All the Shah’s Men (7 page)

Among men of intelligence and learning, his decorum cannot be surpassed. He speaks, behaves, and receives people with respect, humility and courtesy, but without undermining his own eminence and dignity. He may at times have treated his colleagues, including high officials and finance ministers, with a measure of contempt, but in his dealing with other people he has shown warm human feeling, courtesy and humility. Such an impressive young man is bound to become one of the great ones.

Mossadegh came of age during a tumultuous time in Iranian history. He was eight years old when the Tobacco Revolt broke out, and considering how precocious he was and how involved his parents were in public life, it is safe to assume that he followed its course carefully. Several of his relatives, including his uncle, the formidable Prince Farman Farma, played important roles in the Constitutional Revolution. When elections for the first Majlis were convoked in 1906, Mossadegh became a candidate and won a seat from Isfahan. He could not assume it because he had not yet reached the legal age of thirty, but his political career was under way.

In those early years, Mossadegh developed more than a political perspective. He also began showing extraordinary emotional qualities. His boundless self-assurance led him to fight fiercely for his principles, but when he found others unreceptive, he would storm off for long periods of brooding silence. He did this for the first time in 1909, when Mohammad Ali Shah launched his bloody assault on the Majlis. Rather than stay and fight alongside his fellow democrats, he concluded that Iran was not ready for enlightenment and left the country. Like many Iranians of his class, he considered Paris the center of the civilized world, and he made his way there to study at l’Ecole de Sciences Politiques.

During his stay in France, Mossadegh suffered from illnesses that would plague him all his life. No one could precisely identify them. They were certainly real and periodically flared up to cause ulcers, hemorrhaging, stomach secretions, and other symptoms. But they also had a nervous component that led to fits and breakdowns. Neither purely medical nor psychosomatic, they both reflected and became a part of Mossadegh’s persona. He was as dramatic a politician as his country had ever known. At times he became so passionate while delivering speeches that tears streamed down his cheeks. Sometimes he fainted dead away, as much from emotion as from any physical condition. When he became a world figure, his enemies in foreign capitals used this aspect of his personality to ridicule and belittle him. But in Iran, where centuries of Shiite religious practice had exposed everyone to depths of public emotion unknown in the West, it was not only accepted but celebrated. It seemed to prove how completely he embraced and shared his country’s suffering.

The onset of illness forced Mossadegh to give up his studies in France after a year and return to Iran. There he was able to rest, partly because the ruler he detested so viscerally, Mohammad Ali Shah, had been forced from the throne. After his recovery he returned to Europe, this time to the Swiss town of Neuchâtel, accompanied by his wife, their three small children, and his beloved mother. He entered the university there, earned his doctorate of law in 1914—the first Iranian to win such a degree from a European university—and decided to apply for Swiss citizenship. First, though, he would travel home to complete research for a book about Islamic law.

Mossadegh returned to a country ablaze with conflict. The Constitutional Revolution had given Iranians a taste of the forbidden fruit of democracy, and they were anxious for more of it. Qajar rule was crumbling. Most important, the outbreak of World War I had thrown all political certainties into question and made everything seem possible. Britain and Russia, having effectively divided Iran between them in 1907, still held the reins of true power, but resentment over their role was leading many Iranians to sympathize with the Kaiser’s Germany. A group of intellectuals centered around Hasan Taqizadeh, who had been a key figure in the Constitutional Revolution, went so far as to set up a “liberation committee” in Berlin that published a radical newspaper and aimed ultimately to seize power in Tehran. Mossadegh was much encouraged by these developments, and instead of returning to Switzerland, he joined the faculty of the Tehran School of Law and Political Science, which was becoming Iran’s first modern university. His book
Iran and the Capitulation Agreements
argued that Iran could develop modern, European-style legal and political systems if it took one vital step. It must impose the law equally on everyone, including foreigners, and never grant special privileges to anyone.

