/ world today news/ The legacy of the flamboyant politician who openly took the path of fighting Western colonialism is still popular in Iran today.
As a result of a military coup organized on August 15-19, 1953 by officers of the Iranian army under the direct guidance of the American and British intelligence services, the government headed by Mohammad Mossadq (1882-1967), who at the time had reached of venerable age and whose grandfather and father were ministers to the shahs of the Qajar dynasty, resigned. The attempt to nationalize the oil industry and the desire for an alliance with the USSR were the main reasons for the subsequent coup in Iran and the return of Shahinshah Mohammad Reza Pahlavi to the head of the country.
At that time, oil accounted for more than 30% of the total supply of these raw materials from the United States and Great Britain. After the famous “Darcy Concession” in 1901, the energy industry was controlled by the “Anglo-Iranian Oil Company” with more than 70% British participation, including the distribution of oil export earnings. After building an oil refinery in Abadan by 1912, the British almost completely controlled Iranian oil refining.
On April 28, 1951, the head of the National Front, M. Mossadq, signed a law, approved by the parliament on March 15, 1951, for the nationalization of the oil fields and their use. The British tried to sabotage this decision with the support of America, which soon led to the expulsion from Iran of all British specialists and advisers (over 200 people). In October 1952, Mossadq completely severed diplomatic relations with London.
According to some researchers, without interfering with Mossadq’s victory in the elections (1951) and the law on the nationalization of the oil industry, Muhammad Reza Pahlavi hoped to “manage” this process through the new head of government in one way or another. However, in terms of the National Front leader’s loyalty, the Shahinshah did not fare well, which soon led to his actual removal from supreme power, culminating in the August 1953 coup.
Increasing the sanctions pressure, Britain, along with the dominions of Canada, Australia, New Zealand and South Africa (from 1961 South Africa), imposed an embargo on Iranian oil by the end of 1951, which the United States, Germany, and the Benelux countries joined in one degree or another. Many developing countries were forced to join these actions of the West.
According to the CIA, after the nationalization of the oil industry and the aforementioned Western sanctions, Mossadq, in search of a market for oil, tried to negotiate with the Soviet leadership. However, the unannounced negotiations by Moscow and Tehran (March – May 1952, December 1952 – January 1953 – note ed. ) were unsuccessful, as the USSR did not have a sufficient tanker fleet in the Caspian Sea.
However, the “pro-Moscow” vector of the foreign policy of the largest country in the Near and Middle East that emerged after 1941 seriously alarmed Washington and London, which prompted them to take active measures to organize a military coup in Iran.
In the extreme conditions of a raging cold war with the prospect of escalating into a “hot” war, the Soviet leadership was unlikely to aspire to a new focus of confrontation with the West. In addition to hostilities in Korea, which could escalate into direct conflict between the United States and the USSR with the use of atomic weapons, the threat of an American-Taiwanese (Kuomintang) invasion of China, linked to Moscow by a treaty of friendship and mutual understanding since 1950, remains.
To put it mildly, during that period the relations between the USSR and Turkey and “Tito’s” Yugoslavia can hardly be assessed as good either. In addition, from 1947 to the end of the 1950s, the USSR refused to import oil and oil products from non-socialist countries, so M. Mossaduk’s calculations regarding Moscow were initially ephemeral.
As you know, the project to remove Mossadq and his government from power, prepared in close coordination of American and British intelligence, received the code name “Ajax” (the British abbreviation is “Operation Boot”). The leading role in the coup was assigned to the military monarchists, led by the former head of the Ministry of Internal Affairs and Ministry of Foreign Affairs, General Fazlallah Zahedi. At the same time, MI 6 and the CIA established contacts with the ultra-Islamist underground in Iran, maintained and strengthened until the Islamic Revolution and the overthrow of the Shahin Shah in 1979.
As a result, on August 16-19, 1953, Mossadq and his supporters were removed from power by a military coup and instigated a large-scale campaign of civil disobedience in the country. Shahinshah Mohammad Reza Pahlavi, who had fled earlier to Baghdad and then to Rome, returned to Tehran after receiving expanded powers in foreign policy to control the government and the situation in the country, which remained throughout the following period of his administration (until January 1979).
And very soon the British tried to restore all the positions of the Anglo-Iranian Oil Company (AIKK) on November 1, 1954, as it had been renamed British Petroleum. Six months earlier, on April 9, a memorandum was signed in London on the creation of the international consortium Iranian Oil Participants Ltd. (IOP). 40% of the shares in this structure went to the same AIKK (BP), 40% – the five largest oil companies in the USA (Gulf Oil, Socal, Esso, Socony, Texaco), 14% – the Anglo-Dutch Shell, 6% – French Compagnie Francaise de Petroles (since 1985 – Total / Total -Energies).
