Remembering a CIA Coup in Iran That Never Was
Mohammed Mossadegh was not a democrat or democratically elected, nor was he toppled by nefarious foreigners
March 05, 2023
‘The prime minister had a deep strain of decency, but was an inept visionary who overplayed his hand’Keystone/Getty Images
When anti-regime protests spread like wildfire throughout Iran in mid-October of 2022, the regime’s Supreme Leader Ali Khamenei was quick to lay the blame on the usual foreign suspects. “I say explicitly that these riots and this insecurity were a design by the U.S. and the occupying, fake Zionist regime and those who are paid by them,” he told a class of cadets at a police college in Tehran. He suggested that the ultimate goal of the U.S. and Israel was regime change in Iran.
This elicited a response on Twitter from Iranian rapper Hichkas, who defended foreign support for the uprising, saying that it represented solidarity, not collaboration. He ended his riposte with a taunt that was retweeted or liked more than 50,000 times:
“And you can shove that Mossadegh tale you’ve lived off of for a lifetime.”
The rebellious young hip-hop star was connecting dots that Khamenei had only implied: that in 2022, the United States and its allies were once again seeking to overthrow an Iranian leader, just as in the summer of 1953 the United States had cooperated with players inside and outside Iran to help end the political career of the doomed nationalist prime minister, Mohammed Mossadegh.
For anyone who needs a reminder of the significance of that episode, whose 70th anniversary falls this year, let Columbia University’s professor Hamid Dabashi provide one, from his book Iran: A People Interrupted:
As Iranians never get tired of repeating (for this is the defining trauma of their modern history), the CIA, aided by British intelligence, mounted, paid for, and executed a military coup, overthrew the democratically elected government of Mosaddeq, and brought the corrupt Mohammed Reza Shah back to power.
This Ivy League encapsulation of the events of August 1953 in Iran contains at least four remarkable untruths, though “As Iranians never get tired of repeating” is not one of them.
First, the CIA did not mount or execute a coup.
Second, Mossadegh was not democratically elected.
Third, the shah was not yet corrupt.
Fourth, he was not brought back to power, because he had never left it: Assassinations were a fact of life in 1950s Tehran, and having survived an attempt on his life in 1949, Mohammed Reza chose to wait out Mossadegh’s fall in Baghdad and Rome but never abdicated.
What actually happened in the land which once harvested prime ministers more promiscuously than Henry VIII harvested queens was this: After Shah Mohammed Reza’s Prime Ministers Mohammed-Ali Foroughi, Ali Soheili, Ahmad Qavam, Mohammed-Reza Hekmat, Ebrahim Hakimi, Abdolhossein Hazhir, Mohammed Saed, and Ali Mansur, came Ali Razmara, who was assassinated in March 1951. Following the brief caretaker premiership of Hossein Ala, Shah Mohammed Reza Pahlavi wanted Seyyed Zia Tabataba’i, but in deference to the aged Qajar aristocrat Mohammed Mossadegh, had him offered the job, feeling confident he would decline. To everyone’s surprise, Mossadegh accepted, and the Majlis concluded a brief poll to endorse him. Then the shah gave Mossadegh the job. Again, the sequence of events is significant: The shah chose a prime minister, the parliament consented, and the shah appointed him.
Between 1953 and 1979, the shah would appoint and dismiss 10 more prime ministers, including Mossadegh twice. Not even the most overheated Iran historian describes these changes as coups.
Between 1953 and 1979, the shah would appoint and dismiss 10 more prime ministers, including Mossadegh twice. Not even the most overheated Iran historian, in Islamic Iran or American academia, describes these changes as coups. The difference is that when Mossadegh’s second government went down in flames in August 1953, there were some American would-be arsonists in the wings who may or may not have shared responsibility, but who insisted on claiming the lion’s share of the credit, however implausibly or unwisely.
Constitutionally, appointing prime ministers in imperial Iran was the sole prerogative of the shah. As Gholam Reza Afkhami wrote, “The Constitution … gave the Crown and only the Crown the power to appoint or dismiss the ministers (Article 46, Supplementary basic Law) …” In George Lenczowski’s Iran Under the Pahlavis we read that “The Shah’s authority embraced the right to appoint and dismiss the prime minister and ministers.” However, according to Afkhami, “over the postwar years it had become the accepted practice for the shah to ask the Majlis to express its preference before he appointed a prime minister.”
Article 46 of the Supplemental Constitutional Law of the Iranian constitution in force at the time was blunt: “The Ministers are appointed and dismissed by the decree of the King.“ The poll noted above to align king and legislature behind a prime minister was “a tentative consent of the majority of the Majlis which was ascertained in the form of a vote of investiture known in Iran as raye tamayel (“vote of inclination”), prior to the issuance of Royal farman appointing the prime minster,” as Iranian American scholar Sepehr Zabih put it in The Mossadegh Era. Mossadegh scholars Darioush Bayandor and Christopher de Bellaigue call it a straw vote or straw poll.
The Iranian parliament’s role in the choice of a prime minister was similar to, but weaker than, the U.S. Senate’s role in confirming presidential appointments, such as, among others, Supreme Court justices, some cabinet posts, and ambassadors. Yet despite this even stronger legislative role, no one refers to “the democratically elected Justice Samuel Alito,” the “democratically elected Secretary of State Antony Blinken,” or “the democratically elected Ambassador Pamela Harriman.”
This fetishistic formulation, applied to Mossadegh is even odder, for reasons that are worth examining. First, though, it’s worth retracing Mossadegh’s steps on his way out of power.
The story of Mossadegh’s departure from power is notorious among Middle East scholars, on par with the JFK assassination or abdication of Edward VIII. Hence retelling it is a little laborious, with sensationalism vying in a death match with numbing familiarity.
Once in power, Mossadegh quickly achieved national hero status by getting a bill through the Majles nationalizing the Iranian oil industry. However, negotiations with the British Anglo-Iranian Oil Company, AIOC, went in circles over details such as management and future compensation to the British. As the U.S. worked with the British toward a solution, the Brits were annoyed by the Washington upstart’s idealism towards Mossadegh, while Washington was peeved by London’s anachronistic, patronizing greed.
The U.S finally dispatched Averell Harriman to work with Mossadegh toward a resolution. The canny old man’s posturing and slippery illogic inclined the Americans to sense that he plainly did not want an agreement. As the Iranian prime minister himself conceded, he was wary of “my fanatics” in the Iranian polity who would kill him for making concessions. Harriman went home empty-handed, and Eisenhower soon replaced Truman.
