Further confirmation of US overthrow of Mossadegh

J. F Dulles and Allen Dulles

by Richard Mellor

AFSCME Local 444, retired 

Much of the world knew it but as is often the case, most of the American people, living with perhaps the most censored and controlled mass media in the advanced capitalist economies, had no idea that the US was behind the overthrow of the secular democratic regime of Mohammad Mossadegh in Iran in 1953.  The US also ousted the government of Guatemala the following year deposing President Jacobo Árbenz Guzmán.

Guzman was taking steps to distribute land to the peasants and introduce other economic reforms that were holding back development in that country.  The United Fruit Company, a US multinational owned 42% of the arable land in Guatemala at the time and the CIA’s covert operation was set in motion to do what the CIA is there for, defend the US corporation’s profits at all costs. The excuse in the US media was the illegal invasion was necessary to repel communist tyranny in the US’s back yard.

The US Dulles brothers were influential in both coups as John Foster Dulles was secretary of state under Eisenhower and his brother Allen ran the CIA.  They were both on the payroll of United Fruit Company as well.  In fact, the Eisenhower administration was well connected to the UFC just like government and the private sector is today:

John Foster Dulles, who represented United Fruit while he was a law partner at Sullivan & Cromwell – he negotiated that crucial United Fruit deal with Guatemalan officials in the 1930's – was Secretary of State under Eisenhower; his brother Allen, who did legal work for the company and sat on its board of directors, was head of the CIA under Eisenhower; Henry Cabot Lodge, who was America's ambassador to the UN, was a large owner of United Fruit stock; Ed Whitman, the United Fruit PR man, was married to Ann Whitman, Dwight Eisenhower's personal secretary. You co uld not see these connections until you could – and then you could not stop seeing them. The Fish that Ate the Whale, p. 186. By Rich Cohen,

The Mossadegh government was about to nationalize the Iranian oil industry that was in the hands of British imperialism at the time and the British asked for US assistance.  The New York Times reports that George Washington University, under the Freedom of Information Act, obtained documentation confirming the CIA’s role in the ouster of Mossadegh, the most explicit proof to date.

These are just two examples of many instances of interference in the affairs of other countries and we could throw in the installation of Mobutu and the resulting deaths of some two million Congolese under that dictator’s rule after the murder of Lumumba by pro US/Belgian forces. Pinochet, Marcos, the murderous Shah of Iran the US installed after removing Mossadegh, the thugs that rule Bahrain and Saudi Arabia, Osama bin Laden, the former CIA agent are all the Pentagon’s babies.

Perhaps we Americans might reflect on these historical facts and consider the source when we are fed propaganda by the 1%’s mass media about reactions to US foreign policy.  Especially as we could end up supporting a conflict with Iran over supposed nuclear weapons. One can’t blame the Iranians for wanting nuclear weapons though they have repeatedly denied that their nuclear policy is anything but peaceful; the US never invaded North Korea and there’s a lesson there.

Given the history, US government/CIA credibility when it comes to bringing the truth to its own population is pretty poor. As for the Iranians and other victims of US corporate foreign policy, some people have reason to be a suspicious.

A decent book on the US overthrow of the democratic government of Iran in 1953 is All The Shah’s Men by Steven Kinzer