Shadow of Russia over the Political Development in

Iran
and the Continuing Struggle for Democracy

By:
Ali Keyhani

"Iranians owe a rule by Mollahs

to realize that Mollahs are leeches
on the body and soul of Iran."
Ahmad Kasravi

2021
 Forward
Iran's struggle for democracy started with the mass participation of
Iranians in the political process after the disastrous defeat of Iran in Wars with
Russia and the Russian ultimatum followed with the imposition of the
humiliating treaty Turkmenchay. Angry Iranian attacked the Imperial Russian
embassy in Tehran resulting in the massacre of the Russian ambassador. The
Iranians struggle against tobacco concession was demonstrated its power by
Political Islam under the leadership of Ayatollah Shirazi that forced Nasser Din
Shah to abolish it. Masses of Iranians from all classes demanded a curb on royal
authority and the establishment of the rule of law as their concern over foreign,
and especially Russian, influence grew. The Shah signed the constitution on
December 30, 1906, C.E. Mohammad Ali Shah with the aid of Russia, attempted
to rescind the constitution and abolish parliamentary government. He used his
Russian-officered Persian Cossacks Brigade to bomb the Majlis building, arrest
many of the deputies, and close the assembly. Resistance to the shah, however,
unified in Tabriz, Esfahan, Rasht, and elsewhere. In July 1909 C.E, constitutional
forces marched from Rasht and Esfahan to Tehran, deposed the shah, and re-
established the constitution. The struggle for democracy continued when
Mosadegh nationalized the Anglo-Iranian Oil Company's (AIOC) operations in
Iran. After the collapse of the Soviets, now the Russian embassy in Tehran is the
den of spies. As Javad Zarife said: "Russia attempted to sabotage the nuclear
agreement between Iran and the west." Russia is only interested in a weak and
isolated Iran." Bijan Jazani was the first Iranian patriot on the New Left who
said: " Coming close to Russia has many harms and no benefits for Iranians."
Shah's secret police murdered him. Khomeini’s mentor was Sheikh Fazlollah
Noori who claimed since the concealment of Mehdi, Imam of all time, the
Velayet-e-Faqih on behalf of Mehdi, must lead the Shia. Dariush Forouhar, a
nationalist leader, would not be silenced and spoke openly against the tyrannical
religious theocracy and the regime murdered him cowardly. A government based
on Velayet-e-Faqih, dictatorial regime will rot to its core when no one believes
in the regime and more Iranian masses realize the nature of the clergy. A regime
that cannot renew its vitality is doomed. Global warming, water scarcities,
stagnate economy, cronyism will push Iran to darker times. The time will come
when more Iranians become alienated and refuse to participate in deception put
together by clergy. Just like the Shah regime, the system will collapse. But as the

2
Soviet Socialist system collapsed in a week, Velayet-e-Faqih will fail too. Iran
has come to full circle to acknowledge the clear statement by Kasravi who said:
"Iranian owe a rule by Mollahs to realize that Mollahs are leeches on the body
and soul of Iran." Iran has paid its dues. This book seeks to demonstrate the
Iranians struggle from the humiliating treaty of Turkmenchay, the revolution of
1905 and its defeat by Russia, the domination of the Soviets, Tudeh Party,
Mosadegh nationalization of Anglo - Iran oil company, the 1953 coup, the
struggle by the New Left, why Iran ended up with the Velayet-e-Faqih and the
continuing struggle of Iranians for democracy.

3
This book is dedicated to:
People of Iran

4
 Chapter 1. The treaty of Turkmenchay of 1828 C.E.
Abbas Mirza was the son of Fath Ali Shah and was commander of
Iranian forces in wars with Russia. He was the governor of the Azerbaijan region
of Iran. He pursued to rule it in European style and employed officers to
restructure the Iranian army. He was soon at war with Russia (Russo-Persian War
(1804–13)), and his aid was eagerly requested by both England and Napoleon,
anxious to checkmate one another in the East. Choosing the friendship of France,
Abbas Mirza continued the war against Russia's General Kotlyarevsky, but
France new didn’t give him very military assistance. Kotlyarevsky routed the
numerically greater (30,000) Persian army in October 1813. He was forced to
make a disadvantageous peace, ceding some territory in the Caucasus region.
These losses forced Abbas to rethink his strategy, and he started dispatching his
students to Europe for military training. In 1811 and 1815, two groups were sent
to Britain, and in 1812 a printing press was established in Tabriz to reprint
European military handbooks. Tabriz also saw a gunpowder factory and a
munitions depot. The training persisted with constant drilling by British advisers
After the defeat of the Iranian army, Russia gave an ultimatum to the Shah
of Iran that the treaty drafted by Russia must be signed. If the treaty were not
signed, the Russian Army would march to Tehran. Shah agreed with the Russian
demand. The treaty was signed for Persia by Crown Prince Abbas Mirza and
Allah-Yar Khan Asaf al-Daula, chancellor to Shah Fath Ali and for Russia by
General Ivan Paskievich. The treaty of Turkmenchay cemented the shadow of
Russia over Iran that concluded the Russo Persian War (1826–1828 C.E.). Iran
lost control of several areas in the South Caucasus to Russia. Following the
signing of the treaty of Turkmenchay, the Iranian territories north of the Aras
River became part of the Russian Empire, and later the Soviet control for
approximately 180 years.
As part of the treaty, Iran lost control of the South Caucasus regions. Also,
Iran lost its navigation rights in the Caspian Sea and agreed to pay compensation
to Russia totaling twenty million silver rubles (in 1828 C.E. currency) and agreed
to the capitulatory rights for Russians living in Iran. When the news of the treaty
reached Tehran, angry Iranians attacked the Russian embassy and killed
Aleksander Griboyedov, the Russian ambassador.

5
Credit to: https://www.alamy.com/stock-photo/abbas-mirza.html
Abbas Mirza (Hermitage).jpeg

6
 Credit To https://karabakh.org/treaties/turkmenchay-treaty/
Meeting for Signing of the Treaty
https://karabakh.org/

Chapter 2 The Anglo-Persian War and Darcy Oil Concession

From November 1, 1856, to April 4, 1857, Iran fought over the control of
Herat. The British Empire opposed any effort by Iran to continue to control the
city of Herat. The British navy occupied Iran the city of Bushehr and the city of
Khorramshahr. The British demanded that Iran surrender its claims on the city of
Herat to the British, and in return British would withdraw from the southern
Iranian cities. The accomplishment of the British soldiers, more than half of
whom were Indian, was primarily due to technological advantage and new
English rifles. British commanders faced the burden of barely sufficient means
and lack of training. Incompetence on the Persian side is demonstrated by the
lack of excitement for the holy war against the British preached by the religious
establishment. Iran agreed and the war between Iran and the British ended.
In 1901C.E, William Knox Darcy, a baron of London trend-setter had
heard of oil coming out of the ground in Khuzestan of Iran. He went to Iran and
met Muzaffar al-Din Shah Qajar and negotiated an oil concession. Shah received
£20,000 (£2.2 million today), an equal amount in shares of Darcy's company, and
a promise of 16% of future profits and sole rights to the potential for oil for 60
years in Khuzestan. Darcy hired a geologist to do the searching in the Iranian

7
desert. Darcy’s geologist didn't find oil and he sold part of his rights to the
Burmah Oil Company. However, the geologist continued with his work
discovered oil on 26 May 1908 C.E. The Anglo-Persian Oil Company (APOC)
was formed on 14 April 1909, by Burmah oil company and Darcy Oil Co. A
refinery built at Abadan and Iranian oil products started in 1913 C.E. The Abadan
refinery was the world's largest for more than fifty years. In World War I, APOC
supplied Iranian oil to British Navy. The British government also became a de
facto hidden power behind the oil company. After the Russian revolution, in 1920
C.E, the APOC also obtained a northern oil franchise that had been officially
awarded in 1916 Russians. But the Iranians refused to recognize the new
company. The Iranian government lacked the power to control the oil industry
and the organization of APOC. The struggle for control of oil and British power
was continued in Iran till nineteen fifties when the Iran national front under the
leadership of Mosadegh nationalized the oil.

Chapter 3 The Constitutional Revolution

I read Kasravi's book on the history of The Persian Constitutional
Revolution. It is an excellent book that describes the Constitutional Revolution
of Iran.
The humiliating defeat of Iran with Russian wars and the subsequent treaty
of Turkmenchay an Anglo Persian war and Darcy oil concession by
Muzafradian Shah set in motion the seed of the Iran Constitutional
Revolution that was the consequence of 200 years of humiliation by Russia and
Britain. The revolution took place between 1905 C.E and 1911 C.E. The western
neighbor of Iran was the Ottoman Empire that blocked the flow of commerce and
ideas from the ongoing industrialization of Europe. On the northern border, faced
menacing Russia. On the sought, Iran faced the growing British navy. On the
east, tribal Afghanistan, and British forces in India. Abbas Mirza is remembered
for his valor in battle. Furthermore, it was Abbas Mirza who first dispatched
Iranian students to Europe for western education. He was unable to defend Iran's
wars with Russia as he ended up losing the historical territory of Iran. However,
he failed in his attempt to modernize the Persian army and develop the supporting
industries. He was not successful in part due to the lack of government
centralization in Iran during the era. To demonstrate the historical period, I will

8
review the development in Europe and the neighbors of Iran to understand why
Iranians were so humiliated by the treaty Tuekmanchay and Ango Persian Wars
and Darcy oil concession from which Iran never recovered.
Industrial Revolution in Britain
In the period from between 1760 to 1820 and 1840 in Europe and the
United States, the transition started from going from hand production methods to
machines, new chemical manufacturing, and iron production processes, the
increasing use of steam power and waterpower, the development of machine
tools and the rise of the mechanized factory system. The Industrial Revolution
also led to unprecedented growth in population. The Industrial Revolution began
in Great Britain, and many of the technological innovations were of British
source. By the mid-18th century, Britain was the world's leading commercial
nation. Britain controlled a global trading route with colonies in North America
and the Caribbean, and with major military and political hegemony on the Indian
subcontinent.
Industrial Revolution in Germany and France
Bismarck created united Germany and started the industrialization of
Germany, particularly, metalogical and chemical industries. A very few Iranians
went to Germany for higher education. Industrialization in France happened at a
much slower rate than in Germany. France experienced a slow change to
commercialized agriculture, power-driven machinery, and mass production.
Even by the end of the nineteenth century, many workers were employed outside
of the industrial factories. The French Revolution had a great and far-reaching
impact that probably transformed the world more than any other revolution. Its
repercussions include lessening the importance of religion; the rise of Modern
Nationalism; the spread of Liberalism and igniting the Age of Enlightenment.
Did the French Revolutionary and Napoleonic wars contribute to the
Industrial Revolution? Well, maybe. However, the Wars created a demand for
superior military technologies. The wars demand increased production for more
valuable technologies, which both stimulated the Industrial Revolution. Now, let
us look at Iran's northern neighbor at the time.
Industrial Revolution Imperial Russia
In Russia, Peter I, better known as Peter the Great brought Russia into the
modern industrial age. During his time as czar, from 1682 C.E until he died in

9
1725 C.E, he implemented a variety of reforms that included revamping the
Russian calendar and alphabet and reducing the Orthodox Church's autonomy.
Peter, I created a combat-ready army supporting metallurgical, textile,
cloth, and other industries. In 1702 C.E–1707 C.E. Lipetsk, Kozminsk, and Borin
factories with a total number of more than 500 workers are being built. In Karelia
in 1703 C.E, the equally large Petrovsky and Povenetsky plants were built. In
1704 C.E–1705 C.E, the Konchezersky plant and the Tyrpitsky ammunition
plants appeared. These plants produce valuable arms for the Army. Imperial
Russia, with modern arms, defeated Iran repeatedly.
During these years, Ottoman was at the center of interactions between the
Eastern and Western worlds for six centuries (1299 C.E-1922 C.E). In this period
only limited Iranians went to Europe, mostly went to France. Iranian empire was
ruled by the Qajar dynasty, which was of Turkic origin from the Qajar tribe, from
1789 C.E to 1925 C.E. The Qajars were a Turkmen tribe that held ancestral lands
in present-day Azerbaijan, which then was part of Iran. Agha Mohammad Khan
the head tribe of Qajar established the Qajar dynasty and was assassinated in 1797
C.E. He was succeeded by his nephew, Fath Ali Shah who ruled from, 1797 C.E
- 1834 C.E. and was defeated by Russia and forced to sign the treaty
of Turkmenchay. After the signing of the treaty of Turkmanchay, the rapid
decline started in Iran as Shah after Shah had no interest in the welfare of the
population. The highlight of the period was an attempt by Amir Kabir to develop
advanced institutions during Naser Din Shah.
Naser Din Shah, 1848 C.E - 1896 C.E.
During Naser Din Shah contracted huge foreign loans from England to
finance expensive personal trips to Europe. Mirza Amir Kabir (1807 C.E)
became chief minister to Naser al-Din Shah Qajar for the first three years of his
reign. He is widely considered to be "Iran's first reformer", a modernizer who
was "unjustly struck down" as he attempted to bring "gradual reform" to Iran. He
was exiled to Fin Garden in Kashan and was murdered by the command of Naser
Din Shah Qajar on January 10, 1852, C.E. During his tenure, Amir Kabir
participated in many missions abroad. He spent almost four years in Erzurum,
part of a commission to delineate the Ottoman-Iranian frontier. He resisted
attempts to exclude present-day Khorramshahr from Iranian sovereignty and to
make Iran pay compensation for its military incursions into the area of

10
Sulaymaniyah. Amir Kabir established the foundation of the Darolfonun as a
place of higher learning in Tehran. Among the subjects taught were medicine,
surgery, pharmacology, natural history, mathematics, geology, and natural
science. The instructors were for the most part Austrians, recruited in Vienna
by Daʾud Khan, an Assyrian who had become acquainted with Amir Kabir
during the work of the Ottoman–Iranian border commission. Darolfonun soon
became a posthumous monument to its founder. His most immediate success was
the vaccination of Iranians against smallpox, saving the lives of many thousands
if not millions in Iran. In 1872, a representative of British tycoon Paul Reuter met
with the Naser al-Din Shah Qajar and agreed to fund the monarch's upcoming
lavish visit to Europe, but the sum was not explicitly stated. In return for
exclusive contracts on all businesses Iranian from tobacco to the extraction of
resources, and other public works. The Reuter company registered in Britain
would receive a specified sum for five years and 60% of all the net revenue for
20 years. The Reuter kept accounting as property of the company and was not
open to audit. Besides, Shah and his advisers had no idea how to audit the
accounting of the company. The "Reuter concession" faced violent opposition in
Iran and from Russia. The power of the established clergy became apparent when
on the most controversial concessions that Iran's Qajar monarchy granted to
foreign nationals in exchange for monetary compensation. It was a monopoly on
the production, domestic sales, and export of tobacco. This was granted to Major
G. F. Talbot of Britain and was registered in March 1890 as the Imperial Tobacco
Corporation of Persia in Britain. Talbot was granted to pay 25,000 pounds
immediately for the concession and to provide an annual payment of 15,000
pounds to the Imperial Treasury. This payment was to be accompanied by a 25
percent share of the net profits after deduction of a 5 percent shareholder's
dividend. The arrangement was to be maintained for fifty years.
In 1891 the consequences of the monopoly became evident to merchants
and the Iranian population at large, the majority of whom consumed some form
of tobacco daily. The monopoly to a foreign entity provokes patriotic fervor. The
Shah and his minister in leadership didn’t realize the opposition to such naked
exploitation of Iran masses and merchants who supported the clergy. This
concession prompted the politicization of the intellectuals and the clergy. As the
events of 1891 progressed, the clergy displayed its power successfully and
mobilized crowds against the government and its foreign policies. Under the

11
leading leader of the clergy, protests began in Shiraz, and Tabriz bazaars spread
to all provinces. In Isfahan two leading clergies, Agha Najafi and his brother
Shaykh Muhammad Ali, declared the use of tobacco filthy as their followers took
to the streets and smashed all visible water pipes in the bazaars. In December the
most prominent expert on Shia Islamic law, Grand Ayatollah Mirza Muhammad
Hasan Shirazi, who resided in Ottoman Iraq, declared a fatwa (legal opinion)
prohibiting all forms of smoking. Shops throughout the bazaars closed and
smoking was completely abandoned, even the shah's wives in the court stopped
smoking. It was a powerful show of force by the religious establishment. On
Christmas Day, billboards were adorned throughout the Isfahan bazaar warning
a jihad against Europeans. Three days later, the shah declared the conditional
abandonment of the tobacco concession and requested that the population resume
smoking. The suspicious crowds waited for word from Ayatollah Shirazi that
the fatwa had been rescinded, but it did not arrive. The nervous shah, Naser al-
Din, sent a personal letter to Tehran's prominent clergy Mirza Hasan Ashtiani,
insisting that he instantly return to smoking or leave Iran. As the news of the
shah's daman spread through the capital, the angry masses occupied the streets
nearby the shah's palace. Fearing for the security of the shah, the government's
troops opened fire on the protestors, killing seven people, including the leader of
the crowds. With the help of the merchants, Ashtiani and another clergy sent a
powerful message to Naser Din Shah and his prime minister, Amin al-Sultan.
Grasping the seriousness of the situation, the shah in January 1892 abolished the
concession, approved to pay reimbursement to the families of those killed, and
absolved all leaders of the revolt. Ayatollah Shirazi telegraphed a few days later
and removed his fatwa and permitted that Muslims could resume smoking.
Muzaffar Din Shah 1896 C.E-1906 C.E
When Naser Din Shah was assassinated by Mirza Reza Kermani in 1896
C.E, the crown passed to his son Muzaffar -Din Shah was a weak and ineffectual
ruler. Royal extravagance and the absence of incoming revenues exacerbated
financial problems. The Shah swiftly obtained to obtain a large loan from Russia
for his trips to Europe. Public anger fed on the shah's propensity for granting
concessions to Europeans in return for generous payments to him and his
officials. People began to demand a curb on royal authority and the establishment
of the rule of law as their concern over foreign, and especially Russian, influence

12
grew. The shah signed the constitution on December 30, 1906, C.E. He died five
days later. The Supplementary Fundamental Laws approved in 1907 C.E.
provided, within limits, freedom of press, speech, and association, and for the
security of life and property. The Constitutional Revolution marked the end of
the medieval period in Iran. The hopes for the constitutional rule were not
realized, however.

Mohammad Ali Shah (reigned 1907-1909)

Constitutional Revolution
Mozaffar Din's son Mohammad Ali Shah (reigned 1907 C.E-1909 C.E),
with the aid of Russia, attempted to rescind the constitution and abolish
parliamentary government. After several disputes with the members of the
Majlis, in June 1908 C.E, he used his Russian-officered Persian Cossacks Brigade
to bomb the Majlis building, arrest many of the deputies, and close the assembly.
Resistance to the shah, however, coalesced in Tabriz, Esfahan, Rasht, and
elsewhere. In July 1909 C.E, constitutional forces marched from Rasht and
Esfahan to Tehran, deposed the shah, and re-established the constitution. Sardar
Asaad Bakhtiari (1856–1917 C.E) also known as Haj Ali-Gholi Khan, Sardar
Asaad II (born Ali-Gholi Khan) was the 3rd son of Hossein Gholi Khan and an
Iranian revolutionary, a chieftain of the Bakhtiari Haft Lang tribe, he was one of
the primary figures of the Persian Constitutional Revolution. In 1909 C.E,
Bakhtiari tribal forces under his command with help of modern arms from the
German Empire successfully captured Tehran as part of the revolutionary
campaign to force the central government to establish democratic reforms. The
three main groups of the coalition seeking a constitution were the bazaar
merchants, a part of the religious establishment, and a small group of radical
reformers, Mohammed Mosadegh, and Liberal Nationalists. Mosadegh was
related by his mother side to the reformist Qajar prince Abbas Mirza started his
political activities and became the future prime minister. The revolutionary forces
shared the goal of ending royal corruption and ending dominance by foreign
powers. According to the revolutionaries, the role of the shah was being used to
keep the Qajar dynasty and other wealthy aristocrats at the expense of Iran's
resources and economy. They argued that whilst Iran's oil industry was sold to
the British, tax breaks on imports, and manufactured textiles destroyed Iran's

13
economy. Muzaffar al-Din accumulated a fortune in foreign debt while selling
assets to pay interest, instead of investing in Iran. This sparked the revolt. The
new fundamental law created a parliament, the Majlis, and gave the legislature
final approval of all loans and the budget. More power was divested from the
shah with the supplementary fundamental law, which was passed by the National
Assembly and signed by the shah. A committee of five religious establishments
was to be created to ensure that new laws were compatible with the sharia.
However, the committee never convened. Britain and Russia capitalized on Iran's
weak government and signed the 1907 Anglo-Russian Convention dividing the
country between themselves and with a neutral central zone. This constitutional
period ended when the Majlis in Tehran's neutral zone dissolved over the issue
of equal rights for non-Muslims; Russia then invaded and captured the city of
Tabriz. Although Iran gained a constitution, Iranian independence was not
achieved by the revolts.
Iran tried to remain free of Russian influence through the resistance of the
majlis. Majlis hired William Morgan Shuster, an American, Iran's treasurer
general. Russia issued an ultimatum to expel Shuster and suspend the parliament.
The Russian force under General Snarski occupied Tabriz on 30 April 1909 C.E.
The ultimatum nevertheless created unrest in Tabriz. The fedayeen of revolution
attacked the Russian troops, inflicting severe casualties. In response, a brigade of
the Russian Imperial Army was dispatched to Tabriz. The fiercest battle of the
Russian invasion occurred in Tabriz, where the constitutionalists resisted. After
about three days, the defense of the city's residents broke. The Russians shelled
Tabriz with artillery and entered the city. Once in control, the Russians held
courts-martial for the fedayeen. The Russians executed the constitutional
revolutionaries of Tabriz, and their relatives were executed and many civilians of
Tabriz as well. The total number of executions is estimated to have been about
1,200. After the Russian revolution of 1917 C.E. Russian left the city in disarray.

14
 Russian troops occupied Tabriz and executed the defenders.
Credit
to:https://military.wikia.org/wiki/1911_Russian_invasion_of_Tabriz

Freedom Fighters of Tabriz

The two men in the center are Sattar Khan and Bagher Khan.
Credit To:
https://www.iranchamber.com/history/constitutional_revolution/constitutional_r
evolution.php

15
 Russia under Lenin was busy recreating the new Soviet Russian empire.
British and its lackeys became the main power in Iran. When War I had ended in
1918 C.E., the British drafted the Anglo-Persian Agreement centered on the
drilling rights of the Anglo-Persian Oil Company. The "agreement" was issued
by British Foreign Secretary, Lord Curzon, to the Persian government in August
1919 C.E. It was never ratified by the Majlis. After the 1917 C.E Bolshevik
Revolution, the new Soviet government abandoned the former Russian sphere of
influence in the five northern provinces of Iran, branding the concept as "Tsarist
Imperialism". Britain was the remaining power in the region and the British
hoped to make Iran a client state of Britain. The document gave a guarantee of
British access to all Iranian oil fields. In return, the British would supply
munitions and equipment for a British-trained army, provide a 2 million sterling
loan for "necessary reforms". The British proposed treaty was denounced
worldwide as hegemonic, especially in the United States, which also had designs
on accessing Iranian oil fields. Eventually, the Anglo-Persian treaty was formally
denounced by the Majlis on 22 June 1921 C.E. Ironside was a British general
attached to the Force fighting the Bolsheviks who were establishing the Soviet
Union in northern Russia 1918 C.E. However, the Red Army of Russia gained
upper hand in the Civil War, and in late 1919 C.E., He was posted in Iran to create
a stable government. He ousted the Russian officers from Persian Cossack
Brigade and offered the commander position of command to the élite Cossack
Brigade the Sardar Homayoun to become the Shah of Persia because of his
lineage to the Qajar dynasty. He declined out of his loyalty to Ahmad Shah. Later
it said that it was out of his fear for his family's safety and his moral reluctance
to use force against his countrymen. His reluctance was seen as cowardice by the
British. Ironside offered the position to Reza Khan. would later seize control of
the country, and rule as Shah from 1925 C.E. to 1941 C.E. The precise level of
British involvement in Reza Khan's coup remains a matter of historical debate,
but it is almost certain that Ironside himself at least provided advice to the
plotters. On his departure from Persia in 1921 C.E, the Shah awarded him the
Order of the Lion and the Sun. However, it was a tacit understanding of Reza
Shah that the British continued monopoly and exploitation of Iran's rich oil field
in Khuzestan. Who was Reza Shah? I will review his life and rise to power in the
next chapter.

