August 19, 1953: A military coup overthrows the democratically-elected government of Iran, and restores the deposed monarch, the Shah (Emperor), Mohammed Reza Pahlavi.
Mohammad Mosaddegh, who had served in the Majlis, Iran's Parliament, since 1923, was appointed Prime Minister in 1951, and won a contentious election in 1952. He was a populist, enormously popular in the country; and a nationalist, resisting the influence of both the Soviet Union and the Western nations that had long dominated his country, mostly America, Britain and France. Time magazine named him their Man of the Year for 1951.
He sought to audit the documents of the Anglo-Iranian Oil Company (now part of British Petroleum, or BP), to verify that AIOC was paying the contracted royalties to Iran, and to limit the company's control over Iran's vast oil reserves. Upon the AIOC's refusal to cooperate with the Iranian government, the Majlis voted to nationalize Iran's oil industry, and to expel foreign corporate representatives from the country.
That infuriated British Prime Minister Winston Churchill, who instigated a worldwide boycott of Iranian oil to pressure Iran economically. For all his leadership in opposing fascism in World War II, Churchill was innately racist, and didn't trust any native peoples anywhere to run things that he thought should be run by Britain.
Judging Mosaddegh to be unamenable, and fearing the growing influence of the Tudeh Party, Iran's Communists, Churchill met with officials of the Administration of President Harry S Truman, and proposed a coup. Truman rejected this, fearing the precedent that would be set by America's Central Intelligence Agency (CIA) being involved in such an enterprise.
But with the election of Dwight D. Eisenhower in 1952 came the appointment of John Foster Dulles as U.S. Secretary of State, and his brother Allen Dulles as Director of the CIA. Both men were among the iciest of the Cold Warriors, and had no problem agreeing to Churchill's wishes.
The CIA, under Kermit Roosevelt Jr., grandson of Theodore Roosevelt, ran Operation Ajax, in conjunction with Britain's MI6, in Operation Boot. They hired mobsters to stage pro-Shah riots in the capital of Tehran. Between 200 and 300 people were killed in rioting. Finally, General Fazlollah Zahedi moved in, and formed a new government, which allowed the Shah to retake power.
Mossadegh was arrested, tried, and convicted of treason by the Shah's military court. He was sentenced to 3 years in prison, and then was kept under house arrest until his death in 1967, at the age of 84. Zahedi served as Prime Minister from 1953 to 1955, retired, and lived until 1963.
The Shah ran a very progressive country in many ways, and Iran was seen as a modern nation. But it was a fascist nation, with SAVAK becoming one of the world's most dreaded secret police. In 1979, the Shah was overthrown in an Islamic Revolution, led by the Ayatollah Ruhollah Khomeini. Already dying of cancer, he was too weak to mount an opposition, fled the country, and died the next year.
Never forgiving the Americans for their role in the 1953 coup, militants captured the American Embassy in Tehran, and held 52 Americans hostage for over a year. Over the next 10 years, Iran sponsored terrorist attacks on American military units around the Middle East.
In 2013, on the 60th Anniversary of the coup, the U.S. government formally acknowledged its predecessor's role in the 1953 Iran coup, releasing a bulk of previously classified government documents that show it was in charge of both the planning and the execution of the coup, including the bribing of Iranian politicians, security and army high-ranking officials, as well as pro-coup propaganda. The CIA is quoted acknowledging the coup was carried out "under CIA direction" and "as an act of U.S. foreign policy, conceived and approved at the highest levels of government."
Relations between America and Iran remain very cold, as cold as any between the U.S. and the Soviet Union were during the Cold War.
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August 19, 1953 was a Wednesday. Republican political strategist Mary Matalin was born.
These baseball games were played that day:
* The New York Yankees beat the Washington Senators, 2-0 at Yankee Stadium. Jim McDonald pitched a 4-hit shutout. Yogi Berra hit a home run. Mickey Mantle did not play.
* The Brooklyn Dodgers beat their arch-rivals, the New York Giants, 7-5 at Ebbets Field.
* The Boston Red Sox beat the Philadelphia Athletics, 6-4 at Fenway Park in Boston. Ted Williams, having returned from the Korean War, hit a home run.
* The Pittsburgh Pirates beat the Philadelphia Phillies, 5-3 at Connie Mack Stadium in Philadelphia.
* The Milwaukee Braves beat the Cincinnati Reds, 3-2 at Crosley Field in Cincinnati.
* The Detroit Tigers beat the Cleveland Indians, 4-2 at Briggs Stadium in Detroit. (The ballpark was renamed Tiger Stadium in 1961.)
* The St. Louis Browns beat the Chicago White Sox, 4-3 at Comiskey Park in Chicago. The Browns scored 2 runs in the top of the 10th inning, on a triple by Les Moss and a sacrifice bunt by Vic Wertz (normally a slugger, not a bunter). The White Sox got 1 back in the bottom of the 10th, on a double by Nellie Fox, but couldn't find the tying run.
The Browns would go 12-21 the rest of the way, and move to Baltimore to become the Orioles for the 1954 season.
* And the Chicago Cubs beat their arch-rivals, the St. Louis Cardinals 5-3 at the last Sportsman's Park in St. Louis, which had just been rebranded as the 1st Busch Stadium. Stan Musial went 0-for-2 with 2 walks.
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