A Cold War Narrative: The Covert Coup of Mohammad Mossadegh, Role of the U.S. Press and Its Haunting Legacies

Abstract

In 1953 the British and United States overthrew the democratically elected Iranian Prime Minister Mohammad Mossadegh in what was the first covert coup d’état of the Cold War. Headlines and stories perfectly echoed the CIA and administration’s cover story – a successful people’s revolution against a prime minister dangerously sympathetic to communism. This storyline is drastically dissimilar to the realities of the clandestine operation. American mainstream media wrongly represented the proceedings through Iran strictly Cold War terms rather than placing it in it rightful context as a product of the Anglo-Iranian oil nationalization crisis. In relying on narrow Cold War ideologies, the press disguised the true nature of the events and kept the American public blind to the realities. Furthermore, a complacent and silent press allowed the overthrow of the nationalist Prime Minister – one of Iran’s most democratic leaders – to go unchallenged in public spheres of deliberation and enabled its tragic consequences to go concealed and unexamined