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All the Shah's Men: An American Coup and the Roots of Middle East Terror 2nd Edition, Kindle Edition
by Stephen Kinzer (Author)
With a thrilling narrative that sheds much light on recent events, this national bestseller brings to life the 1953 CIA coup in Iran that ousted the country’s elected prime minister, ushered in a quarter-century of brutal rule under the Shah, and stimulated the rise of Islamic fundamentalism and anti-Americanism in the Middle East. Selected as one of the best books of the year by the Washington Post and The Economist, it now features a new preface by the author on the folly of attacking Iran.
4.6 out of 5 stars 390 customer reviews
Overthrow: America's Century of Regime Change from Hawaii to Iraq
Stephen Kinzer
4.5 out of 5 stars 295
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File Size: 3605 KB
Print Length: 299 pages
Publisher: Wiley; 2 edition (January 1, 2008)
Publication Date: January 1, 2008
Stephen Kinzer
390 customer reviews
4.6 out of 5 stars
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middle east united states shah had given women foreign policystephen kinzer kermit roosevelt oil company operation ajaxwell written dulles brothers democratically elected must readislamic revolution anglo-iranian oil mohammad mossadegh new yorkeast terror well researched hostage crisis history of iran
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Frank
5.0 out of 5 starsA Must-Read for Anyone Interested in the Middle EastOctober 23, 2015
Format: Kindle EditionVerified Purchase
The author provides a detailed description of why and how the CIA of the United States orchestrated the overthrow of the western oriented, democratically elected, and secular government of Iran in 1953. This book is important and a must-read for anyone interested in what is currently going on in the Middle East. The sin of Prime Minister Muhammad Mossadegh? He had, in 1951, nationalized the Anglo-Iranian Oil Company (now BP) because the company had economically and socially exploited the country for many decades and had not fairly shared proceeds of Iran’s natural resource with the country. Great Britain appealed to the United States to help them overthrow the regime in Iran. Although President Truman had rejected this appeal, Great Britain made the appeal again after the election of Dwight Eisenhower in 1952. The Dulles brothers (John Foster as Secretary of State and Allen as CIA Director), who saw a communist behind every tree, disingenuously convinced President Eisenhower that Prime Minister Mossadegh’s government would fall under communist influence! The overthrow was subsequently approved by Eisenhower.
Thus, the United States handed power to the Shah and his secret police who oppressively ruled Iran until the Revolution of 1979. In 1979, the people of Iran had had enough of the Shah’s brutality and overthrew the government. During the Shah’s regime, the only viable resistance was in the mosques such that when the Shah was eventually expelled, the leadership unsurprisingly fell to the imams. Given the role of the United States in overthrowing a democratically-elected government and then supporting an oppressive and brutal dictatorship, it should not be surprising that Iran is very suspicious of the United States. The United States obviously has some culpability for the current theocracy of Iran.
An interesting note is that he CIA agent who was given responsibility for orchestrating the 1953 coup in Iran was Kermit Roosevelt, the grandson of former president Teddy Roosevelt. Interesting because Teddy Roosevelt, himself, interfered in a sovereign country when he encouraged Panamanian rebels to secede from Colombia in order to build the Panama Canal.
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Nona
4.0 out of 5 starsBlow BackApril 6, 2017
Format: Kindle EditionVerified Purchase
Stephen Kinzer has done a great job of reminding us that it is not only the Muslims that have screwed up the Middle East. America and Britain had a big role in creating the conditions we see today. While it is impossible to predict what would have happened if we had not deposed Mosaddegh and installed the Shah. Kinzer explains just how misguided our intervention in Iranian internal politics was and connects the dots leading to the hostage crisis and today's bellicose posturing. It is too bad that a country with people who like and admire Americans is being governed by people who describe America as the great Satan, especially when the county was on a very different path. Maybe this study of our past blindness will open our eyes in the future, but I doubt it.
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Streeds Reads
4.0 out of 5 starsReview: All the Shah's Men: An American Coup and the Roots of Middle East TerrorJanuary 21, 2017
Format: PaperbackVerified Purchase
FTC NOTICE: Library Book
REVIEW: “All the Shah’s Men” serves as the second book I have read by Stephen Kinzer, and it was full of intrigue, micro-histories, and biographies that left me with the desire to research and read more about the Middle East as well as additional books by this author.
It is not unusual for history books to discuss timelines and people; but, what I appreciated most in this text was Kinzer’s differing approach to historical data. He was generous with details about a significant array of people that were involved with multiple coups. There were names of people in his book that I did not recall seeing in other compendiums pertaining to Middle East history and/or Iran. Kinzer shared what their individual philosophies were and how they affected their decisions and the resulting behaviors.
One challenge I experienced while reading this book, and that which prevented me from giving it five stars in lieu of four of them, was that there was too much going back and forth in history. A political leader’s history and interactions with others was/were very well described; but, at the end of that history, the reader was then re-introduced to a character at the beginning or middle of the previous history and all within the same chapter. Segmentation via a few extra and short chapters would have helped.
Despite the back-and-forth of histories, Stephen Kinzer has a great way of making a reader take a look at a situation and evaluate what could have been done differently. Unfortunately, he waited until over 200 pages into the book for any analysis or extrapolation to occur. This was coupled with a whole series of “if” and “if” and “if-then” and “if.” In doing so, Kinzer inadvertently de-valued what he was trying to accomplish, and the history could no longer be evaluated as a reality. Thankfully I had already read another book called "Reset: Iran, Turkey, and America's Future" by Kinzer, so I knew what he was trying to accomplish, and I didn’t want him to think that this was lost on me. He wanted the reader to imagine how things could have been done differently; what would have happened if one or all of these things did not occur?