The British, having been talked out of military action by the Yanks, pulled AIOC staff out of Iran. The British pullout and boycott, combined with the lack of domestic Iranian expertise to produce or market oil, proved catastrophic for the economy, as increased production in Iraq, Kuwait, and Saudi Arabia made the renamed National Iranian Oil Company, NIOC, irrelevant. Mosaddegh and his advisers were blind to these realities amid the nirvana of unanimous domestic support for their anti-imperialist bluster. Worse, his decision to end the oil talks were a signal event for Washington, who now joined London in seeing the prime minister as unstable and untrustworthy.
As the political and economic tides turned against him, Mossadegh sparred with the shah over who had the right to appoint the minister of war. This demand was a red line for the shah, who prized the military as his key constituency. The prime minister resigned in protest, but his brinkmanship got him what he wanted, his job back along with power over the War Ministry. He was quick to rename it the Ministry of Defense and appoint himself to head it, cut its budget by 15%, purge the services of 136 officers, install men loyal to himself, including his nephew General Vossuq (whom he named assistant minister), and obtain six months’ emergency powers, including the power to legislate. He then dismissed the Supreme Court, and, lacking support in the Majles, sought to dissolve it, too—a power that the constitution reserved to the shah.
This was the beginning of the end for the prime minister who spoke eloquently of democracy but, when given opportunities to exercise it, always showed a dictatorial bent. Claiming to seek legitimacy not from the legislature but from “the people,” Mossadegh set up a national referendum on dissolving the Majles, with no secret ballot: Yes and no votes were cast in different locations. Mossadegh’s stacked referendum gave him a landslide victory, which cost him the support of the Shia clergy, the National Front coalition, and even family members. Sattareh Farmanfarmaian, his niece, wrote in her memoir, Daughter of Persia, of how “wretched” she felt over this betrayal. Majles Speaker Ayatollah Kashani denounced him, and his former National Front allies called him a “worse dictator than Reza Shah.”
Having lost nearly all political support except the communist Tudeh party, and with even his pro-oil nationalization supporters split, Mossadegh found himself with a reduced base composed of radical supporters and an increasingly united front opposing him: the clergy, the military, and the bazaar, with the U.S. and Britain now both solidly behind the monarch. Most importantly, the absence of a functioning Majles offered the shah an opening to remove his unpopular prime minister.
Previously, the shah had rejected repeated advice, domestic and foreign, to fire Mossadegh, though it was within his constitutional powers. There had already been 14 recess appointments or dismissals of prime minister, which Mossadegh knew well, but he boasted that the shah would not “have the guts” to dismiss him. His bluff backfired. Absent a parliament, Mossadegh could now be removed from power. All it took was royal will.
Despite the cresting of the feud between Mossadegh and the now less-deferential young shah, the latter hesitated to oust his prime minister. The British succeeded in persuading Eisenhower to connive against Mossadegh. Hands-off Ike bucked the conversation down to the working level, which was the Dulles brothers, Alan and John Foster, and the operational components of the CIA. London favored some form of a palace coup, using its network of Iranian agents, who with the rupture of Tehran-London relations had been passed to the local CIA station for handling.
The agency was barely six years old and years away from having its own headquarters in Langley. Still, it had already adopted practices like the secretive use of cryptonyms to conceal identities.
Long since declassified, TPBEDAMN was an anti-communist covert influence program in Iran. KGSAVOY was the shah, and TPAJAX was the plan for the rather tame machination—far removed from a British military invasion—to remove Mohammed Mossadegh from power legally and constitutionally, by persuading the shah to use his prerogative to replace him.
Enter RNMAKER, true name Kermit “Kim” Roosevelt, Teddy’s grandson and no stranger to the sandbox. In his book Arabs, Oil, and History (1949), he devoted a chapter to Iran, which in his telling is one of the “fringe lands,” as a Muslim but non-Arab country in the suburbs of the Middle East (there are Iranians who would punch him in the nose for this alone). On a trip through Iran, Kim is lectured by ragged tribals about bad royal priorities: “Why does [the shah] not give away some of his lands? Or spend what he spends for a B-17 on a program to combat trachoma?” Our good listener and deft name-dropper tells us that on a recent visit to the country, “The shah had told me much the same thing … As long as Iranian people are ill-fed, ill-clothed, ill-educated and just plain ill there could be no real security against outside aggression.”
In a subsequent book, Countercoup: The Struggle for the Control of Iran, published in 1979, Roosevelt detailed the course of his plotting. Like Stephen Kinzer’s 2003 book All the Shah’s Men: An American Coup and the Roots of Middle East Terror, which relies heavily on Roosevelt, it is overly padded and suffers from what H.R. McMaster would call strategic narcissism—the tendency to put the United States at the center of everything, deserving of both glory and blame, whether rightly or wrongly. Fittingly, McMaster uses the term, in his book Battlegrounds, to describe the posture toward Iran adopted by President Obama (who we shall see would also weigh in on the Mossadegh affair).
A good example of this world view occurred in the movie Shakespeare in Love, where we see the cast of Romeo and Juliet taking a break in a tavern. When the portly actor who plays the nurse is asked by a fellow drinker, “So what’s the play about, then?” he starts to explain, “Well, you see, there’s this nurse … “
This gets to the heart of the narratives around Mossadegh’s political demise. The isolated prime minister was entirely correct in his complaints to everyone from the shah to Harriman that he was being plotted against. Ray Takeyh writes that Mossadegh’s coming ouster was “the worst-kept secret in Iran.” While Roosevelt strategically and narcissistically spins tales of CIA plotting in Washington and London and secret meetings with the shah, the Iranian army brass was already assessing its options against Mossadegh, and had even approached the British Embassy in Tehran for support. Grand Ayatollah Borujerdi in Qom, Ayatollah Behbehani in Tehran, and Ayatollah Kashani, who had been dismissed from his Majles speaker post by Mossadegh, had already lined up against him.