16
 Chapter 4 Reza Shah
Tribes after tribes or invaders have ruled Iran in the past 2500 years. The
coming of Reza Shah to power was the first departure from past Iranian history.
Reza Shah Pahlavi was born in the village of Alasht in Savadkuh County,
Mazandaran Province, in 1878 C.E, to Major in Qajar army and his father’s name
was Abbas-Ali Khan and his wife Noshi. After the Abbas Mirza of Qajar lost the
war with the Imperial Russian and Caucasus regions were annexed
by Imperial Russia, the family had emigrated to Qajar Iran. His mother was a
Muslim émigré from Georgia. His father was an officer in the 7th Savadkuh
Regiment of the Qajar army. He served in the Anglo-Persian War in 1856 C.E.
Abbas-Ali died suddenly in 1878 C.E when Reza was barely 8 months old. Upon
his father's death, Reza and his mother moved to her brother's house in Tehran.
She remarried in 1879 C.E and left Reza to the care of his uncle. In 1882 C.E, his
uncle, in turn, sent Reza to a family friend, Amir Tuman Kazim Khan, an officer
in the Persian Cossack Brigade. Reza had a room of his own and a chance to
study with Kazim Khan's children with the tutors who came to the house. At age
of sixteen, Reza joined the Persian Cossack Brigade. For a year, in 1903 C.E, he
was a guard and servant to the Dutch consul general Fridolin Marinus Knobel.
At age of twenty-five, Reza served in the Imperial Army of Qajar. Prince Abdol-
Hossein Farman Farma was in command, he noted that Reza had the possibility
and sent him to a military academy where he achieved the rank of gunnery
sergeant. In 1911 C.E. Reza worked well at his responsibilities and was promoted
to First Lieutenant. His competence in controlling machine guns promoted him
to the rank equivalent to captain in 1912 C.E. By 1915 C.E., Reza Khan attained
the rank of Colonel. His military service performance was impressive and came
to the attention of his commanding officers of imperial Russia. He was supported
by a commission of a Brigadier General in the Persian Cossack Brigade. Ironside,
a British officer stationed in Iran with the mission to create a stable government
and check the advances of the Bolssivk into Iran, ousted the Russian officers from
Persian Cossack Brigade and offered the commander position to Reza Khan. The
British government was interested to stop the Bolsheviks' penetration of Iran,
particularly because of the danger it posed to the British assets in India and oil
interest in Iran. The British supplied ammunition, supplies, and paid salaries
for Reza Khan's troops. Reza Khan treated his troops with discipline iron hand
and at the same time paid his troops well. During this time. most of the population

17
was living in extreme poverty. General Ironside sent a report to the British War
Office saying that a capable Persian officer was in command of the Cossacks and
with his help we can solve many difficulties and enable us to depart in peace.
Then British Embassy informs the British government was helping Reza Khan as
our man Persia to create a centralizing power. At the same time, Ironside
contacted a military officer known as Sardar Homayoun who was the
first Imperial Iranian Army general to graduate from the prominent Saint-Cyr
Military School in France as a possible new Shah of Iran. Sardar Homayoun was
urged by the local politicians and moderates, backed the British Government, to
become the Shah of Iran. Sardar Homayoun's lineage traced to the Qajar dynasty
gave added incentive to have him on the throne. Sardar Homayoun declined out
of his loyalty to Ahmad Shah, and his moral unwillingness to use force against
his countrymen, a measure that was predictable for the maintenance of the
monarchy. His unwillingness was seen as timidity by the British. British, instead,
selected Raza Khan.

Reza_Kahn_behind_Ahmad_Shah
Credit to: https://www.alamy.com/stock-image-reza-kahn-behind-ahmad-
shah-jpg-166253609.html

The power behind the direction of events in Iran was the British embassy in
Tehran. The ruling class, the established clergy, and Shah were subservient to the

18
British plan. The nationalist forces in Tehran and major cities were weak. The
communist in northern and Caspian provinces was subservient to the invading
Red Army and had no plan for mobilizing the masses of landless peasants. Iran
had become a battleground after the Russian Revolution of 1917 C.E. Iran was
as a springboard for the launching of an attack into Russia as part of their
intervention in the Russian Civil War on the side of the White movement by
Britain. A wobbly coalition of anti-communist forces fought the communist
Bolsheviks. The Soviet Union reacted by occupying portions of northern Iran,
creating the Persian Socialist Soviet Republic. Unrest in the country started a
severe political crisis in the capital. In 1921C.E., the commander of the British
Forces in Iran, General Ironside, helped Reza Khan to lead the entire brigade and
assured him of supply and payment for his troop. British Embassy was in touch
with Zia Din Tabatabaee, a journalist, who wrote blistering attacks on prominent
politicians of the Qajar monarchy, which caused the closing of his newspapers.
The British chose him as prime minister because he had spent some time in
Europe and was educated and he consistently attacked the ineffective Qajar
aristocracy. In the end, the coup d'état of 1921 was organized by Zia Din
Tabatabaee with the approval of the British Embassy in Tehran with Reza Khan
as the minister of war, and Zia Din Tabatabaee as the prime minister. Under
British direction, Reza Khan led his 3,000-4,000 strong detachments of the
Cossack Brigade, based in Qazvin, and Hamadan, to Tehran and seized the
capital. Reza Khan forced the dissolution of the previous government and
demanded that Seyyed Zia'eddin Tabatabaee be appointed Prime Minister. Reza
Khan's first role in the new government was as Commander of the Iranian Army,
which he combined with the post of Minister of War. He took the title Sardar
Sepah, or Commander-in-Chief of the Army, by which he was known until he
became Shah.
The Soviets obtained disgraceful concessions from the Qajar government,
whose ministers Ahmad Shah was often unable to control the country. By 1920
C.E, the government had lost practically all power outside its capital Tehran.
British and Soviet forces exercised control over most of the Iranian mainland.
The Soviets came to Rasht on the Caspian were ready to march on Tehran with
"a guerrilla force of 1,500 Jangalis, Kurds, Armenians, and Azerbaijanis",
strengthened by the Soviet Red Army. The Jungle movement had started in 1914
C.E. and gained momentum after the victory of the Bolsheviks in Russia. In May

19
1920 C.E., the Soviet Caspian Fleet entered the Caspian port of Anzali. The
mission of the Soviets was to capture the Russian vessels and ammunition that
was taken to Anzali by the White Russian counterrevolutionary who had been
given asylum by British forces in Anzali. The British garrison in Anzali
soon abandoned the town without any resistance, retreating to Manjil. In May
1920 C.E, the Soviet Republic of Gilan, officially known as the Socialist Soviet
Republic of Iran, came into being. The Republic did not redistribute land to poor
peasants. The Iranian envoy in Moscow agreed to a treaty with the
Bolsheviks for the removal of Soviet troops from Iran. Article IV of the Russo-
Persian Treaty of Friendship allowed the Soviets to occupy Iran if they felt
that Iran may be used by foreign troops as a staging area for an attack on Soviet
territory. This treaty would cause enormous conflict between the two nations. It
was clear to Iranian nationalists; the new Imperial Soviet was based on an
agreement between the British and Soviets that kept the shadow of Russia and
the British over Iran as before. The Russo-Persian Treaty of Friendship was
signed on 26 February 1921 in Moscow between representatives of Iran and
Soviet Russia. Based on the terms of the treaty, all previous agreements made
between two parties including the Treaty of Turkmenchay were canceled.
Moreover, both Russia and Iran were given full and equal shipping rights in
the Caspian Sea. Confirmations were exchanged in Teheran on 26 February 1922
C.E. It was registered in the League of Nations Treaty Series on 7 June 1922 C.E.
The passage of the treaty, and particularly articles 5 and 6, was subject
to forceful debate in the Persian parliament; anti-British sentiment, however,
leads to its acceptance without modification. The nationalist believed that the
Imperial Soviets and British have forced Iran to sign a new treaty of subjugation,
but leftists praised it. The treaty was the basis for a Soviet occupation in
1941C.E., and articles 5 and 6 were eventually repudiated by Iran
in the 1979 revolution.
With the departure of the Red Army forces, the guerrilla force Jangalis,
Kurds, Armenians, and Azerbaijanis melted as Reza Khan marched to Azerbaijan
and the Capien provinces. By 1921, and particularly after the agreement was
achieved between the Soviet Union and Britain on the future of Iran and the
British stopped the support for the White forces. Soviets decided not to further
support the Soviet Republic of Gilan based on a separate agreement with the
British for stopping British support for the White forces in Iran. The Russo-

20
Persian Treaty of Friendship of 1921 C.E was drafted under Lenin with Iran being
treated as a client state and ensuring peace on the Russian southern border When
the Soviets stopped the support of the Socialist Soviet Republic of Iran, the
republic melted away as Reza Khan began marching to the north of Iran and
reasserting central government control over Gilan and Mazandaran. The Soviet
Republic of Gilan officially ended in September 1921C.E. Mirza and his friend
Gauook (Hooshang) fled alone into the Alborz Mountains and died of frostbite.
While Reza Khan and his Cossack brigade secured Tehran and northern states of
Iran, the Sheikh Khazal's rebellion in Khuzestan was created as an emirate.
Again, Reza Khan dissolved the emirate in 1925 C.E., along with other
autonomous regions of Persia, and used force to construct a centralized state.
From the beginning of the appointment of Reza Khan as the minister of
war, there was ever-increasing tension with Zia Din Tabatabaee, who was prime
minister at the time. Zia Din Tabatabaee wrongly calculated that when Reza
Khan was appointed as the minister of war, he would relinquish his post as the
head of the Persian Cossack Brigade and that Reza Khan would wear civilian
clothing instead of military attire. This erroneous calculation by Zia Din
Tabatabaee backfired and instead, it was apparent to people who observed Reza
Khan, including members of parliament, that he, and not Zia Din Tabatabaee,
was the one who wielded power. Reza Khan had largely succeeded in securing
Iran's interior from any remaining domestic and foreign threats. Upon his return
to the capital, he was appointed Prime Minister, which prompted Ahmad Shah to
leave Iran for Europe, where he would remain until his death. The Parliament
grant Reza Khan dictatorial powers, who in turn assumed the symbolic and
honorific styles of Janab-i-Ashraf (His Serene Highness) and Hazrat-i-Ashraf on
28 October 1923 C.E. He quickly established a political cabinet in Tehran to help
organize his plans for modernization and reform.
Reza Khan treasured the idea of revitalizing the Iranian nation and leading
it on the path of progress. Many had envisioned that Reza Khan, whom they took
to be a naive regimental officer, would be content with a high-sounding title and
a sword of honor given by the shah. But he had his vision for Iran based on the
powerful army and was not to allow a diverse group of inexperienced though
sincere idealists and foreign-influenced opportunists to rule the country. His
progress toward supreme power was unusually rapid. He was tall and
had a menacing appearance. He talked little and never revealed his intentions.

21
When he visited Nader Shah's grave in Mashhad, he asked his minister: "what
was the biggest mistake Nader Shah made?" The minister stood silent. Then
"Reza Shah said: " Nader Shah said what he was going to do tomorrow by saying
to his generals that he would blind them because he blinded his son on suspicion
of a plot to assassinate him, and he was killed that night by his generals. Reza
Shah displayed great political talent against his opponents, he divided and
weakened them. He also understood that to reach the ultimate objective, he had
to have complete control over a military force, and that required money. At first,
his troops were paid and supplied by the British, then, as he built up the army, he
used the army to collect more taxes until finally, he had gained control over the
entire country. As a war minister, he was the real power behind several prime
ministers in succession until 1923 C.E., when he became prime minister
himself. By October 1925 C.E, he succeeded in pressuring the Majlis to depose
and formally exile Ahmad Shah and become the next Shah of Iran. Initially, he
had planned to declare the country a republic, as his contemporary Atatürk had
done in Turkey, but abandoned the idea in the face of British and clerical
opposition. The Majlis declared him the Shah of Iran on 12 December 1925 C.E,
under the Persian Constitution of 1906 C.E. Three days later, he took his imperial
oath and thus became the first shah of the Pahlavi dynasty. Reza Shah left behind
no major thesis, or speeches giving an overarching policy, he talked little and
gave orders to his ministers. He strived for an Iran that would be free of clerical
influence, nomadic uprisings, and ethnic differences with European-
style advanced educational institutions, westernized women that are active
outside the home, and modern economic structures with factories,
communication networks, investment banks, and a strong economy.
Reza Shah never asked the opinion of his ministers, and he was feared by his
ministers. He avoided discussion with his ministers.

22
 Credit to:
https://www.reddit.com/r/iran/comments/mh6a8l/opening_ceremony_of_tehran
_university_faculty_of/
Opening ceremony of Tehran University Faculty of Medicine. 90 years
ago, on March 31, 1931.

Reza Shah never asked the opinion of his ministers, and he was feared by
his ministers. He avoided discussion with his ministers. He said: “every country
has its ruling system and ours is a one-man system.” He used punishment to
reward in dealing with subordinates or citizens. Many other western-educated
Iranians implemented his modernist plans. Reza Shah's vision became clear as it
was implemented: The construction of railways, a modern judiciary and
educational system, and the imposition of changes in traditional attire, and the
limited influence of the powerful religious establishment. During Reza Shah's
sixteen years of rule, major developments, such as large road construction
projects and the Trans-Iranian Railway were built, modern education was
introduced and the University of Tehran, the first Iranian university, was
established. The government-sponsored European education for many Iranian
students. The number of modern industrial plants increased 17-fold under Reza
Shah (excluding oil installations), and the number of miles of highway increased
from 2,000 to 14,000. Km

23
 Credit To: http://onenewsbox.com/2016/12/10/the-opening-of-the-
trans-persian-railway-by-reza-shah/4/

The Trans-Iranian Railway was a major railway building project started in

1927 and completed in 1938, under the direction of the Reza Shah, and entirely
with indigenous capital. Along with the modernization of the nation, Reza Shah
eliminated the chador and Islamic Hijab from Iranian women. The religious
establishment opposed him, and he crushed it. The unveiling issue and the
Women's Awakening are linked to the Marriage Law of 1931 C.E. and in
1935 C.E they were admitted to Tehran University, and in 1944 C.E education
became compulsory. In the Western world, Persia was historically the common
name for Iran. In 1935 C.E, Reza Shah asked foreign delegates and the League
of Nations to use the term Iran ("Land of the Aryans"), the endonym of the
country, used by its native people, in formal correspondence. Since then, in the
Western World, the use of the word "Iran" has become more common. This also
changed the usage of the names for the Iranian nationality, and the common
adjective for citizens of Iran changed from Persian to Iranian. Support for the
Shah came principally from three sources. The central "pillar" was the military,
where the shah had begun his career.

24
 Reza Shah at Persepolis
Credit to: https://www.pinterest.com/pin/697002479806511220/

The annual defense budget of Iran "increased more than fivefold from
1926 C.E to 1941C.E." Officers were paid more than other salaried employees.
The new modern and expanded state administration of Iran was another source
of support. The ten civilian ministries employed 90,000 full-time government
workers. Patronage controlled by the Shah's royal court served as the third
"pillar". Reza Shah accumulated considerable personal wealth which had been
built up by forced sales and seizures of estates, making him "the richest man in
Iran". On his resignation, Reza Shah "left to his heir a bank account of some three
million pounds sterling and estates totaling over 3 million acres." The land-
owning upper classes tolerated Reza Shah. Opposition to his rule was from the
tribes who were terrorized to submission, the clergy became obedient, and the
young generation of the new intelligentsia who wanted to participate in the
political process was dissatisfied. Reza Shah controlled who will be elected to
the parliament and controlled the press. The tribes withstood the worst of the new
order. There was no room for debate and Reza Shah ruled by terrorizing the
population. As his reign became more secure, Reza Shah clashed with Iran's

25
clergy and devout Muslims on many issues. In March 1928 C.E, he violated the
sanctuary of Qom's Fatima al-Masoumeh Shrine to beat a cleric who had angrily
admonished Reza Shah's wife for temporarily exposing her face a day earlier
while on pilgrimage to Qom. In December of that year, he established a law
demanding everyone, except Shia clergy who had passed a special qualifying
examination to wear Western clothes. This angered devout Muslims. The Shah
also encouraged women to discard hijab. He announced that female teachers
could no longer come to school with head coverings. One of his daughters
reviewed a girls' athletic event with an uncovered head. The devout were also
angered by policies that allowed the mixing of the sexes. Women were allowed
to study in the colleges of law and medicine, and in 1934 C.E. a law set heavy
fines for cinemas, restaurants, and hotels that did not open their doors to both
sexes. Doctors were permitted to dissect human bodies. He restricted
public mourning observances of the Martyrdom of Hossein to one day and
required mosques to use chairs instead of the traditional sitting on the floors of
mosques. The dissatisfaction of the Shi'a clergy boiled throughout Iran. In
1935 C.E, a backlash erupted in the Mashed shrine. Responding to a cleric who
criticized the Shah's "sacrilegious" inventions, immorality, and heavy consumer
taxes, many bazaars and villagers took refuge in the shrine, repeating slogans
such as "The Shah is a new Yazid." For four full days, local police and army
declined to violate the shrine. The stalemate was ended when troops from Iranian
Azerbaijan arrived and broke into the shrine, killing dozens and injuring
hundreds, and marking a final rupture between Shi'ite clergy and the Shah. Reza
Shah ruled by decrees and the parliament agreed to his decrees, the free press was
suppressed, and the swift incarceration of political leaders like Mossadegh, a
nationalist leader, that later in 1950 became a prime minister. Reza Shah ordered
the murder of his court minister Teymourtash on flimsy charges. Teymourtash
was educated in Tsarist Russia, at the exclusive Imperial Nikolaev Military
Academy in Saint Petersburg and spoke fluent Persian, French, Russian, and
German and had a strong command of English and Turkish. He ordered the
execution of Sardar Asad who was the 3rd son of Hossein Gholi Khan and
an Iranian revolutionary; Firouz who was educated at the American University of
Beirut and the Sorbonne in Paris and spoke five languages (Persian, French,
English, Russian, and German) and attended Lycée Janson de Sailly in Paris and
Institute Le Rosey in Switzerland; Modarres who a progressive clergy and was a

26
notable supporter of the Iranian Constitutional Revolution; Arbab Keikhosro,
who the mastermind and designer of the mausoleum for poet Ferdowsi at his
burial site in the city of Tus, and the suicide of Davar who established Iran's
Bureau of Social Affairs, The Law of Documentation Registration, The Law of
Property Registration, and The Law of Marriage and Divorce. The formation of
any democratic process was unattainable. Shah treated the urban middle class,
the managers, and technocrats with an iron fist; as a result, his state-owned
industries remained unproductive and inefficient. The bureaucracy fell apart
since officials preferred flattery when anyone could be taken away to prison for
even the hint of disobeying Shah's whims. He confiscated land from the Qajars
and his rivals and into his estates. The corruption continued under his rule and
even became institutionalized. Progress toward reconstruction was spotty and
isolated. He became dependent on his military force and the army, which in return
regularly received up to 50 percent of the public revenue to guarantee its
loyalty. Although the landed upper class lost its influence during his reign, his
new regime aroused opposition not from the upper class but mainly from Iranian
"tribes, the clergy, and the young generation of the new intelligentsia. The tribes
endured the most repression of the new order. Reza Shah initiated change in
foreign affairs as well. He worked to balance British influence with other
foreigners and generally to diminish foreign influence in Iran by bringing the
German industries. In 1931C.E., he refused to allow Imperial Airways to fly in
Persian airspace, instead of giving the concession to German-owned Lufthansa
Airlines. Reza Shah hired American consultants to develop and implement
Western-style financial and administrative systems. Among them was U.S.
economist Arthur Millspaugh, who functioned as the nation's finance minister.
Reza Shah also purchased ships from Italy and hired Italians to teach his troops
the intricacies of naval warfare. He also hired hundreds of German technicians
and advisors for various projects. Mindful of Persia's extended period of
subservience to British and Russian and imperial Soviet authority, Reza Shah was
careful to avoid giving anyone foreign nation too much control. He also insisted
that foreign advisors be employed by the Persian government be answerable to
his government. His experience with Anglo-Persian Darcy concession was a sour
pain on his side. He remembered how his troops were paid and by the British
government and as a result, he had to implement their orders. He annulled the
19th-century capitulations to Europeans in 1928 C.E. Under capitulations,

27
Europeans in Iran enjoyed the privilege of being subject to their consular courts
rather than to the Iranian judiciary. The right to print money was moved from the
British Imperial Bank to his National Bank of Iran (Bank Melli Iran), and the
telegraph system, from the Indo-European Telegraph Company to Iran to
his government. He fired Millspaugh, and prohibited foreigners from
administering schools, owning land, or traveling in the provinces without police
permission. Many modern educated Iranians implemented his reforms. He
implemented the objectives of the constitutional revolution of 1905 C.E–
1911C.E. However, his greed and despotism created the seed of new corruption.
He was aware that the system of the constitutional monarchy in Iran after him
had to stand on a solid basis of the collective participation of all Iranians.
However, he was a dictator and trained by an Imperial Russian officer and could
not allow the freedom of thoughts and democracy. To counterbalance Imperial
British and Imperial Soviet influence, Reza Shah encouraged German
commercial enterprise in Iran. On the eve of World War II, Germany was Iran's
largest trading partner. The Germans agreed to sell the Shah the steel factory he
coveted for Iran. His foreign policy, which was based on playing
the Imperial Soviet Union off against the Imperial British failed since those two
powers were allied after the establishment of the Imperial Soviet Union and those
two-power joined in 1941 C.E to topple his one-man rule. In the 1932 C.E, he
surprised the British by unilaterally canceling the oil concession awarded to
William Knox Darcy which was slated to expire in 1961C.E. The attempt to
revise the terms of the oil concession on a more favorable basis for Iran led to
protracted negotiations that took place over several years. However, Reza Shah
was soon to assert his authority by dramatically inserting himself into the
negotiations. The monarch attended a meeting of the Council of Ministers in
November 1932 C.E, dictated a letter to the cabinet canceling the D'Arcy
Agreement. The Iranian Government notified APOC that it would cease further
negotiations and demanded the cancellation of the Darcy concession. Rejecting
the cancellation, the British government espoused the claim on behalf of APOC
and brought the dispute before the Permanent Court of International Justice at the
Hague, asserting that it regarded itself "as entitled to take all such measures as
the situation may demand the Company's protection." The Permanent Court of
International Justice was a tool of the League of Nations which, in turn, was
dominated by the victors of World War I. The dispute between the two countries