After Mossadegh had been home for less than a year, his uncle, Farman Farma, who had become prime minister, asked him to join the cabinet as minister of finance. Mossadegh declined because he did not want to be accused of rising to power through family connections. In 1917 he suffered an attack of appendicitis and was operated on in Baku, and while recovering, he received another offer, this time to become deputy finance minister. By this time his uncle was no longer prime minister, and at his mother’s urging he accepted the offer. He upset his new colleagues by unearthing a series of corrupt schemes and insisting that the wrongdoers be punished, and after less than two years in office he was dismissed. Once again he decided that Iran did not deserve his services, and he returned to Neuchâtel. By doing so he showed, as he would show repeatedly throughout his life, that he was a visionary rather than a pragmatist, preferring defeat in an honorable cause to what he considered shameful compromise.

Mossadegh was in Neuchâtel when he received news of the infamous 1919 Anglo-Persian Agreement that effectively reduced Iran to the status of a British protectorate. He was outraged and did all he could to protest, as an Iranian biographer reported:

He talked and corresponded with other prominent Iranians in Europe, published leaflets, and wrote to the League of Nations protesting against the agreement. He even traveled to Bern for the sole purpose of having a rubber stamp made for the Comité de Résistance de Nations in whose name the anti-agreement statements were issued. Anger, frustration and loneliness must have taken their toll on his nerves, for it is unlikely that, as he suspected, he was being watched by British agents—one of them in the shape of the “chic, pretty and bouncy” woman next door who called from her balcony, “Est-ce que vous voulez fumer ce soir?” and was disappointed when Mosaddegh answered, “Pardon, madame. Je suis malade. Je suis très occupé. Je suis fatigué. Excusez-moi. Je n’ai pas le temps.”

Mossadegh was devastated by his countrymen’s failure to rise up in righteous anger against the Anglo-Persian Agreement. The cause of Iranian patriotism, he concluded after a few months, was lost forever, and so there was no place for him in his homeland. He resolved to file his application for citizenship in Switzerland and spend the rest of his days practicing law there. Unfortunately Swiss immigration laws had been tightened since he had last considered this option, and his application was delayed. He came up with the idea of opening an import-export firm and decided to travel to Iran to make arrangements with merchants there. As soon as he set foot on his native soil, he found himself caught up again in politics. On his way to Tehran he passed through the southern province of Fars, and when local dignitaries learned of his presence, they offered him a large sum of money to stay there and become governor. He agreed, though he turned down the financial offer and even insisted on serving without salary.

After Reza Khan came to power in 1921, he tried to make use of Mossadegh’s evident talents. Theirs was a short and unhappy partnership. Mossadegh first became minister of finance, a post for which he was eminently qualified, but upon taking office he launched an anticorruption campaign that threatened Reza and his friends, and was soon forced to resign. Next he was named governor of Azerbaijan province, where the Soviets were trying to stir up a separatist rebellion, but quit when Reza refused to give him authority over troops stationed there. Then he served for a few months as foreign minister. Finally he concluded that Reza shared neither his democratic instincts nor his anti-imperialist creed. He quit the foreign ministry, ran for a seat in the Majlis, and was elected easily. He was now a free agent, and soon he emerged as one of Reza’s sharpest opponents.

By the time Mossadegh entered the Majlis in 1924, he was already a thoroughly political man. He had developed a deep understanding of his country, its political system, and above all its backwardness, much of which he attributed to the rapacity of foreign overlords. Yet he was never truly part of any establishment, political or otherwise. Many rich and influential Iranians considered him a class traitor because of his insistence on judging them by the letter of the law. Even some of his supporters chafed at the intense self-confidence that often led him to dismiss his critics as either rogues or fools.

Mossadegh’s appearance was as strikingly unusual as his character. He was tall, but his shoulders slumped down as if they were bearing a heavy weight, giving him the image of a condemned man marching stoically toward execution. His face was long, marked by sad-looking eyes and a long, very prominent nose that his enemies sometimes compared to a vulture’s beak. His skin was thin and pasty white. But for all that, he moved through life with a determination that many of his countrymen found impressive to the point of inspiration. In intellect and education he towered above almost all of them, a drawback for a politician in some countries but not in Iran, where those who do not live the life of the mind have always admired those who do. His arrival in the Majlis marked the beginning of a new stage in his remarkable career, as one of his cousins recalled in a memoir:

