All the Shah’s Men (19 page)

These terms were reasonable enough to worry Churchill. Over the next few weeks he sent a series of cables to Truman urging him not to succumb to the temptation to negotiate. “We cannot I am sure go further at this critical time in our struggle,” he insisted in one of them. “Mossadegh will come to reasonable terms on being confronted with a continued Truman-Churchill accord.”

As these cables were flashing across the Atlantic, Churchill’s foreign secretary, Anthony Eden, was hearing good news from his embassy in Tehran. General Zahedi had proven highly responsive to British overtures. He was ready to join a coup against Mossadegh, naturally with himself as the designated successor. Encouraged by this development, Eden sent Mossadegh a cold note rejecting his terms.

Unlike some of the other outsiders who shaped the Western intervention in Iran, Eden was familiar with the region. At Oxford he had studied Persian, which he considered “the Italian of the East.” He read the epic
Shahnameh,
early Persian poetry, and inscriptions written by Darius. After graduating, he joined the Foreign Office. He was an undersecretary when Britain negotiated the 1933 accord that outraged Mossadegh and other Iranian nationalists. Later he made several extended visits to Iran. They did not leave him with a high opinion of the natives.

Eden, like Churchill, was a fervent defender of the colonial system. His contempt for the political and intellectual capacity of people in poor countries, which he did not hide, startled some foreigners. One of them was Dean Acheson, who was taken aback by Eden’s view of Iranians. “They were rug dealers and that’s all they were,” Acheson lamented about Eden’s attitude. “You should never give in, and they would always come around and make a deal if you stayed firm.”

Eden’s dismissive note confirmed Mossadegh’s belief that Britain would never offer him anything but hostility. His belief turned to certainty when he learned of General Zahedi’s meetings with British agents. Zahedi had also begun meeting with Ayatollah Kashani, who had been elected speaker of the Majlis and increasingly saw Mossadegh as a political rival. Tehran was alive with rumors that a coup was imminent. There was only one way for Mossadegh to rid himself of the British agents who were plotting it. On October 16 he announced that Iran was breaking diplomatic relations with Britain.

By the end of that month all British diplomats, and with them all British intelligence agents, were gone from Iran. It was a heavy and fateful blow. With it, Mossadegh dashed Britain’s hopes of organizing a coup. If there was to be one, the Americans would have to stage it.

Having expelled the British before they could strike against him, Mossadegh and his allies moved to arrest General Zahedi and place him on trial for treason. They were stymied at first because, as a senator, Zahedi enjoyed parliamentary immunity. The Senate’s two-year term had recently expired, however, and although senators had voted to remain in office for another four years, their action was plainly illegal. On October 23 the Majlis declared the Senate dissolved. The moment this act became law, Zahedi was subject to arrest. To avoid it, he went into hiding.

Britain now had no intelligence agents in Iran, Zahedi was out of circulation, and the Truman administration remained implacably against the idea of intervention. Plans for a coup were at a standstill. That was fine with Truman, who believed that the British were at least as much to blame for the “awful situation” as was Mossadegh. “We tried,” he lamented in a handwritten letter to Henry Grady, his former ambassador in Tehran, “to get the block headed British to have their oil company make a fair deal with Iran. No, no, they could not do that. They knew all about how to handle it—we didn’t according to them.”

British leaders might have despaired at this point, but they saw a bright glimmer of hope on the horizon. A presidential election was forthcoming in the United States, and Truman was not running for reelection. The Republican candidate to replace him, Dwight Eisenhower, was running on a vigorously anticommunist platform. Eisenhower’s rhetoric greatly encouraged Churchill and Eden. The moment he was elected, they called off their effort to influence Truman and shifted their focus to the incoming team.

Election day found Kermit Roosevelt in Tehran. His job running CIA operations in the Middle East gave him professional interests there and he visited from time to time, but this was no routine stop. The abrupt departure of British intelligence officers from Iran was a major event in Roosevelt’s world. The British had spent decades building a covert network there, and now it was leaderless. This was an extraordinary opportunity for the United States. Roosevelt was determined to exploit it as best he could.

Born in Buenos Aires, where his father had business interests, brought up near grandfather Theodore’s estate on Long Island, and educated at Harvard, Roosevelt was the prototype of the gentleman spy. He was in his twenties when World War II broke out, a junior faculty member in the Harvard history department. Eager for adventure, he joined the Office of Strategic Services, which was so clandestine that even many of the people who knew it existed did not know what its initials stood for; they called it Oh So Secret or, because its ranks were filled with well-connected Ivy Leaguers, Oh So Social. What Roosevelt did as an OSS agent is unknown, although he apparently spent time in Egypt and Italy. Not even his family ever found out. “That was spook talk,” his wife said years later. “He didn’t talk spooks to me.”