One of the best accounts of the movement to oust Mossadegh is in Ervand Abrahamian’s Iran Between Two Revolutions, and in a dozen dense pages he scarcely mentions the CIA. Having inherited the (still closed) British Embassy’s human intelligence network, the CIA station in Tehran, in the person of Roosevelt, held secret meetings and moved some money around. Yet the already-existing network, meeting in the capital’s Officers Club, lacked neither motivation nor money. Abrahamian notes that Roosevelt’s support did help Major General Fazlollah Zahedi—the declared candidate to replace Mossadegh—win over key allies such as Imperial Guards Commander Nassiri, Air Force Chief Gilanshah, gendarmerie Chief Colonel Ardubadi, secret police Chief Mu’tazed, and the senior tank commanders of the Tehran army garrison.
The TPAJAX plan unfolded on the night of Aug. 15. Colonel Nassiri arrived at Mossadegh’s house with the royal edict, or farman, signed by the shah. This one dismissed Mossadegh as prime minister, another appointed Zahedi to replace him. Despite the weird circumstances—it was nearly midnight, and Nassiri was accompanied by two truckloads of soldiers—this was a legal and constitutional action. But because it was the worst-kept secret in Iran, Mossadegh had been tipped off. Tudeh had penetrations of the Imperial Guard and the military, according to Bayandor, and Abrahamian even names the leaker, one Captain Mehdi Homayouni. (Mossadegh may have had multiple sources—senior Tudeh leader Noredin-Kianuri claimed in his memoirs that he too had personally tipped off Mossadegh.) Mossadegh signed a receipt for the edict but refused to comply, and his men placed Nassiri under arrest.
The plan had failed, and the Americans had no plan B. Roosevelt was asked to return to Washington but preferred to stay in Tehran. The CIA passed a memo to Eisenhower conceding the failure and assessing that the U.S. would “probably have to snuggle up to Mossadegh.” The U.S. ambassador, Loy Henderson, who like the shah had sat out the operation abroad, returned to Tehran to meet on the 16th with Mossadegh, who denied having ever seen the royal edict dismissing him, but went on to say that even if he had and if it were real, he would have ignored it. When Henderson gave his account of the meeting to the media, he pointedly omitted the title of prime minister when referring to Mossadegh. Despite all the confusion and contradiction, the underlying fact was that Zahedi was the legitimate prime minister of Iran.
That was Roosevelt’s focus for the next couple of days. He arranged for photostats of the two farmans to be circulated to local newspapers, who published them. Skeptics of the Roosevelt legend point out that the only papers the CIA could suborn were low-circulation organs in south Tehran and thus of limited citywide influence.
On Aug. 19, demonstrations and counterdemonstrations broke out in Tehran, eventually converging on the radio station and Mossadegh’s house in Kakh (Palace) Street, which was defended by tanks. If Mossadegh’s fall is analogous to the JFK assassination, 109 Palace Street was Dealey Plaza. Violence broke out, and dozens were killed. The former prime minister’s house was damaged by gunfire. In the late afternoon, a tearful Mossadegh heard the public radio broadcast of Zahedi’s victory speech saying that Mossadegh’s “coup” had failed. He learned, but refused to believe, that his relative, the police chief Col. Daftary, had turned against him. When his house was overrun, he fled and turned himself in to Zahedi’s government the next day. He was treated respectfully.
Before flying home, the shah sent telegrams to Grand Ayatollah Borujerdi and Ayatollah Behbehani. The more senior ayatollah responded with elaborately polite hopes that the shah could now put an end to the country’s ills and bring glory to Islam. He closed, “Do return as Shiism and Islam need you. You are the Shiite sovereign.”
More than one Iranian historian has derided Roosevelt’s memoir as “prophecy made after the fact,” and Afkhami complained that “[t]his false history, fostered by pro-Mosaddeq Iranians and liberal and leftist westerners, has diminished Mosaddeq, demonized the shah, and turned Iranians into traitors or wimps.”
The highly detailed, if also highly redacted, U.S. government histories of the so-called coup make the same point. While rich on details of secret travels and meetings, money changing hands, successive British and American drafts of the TPAJAX plans, and intragovernmental communications, all of them—the National Security Archives’ “Secret History of the Iran Coup, 1953” of 2000, “Zendebad, Shah!” by the CIA history staff, partially declassified in 2017, and “Planning and Implementation of Operation TPAJAX, March-August 1953,” an archive of documents published by the Office of the Historian of the State Department, all concur that it is impossible to establish who, if anyone, was directing the protests and mob actions on the fateful and chaotic day.
In retrospect, Roosevelt did himself no favors in Countercoup. He places himself at the center of the action, including instances that stretch the imagination. He gives us a shah who spends long evenings listening to him and gushing with praise, as well as a remarkable instance of him lying to the monarch: In a final meeting before the ruler left Tehran and Nassiri would start enforcing the two royal edicts, Roosevelt lacked a message from Eisenhower, so he made one up. “Since [Eisenhower] had failed to send one, I put into words what he must surely be feeling,” he wrote. His fabricated message from the president to the king was, “If the Pahlavis and the Roosevelts working together cannot solve this little problem, then there is no hope anywhere!” That he chose to publish it just as the shah was overthrown provided the nascent Islamic Republic and its partisans with yet more reasons to hate America. Eisenhower, who had died a decade prior, would have been furious.
It is unsettling that the cult of democratic Mossadegh exists, even in the United States. When I asked a friend of mine who served as the CIA’s chief of Iran analysis—albeit more in the Qassem Soleimani than the Mohammed Mossadegh era—to explain this bizarre interpretive slant, he blamed “bias” and “an overinflated view of U.S. power and influence,” which he called “bullshit.” He added, “Whatever the wisdom of U.S. and UK involvement in his ouster—which was likely near at hand even absent foreign involvement—his removal from power sparked mostly public indifference and some celebration. His contemporaries, including many former supporters, were glad to see him go. Mossadegh’s fictional status as a victimized, heroic advocate of democracy was only later cynically conferred by those who sought and supported the decidedly undemocratic dictatorship that rules Iran today.”
Reuel Gerecht, another former CIA observer, but from the operational side, put it this way: “Look, the focus on ’53 among Iranians is primarily a reflection of, one, left-wing, tier-mondiste critique of American power after the Vietnam War went south—starting in the West before it started in Iran—and two, the growing dissatisfaction among Iranian leftists, most tellingly the Islamic left, with the course of the revolution. Imagining Mossadegh triumphing allowed them to see a democratic Iran where the Shah and Khomeini, Khamenei, Rafsanjani, et al, get deleted.”
