Patriot of Persia Read online

  Bent over the table in his cell, his American spectacles on his nose and a copy of the military laws at his elbow, the ex-prime minister applied himself to his defence. He was capable of writing all day without tiring. (Reading, on the other hand, quickly wore him out.) He was attached to correct grammar and his attention to detail extended to strong views on the best place to pin together the pages of his defence. Old drafts were torn into tiny scraps and thrown in the lavatory to prevent government spies acquiring foreknowledge of his defence. Buzorgmehr proposed amendments. Mossadegh would chew his finger thoughtfully and perhaps consult his dictionary, before they agreed on the correct formulation.

  Far from the madman of his enemies’ depiction, Mossadegh was in charge of all his faculties. He made haste slowly and he liked his drafts to sit around and ‘moulder’ a bit before he went back to them. He and Buzorgmehr took breaks for prison lunch (soup and chicken stew) or home-cooked rice dishes sent in by Zahra. At 4 p.m. Mossadegh drank weak tea with four spoons of sugar. And when, at the end of the day, Buzorgmehr left these eerie purlieus for the comforts of home, he was ‘overcome with sadness and gloom that a man with such exalted human qualities should be fated to spend his days behind bars’.

  One Friday, Zahra, Mansoureh, Mansoureh’s son Ali, and Ahmad’s wife, Qods Azam (who was also Mossadegh’s niece) visited the prisoner, and there was a simple scene of a family united in adversity. Husband and wife kissed each other’s hands and shoulders, and Mossadegh cried. Mansoureh said, ‘Agha! Are you well, thanks to God? Dear Agha! Don’t be sad!’ The mob had destroyed Ahmad and Qods Azam’s house on August 19, and Mossadegh kept repeating, ‘What wrong did you do? You have all been caught up with me.’ Wiping her eyes, Qods Azam said, ‘Dear Uncle, everything [we have], we would sacrifice for you.’ Then they spoke of banal matters and everyone except Mossadegh drank tea, and when the allotted hour was up he said, ‘Off you go, now, and may God protect you.’

  The trial started on November 8. The road to Saltanatabad was lined with troops and the mirrored hall was packed with barracking spectators and a big contingent of journalists. Mossadegh entered in his scruffy coat of barak wool and presented himself: ‘Dr Muhammad Mossadegh, the lawful prime minister.’ The flash bulbs popped. Mossadegh declared, ‘Everyone around the world is waiting to see what sentence this court hands down.’

  His instantly recognisable face was on the front pages and in the newsreels everywhere. Letters of support poured in. The president of the Iraqi bar association communicated his willingness to represent him. Some of the Shah’s supporters had anticipated that Mossadegh, not the Court, would benefit from all the attention. ‘What better vehicle can be conceived for publicising a crippled old man,’ asked one senator, ‘than for him to be tried by a group in jackboots?’6

  Mossadegh did not expect fairness; he wanted to show that he had been the victim of an illegal coup and to bless the ideals that would outlast him and all his generation. The opening days of the trial were marked by strikes and demonstrations, and the cry went up, ‘Mossadegh is victorious!’ The army lay siege to the university and the bazaar was shuttered in protest. At least one person was killed in the ensuing crackdown.

  Transparent justice had been promised. Tehran heaved with foreign reporters and the Iranian press also lavished attention on proceedings. There was massive demand for the latest news of the trial, with local evening paper print-runs rising to an unheard-off 50,000, and second and third editions also selling well. Mossadegh’s defence was a typical mix of law, history and autobiography, and the president of the court countered his prolixity with a memorable putdown. ‘For you,’ he told the defendant, ‘speaking is a medicine, and for others a poison.’ But Mossadegh was undaunted. ‘I am Dr Mossadegh,’ he said, ‘and it behoves me to point out what is anti-constitutional.’

  A leisurely airing of secrets was the last thing the new regime wanted, and Buzorgmehr was pressured to take over the defence and put an end to it all. During the next session the president of the court threatened to hold the trial in camera; Mossadegh made for the door and a guard blocked his way. In the end the president of the court capitulated and the defendant was allowed to defend himself.