Photos of Roosevelt taken around the time he went to Iran show him wiry and boyishly handsome, with dark-rimmed glasses and a winning smile. His family knew him as a bumbler who could barely change a light bulb, but at work he conveyed a very different impression. Associates described him as supremely self-confident without being overbearing. One writer later called him “insouciant coolness personified.” During his reconnaissance mission in November 1952, he did not meet any Iranians whom he knew to be British agents, but he was perceptive enough to sense that there were plenty of them around.

On his way home, Roosevelt stopped in London. He had friends in the upper ranks of the Secret Intelligence Service and had been musing with them for more than a year about ways of dealing with Mossadegh. Now, for the first time, these musings began to seem realistic. His friends told him that they were more determined than ever to carry out a coup and that both Eden and Churchill were pushing them, the latter “with special vehemence.” Roosevelt was most intrigued:

What they had in mind was nothing less than the overthrow of Mossadegh. Furthermore, they saw no point in wasting time by delay. They wanted to start immediately. I had to explain that the project would require considerable clearance from my government and that I was not entirely sure what the results would be. As I told my British colleagues, we had, I felt sure, no chance to win approval from the outgoing administration of Truman and Acheson. The new Republicans, however, might be quite different.

CHAPTER 10

Pull Up Your Socks and Get Going

Excitement surged through the corridors of power in London when news came that Dwight Eisenhower had been elected president of the United States. British leaders had spent many frustrating months trying to persuade Harry Truman to join their campaign against the Iranian government. His steadfast refusals deeply discouraged them, but now the climate in Washington was radically changed. What had come to seem impossible was suddenly very possible indeed.

Over the years, Britain had assembled a formidable network of clandestine agents in Iran. Under the direction of “Monty” Woodhouse, the chief of the British intelligence station in Tehran during the early 1950s, these agents became proficient at everything from bribing politicians to organizing riots. Woodhouse and all other British spies, however, had to leave Iran when Prime Minister Mossadegh shut the embassy from which they worked. They left behind a fine band of subversives.

The principal figures in this underground network were the three extraordinary Rashidian brothers. Their father had made a fortune in shipping, banking, and real estate, and he bequeathed to them not just his wealth but his boundless admiration for all things British. Beginning in the early 1950s the Secret Intelligence Service paid them £10,000 each month, the equivalent of $28,000, a staggering sum by Iranian standards, to suborn Iranians in what the CIA called “such fields as the armed forces, the Majlis (Iranian parliament), religious leaders, the press, street gangs, politicians and other influential figures.”

“Seyfollah, the eldest and a musician and philosopher, was the brains of the triumvirate and a superb conversationalist and host,” one historian wrote about the brothers. “He was a student of history and liked to quote Machiavelli. Asadollah was the organizer, political activist and confidante of the Shah, while Qodratollah was the businessman and entrepreneur.”

Directors of the Secret Intelligence Service were pained to think that such outstanding agents were going to waste in Iran when there was such urgent business to be done there. Eisenhower’s election gave them hope that the Americans would pick up where they had been forced to leave off. Kermit Roosevelt encouraged them further during his visit to London. So eager were they to resume their plotting that they could not even wait for Eisenhower to take office. In mid-November of 1952, less than two weeks after the election, they sent Woodhouse to Washington.

Woodhouse met with his CIA counterparts and with men who would take important posts in the Eisenhower administration. Since he had no love for the Anglo-Iranian Oil Company—he considered its directors “stupid, boring, pigheaded and tiresome”—and since he knew that American officials didn’t care much about its troubles anyway, he shaped his appeal around the rhetoric of anticommunism:

I argued that even if a settlement of the oil dispute could be negotiated with Mossadegh, which was doubtful, he was still incapable of resisting a coup by the Tudeh party, if it were backed by Soviet support. Therefore he must be removed. I had with me a draft plan for the purpose….

Two separate components were dovetailed into the plan, because we had two distinct kinds of resources: an urban organization run by the [Rashidian] brothers, and a number of tribal leaders to the south. We intended to activate both simultaneously. The urban organization included senior officers of the army and police, deputies and senators, mullahs, merchants, newspaper editors and elder statesmen, as well as mob leaders. These forces, directed by the brothers, were to seize control of Tehran, preferably with the support of the Shah but if necessary without it, to arrest Mossadegh and his ministers. At the same time, tribal leaders were to make a show of force in the direction of major cities in the south….