Back home, there is a thread that runs through the Mossadegh literature, from Roosevelt’s and Kinzer’s wildly tendentious accounts, down to Shahzad Aziz’s In the Land of the Ayatollahs Tupac Shakur Is King, and even the Cambridge History of Iran. The thread combines hindsight versus historical context to connect American villainy, lack of Iranian agency, and an alarmist view of the future, always panicking about the folly of Washington’s next terrible moves but never Tehran’s. And then there is the purely magical phenomenon of those who loathe the CIA and its operatives yet who naively take Kim Roosevelt’s self-centered memoirs at face value. American spies overthrow democratically elected governments, but they never tell a lie.
The enduring myth is that the CIA dispatched its serpent, Kim Roosevelt, into a democratic Iranian Garden of Eden, and everything bad that happened over the next half-century can be attributed to this original sin.
The enduring myth is that the CIA dispatched its serpent, Kim Roosevelt, into a democratic Iranian Garden of Eden, and everything bad that happened over the next half-century can be attributed to this original sin. (The “original sin” metaphor is everywhere—The New York Times even worked it into Ardeshir Zahedi’s obituary). On this, the tier-mondistes, American progressives, and Qajar memoirists all agree. A quick sampling:
Not only did Kinzer blame Mossadegh’s fall for the Islamic Revolution, he wrote that “From the seething streets of Tehran and the other Islamic capitals to the scenes of terror attacks around the world, Operation Ajax has left a haunting and terrible legacy.” His book is a warning against the U.S. projecting power—fair enough—but not satisfied with blaming the September 11 attacks on the Mossadegh action, his reissued 2018 edition contains a new and unhinged preface titled “The Folly of Attacking Iran.” In it, he slays vast legions of straw men, such as “the idea of attacking Iran and seeking to decapitate its regime,” which, he judiciously informs us, is “dangerous.”
I served in two of the most hawkishly anti-Iran administrations, Bush 43 and Trump, and while we heard out a foreign ally or two talk about hitting Iran’s nuclear program, no one spoke of anything more than that, and in fact no U.S. president, as we have seen, has ever agreed with those foreign allies, or done more than a single targeted attack against an internationally sanctioned Iranian terrorist.
In a similar but also unhinged and infinitely more turgid work, Going to Tehran, the team of Flynt and Hillary Leverett castigate Washington for overthrowing the democratically elected prime minister. The entire book makes the case for the U.S. to fold to the ayatollahs and for the U.S. president actually to go to Tehran, something the Tehran regime would never dream of allowing. Leverett is a former CIA analyst who has been wandering toward Code Pink territory for years now.
Obama repeats the “democratically elected” canard more than once in his memoir A Promised Land, unsurprisingly from the leader who would use the feckless John Kerry to negotiate the weak JCPOA and seek a legacy of accommodation with the regime. Those who recall Obama’s speech to the Muslim world in Cairo will remember that he not only mentioned Mossadegh but used Kinzerian wording.
Also unsurprisingly, Princeton University’s unsavory Hossein Mousavian, who served as Iran’s ambassador to Berlin during the Mykonos Café massacre of dissidents, wrote in his Iran and the United States (in which he denies that Tehran ordered the Mykonos killings or the Khobar Towers bombing), “the 1953 coup that toppled Iran’s first democratically elected government.” His whole book pleads the wounded innocence of the Islamic Republic.
Dabashi, unsurprisingly, lines up with Mousavaian on Mossadegh, with the difference that he opposes the Islamic regime, though he shares the mullahs’ hatred for Israel. He outdoes Kinzer in alarmism, lobbing brickbats not only at “warmongers” but at “native informers, imperial strategists”—Azar Nafisi and Ken Pollack—Bernard Lewis, and “self-loathing Oriental” Fouad Ajami. (He also thinks Salman Rushdie is Pakistani.)
Even innocuous books by writers with no apparent agenda repeat the error. Akbar Ganji, Mark Bowden, and Scott Peterson have all done it. I have a gripe with the monumental Cambridge History of Iran, whose chapter “The Pahlavi Autocracy” by Gavin R.G. Hambly tells us that “Iranians have never had the slightest doubt that the C.I.A. … organized the conspirators and paid the pro-Shah mobs … By 1982 this tenacious rumor had been fully confirmed and is now incontrovertible.” Hambly footnotes Roosevelt’s book, seeming to take its contents at face value.
For neutrality, readers must turn to the relatively obscure work of Diarioush Bayandor—fittingly, a resident of Switzerland—who possesses the most impartial moral sense among all Mossadegh historians. In his fastidiously sourced Iran and the CIA: The Fall of Mossadegh Revisited (2010), he delivers the verdict, that while “It is fair to conclude that even if the Shah’s dismissal order was not stricto sensu unconstitutional … it was a feature of a foreign scheme to bring about a change of government” and thus was of questionable legitimacy.
However harsh that is—and it is distinctly harsh, considering that at no time did the shah ever breach the laws of his country, while Mossadegh did promiscuously, and unapologetically—facts remain: Mossadegh was not democratically elected. He was not a democrat. He was not overthrown by the CIA, but by domestic forces he had repeatedly manipulated or misunderstood, and who welcomed a foreign hand of unmeasurable and uneven utility.
The controversy lives on in late prime minister’s story as told on stage and screen. The film Mossadegh, directed by Roozbeh Dadvand, recounts the man’s final days in under 30 beautifully shot minutes, but the opening title cards contain the jarring untruth that Mossadegh was “overthrown from power by U.S. and British forces.” Reza Allamehzadeh’s moving play Mossadegh concluded with his trial. When the military prosecutor tried to shame Mossadegh for his foreign minister’s having proclaimed that Iran no longer wanted a king (by then His Majesty had fled Tehran), Mossadegh brought the audience to its feet with the taunt, “And where was this king for anyone to want or not want him?”
Sentimentality toward Mossadegh is understandable. His nationalization project boosted the morale of a proud and often-humiliated country. He did seek a system with a weaker king, although more to gain power for himself than to pass it on to the people. He undoubtedly won hearts and minds with small acts of integrity like making his aristocratic mother pay her back taxes. Even more endearing is the incident when his daughter reported to him an altercation with a policeman who didn’t buy her “Do you know who I am?” defense. She demanded her father act, and he did—rewarding the cop with a promotion for his honesty. But character is fate. The prime minister had a deep strain of decency, but was an inept visionary who overplayed his hand.
Peter Theroux is a translator and writer in suburban Los Angeles. After more than 20 years in the U.S. government, he was awarded the Career Intelligence Medal.