28
was taken up at The Hague and the Czech Foreign Minister who was appointed
mediator put the matter into suspension to allow the contending parties to attempt
to resolve the dispute. Ironically, Reza Shah, first, stood firm in demanding the
abolishment of the Darcy concession. Then Reza Shah suddenly acquiesced to
British demands, much to the chagrin and disappointment of his Cabinet. A new
agreement with the Anglo-Persian Oil Company was agreed to after Cadman,
British foreign minister visited Iran in April 1933 C.E and was granted a private
audience with Shah. Then on his order, a new agreement was ratified by the
National Consultative Assembly on May 28, 1933, C.E, and received Royal
assent the following day. The 1933 agreement promised Reza Shah,
AIOC would give laborers better pay and more chances for advancement, build
schools, hospitals, roads, and telephone systems. AIOC did not fulfill these
promises. Iran declared its neutrality in WW II. Still, Imperial Britain and the
Imperial Soviet Union invaded, and occupied Iran based on Article IV of the
Russo-Persian Treaty of Friendship allowed the Soviets to invade and occupy
Persia to fight the Germans and supply war material through Iran. Once again,
the necked aggression Imperial Soviet with collaboration British showed their
design for Iran. In 1941 C.E., the British and the Imperial Soviet invaded and
occupied neutral Iran by a massive air, land, and naval assault without a
declaration of war. The Iranian military forces fell into complete chaos. Major
Iranian cities (such as Tehran) were enduring repeated air raids. Tehran's water
and food supply had faced shortages, and soldiers fled in fear of the Soviets
killing them upon capture. Faced with total collapse, the royal family, except the
Shah and the Crown Prince fled to Isfahan. The breakdown of the army that Reza
Shah had spent so much time and effort creating was a crushing blow. Many
Iranian commanders behaved ineptly, others sympathized with the British and
sabotaged Iranian resistance. The army generals met in secret to discuss surrender
options. When the Shah learned of the generals' actions, he beat armed forces
chief, General Ahmad Nakhjavan, with a cane and physically stripped him of his
rank. Nakhjavan was nearly shot by the Shah on the spot, but at the insistence of
the Crown Prince, he was sent to prison instead. The Shah ordered pro-
British Prime Minister Ali Mansur, whom he blamed for crushing his military to
resign and replacing him with former prime minister Mohammad Ali
Foroughi. Reza Shah ordered the military to cease resistance and entered
negotiations with the British and Soviets. Reza Shah was all alone since he

29
had previously sacked and forced Foroughi to retire. Shah also had his daughter's
father-in-law executed by firing squad. When Foroughi entered negotiations with
the British, instead of negotiating a favorable settlement, Foroughi implied that
both he and the Iranian people wanted to be "liberated" from the despotism of
Shah's rule. The British and Foroughi agreed that for the Allies to withdraw, Iran
would have to expel the German minister and his staff expelled from Iran and the
German, Italian, Hungarian and Romanian embassies are to be closed. All
German nationals (including all families) would be handed over to the British
and Soviet authorities. Reza Shah delayed the last demand, choosing instead to
secretly evacuate German nationals from the country. In response to the Shah's
defiance, the Red Army on 16 September moved to occupy Tehran. Fearing
execution by the Communists, many people (especially the wealthy) fled the city.
Reza Shah, in a letter handwritten by Foroughi, announced his abdication, as the
Soviets entered the city on 17 September. The British wanted to restore the Qajar
Dynasty to power, but the heir to Ahmad Shah Qajar since that last Qajar Shah's
death in 1930, Hamid Hassan Mirza, was a British citizen who spoke no Persian.
Instead (with the help of Foroughi), Crown Prince Mohammad Reza Pahlavi took
the oath to become the Shah of Iran.
The British left the Shah a face-saving way out:
Would His Highness kindly abdicate in favor of his son, the heir to the
throne? We have a high opinion of him and will ensure his position. But His
Highness should not think there is any other solution.
Reza Shah ruled by the power of the army and police. He didn’t want
trusted advisors to hear anything contrary to his views. He was trained by the
imperial Russian officers and acted the same and was disgraced at the end. The
Anglo-Soviet invasion was instigated in response to Reza for having denied the
request to remove the German residents, who could threaten the Abadan refinery.
Reza Shah further refused the Allies' requests to expel German nationals residing
in Iran and denied the use of the railway to the Allies. However, according to the
British embassy reports from Tehran in 1940 C.E, the total number of German
citizens in Iran – from technicians to spies – was no more than one thousand.
Because of the strategic importance of Iran to the Allies, Iran was subsequently
called "The Bridge of Victory" by Winston Churchill. Reza Shah’s main critics
were the so-called "new intelligentsia" often educated in Europe. New educated
classes looked at Reza Shah, not a state-builder but an 'oriental despot', not a

30
reformer but a tycoon strengthening the landed upper class; not a real nationalist
but a jack-booted Cossack trained by the Tsarists and brought to power by British
imperialists. His defenders included Ahmad Kasravi, a contemporary intellectual
and historian of the constitutional movement, who had strongly criticized the
participation of Reza Shah in the 1909 C.E siege of Tabriz. When he accepted
the unpleasant responsibility of acting as a defense attorney for a group of officers
accused of torturing political prisoners, he stated, "Our young intellectuals cannot
possibly understand and cannot judge the reign of Reza Shah. They cannot
because they were too young to remember the chaotic and desperate conditions
out of which arose the autocrat named Reza Shah."
Reza Shah abdicated, and the British forces quickly took him and his
children to Mauritius, then to Durban, thence Johannesburg, South Africa. He
died on 26 July 1944 C.E of a heart ailment about which he had been complaining
for many years. His doctor had boosted the King's morale in exile by telling him
that he was suffering from chronic indigestion and not heart ailment. He lived on
a diet of plain rice and boiled chicken in the last years of his life. He was sixty-
six years old at the time of his death. After the 1979 revolution, in 2018, a
mummified body believed to be Reza Shah's was found in the vicinity of his
former mausoleum site in Tehran. Officials said that they reburied the body.
Under Reza Shah's reign, several new concepts were introduced between
1923 C.E and 1941C.E. Some of these significant changes, achievements,
concepts, and laws included: Successful suppression of separatist movements and
reunification of Iran under a powerful central government Foundation of the first
judicial system of Iran Foundation of the first health care system and public
hospitals across the country. Reestablishment of Iranian Gendarmerie and
Shahrbani police forces, enforce the law; limit civil disorder and protect property;
Foundation of Trans-Iranian Railway which connected the Caspian Sea to the
Persian Gulf; Nationalizing Iranian forests and jungles; Creation of the modern-
day Iranian Army (Iranian Air Force, Iranian Navy, Iranian Ground Forces);
Creation of the first Iranian radio; Creation of the National Museum of Iran;
Rebuilding Iran's historical sites including the Tomb of Ferdowsi and Tomb of
Hafez; Organizing the Ferdowsi Millenary Celebrations to commemorate the
thousandth anniversary of Ferdowsi's birth as the savior of the Persian
language and Iranian identity; Creation of Iran's Academy of Persian Language
and Literature in order to protect Iran's official language; The first scientific

31
excavations at Persepolis, the ancient capital of the Achaemenid
Empire, Creation of Iran's first national bank known as Bank Melli Iran and
other Iranian banks such as Bank Sepah and Keshavarzi Bank; Creation of the
first university in Iran which is known as the University of Tehran; providing
full scholarships for Iranian students to European countries for studying
abroad; Eradication of corruption in civil servants, paying adequate wages in time
so people did not have to rely on bribes; Creation of the first national school
system and schoolbooks in Iran; (before Reza Shah, the Islamic madrasah and
Quran was the only form of schooling available) ;Establishment of the first
Iranian kindergarten and school for deaf people, Creation of the Iran Scout
Organization; Creation of birth certificates and identification cards for all
Iranians; Creation of the first Iranian airplane factory with buying license from
Germany; Building the first Iranian airport known as Mehrabad
airport; Changing Iranian currency from Toman to Rial, Restoring the Persian
calendar and making it the official calendar of Iran, a decree banning
all veils (headscarf and chador, an edict that was swiftly and forcefully
implemented.) were carried out by the initiative of Reza Shah. The government
also banned many types of male traditional clothing. Iran of today was created
by Reza Shah.
Who was Reza Shah? How did he decide what to do? We know he talked
truly little, never projected his thoughts, and ruled by decrees. However, his
records of achievements are impressive. He implemented all the goals of the
revolution of 1905-1911 C.E and went beyond that by limiting the influence of
reactionary religious rights and emancipated Iranian women. He was still hated
by the religious right and progressive forces from the nationalist and socialist left.
We can only review his life and get an understanding of his character. He had a
humble beginning. When Reza was sixteen years old, he became a Persian
Cossack that was commended by the Russian officers. He must have been a keen
observer and had watched the officers with their families and how women were
free without Hijab and how they were treated with respect. In 1903 C.E, he was
guard and servant to the Dutch consul general. Again, the life of women at the
Dutch embassy must have impressed him. He was getting paid by Imperial Russia
and he was a good soldier and obeyed their order and participated in the massacre
of constitutional forces fighting the Russian occupation of Tabriz in 1911
C.E. After the Russian revolution, he and his Persian Cossack were getting paid

32
by the British. When Sardar Homoyun of Qajar rejected the offer of the British
to become the next Shah of Qajar, Reza Khan with his Persian Cossack became
the real power in Iran with the support of the British. Reza Khan worked for
himself and his troops that later became his Army and his instrument of
terror. My father used to say that Reza Shah terrorized the population to a degree
that a man was afraid to say anything negative to his wife or the children about
the Shah being afraid to be reported. In the end, Reza Shah had no trusted
advisors. Everyone repeated what the Shah has said or kept quiet because Shah
could change his mind. He never consulted with anyone, and his ambassadors
were fearful for their lives and kept quiet as the world was changing rapidly. He
had no idea of the importance of American in the coming World War (WW
II). He blindly aligned his government close to Fascist Germany and forgot his
master, the British. It all happened because he terrorized his ministers, and no
one informed him of the coming World War II. and the new hemogenic
superpower of America who would be the winner of the war. In the end and the
religious establishment, nationalists, and left and right were united with invaders
and wanted to send him to exile. Ironically, his son, Mohamad Reza Shah did the
same and a united left and right forces sent him to his master in America.

Chapter 5 Red Army Occupation of Iran

Red Army Establishment of Azerbaijan People's
Government and the Kurdish Republic of Mahabad.
When World War II started Reza, Shah had no understanding of the world
power. He had started close collaboration with Hitler Germany, and he continued
without knowing how to evaluate his place in the new world. The American
neocolonial power had the Sought America under his grip and had moved into
the middle east by establishing a foothold in Saudi Arabia. Saudi Aramco's
concession began in 1933 when the agreement was signed between Saudi Arabia
and the Standard Oil Company of California (SOCAL). The California Arabian
Standard Oil Company (CASOC) was created to manage the agreement with
Saudi Arabia. Roosevelt told British Saudi is ours, and the British should be
happy with Iran's oil. Reza Shah governing Iran in an atmosphere of fear and had
terrorized every segment of the society, from his ministers to the educated middle

33
class to the merchant and religious establishment. He did not discuss with any of
his ministers and did not want advice.
The new Imperial Soviet had secured a safe southern border with
Iran according to the Friendship of 1921 that delineated the spheres of interest
between the Soviets and British. The friendship Treaty of 1921 was a bear hug.
The Soviets could occupy Iran if the Soviets believed threatened by Iran as the
Soviets felt. The world events were moving fast as the first Stalin signed The
German-Soviet Treaty of Friendship, Cooperation, and Demarcation. It was a
top-secret complementary protocol of the 1939 Hitler-Stalin Pact, that was
amended on September 28, 1939, for their joint invasion and occupation of
sovereign Poland. These amendments permitted the exchange of Soviet and
German nationals between the two occupied zones of Poland. It changed the map
of eastern Europe and divided central Europe into spheres of interest dictated by
the Molotov–Ribbentrop Pact. The treaty specified that neither party in its region
would allow any "Polish agitation" directed at the other party. The Molotov–
Ribbentrop Pact was a neutrality pact between Nazi Germany and the Soviet
Union signed in Moscow on August 23, 1939, that described the spheres of
interest between the two powers. The events were moving fast, and Reza Shah
had no foresight to see the changing directions in the eastern front of the Soviet.
Then came the German invasion of the Soviet Union by Nazi Germany
on Sunday, 22 June 1941 that started World War II. Now united Americans, the
British, and the Soviets became allied against Nazi Germany. It seems Reza Shah
was sleeping and not recognizing the difficult position of Iran. Reza Shah
declared Iran neutrality and thought that was all Iran needed to do. After all, Iran
was the safest land railway bridge for delivering supplies to the Soviets. Still,
Reza Shah refused to join Allied and allow the use of Iranian Railways to send
supplies from the Persian Gulf to Soviets. The Anglo-Soviet march into Neutral
Iran in August 1941 based on the signed treaty of the friendship of 1921. Reza
Shah was a Russian-trained Soldier to the end of his rule. His despotism led to
his downfall. The northern states of Iran were occupied by the Soviets and the
British forces took over Oil-rich Khuzestan. Reza Shah woke up from his dream
of neutrality when the Soviets demanded his surrender with the ultimatum that
they would march to Tehran. Reza Shah was suffering from angina pain of heart
disease, asked frail Foroughi, an educated man at Tehran Darolfonun in political
sciences and language to become prime minister to negotiate with British and

34
Soviets. Reza Shah was forced to resign by the British and exiled to Sought
Africa.
When the war ended, Soviet Army organized Pro-Soviet Iranians to
proclaim Azerbaijan People's Government and the Kurdish Republic of
Mahabad. Stalin's goal was to annex more territories from Iran and get to the
Persian Gulf. The Azerbaijan People's Government was set up by the Soviets,
under the leadership of Jafar Pishevari was proclaimed in Tabriz in 1945.
Azerbaijan was annexed from Iran and created by the direct order of Joseph
Stalin. People had no voice in political power to express their views in the free
local press and were dissatisfied with the centralization policies of Reza Shah. It
was supplied with money and weapons by the Soviets. It was naked aggression
by Stalin who wanted to grab more territories. The Azerbaijani Democratic Party
(ADP) officially announced its formation in Tabriz on 3 September 1945 by a
group of veteran communists headed by Jafar Pishevari. The Soviet-supported
Tudeh party showed its lack of commitment to Iran's territorial integrity and
dissolved its Azerbaijan chapter and ordered its members to join ADP. ADP
expanded throughout Iranian Azerbaijan and with help from the Soviet army,
took over the Iranian army facilities.

Autonomous Republic of Azarbaijan and Mahabad Republic set up by

the Soviets
Credit to: https://www.pinterest.com/pin/697002479806511220/

During the first week of September 1945, the Azerbaijani Democratic

Party, led by Jafar Pishevari, a long-time leader of the revolutionary movement

35
in Gilan, declared itself to be in control of Iranian Azerbaijan, promised liberal
democratic reforms, and disbanded the local branch of Tudeh.
The Mahabad Republic was proclaimed in December 1945. The
establishment of the Kurdish republic was assisted by the Soviets, and
Qazi Muhammad, the religious and leader of Mahabad. Mullah Mustafa
Barzani came to play a key role in the newly created military force of the
Mahabad Republic known as the Peshmerga. Barzani's support was secured,
along with some 60 tribal Kurdish leaders, the KDP-I party platform proclaimed,
and Qazi Muhammad was elected the first president on 22 January 1946. The
Kurdish forces were advised and organized by Soviet military officer Captain
Salahuddin Kazimov. The Soviets extended their influence by sending at least 60
Kurds to Soviet Azerbaijan for additional military training. Under pressure by the
Western powers, the Soviet Union revoked its support of the newly created states,
and the Iranian military succeeded in re-establishing Iranian rule in November
1946. Under pressure from the new American hegemonic world power, the
Soviets had to recognize that their ideas in Iran were premature. The issue of
Iranian Azerbaijan became one of the opening skirmishes of the Cold War, and,
largely under the Western powers' pressure, Soviet forces withdrew in 1946. The
autonomous republic collapsed soon afterward, and the members of the
Democratic Party took refuge in the Soviet Union, fleeing Iranian revenge. In
New declassified evidence of formerly, top-secret documents from the Cold War,
the Soviets government created Pishevar’s government by the direct orders of
Stalin. The Soviet military supported the new autonomous entity and prevented
the Iranian army from restoring governmental control over the area. The Soviet
willingness to forego its influence in (Iranian) Azerbaijan probably resulted from
several factors, including the realization that the sentiment for autonomy had
been exaggerated. The main reason for the support of the establishment of the
Azerbaijan People's Government and the Kurdish Republic of Mahabad by the
Soviet Union was to make pressure to earn the Northern Oil Concession. Soviet-
Iranian government oil agreement had to the approval Iranian Majlis.
The Tudeh deputies in the Majlis had earlier enthusiastically insisted on
the nationalization of the whole petroleum industry, then, suddenly, the Tudeh
party supported granting the Soviet petroleum industry in Iran to Stalin. The
Tudeh party justified its action the on grounds of "socialist solidarity. Again, the
Tudeh party was subservient to Stalin's design for Iran. The Soviets agreed to

36
remove their troops out of Iran after negotiating an oil agreement with the Iranian
government subject to the Majlis ratification. A month later, the Soviets moved
their troops out of Iran in April 1946. The Soviets negotiated the concession of
Iran's northern oil resources was submitted to the newly elected deputies of
Majlis and Majlis rejected the Soviet-Iranian oil agreement on the ground that
had been concluded under coercion in March 1946. On September 11, 1947, U.S.
ambassador George V. Allen publicly condemned the agreement that had been
obtained under intimidation and coercion used by Soviet governments to secure
commercial concessions in Iran. It promised the full U.S. support for Iran
to freely decide about its natural resources. With this unequivocal
encouragement, when the agreement was brought to the Majlis, it was refused
again to endorse the Soviet oil agreement on October 22, 1947; the vote was 102
to 2. Almost immediately, the Iranian government reneged on the oil deal, and,
with U.S. aid and advice, the Iranian Army crushed the revolt in northern Iran.
The Soviets were furious but ceased sending their armed forces into Iran for fear
of creating an escalating conflict with the United States and Great Britain. Under
the pressure on Americans, the Soviets withdrew from Iran. The Iranian crisis
was the first step that created a cold war between the United States and the Soviet
Union. The Mahabad Republic collapsed as Iranian forces entered Azerbaijan in
December 1946. The Barzani’s, along with over 500 Peshmerga and their
families, crossed the Araxes River into the Soviets in June 1947.

Chapter 6 The Tudeh Party

In northern Iran, the Communist Party of Iran was established in June
1920 in Bandar-e Anzali three years after the October revolution. The first
congress of Iranian social democrats was organized Heidar Amou Oghly, who
was one of the leaders of the Constitutional Revolution of Iran, became the
secretary-general of the new party. Mirza Koochak Khan was a
democrat who collaborated with the Society of Islamic Union, started his
uprising in the northern forests known as the Jangali movement. Initially, the
headquarters of the movement was in Kasma, a village in Gilan Iran. Mirza
Koochak Khan was a religious man close to people and he was uncomfortable
cooperating with the Russian Communist Party. In 1915, Mirza Koochak Khan,
an experienced activist in the Constitutional Revolution, launched the Jangali

37
movement. His movement was religiously Islamic, in the forests of
Gilan demanding autonomous status for the province, an end to central
government corruption, an end to foreign interference in affairs of local peoples,
and land reform. The pro-Moscow communist join his movement and encouraged
him to establish the Soviet Republic of Gilan. After the Russian revolution of
1917, the Red Army of the Soviet Union assisted the Jangali movement to put
pressure on White forces fighting the Red Army. Then, the Soviets signed a
treaty with the British in London in 1921 and agreed to withdraw from Northern
Iran for the British to stop supporting White forces. With withdraw of Red Army
support, the newly formed Soviet Republic of Gilan collapsed as Reza Khan
marched toward Gilan.
Lenin in the 1917 revolution reorganized the new Russian Soviets
government on the old Russian Empire by expanding into the Caucasus central
Asia. Lenin and later Stalin started to create the communist international
movement. The Tudeh Party of Iran is an Iranian communist
party reestablished in 1941, by Soleiman Mirza Eskandari. From the beginning
was a Stalinist party and was subservient to the Soviets. The party still exists as
a club of friends after its banning in Iran and mass arrests by the Islamic
Republic in 1982, as well as the executions of political prisoners in 1988.
In 1929–30, the party organized strikes in an Isfahan textile mill, the
Mazandaran railways, Mashhad carpet workshops, and in the British-owned oil
industry. Iraj Eskandari was identified at the time as the leader of the dominant,
moderate faction in the party leadership, along with Reza Radmanesh who joined
the Socialist Party while he studied at Darolfonun that was the first
modern university and modern institution of higher learning in Iran established
by Amir Kabir. He went to France to study physics and on his return to Iran,
Eskandari and Radmanesh established a Marxist–Leninist party appealing to the
broad masses. Iraj Iskandari belonged to the "group of fifty-three" that
were arrested for involvement in communist political activities in
1937. They were brought to trial in November 1938 during the reign of Reza
Shah Pahlavi. Some of them died in jail such as Dr. Taqi Arani. The government
cracked down heavily and most of the "group of fifty-three” were
arrested and imprisoned in Qasr Prison in Tehran. The Stalin purges took a
heavy toll on Iranian communist exiles living in the Soviet Union, these arrests
meant the Communist Party of Iran ceased to exist for all practical purposes

38
outside the walls of Qasr. None of the Tudeh party leadership talked of the purge
in Moscow continued to support the Soviets and were subservient to Stalin in
years to come.
The British-Soviet Allied invasion of 1941–42 resulted in the end of Reza
Shah's reign. Many political prisoners were released, and a new mass movement
of political participation took hold in Iran. Tudeh members were also released in
1941 when Reza Shah abdicated and went into exile. The Tudeh Party of Iran
was reestablished on 29 September 1941, electing Soleiman Mohsen
Eskandari as chairman. First, the Tudeh party was "a liberal rather than a radical
party", with a platform stressing the importance of "constitutional" and
"individual rights", protecting "democracy" and "judicial integrity" from fascism,
anti-imperialism, and pro workers. Soleiman Eskandari urged the party to appeal
to non-secular masses by respecting their cultural beliefs by barring women from
membership, organizing Moharram processions, and designating "a special
prayer room in its main clubhouse." His leadership was not last, and the party
moved "rapidly to the left" within months of its founding. The party entered the
14th Majlis elections and eight of its candidates were elected in 1941. Tudeh
Party, secretly organized a Military Organization of Iran, called TPMO (Sazman-
e Nezami-ye Hezb-e Tudeh-ye Iran) made up of officers in the military. The
TPMO gave the party intelligence and information from the military to shield it
from the security forces and give it military strength. As the event showed later,
the party had no plan at that time to use the TPMO to stage a coup. starting in
1943, Tudeh took a strong stand in favor of women's rights by supporting equal
pay for equal work, two months of maternity leave for female workers. The party
grew massively and became a major force in Iranian politics. The party succeeded
to create the first mass organization in Iran's history. Police records later
estimated 2,200 hard-core members – 700 of them approximately 10,000s of
sympathizers in its youth and women's organizations in Tehran, and 100,000s of
sympathizers in its labor and craft unions. Rahbar (Leader) daily paper claimed
a circulation of more than 100,000 – triple that of the "semi-official newspaper”
Ettela’at. The party was the main political force in the country. The New York
Times estimated that the party and its allies could win as much as 40% of the vote
in a fair election. The party's intellectual influence originated from the prestige
and propaganda of the Soviet Union as "the world's most progressive nation."
Few intellectuals "dared oppose" the party "even if they did not join." Tudeh had

