What the heck Simfan, you're a Shah supporter? I thought you were an exiled Ethiopian, not an exiled Iranian.
I've long seen parallel between Iran and Ethiopia. Two ancient empires, two regional players, both overthrown in the 70s.
Operation Ajax can be summarized as "Kermit Roosevelt spreads some money around to hire some weightlifters to act thuggish and say bad things about Mossadegh so he resigns." It's a joke. There was little resistance to the "coup". Mossadegh didn't try to stay in power and crush the it. Mossadegh had popularity, but the people against him were many, and at the time the coup didn't seem to generate much popular opposition. It was only much later in the 1970s as the new intellectual class was attempting to get political power that the Mossadegh era was seen as some kind of golden era where democracy was nipped in the bud by the "evil CIA". It was a myth.
Ajax involved Roosevelt paying thugs to create violent clashes in the street and loot/burn mosques & newspapers, with troops storming the capital and attacking the prime minister's residence on Roosevelt's signal. Mossadegh did try to stay in power; he surrendered because there were tanks firing on his house. Mossadegh had the popular support, more support than the Shah (otherwise why did the Shah flee to Rome?)Well, you mean Zahedi's. Don't see the problem. Legal action. No, the Shah fled because he feared he'd be arrested.
Mossadegh was a secularist who had said some nice things about democracy, but his actions did not support his words. At the end of his term, he was ruling by decree and accumulating more and more power to himself. He was resisting the Shah's dismissal and indeed trying to overthrow the Shah by the end of the whole thing.
What's wrong with that? As for his rule by decree, he strengthened democracy by his decrees, limiting the powers of the monarchy and weakening the aristocracy. In a battle between two forces, his was unarguably the more democratic, but more importantly, there was a vote to dissolve Parliament, which passed.What aristocracy? The only real thing approaching one was the clergy, which, as your picutre shows, Mossadegh was in bed with. How did he strengthen democracy? He didn't/
He was a charismatic demagogue, and was doing nothing to further the rule of law. Instead, the picture is of Mossadegh doing very little to build democracy (indeed dissolving the legislature), that there was widespread opposition to Mossadegh, that his own actions prevented an end to the crisis, that Iran was becoming dangerously unstable. There was very little complaint about the countercoup after it was done because the country became stable again (again, nostalgia for Mossadegh would grow and eventually become a major factor in the mid seventies, and that Mossadegh lived afterwards (albeit under house arrest).
His legislative dissolution, again, was approved by the voters. 'Stable' in this case means an autocratic regime that repressed all political dissent; hard to express dissent when it means trial, imprisonment, torture, and execution.[/quote]
I don't recall a referendum.
Personally, I don't see Mossadegh as a real democratic figure. He certainly wasn't a good leader and positioned Iran in a very dangerous position. Mossadegh made a good myth though, but just that middle class Iranians in the 1970s believed the myth was true doesn't make it so.
He was more democratic and a better leader, than, say, Zahedi, who was
literally a Nazi. And the 'dangerous position' he placed Iran in was the correct move to make (nationalization of AIOC).
Which was a needlessly provocative move.
Poll