  The man in charge of the prosecution, Brigadier Hossein Azmudeh, was a monarchist of the knuckle-headed type. He regarded Mossadegh as an insurgent and the men who had been killed while trying to storm 109 Palace Street as martyrs. His courtroom manner was hectoring and abusive, and he brought Mossadegh to boiling point when he questioned his Muslim faith. But Mossadegh was even better at getting under the other man’s skin. He refused to acknowledge Azmudeh’s status in what he considered an illegal trial, referring to him as ‘that man’ and deriving innocent fun from correcting him when he mispronounced quite common words. When Azmudeh’s wrath reached a zenith and he demanded that the ‘hammer of the law’ be brought down on the defendant, Mossadegh rested his head on his folded arms on the desk in front of him and shut his eyes. On the question of the upended statues, he neatly turned the accusation of irreligiosity on its head, hinting that the Shah was contravening Islam by erecting such icons. ‘I am not in favour of statues,’ he declared, ‘nor do I think they are consonant with religious law.’

  The main argument turned on whether the Shah had been within his rights to dismiss his prime minister without permission from the majles. ‘If they take me to the gallows,’ Mossadegh declared, ‘I do not accept that in a constitutional country the Shah can sack the prime minister.’ He claimed to have had doubts about the authenticity of the edict he had received on August 15 – even though he had signed a receipt for it. Why had it been delivered in the dead of night by an army officer defying the curfew? Why had the telephone wires been cut and Fatemi been abducted? ‘Tell me, Brigadier Azmudeh, what more is required to stage a coup d’état?’

  It was as much a performance as a defence. His entrance to the second hearing was vintage Mossadegh. ‘Court officials’, The Times reported, ‘helped him to his seat when he entered the courtroom this morning, stumbling and staggering, and nodding his head from side to side. Photographers took his picture from all angles for several minutes, while he kept his head down on his chest, breathing heavily and sometimes moaning.’ A stiff dose of Curamin perked him up and a few minutes later he was furiously disputing once more. In a later hearing, he challenged Brigadier Azmudeh to a wrestling match. ‘I can assure you I will knock him down in no time, and if he beats me he can cut off my head.’7 Even the most hostile observers were in stitches.

  In the later hearings Azmudeh confronted him with members of his cabinet and other allies, some of whom were themselves in custody. There were moving recollections of the fall of 109 Palace Street, and, with the exception of General Riyahi, who buck-passed impenitently, no one betrayed his fallen leader. At one point Azmudeh demanded to know what telegraphs Hossein Fatemi had sent to Iran’s overseas missions after the Shah’s flight, and Seifullah Muazzami, Mossadegh’s minister of posts and telegraph, replied with pained dignity that since he was opposed to censorship, he had no idea. ‘It is not the job of the minister of posts and telegraph to read the people’s telegraphs and letters!’ Here, in a few words, was the humane credo that Iran had lost.

  On the evening of December 21, the court rose to hear the verdict and the president announced that the Shah, in his ‘infinite generosity’, had foresworn his right to retribution. Mossadegh snapped, ‘I never requested clemency, and will never seek it. I have done nothing wrong. You must give a verdict according to justice.’

  Sentence was passed: three years’ solitary imprisonment. It could have been much worse, but the authorities did not want to make him even more of a martyr. Mossadegh declared the conviction to be one of the honours of his career. He lodged his appeal there and then, apologised to the court secretaries for the trouble he had caused them, and walked back to his cell.

  He could have opted for a quiet life, and the authorities enquired discreetly whether he would drop his appeal in ret
urn for banishment to Ahmadabad, but he refused to bargain. For the government, Mossadegh’s appeal promised to be even more awkward than the original trial; it would be a chance to criticise the violence now being done to his legacy.

  The Shah and Zahedi had wasted no time in unpicking Mossadegh’s policies. Britain had reopened its embassy on the day Mossadegh was sentenced, and negotiations on an oil deal to undo nationalisation were under way. In December 1953, Eisenhower’s vice-president, Richard Nixon, came to Tehran to bless the new dispensation, and protests against his visit were met with deadly machine-gun fire. Finally, preparations were underway for heavily supervised elections to the eighteenth majles, whose main job would be to rubber stamp the expected oil deal.