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Myth vs. Reality:
Mossadegh Was Not Democratically Elected—And He Undermined Iran’s Recognition of Israel Much of the Western narrative surrounding Iran’s modern history rests on a myth: that Mohammad Mossadegh was a democratically elected leader overthrown in an illegal coup. This is both factually and constitutionally false.
Mossadegh was appointed by Mohammad Reza Shah Pahlavi—not elected by popular vote—under the authority granted to the Shah in the 1906 Constitution and its 1907 Supplementary Laws. According to Article 46, as cited in a declassified CIA constitutional analysis (CIA-RDP80T00942A000600070002-0): “The appointment and dismissal of Ministers is effected by virtue of the Royal Decree of the King.” Article 48 affirms: “The Ministers cannot continue in their functions unless they have the confidence of the King…” And Article 45 clarifies: “Ministers are responsible to the National Consultative Assembly, in addition to being responsible to the King.”
In short, the Shah had full legal authority to both appoint and dismiss Mossadegh without parliamentary consent or a coup. He didn’t need a coup. The constitutional monarchy gave the King executive power over ministerial appointments, and Mossadegh served at the pleasure of the monarch, not as a sovereign. But Mossadegh’s problematic legacy doesn’t end with constitutional mythmaking. In 1950, under Mohammad Reza Shah, Iran granted de facto recognition to the State of Israel, becoming the second Muslim-majority country to do so after Turkey. This pragmatic and forward-looking move signaled Iran’s alignment with sovereign diplomacy and modern statehood, rather than Arab nationalist or Islamist ideology. Just one year later, Mossadegh reversed that recognition. In 1951, his government revoked de facto ties with Israel, withdrew the Iranian envoy, and aligned Iran with the anti-Israel Arab bloc, which was heavily infused with antisemitic and anti-Western rhetoric. As documented in historical accounts, Mossadegh viewed Israel not as a sovereign state, but as a tool of Western imperialism—a view echoed by Arab nationalists like Nasser. His policies alienated Iran from the Jewish state and undermined the Shah’s vision of Iran as a regional mediator, not a partisan actor. So let’s set the record straight:
1.) Mossadegh was not elected. He was appointed by royal decree.
2.) His dismissal was constitutional, not a coup.
3.) He revoked Iran’s recognition of Israel and embraced the language of ideological extremism.
It’s time to separate history from mythology. Mossadegh may have opposed foreign oil control—but that doesn’t make him a democrat, and it certainly doesn’t absolve him of pushing Iran toward ideological isolation.
Iranian constitution https://cia.gov/readingroom/docs/CIA-RDP80T00942A000600070002-0.pdf…
Annulment of Israel’s recognition by Mossadegh https://jta.org/archive/iran-reported-ready-to-extend-diplomatic-recognition-to-israel?utm_source=chatgpt.com…
Remembering a CIA Coup in Iran That Never Was https://tabletmag.com/sections/israel-middle-east/articles/cia-coup-in-iran-that-never-was-mossadegh
Mosaddegh: The Coup That Failed
August 15, 2020
Iran — PM Mohammed Mossadegh during court hearing on November 11, 1953 Photo: AFP
In the early morning hours of August 16, 1953, Colonel Nematollah Nassiri, the commander of the Imperial Guard, delivered a decree hand-signed by Mohammad Reza Shah Pahlavi to the office of the Prime Minister, Mohammad Mosaddegh. It was an order for the Prime Minister’s dismissal. Hours earlier, Nassiri had handed over another signed order from the Shah to Major General Fazlollah Zahedi, according to which Zahedi was appointed Prime Minister. Fearing the forces loyal to Mosaddegh, Zahedi had been hiding in a safehouse.
Mosaddegh did not accept Nassiri in person and instead, ordered Colonel Momtaz, who was part of the Prime Minister’s Office’s Security Guard, to take the order from Nassiri and bring it to him. He then read the letter, didn’t utter a word, put it in the drawer of his desk, and wrote on a piece of paper, “I received Your Majesty’s correspondence at one o’clock in the morning on August 16, 1953. Dr. Mohammad Mosaddegh.”
He handed the paper over to Momtaz to give back to Nassiri. He then calmly ordered the arrest of Nassiri, who was sitting in the other room drinking tea (Houchang Nahavandi 2013).
The Shah with foresight had ordered the dismissal of Mosaddegh and the appointment of Zahedi from his Kelardasht villa. Nassiri was tasked with delivering the order in-person to the Prime Minister in Tehran. At around 4 in the morning, the Imperial Guard reported to the Shah that the mission assigned to Colonel Nassiri had been unsuccessful.
The Shah immediately awoke Empress Soraya and informed her that they had to depart. Kelardasht did not have an airport. Only a flat empty lot was available for landing and takeoff of small aircrafts. The Shah and the Empress boarded a small plane with Major Khatam (Royal Pilot and Future General) and flew to Ramsar.
At around 6 am, they flew from Ramsar to Baghdad on Shah’s dual engine aircraft. In Baghdad, King Faisal received him with reverence. The Shah stayed in Iraq for only one day, and after a brief pilgrimage to Imam Hussein’s shrine in Karbala, he flew to Rome (quoted in the previous reference).
Overcast Conditions
The Shah had never imagined a day in which he would be forced to order the removal of his Prime Minister in the dead of the night and be stripped of safety and security in his own country.
In history, the origin of no event is simplistic and conspicuous because every starting point has its own antecedent. In the first 12 years of his reign, the young Shah, who was educated in Europe and had a Swiss upbringing, did not rule as an absolute ruler by any means and the constitutional monarchy worked by and large. Some may argue that somewhat similar to European kings, at the time the Shah viewed himself as merely a symbol of national unity and guardianship and tasked with safeguarding the proper implementation of the constitution. Yet, maintaining such a delicate balance was not that straightforward, as Iran was not Europe.
His reign began with the Allied occupation of Iran at the height of World War II. With the help of savvy statesmen like Mohammad Ali Foroughi, the young Shah secured an official commitment from the occupying Allies to leave Iran within 6 months after the end of war. This was not so hard to do since for the West, this was a tactical move to force the Soviets out of northern Iran. The United States and Great Britain fulfilled their commitments, but the Soviet Union had no intention of leaving Iran so easily. In Tehran and throughout Iran, communists formed the Tudeh Party, which did not hide its admiration for the “Great Leader” and Comrade, Joseph Stalin. The Tudeh Party’s branches were especially active in Kurdistan and Azerbaijan provinces, which at the time were occupied by the Red Army. Indeed, party members formally convened under Vladimir Lenin and Stalin’s wall portraits. They declared Iran a “multinational” state, and launched campaigns and provocations to free the Iranian “nations” from “Tehran’s tyranny.”
