Patriot of Persia Read online

  The nationalist argument is that the alternative would have been uglier. The Shah had brought Razmara to power without a parliamentary vote and Mossadegh was not alone in detecting what he called the ‘bitter taste of a military dictatorship’ inspired by foreigners. Martial law; unlawful arrests; sham elections; censorship: Mossadegh knew these all too well, and was determined they should not recur. But Razmara was no longer in uniform and the reforms he brought before parliament – including decentralisation and land redistribution – deserved a respectful hearing. He was denied even that, and summarily damned as a second Reza Shah. Since he was a secretive man, and on the defensive for much of his premiership, his real intentions are hard to judge.

  Mossadegh joined the uproar when the general first arrived in brown pinstripes to present his cabinet to parliament. Someone quipped, ‘Stand to attention!’ and there was pandemonium as desk tops were slammed until they splintered on their hinges and the nationalists hollered their opposition – Mossadegh and the younger hotheads, Baghai and Makki, loudest of all. From the public gallery someone shouted, ‘Death to Dictatorship!’ and Razmara’s supporters gamely retorted, ‘Long Live Dictatorship!’ Mossadegh interrupted the prime minister’s speech, shouting, ‘America and Britain brought you to power!’ and fired a salvo at the departing cabinet: ‘Get lost! Shut the door and don’t come back!’

  Suddenly Mossadegh collapsed and the shout was heard: ‘Ye Gods! Mossadegh has died!’ Theatrical he was, but not morbidly so, and he came round with a dose of oxygen. Outside the parliament, Kashani’s supporters hurled stones and tried to overturn the prime minister’s car as he was driven away.

  The nationalists picked up the bill for the smashed desk tops but a tone of vilification had been set. In parliament Mossadegh uttered the most threatening public words of his career: ‘As God is my witness – even if they kill me, tear me to shreds – I won’t submit to this sort of person . . . I will strike and I will be killed! If you are a soldier, I am more of a soldier. I’ll kill you right here! I’ll shed blood!’14 Later on, Kashani said the prime minister’s pen should be snapped, a metaphor for execution. Photographs of the slain court minister Hazhir circulated in parliament, black-bordered.

  Razmara was not scared. He remained a soldier, in spite of the suit. ‘After my death,’ he predicted, ‘the people of Iran will put up my statue!’ He tried without success to divide the opposition, offering bribes and promising the Islamists he would shred their judicial files and bring in pious government. He cosied up to the Soviets, signing a trade pact and looking the other way when the Tudeh leaders launched a jailbreak. He met everyone – the Shah; the ambassadors; the oil company. With Ernest Northcroft, Anglo-Iranian’s portly, bespectacled Tehran representative, he had a fixed weekly rendezvous. He was on shifting sands because the only solid support he enjoyed – from foreigners – was a liability in the eyes of his countrymen. The Shah responded in his usual way, by undermining the man he had brought to office.

  There were now several opposition newspapers, and they attacked Razmara relentlessly. Headlines and editorials were rousing, and journalistic standards low. Shahed, perhaps the country’s best-selling morning paper, did not limit itself to attacking the prime minister’s patriotism and integrity, but accused him of forcing female guests at the Shah’s wedding to Sorayya Esfandiari into un-Islamic décolletée dresses. The paper then explained in un-Islamic detail what décolletée meant: ‘A dress that leaves the upper part of the body completely naked and leaves quite uncovered the arms and elbows and shoulders and armpits and the whole back and upper portion of the chest and half the ladies’ beautiful breasts . . .’15

  Shahed’s owner, the nationalist deputy Muzaffar Baghai, was a bull-necked battler with intellectual pretensions and a taste for arrack. He could not be arrested – as many of the other editors were – because he enjoyed parliamentary immunity. Whenever his paper was closed down, he reopened it under a different name. The police tried stopping distribution but the nationalist deputies doled out copies on the street corners. On one occasion a thick-neck called Mad Mustafa and his goons were sent to destroy the Shahed presses, but the nationalists withstood the assault together with reinforcements from the Warriors of Islam. In the ensuing siege, Mossadegh spoke to Baghai by telephone and urged the defenders to flee, as he had been tipped off that the authorities intended to kill them. The confrontation came to a peaceful end after Mossadegh led a sit-in by nationalist deputies in the parliament building which drew attention to Baghai’s plight. The spectacle of worldly Francophones fighting alongside Muslim fanatics showed how elastic alliances had become.

