Epistemophilia: unexpected consequences of meddling

I heard an interesting story about CIA blowback on Matt's Today in History about the Nationalization of Iranian oil in 1951. Iran was a British colony at one time and had a long history of squabbling with the British on the issue of profits (btw, the Anglo-Iranian Oil Company eventually became BP.) Then in 1950, the Iranians learned that the US agreed to split their oil profits 50/50 with the neighboring Saudis. The British government refused to do the same. The Iranians voted to nationalize their oil and elected Mohammed Mosaddeq as their Prime Minister. This event should have been a great victory for democracy and it was unique for the time in Southwest Asia.

Alas, the British were having none of it and froze Iranian assets and cut off exports. They even took their case to The Hague but the court found in Iran's favor. Eventually, their financial squeezing took their toll on the population. Meanwhile, the Brits stirred up anti-communist elements in the US government (already you know this story doesn't have a happy ending) and we collaborated with them successfully to overthrow the democratically elected government in favor of the Shah (or Mohammed Reza Pahlavi as his friends called him)-who had technically been on the throne since 1941 and had started out as a secular reformer but became a real dick. He had an infamous secret police, the SAVAK, who also were supposedly trained by the CIA. There is actually a torture museum in downtown Tehran with dioramas showing people being tortured while distinctly American looking mannequins look on.

This event is called the 28 Mordad coup d'etat in Iran.  Mossadeq was arrested in August, 1953, served three years on some kind of jive charges and kept under house arrest until his death in 1967. It's unclear exactly how complicit the Shah was in all of this.

Anyways, this killed democracy in Iran. People hated the Shah and eventually supported the Islamic Revolution in 1979. Some people had dreams of it being a democratic revolution. No religious revolution, alas, is ever democratic. I'm not sure democracy is even a value compatible with religion. It also was just one in a dismal chain of events that fucked up our global image and the people of Iran once again get shafted. It lends a little more insight into why they hate us so much in the Middle East. Who knows how different things might have been if the Brits would have just split the freaking profits with them.