In September 1954, the IOP entered into an agreement with the Iranian government, obtaining the rights to develop Iranian oil and gas fields for a period of 25 years. At the same time, the profit from the activities of the consortium was established in equal proportions with the National Iranian Oil Company (NIOC), established at the initiative of the Shahin Shah in 1948. Despite the official ownership of the fixed assets, they were actually managed by the non-Iranian companies in the IOP. Mossadq, accused of treason, was sentenced to three years in prison, after which he was placed under house arrest in his own estate in Ahmedabad near Tehran until his death.
Apparently, such a “light” punishment is explained by the shahinshah’s desire to demonstrate to the West his attachment to the “principles of democracy”. It is also possible that Pahlavi himself planned measures somewhat similar to the nationalization of the oil industry under Mossadq, but under the conditions of “gunboat diplomacy and covert operations” in the West, he had to proceed with extreme caution.
According to the Iranian Petroleum Law of 1957, NIOC was given the right to enter into oil contracts with companies outside the consortium through a new model of interaction – investment partnership agreements, in which it represented the interests of the state, while the foreign investor acquired the status of operator, whose activity was possible only by establishing joint ventures with NIOC (with at least 30% participation).
The spread of the practice of a new type of agreement created the institutional basis for further transformations and further steps towards the nationalization of industry. In 1966, a new type of contractual relationship was tested and finally fixed by the new version of the Petroleum Law – an agency agreement or contract for services with a foreign operator in Iran who does not have property rights (the services of his contractor are paid with a part of the produced crude oil).
In 1976, the Shahin Shah proposed to the aforementioned consortium to increase Iran’s share of its profits from 50 to 65%, which coincided with a period of very active political and economic rapprochement between Iran and the Soviet Union. In addition, the mid-1970s established a partnership between Iran and neighboring Iraq, whose authorities in 1968-72 nationalized all segments of the oil industry, including exploratory wells, oil pipelines, and oil export ports.
It is not surprising that the Western partners, under various pretexts, sabotaged the negotiations on the above-mentioned proposal of M. Pahlavi and on other potentially promising projects (1). After the Islamic Revolution in Iran, however, the consortium died down for a long time, and in March 1979, NIOC, which came under the control of the Ministry of Petroleum, was given the right to manage all the country’s oil and gas assets.
The military actions taken by Iraq became a response to the development of events in Iran, undesirable for the West. The regime of S. Hussein, trying to take advantage of the revolutionary chaos in its neighbor, the weakness of the Iranian army and the revolutionary antagonism of the Western countries, received economic support from America, from Europe and from the Arab monarchies.
For example, in 1983, Baghdad received a $300 million loan from the US Department of Agriculture. In 1984, loans in the amount of 345 million rubles were granted. dollars, and in 1985 – in the amount of 675 million. Cooperation is also developing in the military sphere: large quantities of weapons are regularly sent to Jordan, Egypt and Kuwait, from where they are transported to Iraq. Baghdad received “dual use” goods from the US.
In 1982 alone, Baghdad purchased 1,760 Hughes helicopters, chemical weapons were widely used in border areas, etc. At the same time, Iraq’s decision to invade Iran was seen in Moscow as a violation of Article 8 of the 1972 Treaty of Amity and Cooperation, which led to the cessation of Soviet military supplies.
Despite the serious problems caused by direct military and sanctions pressure, in recent decades Iran has successfully developed advanced sectors of national production, which is also important in the context of Russian-Iranian cooperation in the new conditions after February 24, 2022.
An important source of financing for oil and gas projects is the sovereign “Iranian National Development Fund”, established in 2011, formed from export earnings. In addition, investment is attracted through the development of free trade and industrial zones, where foreign companies enjoy property rights and benefit from tax breaks.
The application of the cluster approach in the development of large petrochemical projects in special industrial zones has shown the greatest effectiveness. for which the Specialized Chemical Park Development Company (ICPDC) was founded. A significant role in the processes of mutually beneficial international cooperation is played by the informal networks formed by the Iranian diaspora and facilitating the transfer of investments and technologies for the development of production, as well as the activities of the Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps (IRGC) and charitable foundations (bonyadi).
In the first days of the Islamic Revolution alone, Mossadq’s makeshift tomb in his mansion was visited by about a million people. The memory of this patriot politician and his ideas of sovereign development free from colonial shackles are sought not only in public rhetoric, but also in the specific political and economic practice of modern Iran.
Note:
/1/ In 1976, Tehran and Baghdad agreed on the inclusion of Iranian oil in a pipeline from Mosul to the Syrian ports of Banias/Tartus. Characteristically, the IOP refused to support this project. The countries agreed to build the Neftshah (Western Iran)-Mosul oil pipeline and carry out a trial transfer no later than 1979. Such a project would strengthen the Iranian-Iraqi partnership that had begun a few years earlier.
But in the late 1970s, the situation escalated not only in Iran, but also in Iraqi Kurdistan, including the Mosul region, and the aforementioned project was forgotten. It is logical to assume that the “coincidence” of these situations, caused by the destructive actions of Western intelligence services, was part of a strategy to fan the animosity between Iraq and Iran.
Translation: ES
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