  Mossadegh spent much of the second half of 1950 ensconced in a committee room in the majles, deciding the fate of the supplemental agreement. Anglo-Iranian and its supporters were in no hurry for the commission to reach its conclusion, believing that, as Iran’s economic situation got worse and the need for oil revenues more acute, it would become easier to depict the nationalists as pig-headed adventurists indifferent to the nation’s plight. Instead, the commission’s long duration worked in the nationalists’ favour, allowing them to bring the more conservative members round to their view. Mossadegh was instrumental in this process, explaining his views patiently and precisely to men who, while not devoid of national feeling, were instinctively more conservative than he.

  The company was perhaps his biggest ally, for Anglo-Iranian’s Tehran representatives continued to deserve the worst accusations of meddling and intrigue. The company bombarded editors with crib sheets lauding the agreement, while Northcroft urged Razmara to ban unfriendly newspapers, sack the government’s representative on the oil commission (too impartial), and be more forthcoming in directing its members to a satisfactory conclusion.16 Still, the company’s position did not improve. The supplemental agreement was now so loathed, and the culture of odium so entrenched, that no one was prepared to defend it.

  In Washington there was a new realisation that Anglo-Iranian was its own worst enemy, and the State Department privately deplored the British government’s determination to ‘permit the AIOC to operate as it has in the past, bribing deputies and Government officials’.17 The Americans had moved ahead of the British on policy, too, for they understood that the agreement needed sweetening if it was to stand a chance of getting past the majles. The Foreign Office eventually came round, but the company dug in its heels. When, in July 1950, Shepherd proposed that Anglo-Iranian make an advance to help Razmara meet a prospective budget deficit of £28m, Northcroft replied by proposing £6m over six months, which Razmara dismissed as ‘useless’. Sir William Fraser insisted there was only one solution to the impasse, and that was to ratify the agreement.

  Northcroft had spent much energy deflecting Iran’s demands for a 50:50 profit-sharing arrangement along the lines that Venezuela had recently negotiated with Shell. Then, in August 1950, the Iraq Petroleum Company (which was owned by Anglo-Iranian) agreed to pay Iraq a higher royalty than Iran stood to gain under the supplemental agreement. The Foreign Office recognised that the company would have to improve their offer in line with the Iraqi terms, but then the emerging oil kingdom of Saudi Arabia trumped everyone, for the profit-sharing agreement it signed with Aramco in December 1950 was the most advantageous any Middle Eastern oil-producer had negotiated to date. Under this arrangement, the Saudis would receive an average royalty of thirty shillings a ton, nearly double the amount Iran stood to earn under the supplemental agreement. By now, Sir William Fraser had grumpily endorsed advances of almost £30m and no longer excluded discussion of the 50:50 principle. But his concessions came too late.

  By October 1950, when the nationalists launched impeachment proceedings against Razmara, few public figures in Iran referred to the AIOC without attaching an acid epithet – ‘usurping’ was one, ‘marauding’ another – while the Warriors of Islam warned that, if the supplemental agreement went through, the filth would spread and ‘women’s chadors will be ripped from their heads’. During the im
peachment proceedings, Makki tore into the company for besetting ‘Iran and its people with . . . vast and astonishing misfortunes’. Razmara’s finance minister was hounded from office and went in fear for his life. None of this was conducive to an informed debate on the future of Iran’s oil, and Shepherd would denounce ‘the demagogy of [the] minority’ and the ‘threats of [the] gutter press’.18 For once, the ambassador was right.