39
"total domination over intellectual life" in Iran. When the celebrated writer Jalal
Al-e-Ahmad. Al-e-Ahmad resigned from the Tudeh Party along with his
mentor Khalil Maleki over the lack of democracy and the party. They formed an
alternative party the Socialist Society of the Iranian Masses in January 1948. But
dissolved it a few days later when Radio Moscow attacked it, unwilling to oppose
the Soviet Union. The Tudeh party's old guards knew of Stalin's murder of the
Iranian communists in the Great Purge, which took place between about 1936
and 1938 by the ruthless operation that caused widespread terror throughout the
Soviet Union. Nobody dared to recall Stalin's brutal mass murder until
Khrushchev’s secret speech, February 25, 1956, when he denounced Joseph
Stalin a closed session of the 20th Congress of the Communist Party of the Soviet
Union. The speech started the process of the de-Stalinization campaign intended
to destroy the image of the late dictator as an infallible leader. However, Tudeh's
leadership remained subservient and followed the direction of KGB agent of the
Soviet embassy in Tehran.
In 1944–46, Stalin demands a petroleum concession in northern Iran. The
Soviets were sponsoring ethnic revolts in Kurdistan and Azerbaijan. Tudeh
deputies in the Majlis had previously vigorously demanded the nationalization of
the whole petroleum industry, then the Tudeh party supported granting the Soviet
petroleum industry in Iran its wishes on grounds of "socialist solidarity",
"internationalism," and "anti-imperialism." During this time, the international
communist movement was also thriving. The communist world expanded
dramatically in the decade following World War II with Eastern
Europe, China, North Korea, and Vietnam all becoming states dominated by
their respective communist parties, usually via military victory. In the United
States, Iran was seen as the holder of reserves of petroleum with "vital strategic"
value to western countries, and as part of a geopolitical line of defense for
the Mediterranean and Asia. The CIA funded $1 million a year to combat the
communist propaganda. Iran was the center of world geopolitics. The Tudeh's
close relationship with the Soviets and its popular-front strategy was designed by
KGB operators. In February 1949, an attempt was made on the life of
Shah Mohammad Reza Pahlavi. The party was blamed by the government and
banned. The government confiscated its assets and banned the Central Council
and rounded up some 200 leaders and cadres. The party went underground by
1950, the supporters organized under the banner of the Iran Society for Peace

40
(Jam'iyat-e Irani-ye Havadar-e Solh) and published three daily
papers, Razm, Mardom, and Besui-ye Ayandeh. In December 1950, the Tudeh
party military organization succeeded "to arrange for the escape of key members
of the party leadership who had been in jail since early
1949. The conservatives were detesting the Tudeh Party, which was later
outlawed and associated the Tudeh party with Mossadegh.
One Iranian conservative newspaper even editorialized: "The Tudeh
Party, with its satanic doctrine of class struggles, has incited ignorant workers to
violate the sacred right of private property and inflict social anarchy upon the
center of the country. This uprising proves that Tudeh is an enemy of private
property, of Iran, and of Islam. If the government does not stamp out Tudeh, the
local revolt will inevitably spread into a general revolution."
The party played a key role both directly and indirectly during the key era
of Iranian history that began with the 1951 nationalization of the British Anglo
Iranian Oil Company (AIOC) and ending with the 1953 CIA coup to
overthrow Mohammad Mosadegh. In early April 1951, the Tudeh party
organized and launched strikes and demonstrations to protest low wages and
poor housing and demanded the speedy nationalization of the oil industry. Party
organized street demonstrations and sympathy strikes in Tehran, Isfahan, and the
northern cities. Police The government of Mosadegh opened fire on
demonstrators and, it became apparent Mosadegh was not a communist and that
the Tudeh did not control the government. Tudeh's party weakened Mosadegh,
but it could not overthrow him. The party vehemently and resolutely
opposed Mosadegh and his program. In a June 1950 article in its daily Mardom it
described the effects of Mosadegh's policy thusly:
“Already we can be sure that revisions in the southern oil contract will
not be in favor of our people and will only result in the consolidation of
England's position in our country. The solution of the oil question is related to
the victory of our party, that is, the people of Iran”

Mosadegh resigned after the shah vetoed his nomination for War Minister,
in July 1952. Mosadegh appealed to the public for backing, but the Tudeh press
sustained its attack on him, calling his differences with the shah "as purely
one between different factions of a reactionary ruling elite." It was only after the
explosion of popular support for Mosadegh in the street that "many rank-and-

41
file" Tudeh party followers "could see Mosadegh's approval” and came to his
aid. Ayatollah Abol-Ghasem Kashani changed sides and supported the Shah,
"sent a public letter to the pro-Tudeh organizations thanking them for their
invaluable contribution" during the uprising toward Mosadegh’s victory. Tudeh
party called Mosadegh a servant of America. Two political forces from the right,
Kashani’s religious faction and left headed by the Tudeh party opposed
Mosadegh.
Mosadegh oversaw the takeover of British oil facilities and rising
economic difficulty and polarization in Iran as the AIOC withdrew its employees
and retaliated with a boycott of Iranian oil. Mosadegh capitalized on the uprising
to establish an emergency rule, which allowed him to bypass the Majlis, and to
institute his reforms. Stalin gave the order to the Tudeh party not to support the
Mosadegh government.
The US government showed its true intention when Mosadegh became
increasingly frustrated with the stalemate over negotiations with the British
government on control and compensation. The American ambassador even
questioning Mosadegh's "mental stability". In the same year, the Soviet tanks
crushed an anti-communist uprising of strikes and protests in East Germany in
June 1953. Tudeh Party defended the Soviets and call the East German strikes a
plot by imperialist camp. In 1953, American CIA and British intelligence agents
began plotting to overthrow Mosadegh in a coup d'état.
After Mosadegh appointed a series of secular ministers to his cabinet
during his premiership, he lost support with the clergy. In 1953, Ayatollah Abol-
Qasem Kashani and his followers coordinated a series of protests
against Mosadegh's liberal reforms - such as the extension of the vote to women.
By July 1953 when Mosadegh asked for a critical extension of his emergency
powers, "Clerical members of the Majlis who supported Kashani left the National
Front Coalition and set up their own Islamic Faction. Ayatollah
Behbahan marshaled 3000 sticks and club-wielding in the hope that the removal
of Mosadegh would create a more religious government. Both Ayatollah
Behbahani and Kashani received funds from the CIA sources. The clergy's move
to oppose Mosadegh was the decisive factor in his downfall.
The Tudeh party's policy was one of total confusion. First attacking
Mosadegh as a lackey of American imperialism, then supporting him. On 15
August a coup attempt against Mosadegh was uncovered by the Tudeh TPMO

42
military network, but two days later party activists harshly destabilized the
government by staging demonstrations to pressure Mosadegh to announce Iran a
democratic republic. Mosadegh was loyal to the constitution and was not to
overturn Iran's constitutional monarchy. Mosadegh reacted by calling out troops
to suppress the demonstrators. The Tudeh party also sensed a coup might be
launched and formed "vanguard cells" that along with the TPMO, identified key
military installations, army depots, and command and control centers in the
capital, in Tehran. The plotters were trying to convince the shah to issue an edict
dismissing Mosadegh and replacing him with General Fazlollah Zahedi. The plot
was uncovered by Tudeh supporters in the military, and a contingent sent to arrest
Mosadegh were intercepted and plotters arrested themselves. Colonel
Mohammad Ali Mobasherri was a member of the Tudeh party military wing,
a secret three-man secretariat, but also an active member of Tehran Military
Governor, the center of the coup operation. Major Hehdi Homaouni served in the
shah's Imperial Guard and discovered and reported the August plot to the party.
Documents released by the US National Security Archive, indicate that pro-Shah
demonstrators ransack pro-Tudeh and pro-Mosadegh establishments.
Eisenhower and Truman differed in their evaluations of Mosadegh. Eisenhower's
administration believed Mosadegh could not as effectively counter the
Tudeh takeover of Iran. Truman and the CIA in August 1953 downplaying "the
likelihood of a Tudeh overthrow attempt" but doubts the Tudeh taking power in
a more long-term fashion.
The coup attempt created a backlash against its perpetrators, including
Shah. The anti-monarchical and Tudeh supporters were radicalized, and an angry
crowd began to attack symbols of the monarchy and demanded its abolition.
Mosadegh, who was aware of Western fears of the Tudeh party and who had
worked to limit the power of Shah but had never suggested he was in favor of
abolishing the constitutional monarchy, saw these attacks as a challenge, as
removing the shah would violate the constitution. The next day Mosadegh
ordered the military into the streets, and up to 600 mid and low-level Tudeh
activists were arrested in Tehran alone.
The CIA and its Iranian allies struck again, and on 19, August 1953, the
coup d'état replaced Mosadegh with Zahedi. The coup was a major event in Third
World and 20th Century history and there is debate as to how much of the
culpability for the overthrow can be traced to bribes paid by the CIA and how

43
much to domestic dissatisfaction with Mosadegh. Shah assumed dictatorial
powers and banned most political groups, including Mosadegh's National Front.
However, the Tudeh Party continued to function underground. The mass arrests,
destruction of its organization, and execution of some 40–50 leaders following
the coup has been said to have "destroyed" the Tudeh. Between 1953 and 1957,
Iranian security forces using "brute force, together with the breaking of the
cryptographic code with help CIA know-how tracked down 4,121 party
members." More than half the Tudeh party membership was destroyed. The
Tudeh party TPMO totaled 477 members in the armed forces, 22 colonels, 69
majors, 100 captains, 193 lieutenants, 19 noncommissioned officers, and 63
military cadets were arrested and many executed. Paradoxically, a Tudeh colonel
had supervised the Shah's security – as well as that of Vice President Richard
Nixon when he visited Iran. The Tudeh had the opportunity to assassinate the
Shah and the U.S. vice president and change the direction of world events and
the destiny of Iran. The Tudeh officers were able to access and distribute
weapons. Tudeh TPMO high- and middle-ranking military members have
confirmed their ability to distribute weapons and even to assassinate key Iranian
leaders of the coup. The disciplined Tudeh party, backed by military officers with
access to weapons, Tudeh could have played a key role in direction of Iran's
history. The Tudeh network of military officers performed as protection for the
party. The party military wing could have helped to preserve Iran's democracy
after Mosadegh's overthrow, only if Tudeh had the welfare of the Iranian
masses. However, it is puzzling why so many high- and middle-ranking Tudeh
military officers marched to their death singing the Internationale anthem of
the Bolshevik Party, Soviet Russia adopted by Stalin. The arrest and execution
of Khosro Roozbeh in 1957-8 signaled the end of this process. Who was Khosro
Roozbeh? Khosro Roozbeh was an Iranian military officer, mathematician,
writer on political and cultural affairs and the chief of the military branch of the
Tudeh Party as well as the best-known martyr of the Tudeh movement as was
broadcast by Tudeh party Radio of Iran from the German Democratic Republic
(East) in the fifties and sixties. I listen to it as a teenager in Tehran to Tudeh party
Radio. I still remember Roozbeh of his famous statement: “Executed me but not
justice for the working class.” Roozbeh conducted five assassinations
according to his confessions. Four of the victims were party members suspected
of selling information to the police after the 1953 coup. One of these being

44
Hesham Lankrani, a member of a prominent clerical family from Azerbaijan. The
night before his execution, Roozbeh composed a seventy-page testament to
condemn capitalism to praise socialism and to explain why he was willing to die
for the "great revolutionary cause" of the Tudeh party. The Persian poet Ahmad
Shamlou composed a couplet in praise of him. And "many leftists, including non-
Tudeh members, named their newborn son after him. He became the symbol of
uncompromising opposition, heroic resistance, and ultimate self-sacrifice. How
should we judge Roozbeh? The fifth killing was of Mohammad Massoud, a
maverick newspaper editor, and opponent of the regime of Shah. Roozbeh said:
"the assassination of Mohammad Massoud, such a popular anticourt journalist,
could polarize Iran and thus radicalize the Tudeh, and emphasized that he carried
out the Massoud assassination without the party's knowledge. What to make of
killing Hesham Lankrani and Mohammad Massoud? To Roozbeh the end
justified the means. No one knew who killed Massoud? At the time, most people
thought that Shah ordered the killing of Massoud. Did Roozbeh confess to clear
his conscience? So it is, a hero with an uncompromising stand for the cause of
justice and socialism murdered Mohammad Massoud, to start a revolution, and
for the blooming justice. Was Roozbeh infected with the idealization of socialism
in Soviet Russia? How could Tudeh members who were killed by Stalin be
covered up by the Tudeh party in the name of Socialism and justice? How could
Tudeh party members living in East Germany have not recognized the nature of
proletariat government? With the collapse of Soviet Russia in 1991, in five days,
and subsequent creation of the New Federation of Russia and stealing estate
assets by connected Russian communists, one can observe the evolving nature of
Lenin and Stalin Soviet Russia from 1917 through 1991? Not a single Russian
came to the street to defend the Socialist state.
Is there a virus of idealization by which humans’ brains can be infected?
I have been reading the work of Robert Sapolsky, a professor at Stanford
University on "Biology and Human Behavior: The Neurological Origins of
Individuality". His work can be paraphrased as “an act directed by gene (DNA),
environment and Neurobiology.” The shadow of the Soviet idealization must
have hypnotized Tudeh leaders and members. I visited Aziz Sarmadi a member
of Jazani's group house. Aziz lived in Sought of Javadieh in Tehran a poor
neighborhood. Aziz and I had worked together in the early fall of 1963 for
planning the Jebhe Melli Daneshjoo demonstration. We both had leftist views.

45
Aziz later joined Bijan Jazani's group and was murdered by Shah Savak in hills
overlooking Evin. When I entered his house, I noticed that his eyes were red.
Soon, he took a short book from Roozbeh and read it to me, and as he was
reading, he was crying as his mother just died. He was so taken by Roozbeh's
defense of working people. Now in the year 2021, when I look at that day, I began
to think that Aziz and I, at that age adolescence, were infected with the
idealization of socialism. I am not saying that those of us who struggled for
freedom of thought and democracy were infected with the disease. I am saying,
we never recognize the menacing shadow of the Soviet empire on our northern
border. I feel now, we must recognize that Putin's Russian empire is still the same
design on Iran as the past Russian empire.
During the 1979 revolution, all political prisoners were freed, and the
Tudeh Party and other leftist groups were able to participate in the presidential
and parliamentary elections for the first time in many years. However, the Islamic
Republican Party of Ayatollah Beheshti won most seats and leftist and
nationalist organizations were forced out of the loop. The newly elected
President, Abolhassan Banisadr, who had originally been close with Ayatollah
Khomeini, also became increasingly frustrated with the developments that had
been taking place and opposed the domination of the clergy and the religious
factions in Iranian politics.
In 1981, the Majlis, dominated by the Islamic Republican Party, forced
Bani Sadr out of office. A wave of protests and demonstrations started from all
segments of the populace. Bani Sadr later fled the country. Armed revolutionary
committees loyal to Khomeini arrested many thousands of youths and activists
from both nationalist and leftist groups, many of whom were later tried by
Lajevardi, who was known as the Hanging Judge and executed. Tudeh Party
leadership decided to support the new clerical theocratic regime. Again, the
Tudeh party was subservient to the Soviets in the name of supporting the anti-
imperialist government of Iran.
In 1982, however, the Tudeh broke ranks. The Islamist government of Iran
had closed the Tudeh newspaper and purged Tudeh members from government
ministries. What happened was intriguing. According to the Mitrokhin Archive,
Vladimir Kuzichkin, a KGB officer stationed in Tehran, had defected to the
British in 1982. MI6 used this information and shared the information with the
CIA. Their information was then shared with the Iranian government by the CIA,

46
which was secretly courting Iran, as part of the Iran–Contra affair. Quickly the
government arrested and imprisoned its leadership and later more than 10,000
members of the party. This time Tudeh party obedient to the Soviet became for
all to see. In February 1983, the leaders of the Tudeh Party were arrested, and the
Party disbanded, leaving Iran effectively a one-party state. The Tudeh arrests
revealed that once again the party had managed to find supporters among the
armed forces, as several officers, prominent among them Admiral Bahram
Afzali, commander of the Iranian navy, were arrested. Afzali was born in 1937 in
the city of Qom. His father was a cleric. He entered the service of the Imperial
Iranian Navy in 1957 and was sent to Italy for further education. In 1961, he was
graduated from the Italian Naval Academy, where he was trained in mechanical
engineering and shipbuilding. He later obtained a Ph.D. in boat and submarine
architecture in 1970. Was he recruited by KGB agents in Italy? Maybe he learned
Marxist ideas while studying in Italy? Does anyone know how he became a
member of the Tudeh party?
After the 1979 revolution, he continued to serve in the Navy and took part
in the Iran–Iraq War. Then Iranian president Abolhassan Bani Sadr appointed
him as the commander of the Navy in June 1980. He was also a special adviser
to the speaker of the Iranian Majlis, Ali Akbar Hashemi Rafsanjani. At the
beginning of 1983, Afzali, along with more than a thousand members of
the Tudeh Party was arrested by the Iranian Revolutionary Guard. The trial was
conducted in the form of a military tribunal in December 1983, and 32 of them
were sentenced to death. Their judge was Hojjat Al Islam Mohammad
Reyshahri is an Iranian politician and cleric who was the first Minister of
Intelligence served from 1984 to 1989 in the cabinet of Prime Minister Mir-
Hossein Mousavi. Ten Tudeh members were executed on 25 February 1984,
Afzali was executed on charges of espionage for the Soviet Union. These arrests
ended the alliance between the Tudeh Party and the ruling clergy of Iran, and it
collapsed, even as the Soviets collaborated with the Iranians to build up their
nuclear capabilities. International media, such as UPI, reported that along with
the banning of the Tudeh party, 18 Soviet diplomats were expelled from the
country for "blatant interference." At the same time, Tudeh was accused of
working on behalf of "foreign powers," with the suppression praised by
Khomeini. From 1 May 1983 to May 1984 almost all the Tudeh leadership
appeared in videos, first individually and then jointly in an October 1983

47
"roundtable discussion," confessing to treason and subversion. Then they praised
Islam and proclaiming the Islamic government's superiority over atheistic
Marxism–Leninism. In May 1984, Ehsan Tabari appeared on television. Who
was Ehsan Tabari? He was an accomplished Iranian philosopher, poet, and
literary giant fluent in eight languages, and he wrote and translated poetry and
did research in linguistics. He had a key role in the transformation in literature
and cultural enlightenment in the twentieth century in Iran. He was also
instrumental in fostering a deep understanding of Marxist philosophy in Iran;
founding member of the Tudeh Party of Iran; a theoretician of the Tudeh party;
and an active contributor in advancement in the political process whose aim was
social progress and elimination of economic inequality in twentieth-century
Iran. A man with 50 years of leftist experiences told viewers, he had read great
Islamic thinkers such as Ayatollah Motahhari in prison and realized the
superiority of Shia over the Marxist ideas. He renounced the works he had written
over the past 50 years. He now realized that his entire life's work was defective
and damaging to Iran, totally illegitimate and false because it had all been based
on unreliable thinkers such as Ahmad Kasravi and Western liberals
and Marxists linked to imperialism and Zionism. In his repudiation denial,
Tabari went further, and he made frequent references to religion, the Twelve
Imams, and Islamic thinkers and praised Islam for its great spiritual strength. Was
Tabari dishonest in his rejection of Marxist ideas? Well, he was not alive to see
how the first Socialist State, composing of many nationalities with a population
of 289 million to fall apart in five days without a single shot being fired in the
Red Square in Moscow on December 26, 1991. Not a single Socialist person
came forward to defend the great Marxist Leninist ideas. Now, it is apparent to
any fair-minded willing person that his rejection of Marxist-Leninist ideas can
be honest. In science, the experiment is the gold standard to confirm the validity
of a proposed theory. The Soviet state failed after 70 years in power to create a
socialist human being. Ehsan Tabari rejected his Marxist ideas in the prison of
the Islamic Republic. Well, why did he reject all he wrote? He remembered
Albert Camus’s work when he was reading Ayatollah Motahari’s work. As
Camus said, “The only way to deal with an unfree world is to become so
absolutely free that your very existence is an act of rebellion.” Tabari realized the
conflict between the human tendency to seek intrinsic value and meaning in life
and the human failure to find it with any certainty. He acted for living another

48
day as he had accepted that all is absurd at the end be it believing in Imam of all
time or Jesus or Marxist-Leninist Socialist men and women living in harmony
for all time. I admire Ehsan Tabari. He rejected torture.
The suspicions of outside observers, the confession was not given freely
were reinforced by the absence of other members who died during prison
interrogation. The rapid disintegration of the Tudeh at the hands of the Islamic
State, and the confessions of its leaders led the opposition and remaining party
members to seek answers. Explanations ranged from ideological capitulation to
the use of Stalinist methods of trial. The Tudeh Party General Secretary was
Noureddin Kianouri. Who was Kianouri? He was born into the Iranian upper
class. His grandfather was Sheikh Fazlollah Noori, a conservative politician from
a famous Shia Muslim Scholar and Theorist in Qajar Iran during the late 19th
and early 20th century and founder of political Islam in Iran. Even though at the
beginning he supported the Iranian Constitutional Revolution, in the beginning,
he soon rapidly and stubbornly turned against it upon realizing that the
movement was attempting to establish a Western-style government with secular
law rather than a government with Islamic law. He argued that during the period
of the Concealment of Twelve Imam, the running of the country must be a shared
responsibility of the government and clerics. Religious authority must have the
power to assure Islamic decisions are made by Majlis. He justified the clerics'
active involvement in politics. Sheikh Fazlollah Noori allied himself with
Mohammad Ali Shah, who, with the assistance of Russian troops staged a coup
against the Majlis in 1907. In 1909, However, constitutionalists marched onto
Tehran.
He was arrested, tried, and found guilty of sowing corruption and sedition
on earth, and he was hanged before a crowd in Maidan-e Toopkhaneh in the
center of Tehran. He is now named a martyr by the Islamic government. His
views on the role of clergy in government are implanted by Iran Islamic
government. Kianouri first attended the University of Tehran, then he was
trained in Germany, and graduated from the University of Aachen in 1939 as
an Architect. He was one of the founding members of the Association of Iranian
Architects in 1945, which was placed in charge of major housing developments
in the city of Tehran.