The author is also quite talented when it comes to creating imagery. He does this thoughtfully, purposely, and respectfully. Kinzer shares the details of his trip to Iran and his visit to Mossadegh’s final home. There are descriptions of colors, flowers, and buildings, and he places them in the context of what they experienced and looked like in history and how they had changed by the time of his visit. There is a certain romanticism about how he goes about interviewing people who were employees, villagers/neighbors, friends and family of Mossadegh. Stephen Kinzer makes it clear that with the Mossadegh name, there is a legacy, and there is a responsibility to keep the name pure.
Purity and the instability of relationships were prevalent themes in this book. The intelligence that the American government received was not consistently pure. There were people who wanted to make a name for themselves and leveraged “The Cold War” and its threat of spreading communism as a way to convince an American president that it was time to start supporting the British government in its efforts to take back Iran’s newly-nationalized oil company. Kinzer did a good job of “calling out” these people, namely The Dulles Brothers.
There were good people on all sides who had good intentions, and they were coupled with individuals or groups filled with mal-intent, which ultimately led to a surpise coup of Mohammed Reza Shah and the promotion to leadership and ultimate power of and for the Ayatollah Khomeini in Iran. There were well-described changes in alliances that ultimately put the United States in an unsavory position with countries in the Middle East…definitely an unfortunate stance and one that can hopefully be corrected.
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J. Moon
5.0 out of 5 starsEvery American Should Read This BookSeptember 7, 2015
Format: Kindle EditionVerified Purchase
This book provides immeasurable insight into not only our relationship with Iran today, but the politics of our country. It provides a provocative hint into the role that covert actions undertaken by the American Government have played in shaping history, and their disastrous consequences. A strong democracy requires an informed electorate, and the truth of history should be a major part of that base of information. If anything, this book should make every American fearful of the thin veneer of our political process and base of information just as it hid the role of the United States in the disastrous events of August 1953.
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All the Shah's Men
 |
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|
 | |
| Author | Stephen Kinzer |
|---|---|
| Subject | 1953 Iranian coup d'état |
| Publisher | John Wiley & Sons |
Publication date
| July 18, 2003 |
| Pages | 272 |
| ISBN | 978-0-471-67878-6 |
All the Shah's Men: An American Coup and the Roots of Middle East Terror is a book written by American journalist Stephen Kinzer. The book discusses the 1953 Iranian coup d'état backed by the U.S. Central Intelligence Agency (CIA) in which Mohammed Mossadegh, Iran's prime minister, was overthrown by Islamists supported by American and British agents (chief among them Kermit Roosevelt) and royalists loyal to Shah Mohammad Reza Pahlavi.
Summary[edit]
In 1933 Reza Shah signed a deal selling Iranian oil extraction rights to the Anglo-Persian Oil Company, later called British Petroleum (BP). Though Iran was officially neutral at the start of World War II, its monarch was friendly towards the Axis. Following the 1941 Allied Invasion of Iran, Reza Shah was forced to abdicate in favour of his son Mohammad Reza Shah, who upheld the oil agreement with APOC, which by then had been renamed the "Anglo-Iranian Oil Company". When the first democratically elected parliament and prime minister in Iran took power in 1950 they planned to seize the oil assets in Iran that had been developed by the British, violating the still running oil contract with British Petroleum. The British government followed to court in Belgium's International Court, lost the case against Iran's new government and reacted by blockading the Persian Gulf, the Strait of Hormuz, halting Iran's trade and economy.
The US was concerned that Iranian Prime Minister Mohammad Mosaddegh was seeking help from the local superpower, the Soviet Union, against Britain. The Eisenhower administration agreed with British Prime Minister Winston Churchill government to restore the pro-Western Shah to power. In the summer of 1953, the CIA and Britain's MI6arranged a coup in Tehran. Mossadegh was successfully overthrown and spent the rest of his life on his country estate under house arrest, and Iran remained a staunch Cold Warally of the West. After more than 20 years of the Shah's rule, there was a bloody revolution in 1979 and brought into power an Islamic republic, which has ruled ever since.
Regarding US policy as it developed towards Iran in the early 1950s, the book portrays it as having been variously driven by the fear of annoying the British, an attempt to be an honest broker, or an effort to stop the spread of Communism. The fact, stated at the end of the book, that US companies were granted the majority of the oil concessions from the Shah's government after the coup, does not feature significantly in the earlier part of the narrative. However, that it was the chief reason for the coup is the tacit conclusion of the book.
British critic David Pryce-Jones takes strong issue with this conclusion in his essay "A Very Elegant Coup" (link below). In his view, the attempted Communist takeover of Iran was the chief issue, and the portrayal of the CIA by Kinzer as "arrogant, thuggish and immoral" was originally a notion put forward by leftists who sympathized with the attempt.
External links[edit]
- Review Essay of Stephen Kinzer's All the Shah's Men, By: Masoud Kazemzadeh, Ph.D., MIDDLE EAST POLICY, VOL. XI, NO. 4, WINTER 2004
- How to Overthrow a Government—interview with Stephen Kinzer, author of All the Shah’s Men: An American Coup and the Roots of Middle East Terror
- US-Iranian Relations, the 1953 CIA Coup in Iran and the Roots of Middle East Terror—Interview with Stephen Kinzer, author of All the Shah’s Men
- All The Shah’s Men—interview with Steven Kinzer
- Review of All the Shah's Men by David S. Robarge
- A Very Elegant Coup—critique of All the Shah’s Men
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