  The impeachment was a piece of theatre, designed to make the government yet more despised. Then, on November 25, 1950, after the oil commission rejected the supplemental agreement, Mossadegh pulled a rabbit out of his hat. On that day, the nationalist members of the commission moved a historic resolution: ‘In the name of the prosperity of the Iranian nation and with a view to helping secure world peace, we, the undersigned, propose that the oil industry of Iran be declared as nationalised throughout all regions of the country without exception; that is to say, all operations for exploration, extraction and exploitation shall be in the hands of the government.’

  Events now moved with great speed and violence. On 27 November, Ayatollah Kashani issued a fatwa calling for oil nationalisation and his and Mossadegh’s supporters embarked on a terrific propaganda onslaught, with rallies and screaming editorials and a flood of supportive telegrams coming in from the provinces. Rumours flew that Razmara was planning to seize power in a coup, and it was widely known that he had struck a secret deal with the AIOC for a profit-sharing agreement and a big advance to meet government expenses. Razmara had not divulged the details of this deal, for while it may have been feasible six months earlier, the prime minister doubted his ability to sell it in the current frenzy. The Shah was now against his general, sounding out potential replacements and soliciting Mossadegh’s assurance (which he gave) that the National Front did not intend to install a republic. Mossadegh told the court minister, Hossein Ala, that he did not want the premiership. That would take him out of parliament, where he was now absorbed in getting nationalisation into law.

  On 4 March, 1951 Razmara came to the majles and told the oil commission that nationalisation would be impracticable and that Iran was incapable of running its oil industry. Three days later, he was dead.

  Mossadegh was busy with other members of the oil commission when a fellow-deputy came in and whispered that Razmara had been shot. Mossadegh said loudly, ‘Well, he shouldn’t have made that speech!’ and got back to work.

  The assassination had been carried out by a member of the Warriors of Islam, but there is strong evidence that Mossadegh had prior knowledge. Around the turn of 1951, Mojtaba Navab-Safavi, the leader of the Warriors of Islam, had discussed killing Razmara with several National Front leaders, and either Makki or Haerizadeh (the eye-witness accounts differ) claimed to be attending the meeting as Mossadegh’s representative. Makki, for one, gave his approval of the proposed assassination, and Navab-Safavi asked him to convey what had been discussed to ‘absent friends’ – by which he meant Mossadegh.19 Two days after that, Kashani also endorsed the plan.

  Mossadegh never admitted to knowing in advance about the attempt on Razmara’s life, but it is unlikely that he was kept unaware of so momentous a meeting involving his closest allies. He was not simply a benign presence in the National Front, but its unchallenged strategist, as evidenced by his brilliant plan to achieve oil nationalisation. If he did not run the Front as a strict hierarchy, or a personal fief, this is because he was not at home in such hierarchies and the Front contained strong characters who were prepared to answer him back. For all that, National Front meetings were generally held in his house, and his colleagues invariably sought his approval for major decisions.

  Mossadegh was not a violent person, never raising a hand against a member of his family or a servant – neither uncommon at the time – and not shooting animals for sport. He kept a small ivory of Gandhi in his room at Ahmadabad. But Muslim nationalists in the Middle East usually admired Gandhi’s struggle against the British and his religious tolerance more than his ideology of non-violence. Stemming from Hinduism, this ideology was alien and even puzzling in Iran, where vegetarianism was unknown and mainstream Shia Islam was full of gory stories of martyrdom. On a rhetorical level, Mossadegh’s attitude to political violence was ambiguous. During an earlier conversation with Mossadegh, Iraj Eskandari, a Tudeh leader he had known for years, had described Iran’s northern provinces as the Soviets’ ‘security cordon’. Mossadegh withdrew a pencil sharpener from his pocket, unscrewed the blade, and held it towards Eskandari, saying, ‘You’re like a son to me, but if I hear that phrase “security cordon” one more time from you, I will use this to cut out your tongue!’20

  It is probable that Mossadegh did not attend the meeting with Navab-Safavi either because he was indisposed or because his colleagues had anticipated the subject of discussion and wanted to distance him from a nasty business. Characteristically, Mossadegh did not exult in the prime minister’s assassination in the way Kashani and some of his nationalist allies did, but nor did he say anything to suggest that he found it tragic or repugnant. In the same way he had expressed no regrets at the earlier murder of the Shah’s court minister, Hazhir.