  The authorities were determined to stop Mossadegh from using the appeal court as a soapbox from which to publicise his views. A culture of official intimidation was growing again in post-coup Iran, and, citing his own fear of assassination, the authorities had transferred him to a military barracks shortly before the end of the initial trial. Declaring the appeal proceedings closed to the public would have embarrassed the authorities; in the event, they were closed in all but name.

  The military court of appeal convened on April 8, 1954, and Mossadegh’s performance over a month of hearings was as spirited as it had been in his first trial. He made good use of articles, now starting to appear in the foreign press, which alleged that the US had funded the overthrow of his government. But much of what he said went unreported, for only a few dozen spectators were allowed into the courtroom and Colonel Azmudeh was telling the domestic press what to write. Gone from the evening papers were the old verbatim accounts of what had happened in the courtroom. Coverage was often reduced to a couple of insipid columns on an inside page.

  Mossadegh responded to the new restrictions with typical pugnacity. He began a hunger strike in protest, but he weakened rapidly and was almost comatose when an old ally, Allahyar Saleh, rushed to his cell to plead with him. ‘Is that you, Saleh?’ he croaked, and Saleh reminded him that he was not a free agent but belonged to the whole country. ‘At home,’ Saleh went on, ‘my wife and child are worried and expecting news and not eating and waiting for me to tell them the good news that you have ended your hunger strike.’ Mossadegh’s resolve broke and he breakfasted on water and rusk dipped in powdered milk. On May 12 the appeal court upheld the original verdict. He still had twenty-seven months of his sentence to run.

  Solitary confinement is now recognised as a form of torture, and Mossadegh must have suffered horrendously in his cell in the prison of the Second Armoured Division in central Tehran. His request to be allowed to live under armed guard at home pending the result of a final appeal to the Supreme Court was rejected and Jalil Buzorgmehr was no longer allowed to visit him. During the seven months of their close association, Buzorgmehr had learned to coax Mossadegh out of his bleak moods with conversations about the prime minister’s early life and experiences, which the colonel noted down for future publication. Now Mossadegh was denied regular access even to his three civilian counsels, although family visits were permitted to continue. He occupied himself with a furious correspondence with the judicial authorities and a volume of memoirs, but naturally there were moments of despair – and another abortive hunger strike. During the appeal proceedings, journalists allowed to visit his cell had witnessed the sight of the former prime minister in agonies on his bed. ‘Better to live freely in a stable than locked in a palace!’ he sobbed. ‘Oh, freedom!’

  Mossadegh’s distress was compounded by the way things were going on the outside. The 1954 elections were conducted in an atmosphere of violence and thuggery, with votes for Mossadeghist candidates not counted and Brainless Shaban and the others beating up anyone they suspected of anti-government sympathies. Pictures of the charred body of an opposition newspaper editor were published following his ‘suicide’ in jail, and Mossadegh’s former justice minister died after being attacked by a gang.8 Most disastrous of all, in October 1954 the new majles overwhelmingly ratified a deal whereby a consortium of western companies, including Anglo-Iranian, would take over the Iranian oil industry. In theory, the Iranian government remained the owner of its hydrocarbon resources. In effect, control once again lay with foreigners. Nationalisation was a dead letter.

  Of all the personal losses he suffered during this period, none upset him more than the fate of the man who had first proposed oil nationalisation. Hossein Fatemi had made the suggestion in 1949, and he had ended up as Mossadegh’s closest confidant. But Fatemi had done more than anyone to unleash a republican fervour after the failed coup of August 15, and his orders that Iran’s missions in Baghdad and Rome should shun ‘this boy’, as he called the Shah, had aroused the sovereign’s abiding hatred. So, there was much royalist jubilation when Fatemi was discovered in a safe house in Shemiran in February 1954, after a neighbour happened to observe him watering the plants. He was beaten and knifed savagely and taken to the martial-law governorate, where the top brass crowded round him for celebratory photographs.

  The United States and Britain were at one in considering Fatemi to be the most dangerous of Mossadegh’s associates. Sam Falle, who had served at the British Embassy in Tehran before the rupture in relations, thought he deserved to be executed. ‘As long as these boys are alive and in Persia,’ he wrote, ‘there is always the danger of a counter-coup. Toughness is necessary.’9 The Shah needed no persuading.

