Iranian History: 50 Excellent EEs History

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Investigating the Role of CIA and SIS in the 1953’s Iranian Coup
Introduction
The role of the U.S. Criminal Investigation Authority (CIA) and the British SIS (MI6) in the 1953 Iranian coup has been extensively analyzed. Their role was so damaging that even though the coup successfully ousted Mohammed Mossadegh, it left very negative long and short-term impacts on the relations between the United States and British on the one hand and Iran on the other. Much debate on the involvement of the CIA and SIS in the Iranian coup focuses largely on moral dimensions. In an American-Iranian Relations conference in 2000, U.S. secretary of state Madeleine Albright admitted that the U.S., through the CIA played a key role in staging the coup against Mossadegh. While reports by several authors show that the CIA and SIS planned the coup in a joint manner, it was the CIA that actually executed the coup (Gasiorowski 4). The involvement of the two agencies is mostly seen as corruption in which the support of various parties of interest was bought through money and resources and coercion in which various leaders were forced into agreeing to the demands of the agencies. This paper thus attempts to discuss in detail the role that CIA and SIS played in the Iranian coup of 1953.
The Involvement of British in the Iranian Oil Industry
The dispute leading to the coup was fueled by the formation of Anglo-Iranian Oil Co. (AIOC), a British owned oil company (Donald, 13). Anglo-Persian Oil Co. had until 1953 had exclusive rights to Iranian oil. The British government was by the year 1914 a major shareholder in Anglo-Persian Oil Co. British had a controlling stake in the company as it held 51% of the shares of the company. Anglo-Persian Oil Co. played a critical role in British national security given that navy ships had been converted to oil from coal before the commencement of the First World War. Further, British gained hugely from the immense profits the company made thus helping the British offset its deficit. Although a new agreement had been reached in 1949, in which Iranians had been given the highest share of the company’s profits, the sharing of the profits was still in strong favor of the British government.
In 1950, the Iranian government got less money from Anglo-Iranian Oil Co. compared to what it paid in taxes at home. Nevertheless, the demands by Persia for an even higher share of the oil profits grew even further. At the time, the agreement reached between by the Saudi Arabian government and the Arabian American Oil Co. (ARAMCO) in December 1950 following threats to nationalize the oil facilities served as a perfect model (Roger 128). However, Iran only received less than 20% of the profit share while ARAMCO gave half to Saudi.
Nationalization of the AIOC and the Subsequent Weakening of Mossadegh by SIS
The situation of profit sharing was to change in June 1950 with the rise of Ali R...