  With Hazhir’s killing, the Warriors of Islam had saved the National Front in its infancy. Now, by slaying Razmara, they removed the last obstacle to oil nationalisation and a government dominated by the National Front. Mossadegh was in debt twice over to the militants, and Navab-Safavi knew it, impressing on the nationalists that he expected them to implement Islamic law if they came to power. But this is not what happened, and after Razmara’s death Mossadegh cold-shouldered his former allies without compunction, doing nothing to dissuade the authorities from breaking up the organisation and jailing its leaders. Mossadegh was himself threatened by the Warriors, but never considered acceding to their demands. He was not thinking of implementing Islamic law. His attention was fixed obsessively on oil.

  Much later, living out his final years soberly at Ahmadabad, he would describe his fellow members of the sixteenth majles with understanding, distinguishing those who were fighting for Iran’s independence at any price from others whose desire for independence was tempered by doubts over how to achieve it.21 In the heat of battle, though, he subscribed to the same Manichaean world-view as his followers. He was at his most excitable, fainting, bursting into tears and wallowing in old-mannish bathos – such as when he presented his German camera to a colleague, writing, ‘I will have no use for it in these final days of my life.’ He would live for another seventeen years.

  His ailments were debilitating, but not life-threatening. He was in and out of bed with a temperature, receiving guests at Palace Street in the pyjamas that would become the recurring motif of all future caricatures. He was lethargic from uraemia, for which his doctor ordered complete rest: an impossibility, as the patient acknowledged. Everything seemed indexed to the oil issue and he put out petulant vows on the subject – not to get well; never again to set foot in parliament – which none of his colleagues took seriously. He was moved to lovely metaphors, comparing an increase in the banknote issue to pouring water into a glass of buttermilk – its colour staying the same even as its properties weaken – and claiming to have had a dream in which a ‘celestial figure’ urged him to ‘break the chains that bind Iran’s feet’.

  His engagement with politics was deep and joyful. Later the cares of office, and of managing the crisis of his premiership, would wipe the broad uninhibited smile from his face; now was the time of his life.

  Razmara’s death was oddly disregarded in the lunge for nationalisation. On the afternoon of his assassination the oil committee returned to work and the following day, very exceptionally, no mourning holiday was observed. No mullah could be found to speak at his funeral. Something was happening that was more important. In the words of Muhammad-Ali Safari, a young reporter at Bakhtar-e Emrooz, a prominent nationalist newspaper, Iran during this period was marked by the ‘most extraordinary scenes of pride and magnificence . . . the peopl
e of Iran compensated for years and perhaps centuries of humiliation and revilement.’

  The prime minister’s death had one crucial effect, and that was to persuade pro-British deputies that they could not resist the nationalist tide. On March 14, barely a week after the assassination, and with Hossein Ala now prime minister, the majles unanimously voted oil nationalisation into law. Affected by the prevailing atmosphere of intimidation, even those deputies who had been instructed by the Shah to stay away and prevent the quorum turned up and voted in favour. Tehran and other cities erupted in joy. In a poor country that is unable to flex its muscles abroad, the only way to show belief is to go out of doors, shout, and hope that the foreign press does its job. But shouting slogans against Anglo-Iranian had never been a simple act, for the belief in the British bogey had often dissuaded people from expressing themselves.

  The majles oil committee got back to work after the Persian New Year holidays, for although the nationalisation law had been signed by the Shah, the manner of its implementation had yet to be determined. The company, the British government and the Shah united around the kind of arrangement that Razmara had proposed before his death, under which nationalisation was acknowledged in ‘principle’, while a new company was set up with Iranian representation on the board, and profits shared. To Shepherd, Hossein Ala dangled the possibility of an arrangement whereby the government deputed Anglo-Iranian to run the industry on its behalf.