Наурыз құтты болсын! نوروز مبارک Happy Nauryz!

A happy Iranian New Year 1391, Nauryz and vernal equinox to all; particularly to my Iranian, Kazakhstani and Kyrgyzstani friends!

Today, suitably, I happened to finish (for my Governance and Civil Society course this term) the book All the Shah’s Men by New York Times veteran Cold War journalist Stephen Kinzer, a gripping, colourful account of the overthrow of Iran’s first (and, to date, only) wholly democratic government by the CIA in Operation Ajax, and the history which had brought the country to that point. Though Mr Kinzer does paint with a rather broad brush and draws conclusions which are slight stretches from the main theme of his book (particularly the extrapolation that Operation Ajax was responsible for the naissance of Middle Eastern terrorism), he is a talented journalist who can truly spin an enthralling (and, indeed, edifying) yarn – and in this case, he does so around three figures: Mohammed Mosaddegh, Mohammed Reza Shah Pahlavi and Kermit Roosevelt. The histories of three nations – Iran, the United Kingdom and the United States – are set as the backdrop of the entire story.

It should be noted that Mr Kinzer does come to the table with a definite editorial slant – an anti-imperialist one, mainly, which leads him and the reader to instantly sympathise with the idealistic, semi-secular nationalism of Mr Mosaddegh and take immediate umbrage against the heavy-handed imperiousness and blatant injustices of the Anglo-Iranian Oil Company. (Though he does remark that AIOC’s operations were controversial even at home, and that Clement Attlee wasn’t necessarily implacable in his support of AIOC, oftentimes the narrative comes off almost as much anti-British as it does anti-imperialist.)

However, if there is one thing Mr Kinzer is good at, it is providing a brief and compelling account of Iranian history, going all the way back to Zoroaster. I found intriguing his assertion that Shi’a Islam was largely an organic answer to the latent promises of social justice (through the principle of farr فر or ‘glory’ accruing to moral or just rulership, akin to the Chinese principle of 天命 the mandate of heaven) which Sassanid Zoroastrianism had left unfulfilled. It mirrors to a certain extent Jalal al-e Ahmad’s description in Occidentosis of Islam more generally as ‘an answer to the call of Mani and Mazdak [for justice] three centuries earlier’. Kinzer does wax quite romantic with regard to the populist potential, the ecstatic, self-sacrificing ethos of martyrdom in the tradition of Ali and his son Hussein, the penchant for preserving the pre-Islamic traditions that characterise Shi’a Islam – and the reason for his romanticism becomes clear in the following chapters. For Kinzer, Mohammed Mosaddegh is meant to fill the role of the Shi’ite paragon and martyr: idealistic and self-sacrificing to a fault, stubborn, theatrical, keenly passionate and humanitarian to the point of saintliness even with regard to those he had every reason to mistrust. And indeed, his political behaviour would seem to indicate that he held a similar view of himself – perhaps one not completely unjustified.

The narrative of Operation Ajax, as related by Mr Kinzer, is an acutely painful one to read now, particularly because everyone involved felt they were doing exactly the right thing. Mosaddegh, even as he became increasingly isolated and vulnerable, held firm in his belief in the rule of law and held back the counter-protestors who marched in his favour when he felt they were liable to harm Americans in Iran. Kermit Roosevelt genuinely thought that bringing down Mosaddegh (even with such stealth) was the right thing to do in the fight against the Soviets and their puppets in Tudeh. Ayatollah Kashani thought he was doing the right thing in cooperating with the Americans to take down Mosaddegh, whom he and his intellectual heirs (the people behind the 1979 revolution) saw as a secular traitor to Islam. It is heartening to hear that the majority of Iranians have such a high view of the American people, but I can only hope that, in light of the irresponsible behaviour of our own elected government, we can someday prove ourselves worthy of that trust – by treating the political and social goals of the Iranian people as equal to our own. We can start by doing as the Iranians ask and not going to war with their country, and thereby showing that we have begun to learn the lessons of 1953. And we as private citizens can stand in solidarity with the Iranian people in their fight for basic human dignity and political reform – provided that we first demand transparency, fair dealing and realistic foreign policy goals from our own government.

EDIT: Obama’s yearly Nauryz address can be found here. Some recommended related reading may also be found here.