In Azerbaijan, the Azerbaijan Democratic Party, founded by Ja’far Pishevari, declared autonomy and effectively disarmed and occupied the military barracks and forts of the Imperial Iranian Army. In a very small section of Kurdistan, Qazi Mohammad declared the “Republic of Mahabad.” Eventually, Prime Minister Ahmad Qavam (Qavam al-Saltaneh) used clever diplomacy and took advantage of the growing rift between the Soviet Union and the United States to checkmate Stalin. The Red Army subsequently withdrew from Iran in 1946 and in due course, the separatist pandemonium subsided (Jahanshahlou, 2006). In 1949, a member of the Tudeh Party made an assassination attempt against the Shah. Five shots were fired at Iran’s monarch, two of which hit him: one in the face and the other in the back. He miraculously survived and recovered quickly (Mohammad Reza Shah, Mission for my Country, 1961).
The Rain Before the Storm
Another crisis was brewing; this time over petroleum. In 1949, Iran’s then Minister of Finance, Abbas Gholi Golshaeian, signed a draft adjunct contract with the Anglo-Iranian Oil Company (formerly Anglo-Persian Oil Company), which gave some concessions to Iran and increased Iran’s share of the oil. However, some Iranian parliamentarians did not consider it sufficient, and the agreement was not going to be official unless ratified by Iran’s Parliament.
In 1950, General Haj Ali Razmara was elected Prime Minister and charged with sorting out the oil industry and the agreement that was in a standstill. Razmara’s belief was that when Iran lacked the most rudimentary technical and managerial expertise to explore, extract, refine, and export petroleum, nationalizing the oil industry was little more than an empty slogan.
Mosaddegh deeply resented Razmara. As a member of the Parliament, he once threatened Razmara’s life in an angry outburst amidst an official parliamentary session: “God is witness, even if we are killed, even if we are shredded into threads, we shall not submit to the rule of such a person (Razmara). We shall shed blood and we shall spill blood. If you (Razmara) are a soldier, I am more militant. I will kill you right here.” Razamara was taken aback by Mosaddegh’s threat and pointed out to him that despite his vast wealth and influence as a Qajar prince, he had done very little to help the poor in Iran.
Only a few months after this confrontation, Razmara was assassinated. On March 7, 1951, Khalil Tahmassebi who was a member of the Devotees of Islam – an Islamist terrorist faction founded by a theology student named Navvab Safavi – shot and killed Prime Minister Razmara with 3 bullets at the Shah Mosque in Tehran. By this time, relations between Mosaddegh’s National Front and the Devotees had warmed up. At a private meeting with Safavi held shortly before Razmara’s assassination, most members of the National Front agreed on behalf of Mosaddegh that any political decision made in that congregation would be unconditionally binding (Memoir of Ezzatollah Sahabi 2009).
After Razmara’s assassination, Seyyed Hossein Fatemi, Mosaddegh’s associate, confidant, and Foreign Minister wrote an editorial in Bakhtar-e Emrooz newspaper in praise of the slaying. He boasted that “selfless militant youth” were willing to “remove the stains of disgrace,” even at the cost of their own blood.
The Thunders
Shortly after Razmara’s assassination, Mosaddegh became Prime Minister. Initially, he enjoyed the majority’s support in the Parliament. One of the first pieces of legislation that Mosaddeghand his allies in the Parliament passed was to officially pardon Tahmassebi — who had been arrested at the scene of Razmara’s murder — and facilitate his release from custody. The legislation contended Razamara had committed treason against the nation and hence his elimination was justified. It further obliged the government to financially provide for Tahmassebi’s “comfort and livelihood” for the rest of his life.
Subsequently, Tahmasebi was released from prison, recognized as a national hero, and received a steady stipend from the Mossadegh administration. The Ettela’at newspaper reported on Sunday, October 27, 1952 that “Mr. Tahmassebi has met with the Prime Minister, Dr. Mohammad Mosaddegh.”
Although there is no evidence of Mossadegh’s personal involvement in ordering the assassination of Razamara, the actions of his political block in condoning the killing made him politically responsible. However, this did not stop him from pursuing his agenda.
He was hardly content with nationalizing Iran’s oil industry alone, an endeavor that was looked upon favorably by the Shah himself. Mosaddegh had more ambitious and controversial goals in mind. With the passage of the act to take over the Abadan Refinery and other assets of the Anglo-Iranian Oil Company, Mosaddegh sought to expel all British engineers, managers and technicians from Iran. This action effectively shut down Iran’s oil industry on the one hand, and at Britain’s instigation, led to international sanctions on Iran on the other. Furthermore, all of Iran’s shares of the Anglo-Iranian Oil Company outside the country were lost.
Hague’s International court meets on Persian oil dispute
Mosaddegh would not consent to any agreement or overture meant to arbitrate between Iran and the British. He even rejected a proposal by the United States to a 50/50 share of the profits between the Iranian government and the Anglo-Iranian Oil Company. Mosaddegh feared that accepting any agreement with the West would be viewed by his comrades as submission to Western colonialism. Given his rigid posture and being left with little options, Mosaddegh’s government acquiesced to sell oil to China’s communist government at a fraction of the market value. A major obstacle, however, was transporting the petroleum to China. China did not have oil tankers; most of the world’s tankers at the time belonged to Britain. Other countries that owned tankers were reluctant to transport Iranian oil fearing secondary sanctions and the possibility of upsetting their partnership with Britain.
Due to sanctions and the closure of the oil industry, Iran’s economy suffered a deep recession and the value of Iran’s national currency fell by a third. To resolve the crisis, Mosaddegh’s government began issuing national bonds. However, when the sale of those bonds proved inadequate, he illegally and without collateral began printing money, bypassing the Parliament’s consent and without consultation with National Bank’s economists. As a result, the economy fell from recession to inflationary recession.
