nationalist (but only tangentially socialist) ambitions. This was the CIA's first dirty tricks campaign to destabilize a foreign government, and Kinzer ably points out the irony in how the US overthrew a democracy and installed a totalitarian regime, in order to basically protect Western corporate profits. Kinzer also outlines the very real ramifications this all had decades down the road in the form of radical Islamic fundamentalism in Iran and fractured international relations to this day.

However, some of Kinzer's conclusions are reaching way too far. The book's subtitle confirming "the Roots of Middle East Terror" appears like a ploy to sell books in the aftermath of 9/11, as his attempt to directly connect the 1953 coup in Iran to specific modern acts of terrorism and hatred toward America is not completely logical. For one, he has completely disregarded the continuous Israeli/Palestinian saga. Kinzer's hero worship of Mossadegh and neglect of all other Iranian interests of the period (the Shah barely registers as a character, for example) is also problematic in its one-sidedness. But if you disregard some of the specious conclusions, Kinzer's story is an interesting example of the far-reaching effects of political dirty tricks and unintended consequences on America's relations with the developing world. [~doomsdayer520~]

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11 of 12 people found the following review helpful:
A shameful episode in the history of American espionage, December 24, 2004
By 	D. Cloyce Smith (Brooklyn, NY) - See all my reviews
(TOP 500 REVIEWER)    (REAL NAME)   
This review is from: All the Shah's Men: An American Coup and the Roots of Middle East Terror (Hardcover)
Considering how desperately the current American administration claims to want to "grow democracy" in the Middle East, it is particular ironic and distressing that, fifty years ago, the U.S. moved to annihilate a suitably decent fledgling parliamentary government in Iran--and a friendly one at that. As Stephen Kinzer concludes in in his animated history--which reads like an espionage thriller--"few would deny that the 1953 coup in Iran set off a series of unintended consequences."

Why would the United States topple a regime that not only considered us an ally but also emulated our own form of government? The quick, but incomplete, answer is also the obvious one: oil. Certainly that's the only reason the British needed when Mohammad Mossadegh nationalized the Anglo-Iranian Oil Company. The fading imperialists of the British government predictably screamed foul, arguing that the allegedly "private" oil company had a long-term agreement, signed in 1933, and Mossadegh had no right to renege on that agreement. As Kinzer's mountain of evidence shows, however, the Brits had conveniently ignored their own half of the deal: they had steadfastly refused to implement promised wage increases, build better housing, and construct hospitals and schools for the nearly enslaved and wholly impoverished native workers. Furthermore, London refused repeatedly to open the company's books to Iranian inspection, appropriated more than its contractual share of the profits, and supplemented the take by disguising large portions of the earnings as a corporate tax.

The Truman administration, wisely, would have nothing to do with British whining, but Churchill, inevitably, found two kindred spirits in the newly elected Eisenhower administration: Secretary of State John Dulles and intelligence director Allen Dulles. British oil wasn't enough bait for the Americans, but London knew that there was something that would make the Dulles brothers sit up and pay attention: the Red menace. British plans were thwarted, however, by an inconvenience: Mossadegh and his officials were not in the least interested in Communism and regarded the Soviets with undisguised contempt. So, instead, American ambassador Loy Henderson and British ambassador George Middleton invented the Communist canard in an unassailable if specious guise, arguing that Mossadegh's government was unstable and that it might someday fall to extreme leftists; "the longer Mossadegh remained in power, the likelier it was that Iran would fall to communism." In other words, the British convinced the Americans to meddle to prevent the off-chance that the Soviet Union might decide to meddle first (never mind the fact that the Soviets were then reeling from Stalin's death and were in no position to do anything of the sort).

This brief background summary doesn't evoke even a small part of the story, and Kinzer's book unveils many surprises that should frustrate and dismay Americans who believe that our government should be an ally to friendly democracies. The planning and execution of the coup (there were two attempts--the first one failed) that brought the tyrannical Shah back to power often resembles an episode of the Keystone Cops, but Mossadegh's trust and honor was no match for Western persistence and duplicity.

Kinzer's concluding chapter (as implied in his subtitle) goes too far, however, when he asserts that this shameful episode of American history is responsible in large part for Middle East terror. The Israeli-Palestinian conflict, the repressive Saudi monarchy, the Soviet-Afghan war, the rise of the Taliban (which was hardly friendly with the current Iranian regime)--these and many other factors have contributed to the region's turmoil. Still, it's irrefutable that our betrayal of Mossadegh insured that Middle East leaders and peoples would, in the future, be justifiably wary of ever again trusting us.

There are expatriates from the Shah's era who argue that his regime, while undeniably authoritarian, was better for Iran than what followed it and that the United States was correct in championing him. This weak attempt to tar Mossadegh's reputation by implicitly aligning him with the fundamentalists ignores the fact that Khomeini & Co. were also vocal enemies of the Mossadegh administration. By replacing a good (if imperfect) government--by getting involved at all--the United States insured that lingering resentment for our role in the first tyranny would be used against us by the leaders of the second tyranny--even if they despised Mossadegh himself. And, finally, it ignores the possibility that, if we had instead supported and encouraged Mossadegh and minded our own business, the Middle East might well be a friendlier and more peaceful place today.

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  	Most Recent Customer Reviews

All the Shah's Men
I think this is a book that every American should read because it explains so clearly the little known facts about the overthrow of the very first democratically elected prime... Read more
Published 8 days ago by Rosalind Elahi

Excellent crash course in the root of US/Iranian problems
I was recommended this book by a friend who is Persian. He considers himself Persian because he does not want to be identified as an Iranian due to misperceptions of the people in... Read more
Published 1 month ago by DavidKSNK

Imagine that Iran would try to dictate the US at which prices and to whom they can only sell their products and own resources...
This book shows the kind of info that is not found, as usual, in the mainstream media. It shows you how the US along with other countries like the UK have tried to control the oil... Read more
Published 1 month ago by Info eater

This is a deep book which is very well written and organized
The history of Iran has never been documented this well. Kinzer is an excellent author and he has gained himself a loyal new fan in me. Read more
Published 1 month ago by P. M.

Ever wonder why nobody in the Middle East trusts American motives?
This is an absolutely outstanding book describing the importance of Iranian oil to the British economy before, during, and after WW II and how the British (and later the... Read more
Published 2 months ago by Utah Blaine

Is this an academic work ?
Stephen Kinzer's book has impressed lot of uninformed people in Iran, the US and elsewhere. In reality it's a journalistic work unworthy of the name of the New York Times where... Read more
Published 2 months ago by From a reader

A Book That Tells The Truth
I'll keep this short - if you truly want to know what lies at the root of the Islamist extremists who hate the U.S. Read more
Published 3 months ago by Alan B. Chase

Understanding our dilema in the Middle East
The author is able to make good reading out of the history of the west's multiple errors in diplomacy reguarding the middle east and Iran in particular. Read more
Published 3 months ago by John T. Griffin

Interesting Read, Not Comprehensive Enough
Kinzer puts forth an interesting, yet questionable theory. The events of 1953, in the overthrow of Mossadegh was an error in American foreign policy. Read more
Published 4 months ago by Brian Campbell

Good synopsis of the 20th century
Kinzer's work reads well and presents good scholarship on the historical background behind the current Iranian regime. Read more
Published 4 months ago by Jonathan Jett-Parmer

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