49
 Credit to: http://www.iichs.ir/Picture-3681/Martyr-Ayatollah-Sheikh-
Fazlollah-Noori/?id=3681
The founder of Velayet-e faqih

He was a founding member of the Tudeh Party in 1941 and was a member
of the Tudeh Party's central committee in 1945. In February 1949, Kianouri along
with other party members were accused of having planned an assassination
attempt on Mohammad Reza Pahlavi, the Shah. He was sentenced to ten
years. He spent two years in jail and then escaped, seeking exile in Italy where,
with the help of the Italian Communist Party, he received a new identity as Dr.
Silvio Macetti, professor of architecture. He was one of the "hard-liners" in the
party, who formed a more dogmatically Marxist faction compared to the
moderates, and his faction opposed Mohammad Mosadegh's government.
According to Kianouri, the party was caught flat-footed when Mosadegh was
overthrown in the CIA and MI6-sponsored 1953 Iranian coup d'état. Kianouri
moved to Moscow in 1952 and for two years worked with Georgy A.
Gradov, director of the research institute of Moscow's at the Academy of
Architecture in the Soviet Union. He continued that collaborator with
Gradov after moving to East Berlin, developing theories of socialist architecture

50
and urban planning, and continued cooperating with Gradov. During his life, he
must also witness was an uprising that occurred in East Germany from 16 to 17
June 1953 that began with strike action by construction workers and crushed by
the Soviet tanks. The uprising began in Hungary, and it was viciously crushed by
Soviet tanks and troops on November 4, 1956, and invasion of Czechoslovakia
to crack down on reformist trends in Prague when, conservative leader Antonin
Novotny was ousted as the head of the Communist Party of Czechoslovakia, and
he was replaced by Alexander Dubcek on August 20, 1968. Why did such a gifted
educated person such Kianouri never questioned his conviction of socialist ideas
and blind commitment to the Soviets in the face of revolts in eastern Europe?

Credit to: https://history.state.gov/milestones/1953-1960/east-german-

uprising
Russian Tank in front of the German Imperial Court of Justice, Leipzig,
June 17, 1953. (Deutsches Bundesarchiv)

51
 Credit to:
:https://www.newworldencyclopedia.org/entry/File:Sz%C3%A9tl%C5%
91tt_harckocsi_a_M%C3%B3ricz_Zsigmond_k%C3%B6rt%C3%A9ren.jpg
Destroyed Tank in 1956 Hungarian Revolution
Kianouri and his wife returned to Iran following the Iranian Revolution of
1979. The Tudeh party was reinstated, and in January 1979, the party's First
Secretary Iraj Eskandari was replaced by Kianouri, and for a brief period the
party remained legal; his wife led the Democratic Organization of Iranian
Women. The party at that time supported the Iranian Revolution. Kianouri,
interviewed for Newsweek, expressed the party's view that it should work
with Ruhollah Khomeini, and that "he is playing a progressive part in the
development of Iran".
The public confession happened in May of 1983 when Kianouri and
Behazin appeared on national television. Behazin was a well-known writer who
translated many modern Western classics and some works by
Shakespeare and Goethe and was highly regarded by the literary circles in Iran
for his quality and command of Persian and the resulting beauty and honesty of
his translations into Persian of Western literary works. Kianouri
and Behazin, each repudiated from their past work. It was a kind of "history
lesson", in which they outlined how communism had betrayed the people of Iran.
Kianouri mentioned how he had come to realize that communism was essentially

52
alien to the people of Iran and that the party was plagued by private jealousies
and corruption. Throughout his presentation he kept his hands under the table: it
had been broken during interrogation. Later, "in an open letter to Khomeini,
Kianouri recorded a horrific detail method of maltreatment and tortures they
received with his wife during their imprisonment." Before he died in 1999,
Kianouri witnessed the collapse Soviet Union peacefully on December 26, 1991,
and witnessed the invasion of Afghanistan by the Soviet Union on December 24,
1979, under the pretext of upholding the Soviet-Afghan Friendship Treaty that
was signed in 1978 and the two countries to provide economic and military
assistance. And he then witnessed the final humiliating complete withdrawal of
Soviet combatant forces from Afghanistan on May 15 February 1989 and the
establishment of the Islamic government in Afghanistan.
I wonder what his reaction was to these events. Did he write anything about
these historical developments and the collapse of communism worldwide?
Maybe he felt defeated and had nothing to say.

53
 Chapter 7. Mosadegh

Credit to:
https://www.newworldencyclopedia.org/entry/File:Mohmmad,
Mosaddegh2_(cropped).jpg
Prime Minter of Iran
Mosadegh was born to a prominent Persian family in Tehran on 16 June
1882 C.E. His father, Mirza Hidayatullah Ashtiani, was the finance minister
under the Qajar dynasty, and his mother, Princess Malek Taj Najam-es-Saltaneh,
was the granddaughter of the reformist Qajar prince Abbas Mirza, and a great-
grand daughter of Fath-Ali Shah Qajar. When Mosadegh's father died in 1892
C.E, his uncle was appointed the tax collector of the Khorasan province and was
bestowed with the title of Mosadegh-os-Saltaneh by Nasser al-Din Shah. In
1901C.E. Mosadegh married Zahra Emami (1879 C.E–1965 C.E), a
granddaughter of Nasser al-Din Shah

54
 In 1909 C.E, Mosadegh went to France for higher education in Paris,
France where he studied at the Institute d'études politiques de Paris (Sciences
Po). He studied there for 2 years. He returned to Iran because of illness in 1911
C.E. Mosadegh went back to Europe to study a Doctor of Laws (doctorate en
Droit) at the University of Neuchâtel in Switzerland. In June 1913 C.E.,
Mosadegh received his doctorate and became the first Iranian to obtain a Ph.D.
in Law from a European university. Mosadegh taught at the Tehran School of
Political Science. The School of Political Science was founded in 1899 C.E by
Hassan Pirnia who played a key role in drafting the Persian Constitution of 1906
C.E. One of Pirnia's key actions during his time as Prime Minister was to prevent
the acceptance of the Anglo-Persian treaty of 1919 C.E that would make Iran a
protector of the British empire.
Mosadegh started his political career with the Iranian Constitutional
Revolution of 1905–07 C.E. He was elected from Isfahan to the newly
inaugurated Persian Majlis, the Majlis of Iran. However, he was unable to assume
his seat because he had not reached the legal age of 30. During this period, he
also served as deputy leader of the Society of Humanity. In 1919, he felt he had
no future in Iran when the Anglo-Persian Treaty of 1919 was submitted to Majlis,
and he left for Switzerland in disgust and thinking that he would never return to
Iran. He returned the following year after being invited by the new Iranian prime
minister, Hassan Pirnia, to become his minister of justice. He was later appointed
finance minister, in the government of Ahmad Qavam and then foreign minister
in the government of Moshir-ed-Dowleh in June 1923 C.E. He then became
governor of the Azerbaijan Province. In 1923 C.E, he was re-elected to the
Majlis.
In 1925 C.E, the supporters of Reza Khan in the Majlis proposed
legislation to dissolve the Qajar dynasty and appoint Reza Khan as the new Shah.
Mosadegh voted against such a move, arguing that such an act was a subversion
of the 1906 Iranian constitution. He gave a speech in the Majlis, praising Reza
Khan's achievements as prime minister while encouraging him to respect the
constitution and stay as the prime minister. On 12 December 1925 C.E, the Majlis
deposed the young Shah Ahmad Shah Qajar and declared Reza Shah the new
monarch of the Imperial State of Persia, and the first Shah of the Pahlavi dynasty.
Mosadegh then retired from politics, due to disagreements with the new regime.

55
 Iran was occupied by British and Soviet forces in 1941C.E. Reza Shah was
forced by the British to abdicate in favor of his son Mohammad Reza Pahlavi. In
1944 C.E, when World War II ended, Mosadegh was once elected to Majlis. He
organized the (Jebhe Melli) National Front of Iran, which he founded with
nineteen others such as Hossein Fatemi. Fatemi studied in France, where he
earned a bachelor's degree in journalism, and he also received a doctorate in law
in 1948 C.E. He proposed the nationalization of Iranian oil and gas assets. After
the 1953 coup d'état toppled the government of Mosadegh, Fatemi was arrested,
tortured, and convicted by a military court of "treason against the Shah". Fatemi
was executed by firing squad at Ghasr barracks at 6 am on 10 November 1954
(19 Aban 1333 AP) in Tehran, when he was still suffering from fever and the
injuries of the unsuccessful attempt of assassination on him by Fadayan-e Islam.
A Tehran Avenue, in honor of Fatemi, was named after him. Mosadegh often
mentioned Fatemi as the force behind the nationalization of oil from inception to
implementation. After the 1953 CIA-MI6 coup, the Shah gave back half of Iran's
oil and gas rights, mainly to US-UK oil companies, with a few percent for French
and Italian ones, under a new agreement known as the Oil Consortium. Other
countries in the Persian Gulf and North Africa followed the example and took
national ownership of their oil and gas fields. President Nasser of Egypt was
influenced by the earlier example of Fatemi's nationalization when
he nationalized the Suez Canal.

56
 Fatemi with Mohammad Mosadegh at the United Nations security
council
https://peoplepill.com/people/hossein-fatemi-2
National Front’s members were Ahmad Zirakzadeh, Ali Shayegan, and
Karim Sanjabi. The National Front intended to establish democracy and end the
foreign presence in Iranian politics, especially by nationalizing the Anglo-Iranian
Oil Company's (AIOC) operations in Iran. Shah appointed Mosadegh as Prime
Minister after the Majlis (Parliament of Iran) nominated Mosadegh by a vote of
79–12, on 28 April 1951. Shah was aware of Mosadegh's rising popularity and
political power.
The political power was also Fada'iyan-e Islam or "Devotees of Islam"
which was organized by a theology student nicknamed Navvab Safavi in 1946.
Safavi sought to purify Islam in Iran by ridding it of 'corrupting individuals'
utilizing carefully planned assassinations of certain leading intellectual and
political figures. The group was a Shia fundamentalist group in Iran with a strong
activist political orientation. After a series of successful killings and the freeing
of some of its assassins from punishment with the help of the group's powerful
clerical supporters, Ayatollah Kashani. Navvab Safavi played a role in the
assassinations of Abdo Hossein Hazhir, Haj Ali Razmara, and Ahmad Kasravi.
On 22 November 1955, after an unsuccessful attempt to assassinate Hosein Ala',
Navvab Safavi and some of his followers were arrested. In January 1956, Safavi

57
and three other members of Fada'iyan-e Islam were sentenced to death and
executed. The group survived as supporters of Ayatollah Khomeini and the
Islamic Revolution of Iran.
Mosadegh National Front demonstrations break out in Tehran after the
appointment of Mosadegh. Supporters of the National Front were energized by
the speeches with a special focus on the Anglo-Iranian Oil Company and the
heavy involvement of foreign actors and influences in Iranian affairs. Although
Iran was not officially a colony or a protectorate, it was still heavily controlled
by foreign powers beginning with concessions provided by the Qajar Shahs
and leading up to the oil agreement signed by Reza Shah in 1933.
The new Mosadegh’s administration introduced a wide range of social
reforms: unemployment compensation was introduced, factory owners were
ordered to pay benefits to sick and injured workers, and peasants were freed from
forced labor in their landlords' estates. In 1952, Mosadegh passed the Land
Reform Act which forced landlords to place 20% of their revenue into a
development fund. This development fund paid for various projects such as
public baths, rural housing, and pest control. Mosadegh nationalized the Anglo-
Iranian Oil Company, canceling its oil concession, which was otherwise set to
expire in 1993, on 28 April 1951, and expropriating its assets. Mosadegh saw the
AIOC as an arm of the British government controlling much of the oil in Iran,
pushing him to seize what the British had built for Iran. The next month, a
committee of five majlis deputies was sent to Khuzestan to enforce the
nationalization. Mosadegh justified his nationalization policy by claiming Iran
was "the rightful owner..." of all the oil in Iran, and pointing out Iran could use
the money, in a 21 June 1951 speech: Our long years of negotiations with the
British have not produced any results. With the oil revenues, we could meet our
entire budget and combat poverty, disease, and backwardness among our people.
Another important consideration is that by the elimination of the power of the
British company, we would also eliminate corruption and conspiracy, through
which the internal affairs of our country have been influenced. Once this den of
spies has been removed from Iran, Iran will have achieved its economic and
political independence. The Iranian state prefers to take over the production of
petroleum itself. The company should do nothing else but return its property to
the rightful owners. The nationalization law put aside 25% of the net profits on
oil to meet all the legitimate claims of the company for compensation. It has been

58
proclaimed abroad that Iran plans to expel the foreign oil experts from the country
and then shut down oil installations. Not only is this allegation irrational; it is
utter deception.
The conflict between Iran and Britain intensified as Mosadegh's
government rejected to permit the British any participation in Iran's oil industry,
and Britain made sure Iran could sell no oil, which is considered stolen. In July,
Mosadegh broke off negotiations with AIOC after it threatened to "pull out its
employees" and told owners of oil tanker ships that "receipts from the Iranian
government would not be accepted on the world market." Two months later the
AIOC expatriate its technicians left Iran and closed the oil installations. Under
nationalized management, many refineries lacked the trained technicians that
were needed to continue production. The British government declared a de
facto blockade, strengthened its naval force in the Persian Gulf, and lodged
complaints against Iran before the United Nations Security Council.
The British government also threatened legal action against purchasers of
oil produced in the Iranian refineries and obtained an agreement with its sister
international oil companies not to fill in where the AIOC was boycotting Iran.
The entire Iranian oil industry came to a virtual standstill, oil production dropping
from 241,400,000 barrels (38,380,000 m3) in 1950 to 10,600,000 barrels
(1,690,000 m3) in 1952. This Abadan Crisis reduced Iran's oil income to almost
nothing, putting a severe strain on the implementation of Mosadegh's promised
domestic reforms. At the same time, BP and Aramco doubled their production in
Saudi Arabia, Kuwait, and Iraq, to make up for lost production in Iran so that no
hardship was felt in Britain.

59
 Mossadegh was assisted by his son and members of the Iranian
delegation walking in the halls of the Peace Palace, home of the ICJ.
Credit to:

Mosadegh was immensely popular in late 1951, he called elections. His

base of support was in urban areas and not in the provinces. During this period
the Tudeh was subservient to Stalin and followed a "leftist Soviets" rather than
"popular front" strategy, declining to support Mosadegh. Still, the Tudeh party
forcefully and relentlessly opposed Mosadegh and his program. A June 1950
article in its daily Mardom described the effects of Mosadegh's policy as: Already
we can be sure that revisions in the southern oil contract will not be in favor of
our people and will only result in the consolidation of England's position in our

60
country. The solution to the oil question is related to the victory of our party, that
is, the people of Iran.
On 16 July 1952, Mosadegh resigned after the shah refused to accept his
nomination for War Minister. Mosadegh appealed to the public for support, but
the Tudeh press continued to attack him, describing his differences with the shah
"as merely one between different factions of a reactionary ruling elite." It was
only after the explosion of popular support for Mosadegh in the street that "many
rank-and-file" Tudeh party members "could see firsthand Mosadegh's popularity"
and came to his aid. Mosadegh tried to increase the power the people held versus
the power of Shah. In 1952, he was granted emergency powers by
the Majlis which he used to diminish the amount of power the Shah held at the
time. He used these powers to place the control of the armed forces under the
government, to decrease the size of the armed forces, and introduce land reforms
with a more socialist approach. Tension soon began to escalate in the Majlis.
Conservative opponents refused to grant Mosadegh special powers to deal with
the economic crisis caused by the sharp drop in revenue and voiced regional
grievances against the capital Tehran, while the National Front waged "a
propaganda war against the landed upper class".
On 16 July 1952, during the royal approval of his new cabinet Mosadegh
insisted on the constitutional prerogative of the Prime Minister to name a Minister
of War and the Chief of Staff, something the Shah had done up to that point. The
Shah refused, seeing it as a means for Mosadegh to consolidate his power over
the government at the expense of the monarchy. In response, Mosadegh
announced his resignation and appealing directly to the public for support,
pronouncing that "in the present situation, the struggle started by the Iranian
people cannot be brought to a victorious conclusion".
Ahmad Qavam was appointed as Iran's new Prime Minister. On the day of
his appointment, he announced his intention to resume negotiations with the
British to end the oil dispute, a reversal of Mosadegh's policy. The National
Front, along with various Nationalist, Islamist, and socialist parties and groups,
including Tudeh, responded by calling for protests, and strikes, and mass
demonstrations in favor of Mosadegh. Major strikes broke out in all of Iran's
major towns, with the Bazaar closing in Tehran. Over 250 demonstrators in
Tehran, Hamadan, Ahvaz, Isfahan, and Kermanshah were killed or suffered
serious injuries. After five days of mass demonstrations on Si-ye Tir (the 30th of

61
Tir on the Iranian calendar), military commanders ordered their troops back to
barracks, fearful of overstraining the enlisted men's loyalty, and left Tehran in
the hands of the protesters. Frightened by the unrest, Shah dismissed Qavam and
re-appointed Mosadegh, granting him full control of the military he had earlier
demanded. More popular than ever, a greatly strengthened. Mosadegh convinced
Majlis to grant him emergency powers for six months to "decree any law he felt
necessary for obtaining not only financial solvency, but also electoral, judicial,
and educational reforms". Majlis deputies elected Ayatollah Abol-Ghasem
Kashani as House Speaker. Kashani was a key political supporter of Mosadegh,
although relation was often strained. With his emergency powers, Mosadegh
tried to limit the monarchy's powers, cutting the Shah's budget, forbidding him
to communicate directly with foreign diplomats, transferring royal lands back to
the state, and expelling the Shah's politically active sister Ashraf Pahlavi.
In January 1953, Mosadegh successfully pressed Majlis to extend his
emergency powers for another 12 months. He decreed a land reform law that
established village councils and increased the peasants' share of production. By
this act, Mosadegh was abolishing Iran's centuries-old feudal agriculture sector,
replacing it with a system of cooperative farming and government land
ownership, which centralized power in his government. Mosadegh saw these
reforms as a means of checking the power of the Tudeh Party, which had been
agitating for general land reform among the peasants. However, during this time,
Iranians were "becoming poorer and unhappier by the day" thanks to the British
boycott. As Mosadegh's political coalition began to fray, the number of his
enemies increased. Muzaffar Baghai and Hossein Makki and Abol- Ghasem of
Kashani were on the payroll of the CIA. Baghai was a founding member of the
Iranian Toilers' party and former Mosadegh associate, and now allied with
General Fazlollah Zahedi was planning to depose Mosadegh. Baghai was
conspiring for the coup and planned to dismantle the police. The conspirators met
at Baqai's house to plan the murder of the chief of police. Afshartous was the
chief of police. He was kidnapped and took to Hossein Katibi's house and then
Afshartous was taken to the mountains near Tehran and tortured and strangled.
In the meantime, the CIA-sponsored coup d’etat of 19 August 1953 later known
as Operation Ajax was being planned. Hossein Makki, who had helped lead the
takeover of the Abadan refinery and was at one point considered Mosadegh's heir
apparent. I remember Makki when he visited my uncle in Tehran. My uncle was

62
educated in England and married a British woman and later moved to Abadan to
work for the British Oil Co. I wonder how he sold to the CIA for monthly
payment.
The most outspoken against Mosadegh was Ayatollah Kashani. He
dammed Mosadegh with the hatred he had once reserved for the British. Tudeh
supporters organized mass demonstrations by calling "Stalin as the father of
workers" and called Mosadegh a stooge of America. Mosadegh foreign policy
was based on an independent Iran and the thought that a rich country like the US
had no design on Iran. He wanted the support of the US to balance the power of
the Soviets and Britain to develop a vibrant democracy. The Tudeh party never
recognized the nature of the Soviet regime, even when some leaders of the party
spend some time in the Soviet Union and attending the congress of the Soviet
communist party. Tudeh party failed again by not reading the history of the Soviet
Republic of Gilan.
In March 1953, Secretary of State John Foster Dulles directed the Central
Intelligence Agency (CIA), which was headed by his younger brother Allen
Dulles, to draft plans to overthrow Mosadegh. On 4 April 1953, Allen Dulles
approved $1 million to be used "in any way that would bring about the fall of
Mosadegh". Soon the CIA's Tehran station started to launch a propaganda
campaign against Mosadegh. Finally, according to The New York Times, in early
June, American and British intelligence officials met again, this time in Beirut,
and put the final changes on the strategy. Soon afterward, the chief of the CIA's
Near East and Africa division, Kermit Roosevelt, Jr. the grandson of U.S.
President Theodore Roosevelt, arrived in Tehran to direct it. In 2000, The New
York Times made the partial publication of a leaked CIA document titled
Clandestine Service History – Overthrow of Premier Mosadegh of Iran –
November 1952 – August 1953. The plot, known as Operation Ajax, centered on
convincing Iran's monarch to issue a decree to dismiss Mosadegh from office, as
he had attempted some months earlier. But the Shah was terrified to attempt such
a dangerously unpopular and risky move against Mosadegh. It would take much
persuasion and many U.S.-funded meetings, which included bribing his sister
Ashraf with a mink coat and money, to successfully change his mind. Mosadegh
became aware of the plots against him and grew increasingly wary of conspirators
acting within his government. In early August, Iranian CIA operatives pretending
to be socialists and nationalists threatened Muslim leaders with "savage

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punishment if they opposed Mosadegh." CIA agents were giving the impression
that Mosadegh would crackdown on the religious community. A referendum to
dissolve Majlis and give the prime minister power to make law was submitted to
voters, and it passed with 99 percent approval, 2,043,300 votes to 1300 votes
against. There were separate polling stations for yes and no votes, producing
sharp criticism of Mosadegh and that the controversial referendum gave the
CIA's precoup propaganda campaign to show up Mosadegh as an anti-democratic
dictator an easy target. On or around 16 August, Majlis was suspended
indefinitely, and Mosadegh's emergency powers were extended. Declassified
documents released by the CIA in 2017 revealed that – after the Shah had fled to
Italy, CIA headquarters believed the coup to have failed. They sent a cable calling
off operations to Roosevelt on 18 August 1953, but Roosevelt ignored it and the
coup succeeded a week later. I will review the coup in the next chapter. On 21
December 1953, Mosadegh was sentenced to three years' solitary confinement in
a military prison, well short of the death sentence requested by prosecutors. After
hearing the sentence, Mosadegh was reported to have said with a calm voice of
sarcasm: "The verdict of this court has increased my historical glories. I
am extremely grateful you convicted me. Truly tonight the Iranian nation
understood the meaning of constitutionalism.
Mosadegh was kept under house arrest at his Ahmadabad residence, until
his death on 5 March 1967. He was denied a funeral and was buried in his living
room, despite his request to be buried in the public graveyard, beside the victims
of the political violence on 30 Tir 1331 (21 July 1952).

