Colonialism 21

Yes, my sin — my greater sin and even my greatest sin is that I nationalised Iran’s oil industry and discarded the system of political and economic exploitation by the world’s greatest empire. This at a cost to myself, my family; and at the risk of losing my life, my honour and my property. With God’s blessing and the will of the people, I fought this savage and dreadful system of international espionage and colonialism.

Mohammad Mossadegh (1882-1967) was an Iranian lawyer, politician and the first prime minister of independent Iran. The quote is from his speech in court in 1953, in which he defended himself against charges of high treason.

As part of a wave of anti-colonial movements, Mohammad Mossadegh became Iran's first democratically elected prime minister in 1951. In the same year, he was voted Man of the Year by the US Time Magazine for making the nationalisation of British-controlled oil production his first official act. However, in 1952 Dwight D. Eisenhower came to power in the USA, and he promoted a strongly anti-communist course and condemned any form of nationalisation. The CIA had previously noted that the situation in Iran could only be "saved" with a "new prime minister" (File Foreign Relations of the United States 1951: 87). From 1953 onwards, the CIA incited the ruling elite in Iran against Mossadegh and bribed the population with money, as corroborated by documents published in 2017 (Deutsche Welle 2017). In Latin America (e.g. Chile 1973, Allende vs. Pinochet), Africa (e.g. 1961 in Congo, Lumumba vs. Mobuto) and Asia (e.g. 1967 in Indonesia, Sukarno vs. Suharto), governments also emerged from socialist or anti-colonial movements and were overthrown and replaced by dictatorships.

*Deutsche Welle (2017): 1953: Irans gestohlene Demokratie. *Foreign Relations of the United States (1951-1954). *Bundeszentrale für politische Bildung (2013): Zwischen Kolonialismus und Nationenbildung.

1953