Mohammad Mosaddeq and the 1953 Coup in Iran - (Modern Intellectual and Political History of the Middle East) by Mark J Gasiorowski & Malcolm Byrne

Book Synopsis

Mohammad Mosaddeq is widely regarded as the leading champion of secular democracy and resistance to foreign domination in Iran's modern history. Mosaddeq became prime minister of Iran in May 1951 and promptly nationalized its British-controlled oil industry, initiating a bitter confrontation between Iraq and Britain that increasingly undermined Mossaddeq's position. He was finally overthrown in August 1953 in a coup d'etat that was organized and led by the United States Central Intelligence Agency. This coup initiated a twenty-five-year period of dictatorship in Iran, leaving many Iranians resentful of the U.S. legacies that still haunt relations between the two countries today.

Contents include: "Mosaddeq's Government in Iranian History: Arbitrary Rule, Democracy, and the 1953 Coup" - Homa Katouzian; "Unseating Mosaddeq: The Configuration and Role of Domestic Forces" - Fakhreddin Azimi; "The 1953 Coup in Iran and the Legacy of the Tudeh" - Maziar Behrooz; "Great Britain and the Intervention in Iran, 1953" - Wm. Roger Louis; "The International Boycott of Iranian Oil and the Anti-Mossaddeq Coup of 1953" - Mary Ann Heiss; "The Road to Intervention: Factors Influencing U.S. Policy Toward Iran, 1945-1953" - Malcolm Byrne; "The 1953 Coup d'etat Against Mosaddeq" - Mark J. Gasiorowski

Review Quotes

Gasiorowski, the world's foremost living authority on the conduct of the coup, provides a detailed and fascinating account of its various stages based on published materials and interviews with former CIA operatives.-- "International Journal of Middle East Studies"

More books should have such a pedigree. . . . Seven polished studies that speak to each other. . . . The book [provides] a richly and tightly reasoned setting out of what might be dubbed the emerging scholarly synthesis: the British started it, but the United States took it over; Cold War concerns about 'losing' Iran were a greater factor than was oil nationalization.-- "Foreign Affairs"

The articles are meticulously researched and thick with detail. Moreover, many of them . . . use interviews to supplement the available written sources.-- "Middle East Journal"

About the Author

Mark J. Gasiorowski, a professor in the Department of Political Science at Louisiana State University, is the author of U.S. Foreign Policy and the Shah and coeditor of Neither East nor West: Iran, the Soviet Union, and the United States.

Malcolm Byrne is deputy director and research director of the George Washington University-based National Security Archive, where he directs the U.S.-Iran relations project. He is the coeditor of The Iran-Contra Scandal: The Declassified History and The Chronology.