Chapter 8 American neocolonialism

1953 Iranian coup d'état
How did the event lead to the 1953 Iranian coup d'état, known in Iran as
the 28 Mordad coup d'état, to the overthrow of the democratically elected Prime
Minister Mohammad Mosadegh?  The Iranian western-educated nationalists
under the leadership of Mosadegh organized in the National Front with the main
goal to end British power in Iran. Mosadegh attempted to audit the documents of
the Anglo-Iranian Oil Company (AIOC), a British corporation (now part of BP),
and to limit the company's control over Iranian oil reserves. Equally
the political Islam with deep roots in Iranian masses under the leadership the

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Ayatollah Abol-Qassem Kashani, a mentor to the future Ayatollah Ruhollah
Khomeini joined the National Front intending to control the oil reserve Political
Islam started with Mirza Muhammad Hasan Shirazi when he issued a fatwa (legal
opinion) forbidding all forms of smoking until the tobacco concession to the
British was abolished. At the time, Nasser Din Shah realized that he had to act to
save himself. In January 1892, Shah abolished the concession completely, agreed
to pay compensation to the families of those killed, and pardoned all leaders of
the revolt. Again, Ayatollah Sheikh Fazlollah Noori argued that during the period
of the Concealment of Twelve Imam, the running of the country must be a
responsibility of the clerics. Religious authority must have the power to assure
Islamic decisions are made by Majlis. This thesis justified the clerics' active
involvement in politics. Ayatollah Kashani resurrected Political Islam and
its base was the religious establishment and its military arm was Fada'iyan-e
Islam or "Devotees of Islam". Ayatollah Kashani was the mentor of a theology
student nicknamed Navvab Safavi. Safavi sought to purify Islam in Iran by
ridding it of 'corrupting individuals' utilizing carefully planned assassinations of
certain leading intellectual and political figures. The group is a Shia
fundamentalist group in Iran with a strong activist political orientation. The group
was founded in 1946. After a series of successful killings and the freeing of some
of its assassins from punishment with the help of the group's powerful clerical
supporters. Navvab Safavi played a role in the assassinations of Abdo Hossein
Hazhir, Haj Ali Razmara, and Ahmad Kasravi a leading opponent of Shia Sufi
Islam and author of the history of Iran Constitutional revolution. Kasravi attacked
the religious establishment and warned Iranians by his famous saying that
"Iranians will understand the nature of religious establishment once Iranians are
ruled by the clergy." He called the clergy leeches on the soul and body of Iranian
masses Ahmad Kasravi was attacked by thugs of Fada'iyan-e Islam as he was
leaving the ministry of justice and killed, and his body shredded to pieces. 
Throughout the 19th century, Iran was trapped between two advancing
imperial powers, Russia, and Britain. In 1892, Iran was just like pieces on a
chessboard upon which is being played out a game for the dominion of the
world by Britain and Russia. During the latter half of the 19th century, the
concession policies of the Shah of Iran faced increased opposition in Iran.   The
story of oil goes back to 1901 When Mozaffar al-Din Shah Qajar granted a 60-
year petroleum concession to William Knox Darcy. The company grew slowly

65
until World War I, when Persia's strategic importance led the British government
to buy a controlling share in the company, essentially nationalizing British oil
production in Iran. The British angered the Iranians by intervening in
their domestic affairs, including in the Iran Constitutional Revolution.  
The support for Mosadegh was galvanized by the merchants and oppressed
city masses when Mosadegh pivoted to nationalize the Anglo-Iranian Oil
Company (AIOC). Mosadegh and Ayatollah Kashani were allies of convenience,
as Mosadegh saw that Ayatollah Kashani could mobilize the "religious masses",
while Ayatollah Kashani wanted Mosadegh to create an Islamic state Kashani’s
Fadaiyan mobs often violently attacked the opponents of nationalization and
opponents of the National Front government, as well as "immoral objects", acting
at times as unofficial "enforcers" for the movement. The National Front had won
majority seats for the popularly elected Majlis (Parliament of Iran) in
1951. Ayatollah Kashani was elected as the speaker of the Parliament by the
National Front. According to Iran's constitution, the majority elected party in the
parliament would give a vote of confidence for its prime minister candidate, after
which the Shah would appoint the candidate to power. Prime Minister Haj Ali
Razmara, who opposed the oil nationalization on technical grounds, was
assassinated by the hardline Fadaiyan e-Islam, Khalil Tahmasebi. After a vote of
confidence from the National Front dominated Parliament, Mosadegh was
appointed prime minister of Iran by the Shah. Under heavy pressure by the
National Front, the assassin of Razmara by Khalil Tahmasebi, a local
carpenter, was released and pardoned, thus proving the Fada'iyan-e Islam
movement’s power in Iranian politics. The British-controlled AIOC refused to
allow its books to be audited to determine whether the Iranian government was
being paid what had been promised. British intransigence irritated the Iranian
population. 
Tudeh party was subservient to the Stalin soviets and attack Mosadegh.
Tudeh party had heavy support from the western-educated Iranian and attracted
middle-class intellectuals who idealized the Soviet Union. The attack of
the Tudeh party against Mosadegh was continuously calling him the puppet
of the American interest in Iran.  The Shia clergy was a driving force in Iran since
the collapse of the Safavi.  Shia clergy base of support was the land-owning class,
poor peasants, workers, and city masses. dynasty. There were two factions in the
clergy establishment. One faction believed that in the absence of twelve Imam,

66
the clergy should rule in his name. This faction was
developing political Islam and was active in politics under the leadership
of Ayatollah Kashani. The majority of Shia supported Shah since the Grand
of Shia leader stayed out of politics and give its support to Shah. The land-owning
class and Armey also supported Shah.  U.S. has officially supported the anti-
colonial aspiration of the masses but privately supported Britain, its World War
II ally. Britain's empire was steadily weakening, and with an eye on international
crises, the U.S. re-appraised its interests and the risks of being identified with
British colonial interests.  
In 1949, an assassin attempted to kill the Shah. Shocked by the experience
and emboldened by public sympathy for his injury, the Shah began to take an
increasingly active role in politics. He quickly organized the Iran
Constituent Assembly to amend the constitution to increase his powers. He
established the Senate of Iran which had been a part of the Constitution of 1906
but had never been convened. Shah had the right to appoint half the senators and
he chose men sympathetic to his aims. Mosadegh thought this increase in the
Shah's political power was not democratic; he believed that Shah should "reign,
but not rule" like Europe's constitutional monarchies.  
Shah and Mosadegh had an unfriendly relationship. Part of the problem
stemmed from the fact that Mosadegh was connected by blood to the former
royal Qajar dynasty and saw the Pahlavi king as a usurper to the throne. But the
real issue stemmed from the fact that Mosadegh represented a pro-democratic
force that wanted to reduce the Shah's rule in Iranian politics. He wanted the Shah
to be a ceremonial monarch rather than a ruling monarch, thus giving the elected
government power over the un-elected Shah. In late 1951, Iran's Parliament in a
nearly unanimous vote approved the oil nationalization agreement. The bill was
widely popular among most Iranians and generated a huge wave of
nationalism. However, the bill immediately put Iran at loggerheads with
Britain with the handful of MPs that disagreed with it voting for it as well in the
face of overwhelming popular support and the Fadaiyan's wrath. The
nationalization made Mosadegh instantly popular among millions of Iranians,
cemented him as a national hero, and placed him and Iran at the center of
worldwide attention. Many Iranians felt that for the first time in centuries, they
were taking control of the affairs of their country. Many also expected that
nationalization would result in a massive increase in wealth for

67
Iranians.  Mosadegh's united National Front bloc had widespread popular support
for the oil nationalization vote. The oil nationalization issue became increasingly
intertwined with Mosadegh's pro-democracy movement. The dejected Shah was
angered by Mosadegh's popular support. But the oil nationalization issue
made Mosadegh a hero and his popularity prevented the Shah from acting against
his prime minister. In 1952, Shah dismissed Mosadegh because he demanded to
select the war minister and Shah refused and replaced him with Ahmad
Qavam, an old aristocrat as prime minister. But widespread revolts of 30 Tire by
Mosadegh supporters resulted in the Shah immediately reinstating him.  Britain
now faced the newly elected nationalist government in Iran where Mosadegh,
with the strong backing of the Iranian parliament and people, demanded more
favorable concessionary arrangements, which Britain vigorously opposed. The
U.S. State Department not only rejected Britain's demand that it continues to be
the primary beneficiary of Iranian oil reserves, but U.S. international oil
interests were the US goal. Mosadegh attempted to negotiate with the AIOC, but
the company rejected his proposed compromise. Mosadegh's plan, based on the
1948 compromise between the Venezuelan Government of Romulo Gallegos and
Creole Petroleum, would divide the profits from oil 50/50 between Iran and
Britain. Against the recommendation of the United States, Britain refused this
proposal and began planning to undermine and overthrow the Iranian
government. In July 1951, the American diplomat Averell Harriman went to Iran
to negotiate an Anglo-Iranian compromise. He asked for Shah's help.  Shah
replied that in the face of public opinion, there was no way he could say a word
against nationalization. Harriman held a press conference in Tehran, calling for
reason and enthusiasm in confronting the nationalization crisis. As soon as he
spoke, a journalist rose and shouted: "We and the Iranian people all support
Premier Mosadegh and oil nationalization!" Everyone presents began cheering.
He then marched out of the room; the abandoned Harriman shook his head in
dismay. On a visit to the United States in October 1951, Mosadegh, despite the
popularity of nationalization in Iran agreed in talks with George C. McGhee to a
complex settlement of the crisis involving the sale of the Abadan Refinery to a
non-British company and Iranian control of the extraction of crude oil. The US
waited until Winston Churchill became prime minister to present the deal,
believing he would be more flexible, but the deal was rejected by the British.  

68
 The National Iranian Oil Company suffered decreased production, because
of Iranian inexperience and the AIOC's orders that British technician not
collaborate with  Iranians. The Oil Crisis was aggravated by the Royal Navy's
blockading its export markets to pressure Iran. By September 1951, the British
had virtually ceased Abadan oil field production, forbidden British export to Iran
of key British goods including sugar and steel, and had frozen Iran's hard
currency accounts in British banks. British Prime Minister Clement Attlee
considered seizing the Abadan Oil Refinery by force but instead settled on an
embargo by the Royal Navy, stopping any ship transporting Iranian oil for
carrying so-called "stolen property". On his re-election as prime minister,
Winston Churchill took an even harder stance against Iran. The United Kingdom
took its anti-nationalization case against Iran to the International Court of Justice
at The Hague; PM Mosadegh said the world would learn of a "cruel and
imperialistic country" stealing from a "needy and naked people". The court ruled
that it had no jurisdiction over the case. Nevertheless, the British continued to
enforce the embargo on Iranian oil. In August 1952, Iranian Prime
Minister Mosadegh invited an American oil executive to visit Iran and the
Truman administration welcomed the invitation. In mid-1952, Britain's embargo
of Iranian oil was effective. British agents in Tehran worked to subvert the
government of Mosadegh, who sought help from President Truman and then the
World Bank but to no avail. Iranians were becoming poorer and unhappier by the
day. In the Majlis election in the spring of 1952, Mosadegh had little to fear from
a free vote, since despite the country's problems, he was widely admired as a
hero. A free vote, however, was not what others were planning. British agents
had fanned out across the country, bribing candidates, and the regional bosses
who controlled them. M16 agents alone spent over £1,500,000, smuggled in
biscuit tins, to bribe Iranians, and later his colleague Norman Darbyshire
admitted that the actual coup cost the British government a further £700,000.
They hoped to fill the Majlis with deputies who would vote to depose Mosadegh.
It would be a coup conducted by seemingly legal means.  
Tudeh supporters organized mass demonstrations by calling "Stalin as the
father of workers" and called Mosadegh a stooge of America. Mosadegh foreign
policy was based on an independent Iran and the thought that a rich country like
the US had no design on Iran. He wanted the support of the US to balance the
power of the Soviets and Britain to develop a vibrant democracy. The Tudeh

69
party never recognized the nature of the Soviet regime, even when some leaders
of the party spend some time in the Soviet and attended the congress of the Soviet
communist party. The Tudeh party did the highest damage to the interest of
Iranians. Tudeh party failed again by not reading the history of the Soviet
Republic of Gilan. 
The National Front supported Mosadegh and he won handily in the big
cities, there was no one to monitor voting in the rural areas. Violence broke out
in Abadan and other parts of the country where elections were hotly contested.
Mosadegh's cabinet voted to postpone the remainder of the election until after the
return of the Iranian delegation from the Hague. While Mosadegh dealt with the
political challenge, he faced another that most Iranians considered far more
urgent. The British blockade of Iranian seaports meant that Iran was left without
access to markets where it could sell its oil. The embargo had the effect of causing
Iran to spiral into bankruptcy. Tens of thousands had lost their jobs at the Abadan
refinery, and although most understood and passionately supported the idea of
nationalization, they naturally hoped that Mosadegh would find a way to put
them back to work. The only way he could do that was to sell oil. 
For years, the Tudeh had denounced Mosadegh, but by 1953 the
party changed tack and decided to support him.  A few in Mosadegh's coalition
were on the payroll of the British. They included Muzaffar Baghai and Hossein
Makki and Ayatollah Kashani was on the payroll of the CIA. Baghai was a
founding member of the Iranian Toilers' party and former Mosadegh associate
and later allied with General Fazlollah Zahedi, a friend of the Shah, to
depose Mosadegh. To prepare for the coup the police apparatus had to be
dismantled, and the conspirators met at Baghai's house to plan the murder of the
chief of police, Afshartous and he was kidnapped when he was lured to
Hossein Katibi's house for a meeting. He was brought to the mountains near
Tehran, tortured and strangled by a group headed by Katibi on 24 April 1953.
 Hossein Makki, who had helped lead the takeover of the Abadan refinery and
was at one point considered Mosadegh's heir apparent also abandoning
Mosadegh and was on the payroll of the CIA. I remember Makki when he visited
my uncle in Tehran. My uncle was educated in England and married a British
woman and later moved to Abadan to work for British Oil Co. where he
met Makki. I wonder why Makki sold out for a monthly payment from
the CIA? He died in 1999 in Iran.  

70
 Repeated attempts to settle the oil issue had failed, and, in October
1952, Mosadegh declared Britain an enemy and cut all diplomatic
relations. Engulfed in a variety of problems following World War II, Britain was
unable to resolve the issue single-handedly and looked towards the United States
to settle the matter. Initially, the USA had opposed British policies. After
mediation had failed several times to bring about a settlement, American
Secretary of State Dean Acheson concluded that the British were destructive
and determined on a rule-or-ruin policy in Iran. 
Mosadegh appointed a series of secular ministers to his cabinet during his
premiership, losing his support with the clergy. Mosadegh's political coalition
was unraveling when the Speaker of the Parliament Ayatollah Kashani,
Mosadegh's main clerical supporter, became increasingly opposed to the Prime
Minister because Mosadegh was not turning Iran into an Islamic state. However,
by 1953 Ayatollah Kashani was becoming increasingly opposed to Mosadegh.
 Ayatollah Kashani was contributing to mass political instability in Iran.
The most outspoken against Mosadegh was Ayatollah Kashani, who dammed
Mosadegh with the malice reserved for the British. Ayatollah Kashani continued
to undermine the Mosadegh government and by this time. In 1953, Ayatollah
Kashani and his followers organized a series of protests against
Mosadegh's liberal reforms - such as the extension of the vote to women. By July
1953 when Mosadegh asked for a critical extension of his emergency
powers. Clerical members of the Majles who supported Ayatollah Kashani left
the National Front Coalition and set up their own Islamic Faction is faction then
boycotted the 1953 referendum about the dissolution of parliament.  
In early 1953 Churchill and Eisenhower ordered the CIA of the USA and
M16 of the British to collaborate overthrow Iran's elected government. As part of
that, the CIA organized anti-Communist guerrillas to fight the Tudeh Party if they
seized power in the chaos of Operation Ajax with Qashqai tribal leaders, in south
Iran, to establish a clandestine haven from which U.S.-funded guerrillas and spies
could operate. In early August, the CIA’s Iranian operatives pretending to be
Communists threatened Muslim leaders with savage punishment if they opposed
Mossadegh, seeking to stir anti-Mosadegh sentiment in the religious
community. In addition, the house of at least one prominent Muslim was bombed
by CIA agents posing as Communists. It does not say whether anyone was hurt
in this attack. Shah refused to sign the C.I.A.-written decrees firing Mr.

71
Mossadegh and appointing General Zahedi. The agency was intensifying its
propaganda campaign. A leading newspaper owner was given about $45,000,
for his newspaper to publish articles written by the CIA. On August 1, 1953, in
a meeting with General Norman with Shah said that the army would not support
him in a showdown. Shah, first resisted the CIA's demands for the coup, finally
agreed to support it. Having obtained the Shah's concurrence, the CIA executed
the coup. Shah signed the Firmans (royal decrees) and dismissed Mosaddegh and
appointed General Fazlollah Zahedi as prime minister and Shah and Queen
Soraya departed for a week-long vacation in northern Iran. Saturday 15, 1953,
Colonel Nematollah Nassiri, the commander of the Imperial Guard, delivered to
Mosaddegh a firman from the Shah dismissing him. Mosaddegh, who had been
warned of the plot, probably by the Tudeh Party, rejected the firman and
had Nassiri arrested. Mosaddegh argued at his trial after the coup that under the
Iranian constitutional monarchy, Shah had no constitutional right to issue an
order for the elected Prime Minister's dismissal without Parliament's consent.
However, the constitution at the time did allow for such an action, which
Mosadegh considered illegal. Mosadegh's supporters took to the streets in violent
protests. Following the failed coup attempt, the Shah, accompanied by his
wife Soraya Esfandiari-Bakhtiari fled to Baghdad. Arriving unannounced, Shah
asked for permission for himself and his consort to stay in Baghdad for a few
days before continuing to Europe. After high-level Government consultations,
they were escorted to the Iraqi Government's guest house, before flying to Italy
in a plane. 
Who was Nassiri? On 6 June 1978, General Nematollah Nassiri was
relieved of his post as head of the SAVAK and appointed ambassador to
Pakistan. With the uprising against Shah, he ordered the dissolution of SAVAK,
and Nassiri was called back from Pakistan. He was arrested together with 60
other former officials on 7 or 8 November 1978, including high-ranking officials,
such as former director of SAVAK Hassen Pakravan and former Prime
Minister Amir-Abbas Hoveyda. When the Shah left Iran on 16 January
1979, Nassiri remained in prison until the fall of Shapour Bakhtiar’s government
on 11 February 1979.  On 15 February, Nassiri was arrested by revolutionists and
brought to the Refah School with other officials. He was tried in a Revolutionary
Tribunal along with 24 other individuals for a total of 10 hours and was charged
with corruption on earth, the massacre of people, torture, and treason. He was

72
sentenced to death and confiscation of property at 10 p.m. and after the sentence
was confirmed by Ayatollah Khomeini, he was executed by firing squad at 11:45
p.m. That is the ending of obedient servants of Shah. 
After the first coup attempt failed, General Zahedi, declaring that he was
the rightful prime minister of Iran, shuttled between multiple safe
houses attempting to avoid arrest. Mosaddegh ordered security forces to capture
the coup plotters, and dozens were imprisoned. Believing that he had succeeded
and that he was in full control of the government, Mosadegh assumed that the
coup had failed, he asked his supporters to return to their homes and to continue
with their lives as normal. The Tudeh party members also returned to their homes,
no longer performing enforcement duties. The CIA was ordered to leave Iran,
although Kermit Roosevelt Jr. was slow to receive the message due to MI6
interference and eagerly continued to foment anti-Mosaddegh unrest. The
Eisenhower administration considered changing its policy to support Mosaddegh,
with the undersecretary of state Walter Bedell Smith remarking on 17 August:
"Whatever his faults, Mosaddegh had no love for the Russians and timely aid
might enable him to keep Communism in check. The CIA sent Major
General Norman Schwarzkopf Sr. to persuade the exiled Shah to return to rule
Iran. Schwarzkopf trained the security forces that would become known
as SAVAK to secure the shah's hold on power. The CIA paid a considerable
sum to conduct the operation. Depending on the expenses to be counted, the final
cost was close to $20 million. CIA gave Zahedi's government $5 million after
the coup. Zahedi received an extra million. Zahedi died September 2, 1963,
in Geneva, Switzerland. Shah appreciated the coup; Kermit Roosevelt wrote in
his account of the affair. "'I owe my throne to God, my people, my army, and to
you!' By 'you' the shah meant me and the two countries—Great Britain and the
United States—I was representing. We were all heroes."  
Mosadegh was tried and convicted of treason by the Shah's military court.
On 21 December 1953, he was sentenced to three years in jail, then placed under
house arrest for the remainder of his life. Other Mosadegh supporters were
imprisoned, and several received the death penalty. After the 1953 coup
d'état toppled the government of Mosadegh, Fatemi was arrested, tortured, and
convicted by a military court of "treason against the Shah". Fatemi was executed
by firing squad at Ghasr barracks at 6 am on 10 November 1954
(19 Aban 1333 AP) in Tehran.   The triumphant Shah also ordered the execution

73
of several dozen military officers and student leaders who had
been associated with Mohammad Mosadegh. 
When the Shah finally fell in 1979, memories of the US intervention in
1953, Shah's 26-year reign of terror intensified the anti-American character of
the revolution in the minds of many Iranians. The '28 Mordad' coup, as it is
known by its Persian date was a watershed for Iran, for the Middle East, and the
standing of the United States in the region. The joint US-British operation ended
Iran's drive to assert sovereign control over its resources and helped put an end
to a vibrant chapter in the history of the country's nationalist and democratic
movements. These consequences resonated with dramatic effects in later
years.   Tim Weiner's in his book “Legacy of Ashes” writes: “C.I.A. history has
encouraged many of our gravest contemporary problems. A generation of
Iranians grew up knowing that the CIA had installed the shah and in time, the
chaos that the agency had created in the streets of Tehran would return to haunt
the United States."   United States Supreme Court Justice William O. Douglas,
who visited Iran both before and after the coup, wrote that "When Mosadegh and
Persia started basic reforms, we became alarmed. We united with the British to
destroy him; we succeeded; and ever since our name has not been an honored one
in the Middle East."
When the Shah returned to Iran after the coup, he was greeted by a cheering
crowd. He wrote in his memoirs that while he had been a king for over a decade,
for the first time he felt that the people had "elected" and "approved" of him and
that he had a "legitimate" popular mandate to conduct his reforms. He didn't
know the cheering crowd had been bribed by the CIA. The Shah was never able
to remove the reputation of being a "foreign imposed" ruler among non-royalist
Iranians. The Shah throughout his rule continued to assume that he was supported
by virtually everybody in Iran and sank into deep dejection when in 1978 massive
mobs demanded his ouster. The incident left him in awe of American power,
while it also gave him a deep hatred of the British. An immediate consequence of
the coup d'état was the Shah's suppression of all political dissent, especially the
liberal and nationalist opposition umbrella group National Front as well as
the Tudeh Party, and concentration of political power in Shah and his flatterers.  

