American Coup is a documentary film which premiered in 2010.
The topic is the modern history of Iran with special focus on the coup d’état which took place in August 1953.
Who was deposed?
Who was installed as the new leader of the country?
How and why did it happen?
What were the consequences?
Here is some basic information about this film:
** Director: Joe Ayella
** Narrator: David Paul
** Production and distribution: Journeyman Pictures
** Run time: 97 minutes
Several persons are interviewed in the film. Here are the names of the participants (in alphabetical order):
** Ervand Abrahamian (born 1940) – PhD – professor of history, Baruch College
** Malcolm Byrne – deputy director, National Security Archives, George Washington University - co-editor of Mohammed Mossadeq (2004)
** Joe Cirincione – president of the Ploughshares Fund 2008-2020
** Professor Mansour Farhang (born 1936) – Bennington College
** Maz Jobrani – stand-up comic, actor
** Stephen Kinzer – author of several books, including All the Shah’s Men (2003)
** Ted Koppel (born 1940) – television reporter – anchor of Nightline 1980-2005
** Bruce Laingen (1922-2019) – American diplomat - chargé d’affaires, US embassy, Tehran – hostage in Iran 1979-1981
** Professor John Limbert – US Naval Academy – hostage in Iran 1979-1981
** Kenneth Love (1924-2013) – reporter, New York Times, 1950-1963
** Hooman Majd – author of The Ayatollah Begs to Differ (2008)
** Ray McGovern – CIA analyst 1963-1990
** Trita Parsi – she is the author of Treacherous Alliance: The Secret Dealings of Israel, Iran, and the US (Hardcover 2007) (Paperback 2008)
** Ron Paul – American politician – Republican - member of US Congress – the House of Representatives, 1976-1977, 1979-1985, and 1997-2013
** Karim Sadjadpour – Carnegie Endowment for International Peace
** Professor Gary Sick (born 1935) – Columbia University
** Colonel Lawrence Wilkerson – former chief of staff for general Colin Powell
Archive footage is used between the talking heads. Archive footage is used to support and supplement the statements made by the talking heads. Archive footage is used when the narrator is talking.
Archive footage allows the viewer to meet some people who played an important role in the events covered in this film, but who were no longer alive when this film was made, including the following:
** Kermit Roosevelt (1916-2000) – a CIA agent
** Richard Cottam (1925-1997) – a CIA agent
** Fazlollah Zahedi (1892-1963) – prime minister of Iran 1953-1955
The plot
Who was deposed?
Answer: Mohammad Mossadeq (1882-1967)
Who was installed as the new leader of the country?
Answer: Mohammad Reza Pahlavi (1919-1980)
How and why did this happen?
The answer to this question is long and controversial.
For many years, the answer was based on rumours and speculations. But nothing could be proved with official documents.
According to the official version, what happened in Tehran in August 1953 was an internal affair:
The people of Iran no longer wanted Mossadeq to be their leader. He was pushed out and Mohammad Reza Pahlavi (the Shah of Iran) took control of the country.
The rumours and the speculations told a different story of this event: two foreign countries organized a secret coup d’état. The British secret service (MI6) and the American secret service (CIA) made a plan which was implemented in August 1953.
The UK and the US intervened in order to protect and promote their political and economic interests.
For many years, this alternative version was ignored by American scholars and politicians. If it was mentioned, it was brushed aside as a ridiculous fantasy based on wishful thinking and not supported by any historical facts.
But some observers knew the truth. They pointed to the book Countercoup written by former CIA agent Kermit Roosevelt and published in 1979 with the blessing of the agency. In this book, the author explains his involvement in Operation Ajax.
In 2013, sixty years after the coup, there was an important change: the CIA admitted that it had been behind it.
The US decided that some secret government documents about the case could be declassified. Not only American but also British documents.
These documents showed that the rumours were not just wild and baseless speculations. They were true. There was a conspiracy. The UK and the US had organized the whole thing from the beginning to the end.
How and why did they do this?
The British government had a substantial economic interest in Iran, because the British government owned the Anglo-Iranian Oil Company which was in charge of Iranian oil production and export. This business was extremely profitable.
Britain had promised to pay Iran 10 percent of the profits, but Britain falsified the books, and paid only 5 percent of the profits to Iran. Almost all profits went to the British.
Mohammad Mossadeq was a popular Iranian politician who declared that the oil of Iran belonged to the people of Iran and the profits should benefit them, not the British.
In 1951, when Mossadeq was made prime minister, he decided to nationalize the oil industry. The British were shocked and furious.
They did not want to lose this important source of wealth. They decided Mossadeq had to go.
They began to prepare a plan to push him out. The plan was called Operation Boot. But they soon realised they could not implement such a great project alone.
They decided to contact the Americans. When president Harry S Truman heard about this plan, he said no. The US was not going to help the British exploit Iran.
The British had to wait for better times. Two years later, in 1953, the British contacted the Americans again. This time, they tried to use a different argument.
They no longer used an economic argument. They no longer said they wanted to regain control of the oil industry. Instead, they claimed Iran was threatened by communism!
