June 1951 the Truman administration had concluded that a communist takeover in Iran was a clear and present danger. Thus, President Truman signed NSC-107/2, which determined that “the loss of Iran to the free world is a distinct possibility through an internal communist uprising, possibly growing out of the present indigenous fanaticism or through communist capture of the nationalist movement.”18 A year later, in the waning months of his administration, Truman had come to view Iran as worth defending against Soviet aggression even if it led to global war. NSC-136 and NSC-136/1, signed by the president in late 1952, officially and frankly held that a Soviet invasion of Iran would be cause for war.19 The two directives authorized overt diplomatic and aid programs for Iran as well as covert operations with the specific purpose of countering Soviet influence (but did not authorize any covert action operations aimed at or against the Iranian government). To counter unforeseen moves by the Soviets, the president’s signature also gave contingent authorization for the use of U.S. military forces if warranted by Soviet actions.
From the end of World War II to the final year of the Truman administration, then, a nearly constant series of Soviet provocations directly or indirectly threatening Iran was countered by escalations in American counterpolicies. These policy determinations were shared by Democrats and Republicans, and thus cannot be attributed simply to conservatives attempting to exploit an increasing fear of Communists lurking in the shadows. Senior policymakers of both political parties had no doubt about the seriousness of the situation in Iran. Even now, with the benefit of four decades of history to reconsider, it is difficult to accept an argument that America overreacted to the potential loss of Iran to Soviet control.
On 19 August 1953 the government of Iran, led by Prime Minister Mohammed Mossadegh, was overthrown as the result of Operation TP Ajax, a covert action program instigated by the British and engineered by the CIA (TP being the digraph that denoted Iranian operations and Ajax the operation code name). It was an act that had enormous political and psychological significance in modern Iranian history and was influential in the 1979 capture of the U.S. embassy in Tehran. One trenchant irony, given the emphasis Iranians placed on the coup during the 1978 revolution, is that it was not of much interest to Iranians at the time.
In fact, in 1953 and for years afterward the reversal of Mossadegh’s government was greeted with approbation by a majority of those Iranians who actually cared about or had a stake in their country’s government. (Iran was an undeveloped and provincial country at that time, and in the rural areas beyond Tehran relatively few Iranians were affected by, or even had any knowledge of, occurrences in the capital.) Former director of central intelligence (DCI) and, later, ambassador to Iran Richard M. Helms, a man who certainly knows Iran and Iranians, insists that it was only after the onset of the revolution in 1978 that any sizable number of Iranians began to complain about the 1953 coup. Until then, not only had the people for the most part accepted the shah as their leader, there was also a general consensus that—the history of the region being what it is—the method of his return to power wasn’t anything much to be upset about, either. Charlie Naas, the career Foreign Service officer and expert on Southwest Asia who served first as country director for Iranian affairs at the Department of State for four years and then as deputy chief of mission in Tehran in the final years of the shah’s regime, agrees with Helms. During all of the time he spent observing and participating in Iranian matters, no Iranian ever raised the issue of the 1953 coup with him.1 In other words, Iranians as a population began to condemn the United States for its part in the coup only when it became politically expedient for them to do so.
The coup has been both condoned and condemned. Critics argue that it was wrong for the United States to overthrow a government of perceived legitimacy for seemingly narrow interests, and insist that the oppressive policies of the shah afterward, particularly with respect to human rights issues and the dictatorship he maintained, prove their point. They claim that the return of the shah ended any possibility that Iran might have evolved into a more democratic form of government with institutions respectful of the civil rights and liberties of its citizens. Indeed, on 17 March 2000 President Bill Clinton’s secretary of state, Madeleine Albright, came very close to apologizing for the coup when she acknowledged the role the United States played in it and declared that the coup was “clearly a setback for Iran’s political development.”2 The critics also assert that Mossadegh was not a Communist and insist that there was little or no possibility that Communists would have gained control of the Iranian government under his rule. In sum, the coup was an unnecessary (if not illegal or immoral) act of governmental power that was fomented on insupportable grounds.
In rebuttal, there is first the obvious point that the future of Iran with Mossadegh in charge—or Iran without the coup, for that matter, whether Mossadegh or someone else was in power—was and is unknowable. Claims that Iran would have developed into a Western-style democracy or some other acceptable form of government, and that this other government would have been more respectful of human rights and liberties, are speculations, if not wishful thinking. Never in the millennia of its existence had Iran experienced any sustained period of democratic self-government, nor had it demonstrated an adherence to principles that today would be recognized as endorsing human rights and civil liberties. It exceeds mere optimism to postulate that Mossadegh’s Iran would have achieved these desirable conditions had the coup not cut short his regime.
Those who see the coup as a necessary act dictated by national and international security concerns deny neither the mistakes of the shah nor the cruelty of his government. Their position is essentially that the benefits to the free world of a pro-West regime in Iran far outweighed the more odious aspects of the shah’s rule.3 Those who support, or at least accept, the necessity of replacing the Mossadegh government point out that there was no assurance that Iran would or could have remained free from Soviet influence had the coup not occurred, and, conversely, that the consequences of the loss of Iran were too adverse to risk. One observer argues that even if the 1953 coup had not occurred, the “intervention would have happened in any case, touched off by some other specific action that Washington took as confirmation of its worst fears.”4 What is known, the coup supporters maintain, is that with the shah in power Iran was for a quarter-century a politically stable, pro-West ally in a critical region rent by turmoil and coveted by the Soviets.5
One highly important facet often overlooked and inevitably underestimated is the value of the Tacksman sites. It may never be known for certain just how vital to the interests of Western security, or indeed to the security of the world, the Tacksman intelligence was. The full extent of the role it played in enabling policymakers to counter the Soviet threat and bring about arms reduction agreements may likewise remain in the shadows. But it does not require much faith on the part of anyone familiar with intelligence and arms control policy to believe that the world was far safer for two decades because of the Tacksman sites. And these sites would not have existed without the shah in power.
It is not just that the sites collected critical intelligence against the Soviet strategic missile program. A collateral project, code-named Melody, at one Tacksman site provided crucial intelligence on at least two other security concerns: were the Soviets developing an antiballistic missile defense system in violation of a treaty then being negotiated between the United States and the USSR, and if so, was it founded on a modification of the SA-5 antiaircraft missile? There was doubt in some national security quarters that the Soviets actually could upgrade their SA-5 antiaircraft missile to antimissile capability, but it was essential to know for sure. The White House requested a National Intelligence Estimate (NIE) to inform the issue. The Melody equipment
