Iran
The UK should finally acknowledge its leading role in the 1953 coup that toppled Iran's last democratically elected leader, the former foreign secretary David Owen has said.
The US formally admitted its role 10 years ago with the declassification of a large volume of intelligence documents that made clear the ousting of the elected prime minister Mohammad Mosadegh was a joint CIA-MI6 endeavour. The UK position is to refuse to comment on an intelligence matter.
The original plot, codenamed Operation Boot, was drafted by MI6 after Mosadegh became prime minister and the dominant British oil company in Iran was nationalised. In the spring of 1953, the CIA began planning jointly with MI6 and the operation was renamed Ajax.
Today, the 70th anniversary of the coup, Lord Owen, who was foreign secretary from 1977 to 1979 told The Guardian:
"There are good reasons for acknowledging the UK's role with the US in 1953 in overthrowing democratic developments. By admitting that we were wrong to do so and damaged the steps that were developing towards a democratic Iran, we make reforms now a little more likely... Today, women's powerful arguments for reform in Iran are being heard and respected because they are true to a political spirit that has a long history in Iran. The British government today would help their cause ... if we admitted past errors."
Richard Norton-Taylor, the author of The State of Secrecy, said:
"It is sad, absurd, and indeed counterproductive, for the British government to continue to hide behind its age-old mantra of 'neither confirm or deny' and still refuse to admit MI6's leading role in Mosadegh's overthrow when so much, including official CIA documents, has been revealed about it for so many years.
(Julian Borger, The Guardian, 2023)
The CIA and MI6 engaged in propaganda and disinformation campaigns against Mosadegh's government and also hired and armed street-level thugs to create unrest. When the coup occurred in 1953 it enabled the pro-Western Shah to take Mosadegh's place. He became an increasingly reviled dictator and was overthrown in the 1979 Islamic Revolution.
In charge of MI6 intelligence in Iran, at the time, was a young British spy named Norman Darbyshire. (See coup53.com)
Iran
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Persian Encampment, Ovid Curtovitch (b.1855) Photo Credit: Russell-Cotes Art Gallery & Museum [CC BY-NC-ND] |
If you look under a mullah’s beard, you will find the words “Made in Britain.”
Iranian expressions, still in use, voicing suspicion of the UK’s past and present involvement in the country’s affairs.
The first expression was related by John Simpson on radio 4 Today 9.3.2019.
The second comes from Drinking Arak off an Ayatollah’s Beard by Nicholas Jubber.
* … In the past century the UK occupied the country for five years from 1941-46, and has overthrown Iran's leaders and installed new ones. It backed the Shah's own oppressive regime. And it secretly supplied Iraq's Saddam Hussein with weapons after he invaded Iran in 1980, beginning a war that killed hundreds of thousands of people. There's no collective memory in the UK about our actions. There is in Iran.
(Jack Straw, The i, 2019)
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