Comment by Aloisius
3 days ago
"Democratically elected."
Elections were about as democratic in Iran as they are in North Korea.
By the time the Shah dismissed the Prime Minister, Mosaddegh had dissolved parliament, was jailing his opponents, his party had turned against him and he was ruling by decree like a dictator.
Mosaddegh held a flawed referendum and used emergency powers, but by that point, the CIA and MI6 were actively paying off politicians, military officers, and funding mobs to destabilize his government, all while Britain was strangling Iran's economy with an oil embargo. His defensive measures didn't happen in a vacuum.
Comparing Iran's elections to North Korea..? Iran had a functioning parliament, multiple parties, and real political competition.
And "the Shah dismissed him" glosses over the fact that this dismissal was literally part of the coup plot coordinated with foreign intelligence agencies! Read files that CIA released.
And even if you think Mosaddegh was sliding toward authoritarianism, what replaced him? 26 years of the Shah's rule backed by SAVAK, a secret police that tortured and killed dissidents. The coup made things dramatically worse, not better.
Mossadegh had repeatedly asked for dictatorial powers to be granted to him and then extended, even prior to any of these events. It's misleading to call the subsequent developments a "coup" when that government was de-facto undemocratic to begin with. Genuine democracy was never even in the picture.
> Mossadegh had repeatedly asked for dictatorial powers to be granted to him and then extended, even prior to any of these events
Mosaddegh requested emergency powers from parliament and parliament granted them. That's how constitutional systems work during crises. Many democracies have done this (FDR's wartime powers, for example). Requesting powers through legal channels isn't the same as seizing them.
> It's misleading to call the subsequent developments a "coup" when that government was de-facto undemocratic to begin with
This argument doesn't hold up. A coup is defined by how power is taken through force, bribery, and foreign intelligence operations and not constitutional processes. The CIA literally codenamed it Operation Ajax. Declassified documents describe it as a coup. The US government has officially acknowledged it as a coup. You're arguing against the people who planned it.
> Genuine democracy was never even in the picture.
You are basically settin an impossible standard. By 1953 standards, very few countries qualified as "genuine democracies" (the US still had Jim Crow). Iran had an elected parliament, multiple parties, a free press, and a prime minister chosen through constitutional processes. Was it perfect? No. Was it more democratic than most of the region? Yes
Even if we accept that Mosaddegh's government was imperfect, what replaced it? An absolute monarch ruling by decree with a secret police force. If your standard is democracy, the coup objectively made things worse, which is a strange outcome to defend.
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