What was Teddy Roosevelt's grandson doing in Iran?

Answer 1

Part of the Republican campaign during 1952 had been to blame Democrats for losing parts of the world to the Communists. Once in power in 1953, Eisenhower's administration wanted to make sure that it would not be accused of the same thing. But, as David Halberstam writes in his history The Fifties, "The Korean war proved there were certain domestic restraints on American military involvement in the third world. The Eisenhower administration quickly found a solution in the CIA, which had developed a covert operations capability in addition to its mandated role of gathering intelligence. This willingness to use the CIA for paramilitary and other clandestine operatinos was a marked contrast from the policies of the Truman years."

The Republican administration's first opportunity would come in a struggle with the Soviet Union for control of oil in a place that for most Americans was more of a storybook than a real place. Once known as Persia, Iran had been a battleground in the First World War when the Russians battled the Ottoman Turks (then allied with Germany) over the area's territory and oil. After the war, a cavalry officer named Reza Khan overthrew the government, named himself shah, and changed the family name to Pahlavi. During World War II, the Shah tried to remain neutral, but British and Soviet forces-then allies against Nazi Germany- had forced Shah Reza from the throne and installed his son Mohammad Reza Pahlavi, as the new shah. He agreed to a treaty with Britain and the Soviet Union, allowing them to use the Trans-Iranian railway to ship oil and to keep troops in Iran for the duration of the war.

The British treated Iran as a colony, taking the country's oil as if it were theirs. While the British were earning millions of pounds, the Iranians were gien only a small share of the profits. The British also established segregated facilities for British oil workers in Iran, increasing tensions and resentments among the Iranian people. In 1951, a group of Iranian nationalists led by Mohammad Mossadegh demanded an end to British control of the oil industry. Mossadegh became Iran's Soviet leaning prime minister, and the oil industry was placed under government ownership and control. The shah was reduced to a figurehead.

Then, at the request of the British, the CIA engineered a coup that would restore the shah-whose CIA code name was Boy Scout - to power. With the blessings of Secretary of State John Foster Dulles and his brother Allen Dulles, head of the CIA, the chief organizer of the coup was Kermit Roosevelt, grandson of Teddy (and cousin of FDR). A CIA desk chief who specialized in the Middle East, Roosevelt secretly drove from Baghdad to Teheran, where he convinced the young shah that London and Washington would back him if he seized control. Roosevelt organized massive public demonstrations in favor of the shah, and the cooperative Teheran police suppressed any counter demonstrations. Although Roosevelt succeeded on this occasion, he was generally opposed to such CIA interventions. He later resigned from the CIA rather than participate in a plan to overthrow Egypt's Nasser. Allen Dulles-James Srodes.

The shah was in power. Mossadegh was toppled and arrested. The coup had accomplished all of America's immediate goals. But what about longer term? If history is about connecting the dots, gast forward a few years. During the early 1960s, the shah attempted a series of economic and social reforms, including a land reform program that redistributed the holdings of wealthy landlords among the peasants who worked the land. He also promoted education, improved social welfare services, and gave women the right to vote. At the same time, he exercised nearly absolute control over the government through a hated secret police force, called the SAVAK. Opposition began to grow, especially among students and conservative Muslims.

Barely a quarter of a century later, the ultimate unforseen outcome of the CIA coup came about. in January 1979, mass demonstrations, strikes, and riots led to the shah's departure from Iran. The fundamentalist Islamic cleric Ayatollah Ruhollah Khomeini declared Iran an Islamic republic, and the ayatollah became the country's supreme leader. When President Carter allowed the shah to enter the US for medical treatment and refused to hand him over for trial in Iran, Iranian revolutionaries seized the US embassy in Teheran, taking a group of Americans as hostages. This was the beginning of a long history of the fundamentalist Islamic movement, whose anit-Americanism would ultimately lead to 9/11.