The already-dire situation escalated to a point at which Mosaddegh was in war with all the branches of the constitutionalist system. Concurrent with his role as the Prime Minister, he took over the Ministry of War to expand his influence over the military. He suspended the highest judicial authority in Iran, the Supreme Court, and dismissed high-ranking judges. He placed so much pressure on the Shah until he obtained the Shah’s consent to dissolve the Senate. Although early in his term as Prime Minister, he had made a steadfast commitment to freedom of press – even when he was the target of criticism and insults – Mosaddegh later requested and was given special authority by the Parliament to penalize newspapers. Even more egregious, Mosaddegh organized a battalion of thugs who were occasionally dispatched to newspaper bureaus to vandalize the property and intimidate employees (Memoirs of Shaban Jafari, 2002).
The Gathering Storm
Eventually, internal and external crises converged to a juncture at which the same Parliament that had elected him Prime Minister began to vehemently oppose him. He also lost the support of his longtime ally, Ayatollah Abol-Qassem Kashani, a hardline cleric with anti-imperialist and anti-colonial leanings. Mosaddegh’s relationship with members of Parliament became so strained that he often avoided attending the National Assembly and communicating with lawmakers (Ali Mirfetros 2008).
Mosaddegh predicted that the National Assembly would soon dismiss him and decided to preemptively dissolve the Parliament. According to the constitution of Iran at the time, the Prime Minister did not have the authority to dissolve the Parliament, from which he received his legitimacy. Moreover, in the history of Iran after the Constitutional Revolution of 1906, there was never an instance wherein a Prime Minister would dissolve the Parliament.
Many of his advisors and staunch supporters warned him about this decision. Parliament Speaker Abdollah Moazami, who was close to Mossadegh, strongly opposed the dissolution of the Parliament and urged Mosaddegh to resolve his differences with lawmakers through mediation.
Mosaddegh undermined an important tradition in the constitutional system of Iran according to which the Shah had the authority to dismiss and replace the Prime Minister during an interregnum, when the Parliament did not exist. Ahmad Shah Qajar had previously used this privilege in extended periods of time when there was no Parliament due to war or other crises. During World War I, Ahmad Shah dismissed and installed a dozen Prime Ministers in the course of an interregnum lasting 6 years, from 1915 to 1921.
Many more friends and supporters of Mosaddegh warned him against his decision to dissolve the Parliament. Another member of the Parliament and ardent ally of Mosaddegh, Karim Sanjabi, visited him at his residence and cautioned him that if he dissolves the Parliament, he may face dismissal by the Shah or potentially a coup d’état. According to Sanjabi, Mosaddegh told him that the Shah lacked the courage to dismiss him and in case of a coup, he had the people’s unconditional support. He then angrily expelled a stunned Sanjabi from his house (Homayoun Katouzian, BBC Persian, 2014).
Overall, Mosaddegh was aware of the Shah’s legal authority to dismiss him during an interregnum, but largely relied on the belief that he was a national hero and hence the Shah did not dare to dismiss him.
In any case, Mosaddegh had made his decision and in early August 1953, held a referendum for dissolution of the Parliament. Neither the Parliament nor the Shah had approved this referendum. Moreover, the method for conducting the vote was outlandish. Not only were the ballot boxes for “yay” and “nay” votes separate, but even the precincts for each vote were different. In other words, to vote “yay,” one had to go to one location in the city; and to vote “nay,” he was to travel to another. Subsequently, the anonymity of the voting process, which is the foundation of democracy, was completely violated.
The Storm
Let us go back to the beginning of the article. After Mosaddegh arrested the messenger, Colonel Nassiri, he gave the necessary orders and instructions to Army Chief of Staff Brigadier General Riahi who was appointed by and loyal to him. He then went to bed. He woke up around 6 in the morning and summoned the director of the national radio, telling him that he had been removed from the post of Prime Minister and wanted to convey his last message to the people before departure.
A short message was recorded in which Mosaddegh informed the Iranian people that he had been dismissed by the Shah and asked them to take their fates into their own hands. Yet, the message was never broadcast. Meanwhile, Fatemi and several other loyal supporters of “The Leader” arrived in haste and inquired about the incident. Fatemi who was the most zealous of the bunch protested strongly against Mosaddegh’s decision to resign and told him he is the legitimate Prime Minister and no one can dismiss him. And so began Mosaddegh’s rule as de facto Prime Minister and ruler of Iran without the approval of the Shah or the Parliament.
It was there and then that a decision was made to conceal the Shah’s order of dismissal from the public, as well as from Mosaddegh’s cabinet ministers. Instead, they threw in a red herring. At approximately 7 am, a government statement was broadcast on national radio announcing that the previous night, a coup orchestrated in the Shah’s absence by some members of the Imperial Guard had been thwarted.
From that day on, Mosaddegh’s supporters split into two factions: the more radical group, led by Fatemi, officially declared the Shah a traitor and demanded his official removal, the end of the constitution, and establishment of a republic. Fatemi took part in several large demonstrations with the Tudeh Party between August 16 and 18, believing it was imperative that the National Front and Mossadegh unite with the Tudeh Party to establish a republic. During those demonstrations, large statues of Reza Shah and the young Shah, which had been erected in Tehran’s major squares, were pulled down. Fatemi even suggested Mosaddegh arm members of the Tudeh Party to maximize manpower and use lethal force if necessary. As Mosaddegh’s Foreign Minister at the time, Fatemi also instructed the Iranian Embassies in Iraq and Italy not to let any of the officials greet the Shah and to inform the two host countries that he should be treated as a deposed king. By order of Fatemi, photos of the Shah were taken from all government offices and ministries throughout Iran.
A more moderate faction of Mosaddegh’s allies opposed the republic and sought to form a royal council to replace the Shah. They feared the prospect of Iran’s annexation by the Soviet Union with the help of the Tudeh Party, and believed that proclamation of a republic was tantamount to the Tudeh Party taking over the country’s rule (Houchang Nahavandi, 2013). Mosaddegh himself was in this category. But with respect to exercise of power, the more extremist group led by Fatemi was in charge, as Mosaddegh himself was ill and resting at home.
In those tumultuous days when the news of the Shah’s sudden departure from Iran was spreading like wildfire, a climate of uncertainty was pervasive. In the afternoon of August 18, the inflammatory atmosphere reached its peak. Two proceedings, however, turned the course of events. One, General Zahedi succeeded in making thousands of copies of the Shah’s hand-written and signed order which appointed him as the new Prime Minister and distributed them to the public. Two, a group of bazaar elders sent a message to Grand Ayatollah Hussein Boroujerdi, who was at the time the most prominent Shia authority (Marja’) and rarely interfered in political matters. Based on this communiqué, Boroujerdi recognized that with the way events were unfolding, the country was in the imminent danger of falling into the hands of the Tudeh Party.
