British researchers have found a lost interview by a senior British intelligence officer who led the joint Anglo-American coup in Iran in 1953.
The coup overthrew the democratically
elected government of Prime Minister Dr. Mohammad Mossadegh and
reinstalled the shah (king) of Iran, Mohammad Reza Pahlavi, a close
Western ally. London was alarmed by Dr. Mossadegh’s decision to
nationalize the Anglo-Iranian Oil Company (later renamed to British
Petroleum, or BP), which would deny Britain its lucrative stake in the
Middle Eastern energy market. The British also viewed Dr. Mossadegh as
being too close to the Soviet Union.
In 1952, when Iran severed diplomatic
relations with Britain, London intensified its efforts to convince the
United States that overthrowing the Iranian government was imperative to
keep communism out of the region. Until then, British plans for a coup
had been led by Norman Darbyshire, who headed the Persia station of the
Secret Intelligence Service, known as MI6. With American help,
Darbyshire continued his plotting from Cyprus, where he had relocated
after having been expelled from Tehran by the Iranian government. He
died in 1993. But in 1985 he gave an interview to Granada, a British
production company, for a television documentary titled “End of Empire: Iran”. Because Darbyshire refused to speak in front of the camera, the producers of the documentary ended up not using his interview.
Recently, however, a team of researchers found the interview
and the associated transcript while researching archival material for a
new documentary on the overthrow of Mossadegh. The documentary, titled
“Coup 53”, is scheduled for release this coming Wednesday, which marks the 67th anniversary of the coup. On Monday, the Security Archive at George Washington University released the typewritten transcript
of Darbyshire’s interview. It describes how British intelligence worked
systematically over several years to convince the United States to
support the coup plans, and that British spies also found it difficult
to secure the support of a reluctant Shah Pahlavi.
According to Darbyshire, MI6 and the CIA
tried to bribe Iranian parliamentarians, offering them money in exchange
for defecting from Dr. Mossadegh’s party, thus eliminating its
parliamentary majority. When that effort failed, the spies approached
the Iranian military and proposed plans for a coup. In his interview,
the late MI6 spy claims that the coup cost the British government
£700,000. “I know because I spent it”, he says. He also claims that much
of that money was smuggled into Iran in cash, concealed inside “biscuit
tins”.
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