They said Mossadeq was a communist. Perhaps this was not really true. Perhaps he was not a real communist, but he was certainly friendly with the local communist party, so he was in effect a communist.
In the US, things had changed. Truman (a Democrat) had been replaced by the Eisenhower (a Republican). Two brothers had important positions in Eisenhower’s administration:
John Foster Dulles was secretary of State (foreign minister), while his brother Allen Dulles was director of the CIA.
This American trio was strongly opposed to communism and they did not object to covert operations. This time, the answer to the British request was yes. The US was ready to join the British in an operation to stop communism in Iran. The CIA prepared a plan called Operation Ajax.
They also contacted military leaders in Iran and made sure that most of them were prepared to support Operation Ajax.
In August 1953, the plan was implemented. Mohammad Mossadeq was deposed and the Shah of Iran was installed as the new leader of the country.
The Shah of Iran had been the head of state since 1941, when his father had been deposed by a British and Soviet invasion. The father had been deposed because he was too friendly towards Nazi Germany.
From 1941 to 1953, the Shah did not have any real power. His role was purely ceremonial. Following the coup of 1953, he became a powerful leader who ruled his country with an iron fist.
When he persecuted the communist party and other dissidents, he had the full support of the UK and the US. He remained in power until 1979, when a popular revolution forced him to leave the country. He died in Egypt in 1980.
Ratings and reviews
What do reviewers say about this film?
Here are some results:
On IMDb it has a rating of 74 percent.
There are four user reviews of this product.
Here are the headlines and the ratings offered:
100 – A must watch
100 – A must see – imperialism!
80 – Worth watching
60 – Highly interesting history
As you can see, all four reviews are positive. And three of them offer ratings which are higher than the average on the website.
On Amazon there are at the moment 140 ratings of this product; 107 with reviews.
The average rating is 4.3 stars, which corresponds to a rating of 86 percent.
Here are the details:
5 stars = 70 percent
4 stars = 9 percent
3 stars = 9 percent
2 stars = 2 percent
1 star = 10 percent
Here are the headlines of five reviews which offer five stars:
** The Shameful History of US Interventionism in Iran
** A Movie Every US Citizen Should Watch
** One of the Most Significant and least Known Historical Events of the 20th Century
** When necessary – America exports terror to import oil
** Must Watch!
Here are the headlines of four reviews which offer only one star:
** Biased and untrue documentary
** This Doku is junk
** Unless you’re a communist or radical sympathizer, don’t even bother
** A slanted focused narrative at best, revisionist history at worst
As you can see, the reviews are quite good, but there is a hard minority of negative reviews on Amazon.
The people who wrote the negative reviews refuse to believe the message of this film. They regard this message as a case of left-wing anti-American propaganda.
In 2010, when this film was released, the final proof had not yet been released. This happened in 2013.
Since 2013, a denial was no longer possible. The message of this film was true.
What happened in Tehran in August 1953 was indeed an American coup.
Conclusion
What do I think? In my opinion, this film is an important document about an important chapter of modern history.
Since it was released in 2010, this film cannot mention the secret government documents which were released in 2013 and later.
Much of what is said here is based on rumours and speculation. But in 2013, the rumours and the speculation were confirmed.
In my opinion, the rating on IMDb is too low, while the rating on Amazon is too high.
I want to find a position between them. I think this product deserves a rating of four stars (80 percent).
REFERENCES
# 1. Documentary films
The Last Persian Shah (2019)
Coup 53 (2019)
The Queen and the Coup (2020)
# 2. Books
Countercoup: The Struggle for Control of Iran by Kermit Roosevelt (1979)
All the Shah’s Men: An American Coup and the Roots of Middle East Terror by Stephen Kinzer (2003)
Mohammad Mossadeq and the 1953 Coup in Iran edited by Malcolm Byrne and Mark J. Gasiorowski (2004)
Overthrow: America’s century of Regime Change from Hawaii to Iraq by Stephen Kinzer (2006)
Treacherous Alliance: The Secret Dealings of Israel, Iran and the US by Trita Parsi (2007) (2008)
The Brothers: John Foster Dulles, Allen Dulles, and Their Secret World by Stephen Kinzer (2013)
The Coup: 1953, the CIA and the Roots of Modern US-Iranian Relations by Ervand Abrahamian (2013)
The Devil’s Chessboard: Allen Dulles, the CIA, and the Rise of America’s Secret Government by David Talbot (2015)
# 3. Items available on the Internet
Harry S. Truman,
“Limit CIA Role to Intelligence,”
Washington Post,
22 December 1963 (page A 11)
A short account of American planned 1953 coup
Operation code-name: TP-AJAX
The Iran Chamber Society
Saeed Kamali Dehghan and Richard Norton-Taylor,
“CIA admits role in 1953 Iranian coup,”
The Guardian,
19 August 2013
Lawrence Wu and Michelle Lanz,
“How the CIA Overthrew Iran’s Democracy in 4 Days,”
National Public Radio,
7 February 2019
*****
Coup supporters celebrate victory
in Tehran in August 1953
*****
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