He therefore backed the constitutional monarchy, endorsed Zahedi as the legitimate Prime Minister, and allowed bazaar merchants to close their shops and join the protests against Mosaddegh. In addition, a group gathered around the residences of two influential Tehran clerics – Ayatollahs Kashani and Mohammad Behbahani – and from there, marched to seize government offices that were held by Mosaddegh loyalists. Interestingly, Behbahani and Kashani who were bitter rivals had put aside their antagonism and united over their mutual fear of the Tudeh Party taking over the country.
It was not just the traditional bazaar elites and the clergy who were concerned that in absence of the Shah, Mosaddegh may lose control or capitulate to the communists. At the peak of the Cold War era, the West led by the United States could not stay neutral for too long. At the initial stages of the oil crisis in Iran, the US had resisted Britain’s pleas to openly oppose Mosaddegh. However, as the crisis became more volatile and Mosaddegh’s popularity within certain factions of the Iranian society declined,the US administration under the Republican President Eisenhower joined Britain’s Winston Churchill in advocating for Mosaddegh’s dismissal or overthrow. Afterall, with Iran’s massive oil resources and the long borders with the Soviet Union, the US could not risk a destabilized or communist-controlled Iran.
For months, American and British envoys tried persuading the Shah to dismiss Prime Minister Mosaddegh. However, as long as the Parliament had not been dissolved by Mosaddegh, the Shah resisted their requests. The envoys also lobbied with an increasing number of dissatisfied and demoralized Iranian army officers and Generals, giving them assurance that as long as they stay united in opposing Mosaddegh and backing the Shah, they could count on the support of the Western allies. There is also some evidence that the Western envoys contacted several influential clergymen and bazaar elders to assure them of the West’s support for the Shah in opposing Mosaddegh. Shortly after Mosaddegh dissolved the Parliament, the Shah seized the opportunity to officially dismiss Mosaddegh and appoint General Zahedi as the new Prime Minister. The Shah took the risk as he believed that he had the support of some bureaucrats, the bazaar elders, many influential clergymen, the army, and the Western allies behind him.
The Shah’s gamble did pay off eventually, albeit with a few days of delay. Various wings of the armed forces that had encamped in or around Tehran refused to recognize and obey Mosaddegh. When the Parliament was dissolved and the Shah was absent, they saw no reason to follow the orders of a deposed Prime Minister. Pledging allegiance to Mosaddegh also meant confronting fellow servicemen who remained loyal to the Shah and his new Prime Minister, General Zahedi. This would have led to a civil war and widespread bloodshed in Tehran.
The only wing of the armed forces that took practical steps in support of Mossadegh was the Prime Minister’s Residence Guard. A large crowd of Tehran residents gathered around Mosaddegh’s house to seize the main base of the government. The Guard opened fire on the crowd and resisted for several hours. Nearly 40 people, mostly civilians, were killed by Mosaddegh’s Guard (Same as previous reference).
Finally, at around 4:30 pm on August 19, Brigadier General Nosratollah Fooladvand went to Mosaddegh’s residence to advise him that any further resistance was futile and would only lead to more bloodshed. He warned Mosaddegh that resisting surrender would further anger the protesters who may eventually kill him. He called on the deposed Prime Minister to issue a statement announcing the end of his defiance. Mosaddegh, who was bedridden and ill, finally gave in. As a sign of surrender, a piece of Mosaddegh’s white bed sheet was hung above the entrance of his home. He then surreptitiously escaped from the backdoor.
And so, the coup that had begun on August 16 was thwarted on August 19. Mosaddegh’s supporters later called the three-day saga, “the American-backed coup d’état of August 19.”
The Aftermath
Mosaddegh went into hiding. After a few days, the government of General Zahedi made an official plea to Mosaddegh to turn himself in to proper authorities. Zahedi further promised Mosaddegh that his safety was guaranteed and that he would receive the respect deserving of a former Prime Minister. Mosaddegh sent a reply informing Zahedi that he was prepared to surrender. Zahedi warned military officers and staff that anyone who made the slightest unmannerly gesture towards Mosaddegh would be prosecuted by military court and may face the firing squad. A stern military man, Zahedi was not one whose orders were taken lightly by his subordinates. When Mosaddegh surrendered, the soldiers greeted him with military salute and he shook their hands. Zahedi likewise greeted him with the utmost respect (Same as previous reference).
At his trial, Mosaddegh’s infractions were limited to the three days in which he had defied the Shah’s order of dismissal. According to the law, only the Supreme Court could try the Prime Minister and cabinet ministers for breach of duty; the military court lacked such authority. But the military court argued that from August 16 to 19, Mosaddegh was already dismissed and no longer enjoyed the legal privileges of a Prime Minister. At the end, Mosaddegh was sentenced to three years in a private prison in a military barrack, after which he was exiled to his home village of Ahmadabad – 100 kilometers west of Tehran, until his death in 1967.
Deep within, Mosaddegh was a nationalist, but surrounded himself with people who were too close for comfort to the Tudeh Party and by association, the Soviet Union. The ambiguous notion that Mosaddegh was “democratically-elected” stems from the referendum he held for dissolution of the Parliament, in which 99.94% voted in favor. Otherwise, under the parliamentary constitutional monarchy of Iran at the time, no Prime Minister was ever elected. They were all appointed or recommended by the Shah and approved by the Parliament. Abbas Milani argues that Mosaddegh’s referendum had no legal basis and because it had breached the fundamental requirement of a secret ballot, its legitimacy has always been questioned. For that reason, the actual coup d’état was conceivably plotted and executed by Mosaddegh against the Shah, not the other way around. In essence, those three fateful days constituted a coup that failed.
The opinions expressed by the authors do not necessarily reflect the views of Radio Farda
- Shervan FashandiDr. Shervan Fashandi is a political analyst and senior financial consultant based in New York. He serves as a board member of Iranian Americans for Liberty, a political advocacy and research group focused on international policy towards Iran. Dr. Fashandi is a member of the Constitutionalist Party of Iran (Liberal Democrat). FOLLOW Subscribe
- Reza BehrouzDr. Reza Behrouz is an Iranian-American physician and medical researcher in Texas. He serves on the advisory board of Iranian Americans for Liberty and is a member of Constitutionalist Party of Iran (Liberal Democrat). FOLLOW Subscribe
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