  At 2 p.m. on the afternoon of Fatemi’s arrest, as he was being led out of the martial-law governorate, he was set upon by Brainless Shaban and his cronies, who brandished knives and yelled, ‘Kill him!’ Fatemi’s life was saved by his sister, who had rushed to the police headquarters upon hearing of his arrest, and who flung herself onto her brother as he was being attacked. Miraculously, she survived the ten stab wounds she sustained; she was treated, appropriately enough, in the Najmiyeh Hospital.

  Fatemi himself had also been badly wounded, and his recovery was further imperilled by his subsequent hunger strike. Resigned to his fate, he conducted a remarkable clandestine correspondence with a Mossadeghist cleric who was being kept in the same jail as himself, declaring in one note that he wished to use up his last energies to the benefit of ‘the movement and for the happiness of my compatriots’. Fatemi realised the propaganda value of standing trial, for even if what was said could not be printed, it could still be spread by word of mouth, and ‘it will be on the historical record for ever.’10

  The legal proceedings reeked of the Shah and his lust for revenge. Fatemi was tried in camera alongside Ali Shayegan and Ahmad Razavi – two others who had spoken venomously about the Shah after the first, failed coup. Fatemi was brought in on a stretcher after the press photographers had been shooed away and the doors were shut to observers. ‘I don’t want to threaten you,’ the president of the court told the defendants’ lawyers, ‘but bear in mind that everything we have depends on the Shah and you lawyers must take into consideration the greatness of Iran’s history when making your defence.’ The trial lasted only a few days. Fatemi was sentenced to death, and the others to life imprisonment.

  There was a sordid appeal, with Fatemi coughing up blood in the night and the military doctors declaring him as right as rain and his lawyer absconding after the morning session. Fatemi refused to mount a defence because the trial had been closed to the public, and the president of the court tossed notes made by another defence lawyer into the stove. In the event, Shayegan’s and Razavi’s sentences were reduced to ten years apiece, but Fatemi’s death sentence was upheld. On November 10, 1954, he went before a firing squad.

  Mossadegh, now seventy-two, took a long time to die, and although he remained vitally alive for his family and other members of the nationalist movement, for the public at large the last eleven years of his life was the start of his posthumous legend: his statue in men’s hearts. The judges of the Supreme Court, mortified by the miscarriage but under irresistible pressure from the government, shame-facedly u
pheld the sentence that had been passed against him. His three years were soon up and he was released from jail in August 1956 and sent to Ahmadabad, where he would remain under guard and be allowed contact only with his family and a few retainers, almost until his death.

  Iran was on the move in the last decade of Mossadegh’s life, with the Shah laying the foundations for a police state that would stiffen and bloat until the fatal seizure of 1979. Corruption and social imbalance grew as the country prospered from oil revenues and American loans, moving from boom to bust, and back to boom again, while elections were rigged, dissidents were tortured and, in 1963, protestors drilled with bullet holes. The Shah’s programme of modernising reforms marked the end of the alliance between mullahs and monarch which had saved the throne in 1953. In its place came an oligarchic species of industrialisation, with the landless poor becoming a new urban working class – fodder for Marxists and Islamists alike. The Shah ditched the barren Sorayya and was married for a third time, and in 1960 he obtained the heir he so craved. His influence rose until no decision of consequence could be taken without his say-so, and one prime minister introduced himself to parliament as the sovereign’s ‘slave’.

  Mossadegh was out of all this, dangerous to mention, and yet he remained a painful, spectral presence. The Shah associated him with the Nasserite republicanism now stalking the region, and which spread to Iraq in 1958, where mobs carrying Nasser’s picture beheaded King Faisal, and another friendly monarchy bit the dust. Three years later, in one of the Shah’s spasmodic gestures towards liberalisation, the nationalists were allowed a rally at the race track and the applause lasted several minutes when Mossadegh’s name was uttered. From Ahmadabad, using his family as a courier, Mossadegh offered guidance to his former colleagues, but there were divisions in the nationalist camp and in 1962 he was obliged to issue a terse warning against those who showed signs of compromising with the Court. In 1965 the Shah decided once again to crush those who promoted the ideals of his old rival, and the latest manifestation of the National Front was obliterated with a wave of arrests.