I had obtained the Foreign Office’s agreement to a list of fifteen politicians, any one of whom would be acceptable to us as prime minister if he were equally acceptable to the Americans. The list was in three categories, crudely labeled “Old Gang,” “New Gang,” and “Intermediate.” The third category included General Fazlollah Zahedi, who soon emerged in discussion as the figure most likely to be acceptable to both British and American policy-makers. I had been in touch with him before we were expelled from Tehran, and it was clear that the Americans were also in touch with him since we had left. He was an ironic choice, for during World War II he had been regarded as a German agent. An operation to kidnap him and put him out of circulation had then been organized by Fitzroy MacLean. Now we were all turning to him as the potential savior of Iran.

Over the course of his meetings in Washington, Woodhouse detected “steadily increasing interest” in his proposal for what the British called “Operation Boot.” Frank Wisner, a New York lawyer who had become the CIA’s director of operations, was strongly positive. So was Wisner’s newly named boss, Allen Dulles. State Department officials were markedly less enthusiastic, but John Foster Dulles would overrule their reluctance as soon as he was sworn in as secretary of state.

By the time Woodhouse flew home, the incoming administration had committed itself, albeit informally, to a covert operation aimed at removing Mossadegh. It had also accepted Britain’s nominees to play the two key roles: General Zahedi as Iran’s designated savior and Kermit Roosevelt as the CIA field commander who would place him in office. A plan would be ready soon after Eisenhower took office. John Foster Dulles and Allen Dulles would win his approval and then do the deed.

The Dulles brothers, whose work was vital to the success of Operation Ajax, were unique in American history. Never before or since have siblings run the overt and covert sides of United States foreign policy simultaneously. During their terms as secretary of state and director of central intelligence, they worked in near-perfect harmony to achieve their common goals. Among the first and most urgent was Mossadegh’s overthrow.

Foster and Allie, as the brothers were known, were born into privilege. Their grandfather, John Watson Foster, was secretary of state when they were children, and he often allowed them to meet his guests and eavesdrop on their meetings. During the era of McKinley and Theodore Roosevelt, they spent many formative hours in Washington salons and acquired an easy familiarity with the ways of power. Allie, who from childhood displayed what his biographer called “an insatiable curiosity about the people around him,” took secret notes on what he heard.

Both brothers attended Princeton and did well, with Foster, the elder by five years, graduating first in his class. Although they were always close, they had quite different personalities. Allie was affable and easygoing. He enjoyed tennis, wine, and elegant parties, and at one point had a mistress who was undergoing analysis by Carl Gustav Jung. Foster was stern and gruff, known for opening and closing meetings with grunts instead of expressions of welcome or thanks. It was said that even his friends didn’t like him much.

By the time the brothers had both graduated from Princeton, one of their uncles, Robert Lansing, was Woodrow Wilson’s secretary of state. Partly as a result of his influence, they both pursued interests in world affairs. Allie joined the State Department when World War I broke out. He was sent to Bern, which as the capital of neutral Switzerland was a center of émigré life, and then to Berlin and Istanbul, also hotbeds of intrigue. At each post he plunged eagerly into intelligence work. He proved himself highly adept at recruiting informers, debriefing travelers, observing military movements, and assessing the strengths and weaknesses of foreign governments.

While Allie was learning the espionage business, Foster launched his legal career in New York. After he graduated from law school, his grandfather arranged an interview for him at the legendary firm of Sullivan & Cromwell. He was hired as a junior clerk and soon found himself working with one of the most quietly influential groups of men in the world. Sullivan & Cromwell was no ordinary law firm but a center of international business and finance. Its lawyers were brokers among kings, presidents, and plutocrats, and its clients included many of the world’s most important banks and business cartels. Foster dealt directly with many of them, including J. P. Morgan & Company, the International Nickel Company, and the Cuban Sugar Cane Corporation. He distinguished himself as a maker of high-level deals and an expert in international finance. When the firm’s managing partner died in 1926, Foster was given the job. One of his first decisions was to recruit his brother.

Allen Dulles was fresh out of law school and had not even been admitted to the bar, but his unusual skills and wide range of contacts made him a great asset to Sullivan & Cromwell, which advertised itself as having “unusual and diversified means of obtaining information.” In effect he was an intelligence officer for hire. He enjoyed his work but longed for more excitement. When World War II broke out, he, like Kermit Roosevelt, joined the OSS. He was posted in Europe, where he studied the Nazi intelligence system and worked to penetrate and undermine it.

