By Ruth Norrick This being the time of revelations — of the ‘U.S., somewhere less than open man- ipulation of other governments and government leaders — let us give thought to one of the latest disclosures. It is in columnist Tom Braden’s nation- ally syndicated account of that “happy and triumphant day” for ‘‘all of us” — August 25, 1953, when Mohammed Mos- sadegh, the Iranian premier, had been ousted and the present Shah put back on his throne. That was 25 years ago. Braden, who worked for the CIA at the time, recalls being in the office of John Foster Dulles, then secretary of state. A call came over the ‘‘white’’ phone from his brother, Allen Dulles, then head of the CIA. The message was that ‘Winston Churchill wanted Dulles to send a cer- tain able young man, Kermit Roosevelt (son of the first President Roosevelt) to London to meet him. He wanted to hear from Roosevelt himself how the coup had been managed. _. “Bully”? shouted Dulles. Then he thought he should let Ike — Dwight Eisenhower — know. He used the “red’’ telephone for that. Braden did not ex- plain the special significance of the color. ‘‘Bully for Kim Roosevelt; bully for us who formed the band of (CIA) brothers; bully for the Shah!” Those are Braden’s words. He writes now, not with any misgiv- ings, but with satisfaction, about what was done. The Shah on that day became “our guy” and remains so to this day. “He tried to build a country in the image of this one,” wrote Braden. ‘For his pains heis in trouble now.” Indeed heis! | The columnist opines that maybe “the brothers” had just been lucky in their man, luckier-say, than those who in Vietnam exulted in the accession to power of that “dreadful’’ President Thieu. Space, perhaps, did not permit recalling other triumphs of ‘the brothers” — the deposing of Allende in Chile; Lumumba in the Congo; Arbenz-Gusman in Guatemala. Nor was - there room in that column for anything more than the surname of the man who had been so-successfully removed from office that August day. ~ Mohammed Mossadegh, though, was quite a person as those who were around at the time, friend and foe, con- ceded. So great was his popularity that it took “‘the combined power of the Shah, the Persian army, and the American CIA toremove him.” That summationis from The Middle East, Past and Pre- sent, by Yahya Armajami (Prentice Hall, 1970.) Mossadegh was a Persian, born in Teheran in 1880. Like many of his com- patriots he was educated in France. He entered political life early, in 1906, in the finance ministry. In 1922 he becarne minister of foreign affairs, a very im- . portant post in that time of world ad- justment following the success of the Russian Revolution. The Soviet Union is Iran’s northern neighbor. He served two terms in the Maglis (parliament), but having incurred the disfavor of the Shah — the father of the present ruler —he went into retirement. He returned to active political life in 1944, won a seat in the parliament and soon became the leader of a coalition of nationalist groups. (As early as 1913 he had written Iran and Capitulation.) The date 1944 was very significant: it PACIFIC TRIBUNE—November 10, 1978—Page 8 Allen Dulles Riot police in Teheran attack student demonstrators earlier th is month during widespread strikes Mohammed Mossadegh ea cE _ i> a> 44> by students and workers against the fascist regime of the Shah : (inset, upper left). was the last. year of the second World War. Iran, which early in the war had been occupied by the Soviets in the north and the British and Americans in the south, had been an important supply route. By 1944, though, the Allies were no longer so dependent upon it, and the war, as far as the Iranians were con- cerned, was over. Their concern was with the kind of country Iran was going to be. The immediate need was for the country’s territorial integrity and inde- pendence to be honored, and in due time the pledge was kept. To some-Iranians, though, that was not enough. They wanted possession and control of the great oil fields that for decades had been foreign-owned and operated. The British concession, the chief matter of contention, dated back” to 1901. From 1914 on, the British gov- ernment itself had been in the oil busi- © ness in Iran by having bought into the Anglo-Persian Oil Company. : For Mossadegh and his followers th time had come for the Iranians to take control. The British, and their Ameri- can cousins who had long had an inter- est in Persian Gulf Oil, had altogether different ideas about the future of those that the British had seen to it that they . Macy’ — times had changed — reacted great underground stores of precious ‘petroleum. What could the Persians, or if you prefer, the Iranians, know a { so complicated a matter as the extrac. tion of oil and its sale on the world mar. kets? : “ What they didn’t know they coulq learn, Mossadegh answered; mindful} manded nationalization, nothing less, and on the day that he became prime minister, April 25, 1951, the parliament voted unanimously to seize the British oil companies properties in Iran. The British, foregoing ‘‘gunboat diplo- by taking the issue to the Security Coun- cil of the United Nations. ‘ put the case that debate was postpone i to await a decision of the World Court as to whether or not it had jurisdiction, as the British argued it‘nad. The following May he repeated his New York triumph” when he went before thé World Court, if” The Hague. He won. 7 In Iran, though, opposition was growing, for reasons that can be de- duced from Braden’s article; The British, having failed in the court, re- sorted to a freeze on Persian assets and persuaded Europeans to boycott Per- sian oil and the U.S. to withhold eco- nomic aid. As a consequence the sum- mer of 1953 was one of crises in Teheran. On August 13, the Shah issued an order dismissing Mossadegh from of- fice, and appointed an army general in his place. Mossadegh refused to comply and arrested the messenger. On August 16 the Shah and the empress left the country in order to prevent bloodshed, they said. For the next three days mat- ters were out of control. On August 19 General Zahedia entered Teheran and was able to bring the Shah’s forces to- gether. Three days later the Shah re- turned to Teheran in triumph. Mos- Sadegh had been arrested and was being . held for trial. The rewards for the Shah and his party were great. On August 5, 1954, a pact was signed under which a consor- _ tium agreed to operate the oil industry, market the output, share the profits equally with Iran, and compensate the Anglo-Iranian Oil Company for its seized properties. That consortium in- cluded eight major oil companies in the United States, Great Britain, the Netherlands and France. The United States had already granted the Iranian government a $5 million emergency loan, and five million then was a size- able amount of money. But what of Mossadegh? Many of his followers were executed, but his life — was spared. He was tried and found guilty of leading a revolt against the Shah, and sentenced to three years in prison in solitary confinement. Upon his release he went into retirement. - When he died, in 1967, at age 87, only _passing notice was taken. But those who remember Moham- med Mossadegh know why ‘‘the brothers’’ were celebrating that day. in the office of the U.S. Secretary of State. The CIA operation in Teheran was a success — Mossadegh, the great patriot who dared declare to the world that the wealth of a country belonged to its people, was ousted from office.