74
 Credit to: https://www.rferl.org/a/25075099.html 
Mohammad Mosadegh in court, 8 November 1953. 

The Tudeh bore the main brunt of the crackdown. The Shah's security
forces arrested 4,121 Tudeh political activists including 386 civil servants, 201
college students, 165 teachers, 125 skilled workers, 80 textile workers, and
60 cobblers. Forty were executed Khosrow Roozbeh, another 14 died under
torture and over 200 were sentenced to life imprisonment. The Shah's post-coup
dragnet also captured 477 Tudeh members, "22 colonels, 69 majors, 100 captains,
193 lieutenants, 19 noncommissioned officers, and 63 military cadets" who were
in the Iranian armed forces.  
The Eisenhower administration viewed Operation Ajax, 1953 coup, as a
success, with "immediate and far-reaching effect. Overnight, the CIA became a
central part of the American foreign policy apparatus, and covert action came to
be regarded as a cheap and effective way to shape the course of world
events. After WWII, the US hegemony over the world was being constructed.
Iran was one of the first victims. Iran 1953 coup installed the Shah's
government and formed the SAVAK (secret police), many of whose agents were

75
trained in the United States. The SAVAK monitored dissidents
and conducted censorship. After the the1971 Siahkal Incident, a guerrilla
operation against the Shah government organized by Iranian People's Fadaee
Guerrillas happened near Siahkal town in Gilan on February 8, 1971. The
guerrillas attacked a gendarmerie post at Siahkal, killing three policemen and
freeing two previously arrested guerrillas. The event marks the beginning of
the guerrilla era in Iran for most historians — an era that ended with the Islamic
Revolution.  
Indonesia's 1960 coup-installed Suharto and organized the CIA-
sponsored coup that resulted in an ensuing violent anti-communist purge, an
estimated 500,000 communists, real and suspected, were killed and they
effectively eliminated all opposition. U.S. embassy officials were compiling lists
of thousands of names of public figures in Indonesia and handing these to the
army and saying, 'Kill everybody on these lists and check off the names as you go
and give the lists back to us when you're done. According to UCLA historian
Geoffrey B. Robinson, the Indonesian army's campaign of mass killings would
not have occurred without the support of the U.S. and other powerful Western
governments. Documentary filmmaker Joshua Oppenheimer, director of The Act
of Killing and The Look of Silence. The murder campaign became so brazen in
parts of rural East Java, that Moslem bands placed the heads of victims on poles
and paraded them through villages. The killings have been on such a scale that
the disposal of the corpses has created a serious sanitation problem in East Java
and Northern Sumatra where the humid air bears the reek of decaying flesh.
Travelers from those areas tell of small rivers and streams that have been clogged
with bodies. 
 Guatemala 1954 coup engineered by the CIA called Operation toppled
the duly elected Guatemalan government of Jacobo Arbenz Guzmán. He took
office on 15 March 1951, and continued reforms included an expanded right to
vote, the ability of workers to organize, legitimizing political parties, and
allowing public debate. The centerpiece of his policy was an agrarian reform
law under which uncultivated portions of large landholdings were expropriated in
return for compensation and redistributed to poverty-stricken agricultural
laborers. Approximately 500,000 people benefited from the decree. Most of them
were indigenous people, whose forebears had been dispossessed after the Spanish
invasion. His policies ran against exploitation conducted by the United Fruit

76
Company and nationalized farmland owned by the United Fruit Company. The
company pushed the United States government to have him overthrown.
Arbenz was ousted in the 1954 Guatemalan coup d'état engineered by the
US Department of State and the Central Intelligence Agency.  
Congo 1960 Coup: Patrice Lumumba, the first prime minister of the
Congo (later the Democratic Republic of the Congo), was pushed out of office
by Congolese President Joseph Kasavubu amid the U.S.-supported Belgian
military intervention in the country, a violent effort to maintain Belgian business
interests after the country’s decolonization. Lumumba was targeted by the CIA
with close contact with Congolese to assassinate Lumumba.  After an aborted
assassination attempt against Lumumba involving a poisoned handkerchief, the
CIA alerted Congolese troops to Lumumba's location and noted roads to be
blocked and potential escape routes. Lumumba was captured in late 1960 and
killed in January of the following year. 
The Dominican Republic 1961 Coup: The brutal dictatorship of Rafael
Trujillo, which included the ethnic cleansing of thousands of Haitians in the
Dominican Republic and the attempted assassination of the president of
Venezuela, ended when he was ambushed and killed by armed political
dissidents. Though the gunman who shot Trujillo maintained that nobody told me
to go and kill Trujillo, he did have the support of the CIA. President Lyndon B.
Johnson ordered the invasion of the island nation to install a conservative
government. 
South Vietnam 1963 Coup: The United States was already deeply
involved in South Vietnam in 1963. South Vietnamese generals plotting a coup
contacted U.S. officials about their plan. With U.S. support, which
by some accounts partially came in the form of $40,000 in CIA funds. 
Brazil 1964 Coup:  The United States backed 1964 coupled by Humberto
Castello Branco, then chief of staff of the Brazilian army. In the days leading up
to the coup, the CIA encouraged street rallies against the government
and provided fuel and "arms of non-US origin" to those backing the military.
According to declassified government records obtained by the National Security
Archive, President Lyndon Johnson ordered the planning of the coup.  The
Brazilian military went on to govern the country until 1985. 
Chile 1973 Coup: The United States never wanted Salvador Allende, the
socialist candidate elected president of Chile in 1970, to assume office. President

77
Richard Nixon told the CIA to make the Chilean economy scream and the
agency worked with three Chilean groups, each plotting a coup against Allende
in 1970. The U.S. attempts to disrupt the Chilean economy continued until Gen.
Augusto Pinochet led a military coup against Allende in 1973. The CIA's official
account of the seizure of power on Sept. 11, 1973. The CIA also conducted a
propaganda campaign in support of Pinochet's new regime after he took office in
1973, despite knowledge of severe human rights abuses, including the murder
of thousands of political prisoners.  The United States' hegemonic power to
create client states murdered millions of political prisoners. Mass murdered were
the weapon of choice in Indonesia. Iran did not have that scale of mass
murders. The United States' hegemonic power has collapsed in the Sought
America, and it is collapsing in the Middle East and its disintegration is
continuing today. 

Chapter 9 The Iran New Left

Let me put my cards on the table and tell you what has influenced me
during the past ten years. Simply put is the science of genetics and neurobiology
why we do, the things we do? What we do is described in the book “Behave” by
Robert Sapolsky, Professor of neurobiology at Stanford University. He answers
this question fully and looks at it from every angle. I can paraphrase his book on
the behavior of living beings as governed by Genetics, Environment, and
Neurobiology. Let me explain why I am writing this chapter from this outlook.
Young people who participated in the development of the Iran New Left
were young between the adolescent ages of 16- 25 at the time. Adolescents have
strong views on the policies that shape their lives and communities. They have
the right to be heard, the right to engage have strong emotion to feel the pains
inflicted on others. My short years in the development of the New Left
demonstrate the political atmosphere of the time. The 1953 coup had traumatized
many Iranians when a vibrant democracy under the leadership of Mosadegh was
transformed to despotism by the CIA and the creation of Shah as a dictator. At
the time, I was in tenth grade in high school and sixteen years old when I met
Reza Ansari who had top grades in my class. After a few meetings, I told him,
we should organize a study group for political activities. Then I approached him
with the idea of creating a student organization and we should have a poly copy

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machine to produce an underground newspaper. I asked Reza Ansari if he would
join me to steal the Darolfonun high school copy machine. Reza was the best
student in our class and his endorsement of my idea made me feel important. The
copy machine was at the head of the school office. I watched the office and when
the key was left on the key, I stole it. We planned to go to school from the back
door of the school to take the poly copy machine. Reza brought too black hoods
to cover our heads with only two holes to see through it. Reza and I, around nine
pm, met at the back door of the high school which was open due to construction
at that end. We planned to finish the operation by 10 pm and go home. We open
the back door of the high school and entered an exceptionally large area of the
school which had a basketball and several volleyball fields. We put our hoods on
and started to walk toward the main building, suddenly, the custodian came out.
Seeing us with the hoods he started to scream for help. Reza picked a brick and
threw it at the custodian. We ran out of the back door and saw a bus, we jumped
on the bus. The custodian and several other people who were assisting the
custodian also jumped on the bus from the back door of the bus. We were
arrested. We confess that we wanted to steal the grade book. We spend the night
in the police station. My father and oldest brother came to the police station and
upon seeing me, they both jumped and started to hit me, and oldest brother was
so angry, that he bit off my head. Reza's family was calm, but the head police
station decided to punish Reza with a few lashes on his feet. Reza and I were
adolescent age, probably about sixteen years old, and never thought of where we
would hide the copy machine! What is the meaning of this incident? Now, in the
year 2021, I think the despotism of Shah created a political pressure cooker, we
acted out for a way out. Our acting out was governed by the Genetics,
Environment, and Neurobiology of our minds. After all, we were teenagers and
restless and risk-takers without thinking what we were doing. The chances that
we would succeed were extremely low. The rational part of an adolescent brain
isn't fully developed and won't be until age 25. The adult and adolescent brains
work differently. Adults think with the prefrontal cortex, which is the brain's
rational part. The development and maturation of the prefrontal cortex occur
primarily during adolescent age and the brain is fully developed by the age of 25
years. The prefrontal cortex is the region of the brain that helps accomplish
executive brain functions and do the hard things rationally. We were adolescent

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age and we acted emotionally and irrationally. The chances of succeeding in our
lofty goals were exceptionally low.
We both were transferred to Adib High school where we met
Aziz Sarmady, who later joined Jazani’s group, and we planned to recruit him.
Our group never joined the group organized by Jazani. I realized later that Reza's
brother, Sadegh Ansari, an engineer in agriculture, was a member of the central
committee of the Tudeh party in charge of agriculture. Reza knew Behnam
Shahbazi who was also a high-caliber student and the three of us met to start our
group study. Behnam's father had been associated with the Azerbaijani Party
of Pishevari. My family was supporters of Mossadegh.
The New Left movement foundation was established by Jazani in Iran. All
its members were Iranian leftist intellectuals between the ages of 16-25 years old
when started their political activities. Let me address the question, why we
gravitated toward socialist ideas. The answer is clear when you look at it from
the mind of adolescents. There were no opportunities for free expressions and
dialogs. Job opportunities were none. Adolescence is in need to express
themselves find their place in the world. When the young are repressed, they look
for a lofty idea to combat repression. The socialist idea of equal living of human
beings is a lofty goal. Adolescents don't think things through or fully consider the
consequences of their actions because the frontal cortex, the area of the brain that
controls reasoning and helps us think before we act, develops later. This part of
the brain is still changing and maturing well into adulthood. It is now that counts.
It is now that an adolescent needs to feel free with a few other friends to express
oneself and feel good. To feel important and feel that his/her matter. The
environment of repression stimulated the brains of some of us to act. However,
when an act is successful a leader is born.
The history of nations is constructed and formed during adolescent age as
an idea germinated to maturity in their mind by age of twenty-five. When Castro
was twenty-six years old and Che Guevara was twenty-five years old, began the
assault on the Moncada Barracks on 26 July 1953, it was a daring idealist
revolutionary act. They acted and succeeded after six years of war on 1 January
1959. However, history has witnessed many revolutionary movements that ended
in defeat. The Cuba victories created a worldwide movement against western
imperialism. The new left in Iran attempted to create the same revolutionary
movement.

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 In January 1961, Kennedy became president of the United State and put
pressure on the Shah government to open the political process for economic
reform. When Jazani entered the University of Tehran, the country was facing
political and economic problems that led to a retreat for the Shah. These problems
were caused by the inabilities of the Shah's economic policies and the extreme
military expenses that began after the Coup d'état in 1953. In the spring of 1960
due to mounting debt and inflation, the government of Iran requested immediate
financial assistance from the World Bank and the government of the United
States. The World Bank demanded the Iranian government to fix budget
problems, reduce salaries to receive 35 million dollars of assistance. The
administration of John F. Kennedy also demanded political and economic reform
in Shah's government for 85-million-dollar assistance. Economic problems and
external pressure to perform the reforms led to the instability of the regime. The
Shah to deal with this problem announced the elections of the 20th majlis would
be free to all organizations. The leaders of the Iranian National Front officially
announced the existence of the second national front movement and began their
activities. From his experience with the Tudeh party and possibly from his father
who lived for many years in the Soviet Union, Jazani had realized that the Soviets
do not have the interest of the Iranian masses in mind. He began his activity with
the idea of an independent socialist movement. He started to organize an
independent socialist movement at the University of Tehran. Jazani joined the
student organization of the Iranian National Front to unite all forces against the
regime.
I entered Tehran University in 1962. At that time half student body was
the supporter of the Iran National front and the other half were leftist but not
member of the Tudeh Party. In 1976, when I returned to Iran as a recent PhD in
electrical engineering and started to teach at the Tehran Polytechnic, the National
front had no support. Half students were supporter of Islam that included clergy
faction and Mojahedin and the rest were mostly leftist students. The Iran political
atmosphere had radicalized to the right with domination of clergy and left.
I met Bijan Jazani at Tehran University and on several occasions. I
collaborated with him and discussed the political issues marching with him in the
years 1961-1963 in Iran. Bijan had a very pleasant personality and a charming
smile with a soft and persuasive personality. I was nineteen years old, and he was
several years older and respected him and talked to him on several occasions. He

81
was taller than the average Iranian, but he was conscious to be understanding of
others. His soft-spoken manner and personality inspired enthusiasm in others. He
presented his ideas and opinions with confidence, and he did not hesitate to raise
a controversial subject and had constant flexibility to change his opinion as added
information became known. He displayed the skills and ability to make quick
decisions as he listened to others and above all he was always calm. At the time
I was a university student in earth sciences, and Bijan was pursuing a degree in
political sciences. Although Bijan was a member of the Iranian student
organization of the national front of Iran, he also independently with a few other
friends was attempting to form a leftist socialist group. I was also involved in
underground activities trying to learn socialist ideas of the left and at the same
time joined Dariush Forouhar nationalist party. The group I was active in had
three core members, Reza Ansari who was a student in civil engineering, and
Behnam Shahbazi who was a student in architecture. Later, Khodyar
Sebagian was included in the group by Reza Ansari. Khodyar was in the youth
group of the Tudeh party earlier and was six years older than the rest of us. He
asked to take over the finances of the group. Later, in a meeting, he confessed
that he used the group money to eat kabab lunches because he was hungry. We
were all angry at him, he said: "Comrade criticize me." We kicked him out of the
group. We were young and barely eighteen years old and had a lot to learn about
the world to trust someone with our limited money.
We were all mesmerized by the success of Castro and Che Guevara and
thought of going to the mountain of the north of Iran and starting the revolution.
We formed a mountain rock-climbing group that was headed by Aziz Sarmady
who later joined Jazani's group. We went to the north part of Tehran with a large
group from Reza Ansari's family to learn how a rock-climbing wall. Aziz
Sarmady was strong and fearless, and he was our teacher. He showed us how to
go down the face fifty-meter-high rock. Standing on the top of the rock, I could
not see the bottom of the rock. It was scary. When was my turn to go down the
face of vertical rock, my legs were shaking in fear? Aziz kept shouting: Don't
look down. Look at the face of the rock and keep your feet straight perpendicular
to the rock. He was holding the safety rope that was tied to my waist. As soon as,
I left the top of the rock, I went down the face of the rock, a step, by step, while
my legs were still shaking in fear. Next, Aziz, Reza, and Behnam, and few others,
went to Caspian for exploration of the area for the start of a revolutionary group.

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In our minds, we were following Castro and Che Guevara. After a few days in
the Caspian, we split into a few small groups. Behnam and I went toward Astara
on Caspian. We slept in tea houses and lived with poor masses. I remember that
mosquitoes would not let us sleep at night. Mosquitoes were constantly buzzing
around our face and then suddenly several of them would go directly into our
nostrils. We learned living in the mountain with poor masses means suffering at
the whim of wild mosquitoes.
Reza and I also took a trip to Alborz Mountain, but just as we started to go
up the mountain, Reza complained of heart problems. We return to the city.
Somehow the talk of going to the mountains or starting a revolutionary group like
Castro was never mentioned by me, Behnam, and Reza. Behnam and Reza and I
started our first year, at Tehran University. I was not interested in Earth Sciences,
and my father decided to send me to America, and I left Iran. I finished a Ph.D.
in electrical engineering and became a professor, Reza Ansari became a
contractor and head of the Kayson group in Iran and Behnam Shahbazi became
an architect. It is clear now to me why dropped out of the struggle. We were
governed by our genes, our environment, and the neurobiology of our brain. The
environment for us was after the CIA coup and feeling of victimization and Shah
despotism. We were all from middle-class families and felt the pain of
humiliation. Then our environment acted turned on brain neurons to act. As our
brain matured and the environment allowed us, we saved ourselves and became
who we are now.
Aziz Sarmady was from a poor family and became a day laborer, and his
destiny interweaving with Jazani. He was a friend of Bahman Ghoreishy, who
was the brother of Jazani's wife. I assume through Bahman, he met Bijan Jazani
and started in his group. Jazani main goal became creating a united front to push
the struggle forward for benefit of the Iranian masses. In the early fall of 1963,
Jazani assists the National Front in constructing the student movement. But 1963
ended, the National Front lost hope to the politics of "patience and hope". This
led to the creation of the third national movement in the year 1965 with the
continuation of the publication Payam Daneshjoo (which started in the fall of
1963 that was originally published under Jebhe Melli Daneshjoo. Jazani had a
key role in this process; Payam Daneshjoo reflected a united movement in the
political struggle for students in Iran. In the spring of 1964, a committee was
selected to run the publication made up of all factions of the student movement.

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The preliminary work related to the print was done by Jazani at his home. The
printing was done on a handmade copy machine that was not only labor-intensive
but also demanded a safe environment from the authorities. Jazani had rented a
hidden house for this purpose and in all stages of the process from financial to
print had a significant role. By the spring of 1965, roughly 500 copies were
published where several of them were distributed to officials of different
universities in the Tehran province and others circulated by Dariush Forouhar a
nationalist leader, and others in non-university-related locations. Forouhar was
one of the founding members of the original nationalist Pan-Ironist Party of Iran
in 1951. He had been continually active in the anti-Shah nationalist movement
and was an ardent supporter and close friend of Prime Minister Mohammad
Mossadegh. Forouhar and his wife, Parvaneh Eskandari Forouhar, were overt
opponents of Velayet-e-Faqih (clerical theocracy) and were under continuous
surveillance. They were assassinated in their home in 1998. The murders, which
are believed to have been politically motivated by the Iranian Ministry of
Intelligence. Their murders brought to light a pattern known as the Chain murders
of Iran.
Jazani authored several articles explaining the ideology of his movement
in the publication. The activities of the third national movement had increasingly
worried SAVAK. On May 22, 1965, Savak arrested Jazani and several organizers
of the student movement. These arrests signaled the end of political freedom in
Iran under the Shah's regime, resulting at the end of the third national movement
in 1965. It seems that SAVAK was unaware of the role of Jazani in the
publication of Payam Daneshjoo since the arrest was on charges related to
participation in the circulation of the publication. The main reason for this
mistake by SAVAK was Jazani's concealed presence in the publication. Some of
his friends, Iraj Vahedeepour continued in the publication for a couple of issues
after his arrest to show Jazani had no parts in the publication. Even so, Jazani and
other student activists remained in prison until February 1966 where the court
ruled a 9-month sentence but was immediately released given that he had already
served his time in prison. After prison, Jazani continued his studies and in 1966
graduated with a doctorate in philosophy from the University of Tehran.
After Jazani was released from prison, he concentrated on the development
and organization of a socialist movement. What was important for Jazani, and his
followers were to have an independent understanding of Marxism-Leninism

84
without influence from China and the Soviet Union. Their key goal and what
shaped their views was to do what benefited the people of Iran. Jazani had many
reasons to not be happy with the idea of the Soviet Union being the leader of the
world revolutionary movements. In the past seventy years, the Soviet Union's
policies in Iran were one-sided and beneficial to the Soviet Union. The Tudeh
party carried the Soviet policy and didn't pay attention to the interest of the
Iranian masses. Jazani became an honest observer seeing the relationship of the
Soviet Union and Tudeh party and Eastern Europe at the end of the decade of
1950 and concluded that if the left movement wins the struggle in Iran, it must
be aware of the Soviet Union was only interested in having Iran as a client state
on its southern border. Jazani wrote that if the power of the leftist movement falls
in the hands of the Soviets before anything else it will get rid of us and create a
client state. He believed that geographically Iran is too close to the Soviet Union.
The Iranians must understand to distance themselves from the Soviets. Coming
close to the Soviets have many harms and no benefits for Iranians. In the
evaluation of political parties in Iran, Jazani before discussing the organization's
ideology, revolutionary must study its role in the benefit of the people of Iran.
For example, in response to the blunders of the Tudeh party, of which he once
was a member, he gave a sincere evaluation. The inability of the Tudeh party to
understand the objective of internationalism only made the Tudeh party a
subservient of the Soviet government and the Soviet Communist Party from the
beginning to the end. Tudeh party was unaware of Iran's society, history, and did
not pay attention to the struggle against imperialism that caused the Tudeh party
to lag from other nationalistic freedom movements. Tudeh party positioned itself
against Mohammed Mossadegh and the National Front (Iran) Tudeh party
Weakness and second-guessing in the Coup d’état of August 19, 1953, that
resulted in the strategic loss of the Tudeh party and the labor movement. He
articulated clearly that the Tudeh party was subservient to the Soviets.
Jazani never ruled out nonviolent struggle, but the current circumstance
concluded that open political activity is inconceivable. The government has left
no possibility for this kind of activity; therefore, the only method of struggle is
guerrilla warfare. In the selection of this tactic, Jazani and the members of the
group were affected by the guerrilla warfare of South America and Vietnam, and
they were influenced by the success of Che Guevara, Fidel Castro, and the writing
of Régis Debray. Jazani and Zia-Zarifi articulated the ideology of the group. The

85
study of Iran's political conditions and research of methods were important to
Jazani’s group. However, some of the members of the group were appalled with
any kind of research and made a joke about it. Jazani and Zia-Zarifi were older
members of the group and as mature adults and wanted to assure themselves that
they are making a rational decision. Other members of the group were mostly
under the age of 25 years. From early 1957, the group acted to address this
problem but its effects on the group remained. The change of the position of the
group resulted in the decrease of the importance of struggle in the mountains and
between the villagers and an increase in the importance of the struggle in the
cities and the group prepared its activities according to that condition.
There were five other members of the group headed by Jazani. They were
Zarifi, Jaleel Afshar, Choopan Zadeh, Saeed Kalantari Nazari, Aziz Sarmady and
Keyanzad. Even though the key members of the organization had been arrested,
the associated group was not destroyed. Safari Farahani and Safari Ashtiani left
Iran and joined the Palestinian organization Fatah. After returning to Iran
Farahani and Safari organized the Siahkal uprising on February 8, 1971. Shortly
after that the remaining members of the group including Hamid Ashraf and
Masoud Ahmad Zadeh reorganized and renamed it to Iranian People's Fadaee
Guerrillas. Hamid Ashraf (1946 –1976) was one of the original members and
later the leader of the Organization of Iranian People's Fedai Guerrillas (OIPFG)
that waged guerrilla warfare against the Pahlavi regime in Iran from 1971, till
1979, the Shah's fall. Hamid Ashraf played a key role in consolidating the OIPFG
as a militant armed organization against the Shah's regime. Hamid Ashraf was
born in Tehran to an educated middle-class family. He was raised in Tehran and,
for a few years, in Tabriz. He entered Tehran University, first as a physics student
and then engineering. He engaged in leftist politics when he was introduced to
Bijan Jazani by Farrokh Naghadar in 1965. This was when the Jazani-Zarifi
group was preparing for waging guerrilla warfare in Iran against the regime.
However, the Jazani-Zarifi group was discovered by the secret police in 1968.
Hamid Ashraf and several members were not disclosed to the SAVAK and
survived the crackdown. In 1968 the leadership of the Jazani group was
imprisoned before they had a chance to start an armed uprising. From that point
on Ashraf played a key role in keeping the group together and preparing it for
action. On February 8, 1971, the mountain guerrilla band of the group under the
command of Ali Akbar Safaei Farahani launched an attack on the police station