Foster spent the war years at home, making speeches and publishing articles warning of the threat that Soviet expansionism posed to “the accumulated civilization of these centuries.” He became a leading figure in Republican politics. In 1948 he served as the foreign policy adviser to the Republican presidential candidate, Governor Thomas Dewey of New York. Many assumed that he would become secretary of state when Dewey won, but after Dewey’s surprising loss to Truman he had to return to his law practice and bide his time. Allen, who rejoined the firm after the war, had dreamed of becoming Dewey’s ambassador to France, but that plan, too, was spoiled by the election result.

The Dulles brothers developed a special interest in Iran. Foster always mentioned Iran when he spoke or wrote about countries he believed might soon fall to communism. Allen visited Tehran in 1949 on behalf of a Sullivan & Cromwell client, an engineering firm looking for construction contracts. His trip gave him a chance to observe both the twenty-nine-year-old Shah, whom his wife called “the gloomy prince,” and the fiery opposition leader, Mohammad Mossadegh. Later that year, when the Shah visited New York, Allen arranged a “small private dinner” for him and one hundred members of the Council on Foreign Relations.

In 1947 the wartime OSS was transformed into the Central Intelligence Agency. Allen Dulles had many friends in the new agency, and at their request, he wrote a series of secret reports urging it to launch a worldwide program of “covert psychological warfare, clandestine political activity, sabotage and guerrilla activity.” Soon after Truman chose General Walter Bedell Smith as the director of central intelligence, Smith brought Dulles into the agency, first as a consultant and then as deputy director.

Allen Dulles was one of the country’s most ambitious intelligence experts. John Foster Dulles had become widely known as a world-class international lawyer who moved easily in elite Republican circles. Both reached the pinnacle of power when Eisenhower took office.

“Beedle” Smith stayed with them, moving from the CIA to become undersecretary of state. Smith had been Eisenhower’s chief of staff during the war and remained one of his most trusted friends. In his new position, he was ideally placed to assure that the CIA, the State Department, and the White House would work seamlessly on sensitive projects like the coup against Mossadegh.

On a cold day shortly before Eisenhower’s inauguration, Smith summoned Kermit Roosevelt for a gruff conversation about Iran. Smith had supported the idea of a coup during the Truman administration, but his superiors overruled him. Now he was eager to proceed. It had been two months since Woodhouse’s visit to Washington, and Smith was losing patience.

“When are those ——ing British coming to talk to us?” Smith demanded. “And when is our goddamn operation going to get underway?” Roosevelt assured him that everyone was ready, but it would be unseemly to move before Eisenhower was inaugurated.

“Pull up your socks and get going,” Smith told him. “You won’t have any trouble in London. They’ll jump at anything we propose. And I’m sure you can come up with something sensible enough for Foster to OK. Ike will agree.”

Eisenhower was inaugurated on January 20, 1953. Days later, the American ambassador in Tehran, Loy Henderson, began contacting Iranians he thought might be interested in working to overthrow Mossadegh. Like his new bosses in Washington, Henderson had given up hope for a compromise. In one cable to Washington, he described Mossadegh as “lacking in stability,” “clearly dominated by emotions and prejudices,” and “not quite sane.” In another, he asserted that the National Front was composed of “the street rabble, the extreme left … extreme Iranian nationalists, some but not all of the more fanatical religious leaders, [and] intellectual leftists, including many who had been educated abroad and did not realize that Iran was not ready for democracy.” He and George Middleton, his British counterpart, took the extraordinary step of composing a joint message to their home offices expressing their shared conclusion that the longer Mossadegh remained in power, the likelier it was that Iran would fall to communism.

Through an emissary, Henderson even opened a channel to General Zahedi, who, he told Dulles in a cable, was “not ideal” but had “more chance of piloting Iran through the turbulent days following Mossadegh’s resignation than any other candidate now on the horizon.” Zahedi had assured Henderson that if he reached power, he would “take a strong stand toward the Communists.” He added, however, that it would be “impossible for Iranians to remove the present government by their own efforts.”

Henderson sent a cable to Washington endorsing this view. It was received with great enthusiasm, so much so that Beedle Smith gave it to Eisenhower with a cover note calling it “very accurate.” Smith also sent a reply to Henderson telling him that the United States had decided it could “no longer approve of the Mossadegh government and would prefer a successor government.” He sent copies of his cable to CIA headquarters in Washington and to the CIA station in Iran. It amounted to a formal, though secret, declaration of war on Mossadegh.