Early life Edit

Prime Minister of Iran Edit

Overthrow of Mosaddegh Edit

Electoral history Edit

Year Election Votes % Rank Notes 1906 Parliament Unknown Won but did

not take seat [22] 1923 Parliament Unknown 3rd[76] Won 1926 Parliament Unknown Won[76] 1928 Parliament Unknown Lost[77] 1943 Parliament ≈15,000[78] Unknown 1st[76] Won 1947 Parliament Unknown Lost 1950 Parliament 30,738[76] Unknown 1st[76] Won

Legacy Edit

Iran Edit Bakhtiar and Mosaddegh cartoon in Ettelaat newspaper 22 January 1978. The secret U.S. overthrow of Mosaddegh served as a rallying point in anti-US protests during the 1979 Iranian Revolution, and to this day he is one of the most popular figures in Iranian history.[79] The withdrawal of support for Mosaddegh by the powerful Shia clergy has been regarded as having been motivated by their fear of a communist takeover.[80] Some argue that while many elements of Mosaddegh's coalition abandoned him it was the loss of support from Ayatollah Abol-Ghasem Kashani and another clergy that was fatal to his cause, reflective of the dominance of the Ulema in Iranian society and a portent of the Islamic Revolution to come. The loss of the political clerics effectively cut Mosaddegh's connections with the lower middle classes and the Iranian masses which are crucial to any popular movement in Iran.[81] U.S. Edit Prime Minister Mosaddegh with US President Truman in 1951 The US role in Mosaddegh's overthrow was not formally acknowledged for many years,[82] although the Eisenhower administration vehemently opposed Mossadegh's policies. President Eisenhower wrote angrily about Mosaddegh in his memoirs, describing him as impractical and naive.[83] Eventually, the CIA's involvement with the coup was exposed. This caused controversy within the organization and the CIA congressional hearings of the 1970s. CIA supporters maintained that the coup was strategically necessary, and praised the efficiency of the agents responsible. Critics say the scheme was paranoid, colonial, illegal, and immoral—and truly caused the "blowback" suggested in the pre-coup analysis. The extent of this "blowback," over time, was not completely clear to the CIA, as they had an inaccurate picture of the stability of the Shah's regime. The Iranian Revolution of 1979 caught the CIA and the US very much off guard (as CIA reporting a mere month earlier predicted no imminent insurrectionary turbulence whatsoever for the Shah's regime), and resulted in the overthrow of the Shah by a fundamentalist faction opposed to the US, headed by Ayatollah Khomeini. In retrospect, not only did the CIA and the US underestimate the extent of popular discontent for the Shah, but much of that discontent historically stemmed from the removal of Mosaddegh and the subsequent clientelism of the Shah.[84] In March 2000, Secretary of State Madeleine Albright stated her regret that Mosaddegh was ousted: "The Eisenhower administration believed its actions were justified for strategic reasons. But the coup was clearly a setback for Iran's political development and it is easy to see now why many Iranians continue to resent this intervention by America."[5] In the same year, The New York Times published a detailed report about the coup based on declassified CIA documents.[7] British Edit Mossadeq's overthrow had a direct relationship with the creation of an Islamic revolution and the collapse of the Pahlavi government. America's close relationship with the Shah and the subsequent hostility of the United States to the Islamic Republic and Britain's profitable interventions caused pessimism for Iranians, stirring nationalism and suspicion of foreign interference.[85]

Mosaddegh in the media Edit

See also Edit

Notes Edit

^ His surname is also spelt Mossadeq, Mosaddiq, Mosaddegh, Mossaddeq, Mosaddiq, Mossadeq, Mosadeck, or Musaddiq. ^ [e] is the The -is the Izāfa , which is a grammatical marker linking two words together. It is not indicated in writing, and is not part of the name itself, but is used when a first and last name are used together.

References Edit