With his droopy, basset-hound eyes and high patrician forehead, Mossadegh did not look like a man to shake a nation…. To his mind the parliament was the only mouthpiece of the people of Iran. No matter how rigged the election or how corrupt its members, it was the only body that did not depend for its power either on outside influence or on the [royal] court, but on the authority of the constitution. The Majlis became his soapbox. Elected to it time and again by the people of Tehran, he used it to denounce the misconduct of the British and the Russians, and later the Americans. When he said, “The Iranian himself is the best person to manage his house,” he was stating not only a conviction but a policy that he was to pursue with unwavering purpose until his picture had appeared on the cover of Time magazine and he had thoroughly shaken the foundations of the world’s oil establishment.

Although Mossadegh championed Iranian self-determination, he had little faith in his fellow deputies, and few escaped the lash of his tongue. He accused them of cowardice, of lacking initiative, and worst of all being unpatriotic. His fulminations at the podium were both frightening and theatrical. Gesturing wildly, his hand unconsciously wiping away the famous tears that sprung unbidden from his eyes at times of nervousness or rage, he pilloried his listeners with the righteousness of a priest who suffers with his victims even as he unmasks them…. Distinguished, highly emotional, and every inch the aristocrat, he believed so totally in his own country that his words reached out and touched the common man. Mossadegh was Iran’s first genuinely popular leader, and he knew it.

If Iran had faced only domestic problems, Mossadegh might still be remembered only as a vigorous advocate of reform and modernization. The country’s main dilemma, however, centered around its relationship with outside powers, especially Britain and most especially the Anglo-Iranian Oil Company. Many Iranians resigned themselves to the imposition of these powers, but Mossadegh never did.

During his first few months in the Majlis, Mossadegh rose often to speak. He addressed topics ranging from military corruption to the need for new industries in Iran, but his central themes were always democracy and self-reliance. “If bringing prosperity to the country through the work of other nations were of benefit to the people,” he asserted in one speech, “every nation would have invited foreigners into its home. If subjugation were beneficial, no subjugated country would have tried to liberate itself through bloody wars and heavy losses.”

On October 29, 1925, the Majlis received one of the most far-reaching proposals it had ever considered. It was from supporters of Reza, asking that the Qajar dynasty be abolished and that Reza be named Shah. Mossadegh was horrified. When his turn came to speak on the proposal, other deputies fell into a hush. He began by producing a copy of the Koran and demanded that everyone in the chamber rise to acknowledge that they had sworn upon it to defend the constitutional system. All did so. Then, in the day’s longest and most emotional speech, Mossadegh paid tribute to Reza’s achievements but said that if Reza wanted to govern the country, he should become prime minister, not Shah. To centralize royal and administrative power in the hands of one man would be “pure reaction, pure
istibdad,
” a system so perverse that it “does not exist even in Zanzibar.” Darkly, Mossadegh warned of Reza’s authoritarian tendencies and predicted that elevating him to the throne would lead the country back to absolutism.

“Was it to achieve dictatorship that people bled their lives away in the Constitutional Revolution?” he demanded. “If they cut off my head and mutilate my body, I would never agree to such a decision.”

Mossadegh was under no illusion that he could prevent Reza from taking the throne. Reza was the rising power in a country that had been on the brink of extinction, and just two days after Mossadegh’s fiery speech, the Majlis recognized that fact by agreeing to his coronation. At the ceremony, Reza placed the plumed and jeweled crown on his own head as Napoleon had done, symbolizing his determination to govern as he pleased. For a few months he ruled alone and then, having secured his power, named a prime minister and directed him to offer Mossadegh the post of foreign minister. It was an astute move. Mossadegh had a base of popular support and impeccable nationalist credentials that would serve the new regime well. To no one’s surprise, however, he declined the offer. He enjoyed being a free agent and undoubtedly realized that his abhorrence of dictatorship would soon place him in conflict with the new Shah. Not satisfied with refusing an offer to join the cabinet, he denounced it when it was finally formed. In his speech he called two of the incoming ministers traitors for their role in negotiating the Anglo-Persian Agreement.