remembering Mossadegh, the last time we overthrew a ME government.

Regime change, for whatever reason or whatever the regime, carries a long term risk.

Iran's elected, eccentric, popular and charismatic Prime Minister was deposed in 1953 by a thinly veiled, heavily funded US operation during Eisenhower's administration.

The Dulles brothers succeeded where Britain had failed and the rest, as they say, is history.

Here's a good read, if you haven't already seen it.
(It's a book in print, not a web publication.)


"All the Shah's Men
An American Coup and the Roots of Middle East Terror"
by Stephen Kinzer

John Wiley & Sons,Inc.


<flap snip>

Half a century ago, the United States overthrew a Middle Eastern government for the first time. The victim was Mohammad Mossadegh, the democratically elected prime minister of Iran. Although the coup seemed a success at first, today it serves as a chilling lesson about the dangers of foreign intervention.

In this book, New York Times correspondent Stephen Kinzer gives the first full account of this fateful operation. His account is centered around an hour-by-hour reconstruction of the events of August 1953, and concludes with an assessment of the coup's "haunting and terrible legacy."

<end snip>

An Iranian friend, who experienced life under the Shah, says it's accurate and well-written. He even added the ultimate compliment -- that he's surprised and pleased that the author is American.

I was really upset when I read the section about Kermit Roosevelt. Acting as if it were all one big game -- what a piece of work.