86
in Siahkal in northern Iran. Soon after the operation, which practically started a
new era of armed struggle against the Shah's regime, Hamid Ashraf went into
hiding. Hamid Ashraf's leadership was crucial in the organization of the group's
underground network. For the next five years, Asraf expanded the group and its
operations. The group assassinated high-profile military and security officers. His
history in avoiding ambushes and his long survival under intense persecution, he
had become an "obsession" with the Shah. After a long and elaborated planning
by the Shah's secret police SAVAK on June 29, 1976, the safe house where he
and several members of cadres of the Fadai group were located. He was shot dead
while on the roof seemingly trying to make his escape from the ambush.
Following this incident, the Fadai group only managed to survive with minimal
activities until the 1978-79 revolution took place. Two pamphlets written by
Ashraf have been published: "A three-year Review", and "An Analysis of One
Year of Urban and Mountain Guerrilla Warfare: How did the Siahkal Insurrection
Begin?
In February 1969, Jazani's group was charged under military court. Jazani
was sentenced to prison for life for participation in an organization against the
monarchy and carrying an illegal weapon, which was later reduced to 15 years.
The sentences for other members varied, ranging from 2 to 10 years. The group's
members were located at Gasr prison until spring of 1969, when Saeed Kalantari
Nazari, Sourky, Sarmady, and Choopan Zadeh attempted to escape from prison.
This led to the relocation of most of the group members to rural areas. Jazani was
sent to Qom with ordinary prisoners. Because of the respect of the prison guards
towards Jazani, he was allowed to spend most of his time in the prison library
studying and painting.
In this period, Jazani with the assistance of his wife gets in contact with
the unknown members of the group and guides them in an ideological sense. In
the summer of 1970, he writes "What a revolutionary must know" and signs it in
the name of Safari Farahani to help Safari strengthen his position in the group.
When Siahkal occurred, through interrogation of the participants by SAVAK,
they find out about the relationship of Jazani and the group. In March 1971,
SAVAK brought Jazani to Tehran. From that time on, Jazani remained in Tehran.
He increased his activities in prison. With the help of his wife and other prisoners
he developed contact with the Iranian People's Fadaee Guerrillas outside of
prison and created a leftist movement inside prison. The responsibility of this

87
movement was to organize resistance, manage activities, and teach political and
ideological to leftist prisoners and recruitment for Iranian People's Fadaee
Guerrillas. The activity of Jazani caused problems from two sides in prison. The
officials of SAVAK who thought of Jazani as a major problem in prison
attempted to stop him from his activities. On the other side, leftist prisoners who
disagreed with Jazani acted in many ways against Jazani's activities. SAVAK
also created problems between these leftist factions. The majority of those against
Jazani were the followers of Masoud Ahmadzadeh (1945 – 1972) was
an Iranian Marxist political theorist. His work mostly dealt with the grounds that
Struggle is concerned with 'Strategy' and 'Tactics'. He was executed in prison for
his political activities. Amir Parviz Pouyan (1946-1971) was killed during an
armed action when he and his companion Rahmatullah Piro Naziri came under
fire by the SAVAK for their participation in revolutionary guerrilla activities.
Although these two individuals were killed in 1972, their teachings were the
official teachings of the movement up to 1976. Jazani thought these two
individuals’ teachings were only adventurous and distractive. Jazani’s book
"Armed struggle in Iran: The road to the mobilization of the masses" was written
in response to a book written by Ahmadzadeh "Armed struggle, both tactic and
strategy".
There were major differences between the teachings of Jazani and
Ahmadzadeh. These were that the revolutionary situation of the country and the
method of struggle. Ahmadzadeh group believed that the country is in a
revolutionary status and situations for a revolution exists. Therefore, a guerrilla
fighter must ignite the revolution by a military uprising, and the larger population
will support the military uprising and bring down the Shah's government. Jazani
argued that a revolutionary status does not exist in the country. Furthermore, a
revolution does not result from armed struggle, rather it comes about as a
development of a political, social, economic, and ideological process. A military
uprising does not cause a revolution by itself, should be staged as condition
dictates in the support of the revolution and not before the revolution. Without
mentioning Ahmadzadeh by name, Jazani writes "When we hear that revolution
begins with a military uprising, we have to say that the believers of this train of
thought do not know two things: one the current situation of the military uprising
and second revolution in general and the revolution we want is a specific one."
The second major problem was the method of struggle. Ahmadzadeh believed

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that the only means of battle is a military one and had a strategic role in their
fight. Jazani believed in the current situation one should not limit their means to
one method, but we should prepare the people in a political sense from all sides.
With this effort, one can fight against injustice and dictatorship for a better life
for all people will lead to the regime collapse. Even though Jazani attempted to
resolve issues through dialogue and unite the various leftist factions, his
opponents dismantled the leftist movement in prison to decrease Jazani's
influence. Even so, Jazani remained active to the end of his life. But the military
uprising created more repression as more members of SAVAK were killed. In
retaliation, Jazani, Zia-Zarifi, Jaleel Afshar, Choopan Zadeh, Saeed Kalantari
Nazari, Aziz Sarmady, and Keyanzad. were murdered alongside other prisoners
on April 19, 1975, by Savak, Bahman Naderipour, a SAVAK agent and actively
involved with the executions, described that day's events: We took the prisoners
to the high hills above Evin. They were blindfolded, and their hands were tied.
We got them off the minibus and had them sit on the ground. Then, Attarpour
told them that, just as your friends have killed our comrades, we have decided to
execute you. Jazani and the others began protesting. I do not know whether it was
Attarpour or Colonel Vaziri who first pulled out a machine gun and started
shooting them. I do not remember whether I was the 4th or 5th person to whom
they gave the machine gun. I had never done that before. In the end, Sa'di Jalil
Esfahani shot them in their heads [to make sure that they were dead
All Jazani's books were written in prison from 1970 to 1974. They
discussed the establishment of the independent leftist movement in the two
decades of the 1960s and '70s. Jazani is buried in the 33rd block of Behesht-e
Zahra cemetery. They were 27-37 years old when they were murdered in April
1975. The Islamic revolution was established in February 1979. In the end, the
New Left was decimated by the establishment Velayet-e-Faqih (Dictatorial
regime of clerical theocracy). Only Farrokh Naghadar remains of the group who
lives in London.
The left did not recognize the power of political Islam as displayed itself
in the 15 Khordad 1963 uprising is hard to understand. Shah started several
modernizing reforms in Iran which was known as "The Revolution of the Shah
and the People" or the White Revolution. Although the Shah revolution was a
distraction and continuation of Shah despotism, it also included extending the
right to vote to women. The White Revolution caused a deep rift between Shah

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and the Iranian Shia religious establishment who opposed Shah. On January 22,
1963, Khomeini issued a worded declaration denouncing the Shah and his plans
and listed the many ways in which the Shah had violated the constitution,
condemned the spread of moral corruption in the country, and accused the Shah
of submission to the U.S. and Israel. He denounced the Shah as a "wretched,
miserable man", and warned him that if he did not change his ways the day would
his departure from the country. In Tehran, a Muharram march of Khomeini
supporters estimated at 100,000 marched past the Shah's palace, chanting "Death
to the Dictator, death to the dictator! God save you, Khomeini! Death to the
bloodthirsty enemy. Shah unleashed his army and killed many of the poor masses.
The 15 of Khordad's uprising made Khomeini a hero. Khomeini's stand against
Shah had a Shia vision for the political Islam that resulted in the 1979 revolution.
However, the sacrifices the new left accelerated the collapse of the Shah. After
the collapse of the Soviet Union, the idealization of Marxist-Leninist theory has
ended. Now, Iranians face a new chapter in the struggle for democracy under the
shadow of new despotic Russia.

Chapter 10 Political Islam

As I write this chapter in 2021, I am struck that in my short life of 79 years
how much I have witnessed. I still remember going with my father and three
brothers to a public bathhouse the night before Newroz, 1953 Coup, my political
activities in the sixties, life in the USA, a year in California in 1968, and The
Ohio State University, then Purdue University in Indiana and back in Tehran and
teaching in Tehran Polytechnic University and 1979 revolution. How I cried
when I heard the execution of Dr. Fatemi. Of course, when I came with the idea
of stealing the copy machine, from Darolfonun to my intoxication with the idea
of Socialism and my years in Ohio and Purdue University and teaching for thirty-
three years at the Ohio State University. Who am I? What is life? How does
history move on don't know who I am, but I agree with the saying that “Life is a
chemical incident?” Paul Ehrlich, 1870 who was a Nobel Prize-winning German
physician. The answer to the third question can be bet paraphrased history is a
living organ and the environment create the human who becomes a leader and
moves history forward. My understanding now is based on the writing of Robert
Sapolsky, neurobiological scientist of Stanford University that I can best describe

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his work as the intersection of Environment, and Neurobiology. Put it simply, the
gene that is genotype responds to environmental variation uniquely.
Environmental variation can be physical, chemical, biological, behavior patterns,
or life events. As history moves create Mossadegh, Jazani, and Forouhar.
I entered Tehran University in 1962. At that time half student body was
the supporter of the Iran National front and the other half were leftist but not
member of the Tudeh Party. In 1976, when I returned to Iran as a recent PhD in
electrical engineering and started to teach at the Tehran Polytechnic, the National
front had no support. Half students were supporter of Islam that included clergy
faction and Mojahedin and the rest were mostly leftist students. The Iran political
atmosphere had radicalized to the right with domination of clergy and left.
Then history creates Khomeini who construct a government based on
Velayet-e-Faqih (clerical theocracy). When I heard the Iran Foreign Minster talk
about how Russia tried to sabotage Iran's nuclear accord, I decided to draft this
book. I remembered “History of Iran Constitutional Revolution” by Ahmad
Kasravi. After all, Russia massacred Iranian supporters of the revolution in 1905
in Tabriz. Cossacks’ Russian military officers of Mohammed Ali Shah army
directed heavy artillery bombardments against Majlis. During the 19th century,
Iran was surrounded by two evolving imperial powers of Russia and Britain. In
1892, Iran had two masters, Russia and Britain who balanced their interest and
used Iran as a buffer state marked the domain of influence. Qajar Shah of Iran
had given up and lived in a world of illusion and was only interested in their
indulgences by selling concessions, especially to the British. In 1872, a
representative of British tycoon Paul Reuter met with the Naser al-Din Shah
Qajar and agreed to fund the monarch's upcoming lavish visit to Europe, but the
sum was not explicitly stated. In return for exclusive contracts on all businesses
Iranian from tobacco to the extraction of resources, and other public works. The
"Reuter concession" faced violent opposition in Iran and from Russia. The
concession was a monopoly on the production, domestic sales, and export of
tobacco. This was granted to Major G. F. Talbot of Britain and was registered in
March 1890 as the Imperial Tobacco Corporation of Persia in Britain. Talbot was
granted to pay 25,000 pounds immediately for the concession and to provide an
annual payment of 15,000 pounds to the Imperial Treasury. The monopoly
became evident to merchants and the Iranian population at large, the majority of
whom consumed some form of tobacco daily. The monopoly to a foreign entity

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provokes patriotic fervor. The Shah and his minister in leadership didn’t realize
the opposition to such naked exploitation of Iran masses. This concession
prompted the politicization of the intellectuals and the clergy. As the events of
1891 progressed, the clergy displayed its power successfully and mobilized
crowds against the government and its foreign policies. Under the leading leader
of the clergy, protests began in Shiraz, and Tabriz bazaars spread to all provinces.
In Isfahan two leading clergies, Agha Najafi and his brother Shaykh Muhammad
Ali, declared the use of tobacco filthy as their followers took to the streets and
smashed all visible water pipes in the bazaars. Grand Ayatollah Mirza
Muhammad Hasan Shirazi, who resided in Ottoman Iraq, declared a fatwa (legal
opinion) prohibiting all forms of smoking. Shops throughout the bazaars closed
and smoking was completely abandoned, even the shah's wives in the court
stopped smoking. It was a powerful show of force of Political Islam by the
religious establishment. Shah declared the conditional abandonment of the
tobacco concession and requested that the population resume smoking. The
suspicious crowds waited for word from Ayatollah Shirazi that the fatwa had
been rescinded, but it did not arrive. The nervous shah, Naser al-Din, sent a
personal letter to Tehran's prominent clergy Mirza Hasan Ashtiani, insisting that
he instantly return to smoking or leave Iran. As the news of the shah's daman
spread through the capital, the angry masses occupied the streets nearby the
shah's palace. Fearing for the security of the shah, the government's troops
opened fire on the protestors, killing seven people, including the leader of the
crowds. Ashtiani sent a powerful message to Naser Din Shah and his prime
minister, Amin al-Sultan. Grasping the seriousness of the situation, the shah in
January 1892 abolished the concession, approved to pay reimbursement to the
families of those killed, and absolved all leaders of the revolt. Ayatollah Shirazi
telegraphed a few days later and removed his fatwa and permitted that Muslims
could resume smoking.
This act cemented political Islam and those who ignored paid a high price.
After all, it was the support of clergy and Ayatollah Kashani that facilitated the
success of the 1953 coup and overthrow of Mosadegh. Tudeh Party General
Secretary was Nooruddin Kianouri’s grandfather was Ayatollah Sheikh Fazlollah
Noori, a conservative politician prominent Shia, and a scholar and clergy theorist
in Qajar Iran. When Fazlollah Noori realized that the constitutional movement
was attempting to establish a Western-style government with secular laws rather

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than a government with Islamic laws. He turned against the constitutional
movement and argued that during the period of the Concealment of Twelve
Imam, the running of the country must be a shared responsibility of the
government and clerics. Religious authority must have the power to assure
Islamic laws are made by Majlis. Ayatollah Noori allied himself with Mohammad
Ali Shah, who, with the assistance of Russian troops staged a coup against the
Majlis in 1907. In 1909, however, constitutionalists marched into Tehran. He was
arrested, tried, and found guilty of sowing corruption and sedition on earth, and
he was hanged before a crowd in Maidan-e Toopkhaneh in the center of Tehran.
He is now named a martyr by the Islamic government. His views on the role of
clergy in government were implanted by Iran Islamic government established by
Ayatollah Khomeini after the 1979 revolution.
The power of political Islam occurred again on June 5 and 6, 1963 (15
Khordad) uprising. The raw power of poor masses in the support of political
Islam showed who controlled the masses in Iran . The Grand Ayatollah Ruhollah
Khomeini denounced the Shah as a stooge of the US and Israel. The Shah's
regime was taken by surprise by the massive public demonstrations of support of
Khomeini. The Shah crushed the protests in a few days. The events established
the importance and power of Shia religious opposition to the Shah. By opposing
the Shah, Khomeini became a major political anti-imperialist leader. The event
paved the way for sixteen years later when Khomeini led the Iranian Revolution
and overthrew the Shah and established the Islamic Republic of Iran. In 1963,
Shah, first banned the Iran National front supporters of Mosadegh, and censored
the press, and then issued a declaration of modernizing reforms in Iran which
were known as "The Revolution of the Shah and the People" or the White
Revolution. These plans were to make social and economic changes in Iran. On
January 26, 1963, the Shah held a national referendum on the White Revolution.
Shah's revolution included everything on paper. It is not revealed who drafted the
declaration but included a lot of ideas in a mixture buying the aristocrats' land to
be distributed; nationalization of the forests and pastureland; privatization of the
government-owned enterprises, profit sharing; extending the right to vote to
women; formation of the literacy corps; formation of the health corps; formation
of the reconstruction and development corps; formation of the houses of equity;
nationalization of all water resources; urban and rural modernization and
reconstruction; workers' right to own shares in the industrial complexes; price

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stabilization, free and compulsory education; free food for needy mothers; the
introduction of social security and national insurance; stable and reasonable cost
of renting or buying of residential properties; and introduction of measures to
fight against corruption. The Shah announced this revolution as a way towards
modernization. Shah was trying to obtain legitimacy to his tyrannical rule by his
White Revolution. Instead, his declarative revolution caused a deep fracture
between Shah and Iranian Shia religious established scholars who were the base
of his support. Grand Ayatollah Ruhollah Khomeini saw an opportunity to assert
the religious establishment power. Khomeini was in touch with Iranian poor
masses and rich religious merchants. Shah pocked his fingers in the eyes of the
clergy when as part of his program planned to draft young women in his army.
Khomeini held a meeting with other Grand Ayatollahs and scholars in Qom and
boycotted the referendum of the revolution. On January 22, 1963, Khomeini
issued a worded declaration denouncing the Shah and his plans. Khomeini
continued his denunciation of the Shah's programs, issuing a manifesto that also
bore the signatures of eight other senior religious scholars. In it, he listed the
many ways in which the Shah had violated the constitution. Khomeini's
accusations were correct and Iranian masses had witnessed them since the 1953
coup. Khomeini's condemnation was fresh air for Iranian poor masses, especially,
when he condemned Shah for the spread of moral corruption in the country and
accused the Shah of submission to the U.S. and Israel.
On the afternoon of June 3, 1963, martyrdom of the grandson of the
prophet Hossein, Khomeini delivered a speech at the Feyziyeh Qom religious
school. He denounced the Shah as a "wretched, miserable man", and warned him
that if he did not change his ways the day would come when the Iranian masses
would depose him and threw him out of Iran. In Tehran, Khomeini supporters
passed the Shah's palace, chanting "Death to the Dictator, death to the dictator!
God save you, Khomeini! Death to the bloodthirsty enemy!" Two days later at
three o'clock in the morning, security men and commandos descended on
Khomeini's home in Qom and arrested him. They hastily transferred him to the
Qasr Prison in Tehran. As dawn broke on June 5, the news of Khomeini's arrest
spread first through Qom and then to other cities. In Qom, Tehran, Shiraz,
Mashhad, and Varamin, poor masses of angry demonstrators were confronted by
tanks and paratroopers. In Tehran, demonstrators attacked police stations,
SAVAK offices, and government buildings, including ministries. The surprised

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government declared martial law and a curfew from 10 p.m. to 5 a.m. The Shah
then ordered a division of the Imperial Guard, under the command of Major
General Gholam Ali Oveisi, to move into the city and crush the demonstrations.
The following day, protest groups took to the street in smaller numbers and
were confronted by tanks and "soldiers in combat gear with “shoot-to-kill
orders". The village of Pishva near Varamin became famous during the uprising.
Several hundred villagers from Pishva began marching to Tehran, shouting
"Khomeini or Death". They were stopped at a railroad bridge by soldiers who
opened fire with machine guns when the villagers ask them to join them. When
soldiers continued to attack, the poor masses of villagers attacked the soldiers
"with whatever they had". Many thousand villagers were killed. It was not until
six days later that order was fully restored.

Credit to: https://int.amfm.ir/en/the-15-khordad-uprising/

Khomeini delivered a speech at the Feyziyeh Qom

Hardliners in the regime, Prime Minister Asadullah Alam, SAVAK head

Nematollah Nassiri, favored the execution of Khomeini, as one responsible for
the riots. Strikes and protests continued in bazaars and elsewhere. Pakravan felt
that his execution would anger the common people of Iran. He presented his
argument to the Shah. Once he had convinced the Shah to allow him to find a
way out, he called on another Grand Ayatollah Mohammad-Kazem

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Shariatmadari, one of the senior religious leaders of Iran, and asked for his help.
Shariatmadari suggested that Khomeini be declared just one of many Grand
Ayatollahs. A new religious decree was taken by Pakravan and Seyyed Jalal
Tehrani to the Shah. After nineteen days in the Qasr Prison, Khomeini was
transferred first to the Eshratabad military base and then to a house in the
Davoodiyeh section of Tehran where he was kept under surveillance. He was
released on April 7, 1964. He returned to Qom under house arrest. After a year
in Qom, Khomeini was forcibly exiled from Iran on November 4, 1964. He
eventually settled in the city of Al-Najaf, Iraq’s intellectual counterpart to Qom.
With Khomeini gone, Shah was empowered with a "loose leash" to torture
suspected dissidents with "brute force" that, over the years, "increased
dramatically", and nearly 100 people were executed for political reasons during
the last 20 years of the Shah's rule.
Khomeini returned to Iran in the 1979 Islamic revolution. The date of 15
Khordad is widely noted throughout the Islamic Republic of Iran. Among other
places, the intersection is known as 15 Khordad Crossroads, a 15th of Khordad
Metro Station is named after it. Accidentally, Khomeini died twenty-six years
later in 1989, on the eve of 15 Khordad. Pakravan's saving of Khomeini's life cost
him his own. Fateme Pakravan – wife of Hassan Pakravan, chief of SAVAK –
says in her memoirs that her husband saved Khomeini's life in 1963. After the
revolution when he was given a death sentence, a personal contact of Pakravan
with close ties to Khomeini went to seek his pardon and reminded Khomeini that
Pakravan had saved his life, to which Khomeini replied, "he should not have."
After the revolution, SAVAK was officially abolished but was in reality
"drastically expanded" into a new organization that killed many leftists and
Mojahedin between 1981 and 1985 alone. It is estimated that and 20,000–30,000
in total. One prisoner who served time under both the Shah and the Islamic
Republic declared that "four months under (Islamic Republic's) warden
Asadullah Lajevardi took the toll of four years under SAVAK".
In the Islamic Republic, remembrance of the 1953 coup is quite different
from that of history books published in the West and follows the precepts of
Ayatollah Khomeini that Islamic jurists must guide the country to prevent "the
influence of foreign powers". Ayatollah Kashani, who was a mentor of
Khomeini, came out against Mosadegh by mid-1953 and "told a foreign
correspondent that Mosadegh had fallen because he had forgotten that the shah

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enjoyed extensive popular support." A month later, Ayatollah Kashani "went
even further and declared that Mosadegh deserved to be executed because he had
committed the ultimate offense: rebelling against the shah, 'betraying' the
country, and repeatedly violating the sacred law."
Men associated with Mosadegh, and his ideals dominated Iran's first post-
revolutionary government. The first prime minister after the Iranian revolution
was Mehdi Bazargan, a close associate of Mosadegh. But with the subsequent rift
between the conservative Islamic establishment and the secular liberal forces,
Mosadegh's work, and legacy has been largely ignored by the Islamic Republic
establishment. However, Mosadegh remains a popular historical figure among
Iranian opposition factions. Mosadegh's image is one of the symbols of Iran's
opposition movement, also known as the Green Movement. Mosadegh "for most
Iranians" is "the most vivid symbol of Iran's long struggle for democracy" and
those modern protesters carrying a picture of Mosadegh is the equivalent of
saying "We want democracy" and "No foreign intervention".
As I finish this book, the shadow of Imperial Russia over Iran continues. Now
the Russian embassy in Tehran is the den of spies. Russia does not have the Tudeh
party to exercise its power in Tehran but will try to isolate Iran internationally
and fomented division in Iran. But the struggle of Iranians for democracy will
continue. Bijan Jazani was the first Iranian patriot who was murdered by Shah.
Dariush Forouhar was another Iranian patriot who was murdered by the
tyrannical clerical theocracy of Iran. A government based on Velayet-e-Faqih,
dictatorial clerical theocracy will rot to its core when no one believes in the
regime and more Iranian masses realize the nature of the clergy. A regime that
cannot renew its vitality is doomed. Global warming, water scarcities, stagnate
economy, cronyism will push Iran to darker times. The time will come when
more Iranians become alienated and refuse to participate in deception put
together by clergy. Just like the Shah regime, the system will collapse. How? To
predict the future is a fool errand. But as the Soviet Socialist system collapsed in
a week, Velayet-e-Faqih will fail too. Iran has come to full circle to acknowledge
one a clear statement by Kasravi who said: “Iranians owe a rule by Mollahs to
realize that Mollahs are leeches on the body and soul of Iran. Iran has paid its
dues. The struggle for democracy will continue.

References.

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2002. p. 673-686. ISBN 964-6895-16-6
Kasravī, “Jang-e Īrān o Engelīs dar Moḥammera,” Čand tārīḵa, Tehran, 1324
Š./1945, pp. 6-80
2.J. Calmard, “ANGLO-PERSIAN WAR (185657) Encyclopaedia Iranica,
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masses. Iran Committee. LCCN 80108223.
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Islamic Revolution in Iran,' paper presented at London Conference on vilayat
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