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Unseen images of the 1953 Iran coup – in pictures The Guardian is publishing hitherto unseen pictures of August 1953
- ran’s 1953 coup, taken by Dr William Arthur Cram, a former education officer at the US embassy in Tehran. Engineered by the CIA and the British intelligence to safeguard the west’s oil interests, the coup which overthrew the democratically elected prime minister, Mohammad Mosaddeq, consolidated the shah’s rule until the 1979 Islamic revolution. In 2013, the CIA publicly admitted that it was behind the coup, but Britain is yet to come clean. Cram’s images have captions by the late photographer himself
The Guardian is publishing hitherto unseen pictures ofAugust 1953The Russian ambassador, Anatoly Lavrentiev, arrived in Tehran on 26 July and met with Iran’s prime minister, Mohammad Mosaddeq, on 28 July and 2 August. Lavrentiev was sent to replace Ivan Sadchikov as ambassador to Iran. Mosaddeq’s last photo before the events of mid-August shows him conferring with the Soviet envoy.
3 AugustMosaddeq pushes ahead with his idea to call for a referendum, in order to curb the power of the shah. A huge meeting was arranged but Mosaddeq ordered soldiers to come in between his own men and the Reds (Iran’s communist Tudeh party)
4 AugustAfter this meeting, Mosaddeq approached the Tudeh party still more closely. The Reds sent 50,000 to referendum polls
4 AugustWhile Mosaddeq’s own men participated in the referendum, the Reds stole the show. Even women, who have no franchise, were sent to public squares to impress others.- 16 AugustWith spectacular results – 1 million votes for, 67 votes against the dissolution of the Majlis(the parliament) – the government sent a note to the shah asking him to dissolve it. But the Shah dismissed Mosaddeq and sent his bodyguard, Col Nematollah Nasiri (now a general), to deliver a letter to Mosaddeq. Nasiri was taken prisoner by the prime minister’s bodyguards and the government announced early the next morning that a coup d’état by the royalists was now frustrated. In the letter, the shah had appointed Gen Fazlollah Zahedi prime minister
16 AugustNext morning’s headlines read: “Coup d’etat failed... we want a republic”. At 9am the shah left in his own private plane for Baghdad. At 2pm, Radio Tehran asked all parties for a meeting in Parliament Square. Everyone was certain the shah would abdicate and a republic would be announced. Crowds shouted: “We want a republic … death to the shah.” Of the huge crowd, 85% were of the Tudeh party
16 AugustA Tehran rally with standards, flags and banners
18 AugustUnhindered by the police or by soldiers, young hooligans began pulling down statues of the shah from public squares. Men rode the 25-foot statue of the shah’s father, Reza Shah, in Sepah Square, Tehran’s main square
18 AugustThe solid statue defied efforts but was finally pulled down
18 AugustEven cranes could not pull it down – men brought hacksaws and sawed it down- 18 AugustEverybody tried to take a piece of the statue, but this bust of Reza Shah proved too heavy for these boys.
9am, 19 AugustThe previous day had been a sad one for the people, who had gone home with heavy hearts. On the following morning, pro-shah sympathisers began gathering in the streets and riding commandeered buses- 9.30am, 19 AugustWith portraits of the shah in their hands and anti-Mosaddeq slogans filling the air, people on every corner jumped to action
10am, 19 AugustAt about 10am, tanks and soldiers appeared in the streets. But instead of preventing the riots, they gave free rides to rioters and headed for Mosaddeq’s headquarters- 10am, 19 AugustPeople began their attacks on pro-government newspapers. The offices of Bakhtar, Hossein Fatemi’s newspaper, are on fire
11am, 19 AugustCommunist papers and newsstands suffered in the same way
1.30pm, 19 AugustThe people occupied the Tehran radio station. Here an army officer delivers speeches in the hall of the station
2.30pm, 19 AugustThe bloodiest spot in the town was in front of Mosaddeq’s home. People circulated the corpses in the street and excited other inhabitants
4pm, 19 AugustThis demonstration went on all day. At 4pm, a battle was joined in front of Mosaddeq’s home between his guards and the attackers. It now became known that a military uprising was in full swing
7.30pm, 19 AugustMosaddeq’s house fell after five hours of fighting. This is all that is left of his famous living room where he received foreign diplomats
7.30pm, 19 AugustThe Point 4 Tehran regional office, which was rented from Mosaddeq and which was next to his house, suffered complete ravage. Cars were destroyed. Mosaddeq’s house was looted, even to the last window frame, and burned
10.30am, 23 AugustThe coup d’état was now firmly established. The shah took the first KLM plane back to Baghdad from Rome and flew in his own private plane from Baghdad. Here is the shah (in the dark suit) photographed at the airport with the Zahedi on his right, and Nasiri on his left
31 AugustThe new government needed financial help urgently. The US ambassador, Loy W Henderson, and Point 4 director William E Warne saw Zahedi and promised $45m in aid. Left-to-right in this photo are: Norman Paul, a representative of Stassen; Henderson; Zahedi; Warne
5 SeptemberWith the monarchy saved, chieftains from all over Iran came to Tehran to pay homage to the young Shah
8 SeptemberWhile Russian ambassador Lavrentiev was rumoured to have tried to commit suicide or to have taken seriously ill, more chieftains, even from the Russian frontier zones of Turkmenistan, arrived in Tehran and supported the shah in his defence of the constitution
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