This article was published in August 2020 in Iran Daily newspaper + Download

John Kerry's self-styled admission of US involvement in overthrowing of Prime Minister Mossadegh

Sixty seven years ago, the popular Iranian Prime Minister Mohmmad Mossadegh who led the oil industry nationalization movement from Britain was forced out of office in a joint clandestine US-UK operation. Former US Secretary of State John Kerry in his book “Every Day Is Extra” acknowledges that the United Sates was directly involved in the notorious removal of the popular Iranian premier in August 1953.

A Yale graduate, Kerry enlisted in the US Navy in 1966, and served in the infamous Vietnam War. He returned home highly decorated but disillusioned and testified powerfully before Congress as a young veteran opposed to the war. Kerry was elected to the Senate in 1984, eventually serving five terms. In 2004, he was the Democratic presidential nominee and came within one state – Ohio -- of winning. He succeeded Hillary Clinton as Secretary of State in 2013. In that position he tried to find peace in the Middle East, dealt with the Syrian civil war while combatting ISIS, and negotiated the Iran nuclear deal and the Paris climate agreement. 

In Chapter 7 of his book titled The Old Senate, he writes, “Dulles, along with his brother, Allen, who was CIA director in that same era, had reversed the revolution in Iran and reinstalled the shah.”

 John Foster Dulles served as Secretary of State under Eisenhower until his death in May, 1959. Allen Dulles, John Foster’s younger brother was the first civilian director of the CIA. 

John Foster Dulles was the then U.S. Secretary of State (1953–59), as he once said “There are two kinds of people in the world. There are those who are Christians and support free enterprise, and there are the others.”

 It is noteworthy that, although Kerry acknowledged US intervention in the fall of Mossadegh's government, like other American officials, he did not consider this intervention a “coup d'état” and described it as “reversing the revolution” and “reinstalling the Shah”.

“Diplomacy” can be considered the technique, art or science of achieving “foreign policy” goals. From the perspective of the American imperialist mentality, “diplomacy” is sometimes used to impose domination, threaten and intimidate -- read stick -- and sometimes to encourage -- read carrot -- the weaker side to pursue the desired “foreign policy” of this country.

To further substantiate the hypothesis that the US “foreign policy” towards Iran is typically fixed from the type of intervention mentioned in Chapter 7 of Kerry’s book, and that only the “diplomacy” of achieving its goals may change -- such as the Iran nuclear deal or JCPOA as mentioned in Chapter 18 of John Kerry’s book -- it holds true that “Every Day Is Extra”.