tape 1 I was there from the end of to the middle of '37 and from late '49 to '52 when Mossadegh threw us out and broke off relations and I was there again from 63 to '67 During Moassadegh'S time in power they passed a statute which banned anyone with previous experience in Iran who spoke persian from being posted back again to the you'i have thought that having put the Shah back again on his throne it would have been the easiSt thing in the world to have said just cancel it but it was the Swiss ambassador in Tehran who in his excessive zeal pointed out to the foreign officgthat this law was still on the statute book and that several members of Dennis wright's party who were going back as the initial reestablishment of the embassy had served in Iran and did speak Persian John Fernley was allowed to go back becaspe he didn't speak Persian Morgan Hillier-Fry and I were going back with the first batch and they had to allow someone back and so Dennis went in cold without a Persian speaker on his team but that was the foreign office being wishy washy beyond belief It should have been a simple matter from the foreign Secretary to the foreign minister for Iran In fact I was booked on the plane and this thing came through about 6 hours before I went out in -h3 h7 period first of all as an army officer in SOE Colonel Maclean and I were the first to have gone into AsMaijan after the Russians had withdrawn Colonel NLD he had been up in Tashkar before the Chinese overran it and he was on his way back home precisely what he was doing there except stripping gold off his gold belt and marrying one of the local Kashkar' 3 every week or so I don't know but he finally got out and came to Hong Kong and then via India and he knew Wayborn quite well and he stayed with one of Waverill's adc' 3 called Chailes Rankin and he persuaded the DMI in India to finance his return by road India Afghanistan Persia Turkey and that way it had to be at a certain time which was winter He had various exciting episodes an the way - breaking down in Afghanistan Charles Rankin was then being recalled back by a cert ain date and I met up with them in Meshed in Eastern Iran wheze I had gone off for the weekend to take a diplomatic badpecause there was no ieliable postal service - and he said well why don't you join me I said I would have to find out if the ambassador would let me go - he said fine I ll come down to Tehran His car kept breaking down eventually we got it all repaired and finally set off I was given 5 weeks in which to do this and off we set and we went to the Caspian and chuntered all the way up to the coast and Russian border and we got that damn car to within about 200 yards of the pass and we couldn't move because of the snow So we had to turn around and comthl the way back - this was 10 days after we had left and it went on like that we had been assured by the Turkish military attache in Tehran that if we couldicto Tabrise and then go over the Turkish border that even if we got stuck we could put the car on the train and go to We finally got to Tabrise and struggled to the border in terrible snow conditions and on the border which is a no man's land the Persian post is on one side and then there is a mile of no man's land wwhich you cross before you come to the Turkish post We left Iran and -2- tape 1 our passports were stamped accordingly and we got to the Turkish post with 6 feetLon the road which would river be moved 1 ofdgwi until the spring 50 then back we had to go but then the Persians wouldn't let uS in again because we didn't have an entry visa We were arrested and taken down to the governor and the governor wrote in my passport that he personally authorised us to enter Iran even though we did not have a visa and this is because of snow on the need We came back to Tabrise We drove to Mahabad and decided to try and go down the Ronduse gorge which links that part of Persian kurdistan with northern Iraq and then get up into Turkey that way well the Persians were always very suspicious people particularly the military -we were staying in Mahabad with the commanding officer of the Persian troops he asked what we were proposing to do and we that is surprising he said I don't suppose that by any chance you realize we and the Iraqui's are going to have for the first time a joint offensive one from the Iraqui side and one from the Persian side to squeeze Mustafan and Basani out He told us that the gorge was controlled by the Basanis He said that he did have aliaison officer in touch with the Basanis I would let him 'take you down the gorge but only about 20 kilometres and when we got down the gorge we ran slap into the main Ba sani us what we were doing and they said they would take us down and sure enough 10 kilometres on 6 feet of snow again so we had to come back all the way to Tambrise and all the way back to Knsween the purpose of the journey to get to England for you No but M aclean was Afthat stage I was not officially in intelligence At this point a is explained the focus of the programme and the dates and events realise that When Rasman was assassinated he was attending a memorial service -of another cabinet colleague of his who had also been assasinated and at the time he had in his pocket the first 50 50 agreement and he was waiting to choose the moment to present it That would have changed our whole dealings in the Middle East At that stage I wash in the embassy in Tehran I was vice-consul in Meshed when Rasan was assassinated --the Shah could have nominated anyone according to the constitution but instead let it be known that he'd take the feelings of the MangelasaLand that brought Mossadegh about I would have thought that he would have almost certainly have chosen someone elselonger have an influence over the Shah's choice Don't forget that it was not only ourselves it was the Russians as well and immediately after the Americans were very new to the game and certainly we would have hoped to have had more influence The Shah was a very youn32man when he was tape 1 put on the throne and he was knocked around from pillar to post between Britian and Russia and he was always listening to the last person in and that was often the advice he took 9 I - Were you seeing him in that period of early 1950-51 YES but more on a social basis because I was were in touch with hima and I particularly was in touch with the Persians who were influential with him - Ernst Perron people like that terrible Could the Shah no longer ignore opinion in theMajlis He didn't know whatko do He thought he'd take the easy way out and ask them to give him an expression of their will about because they couldn't agree on anybody else It then became clear that Mossadegh was an ardent nationalist 1 and zenophobic to boot one of the things that he did nf course was to close all the consulates in Eastern and Northern Iran the only ones that remained Open were the consulate general inAchwaz Khoramshah from Abadan He also nationalised the Soviet Persian fisheries We thought when Mossadegh came in that it would be relatively easy to get him removed -constitutionally yes because the Shah had the right to do it if he wished But now you ge another character entering the scene the late professor I haven't got a copy of Monty's book with me Anthony Eden sent I out 7 1 1 in The relevant pages of the book are talked I had shared a house with _ in Tehran for 3 years between 'h3 and his brief was very simple go out don't inform the ambassador use the intelligence services to provide you with any money you might need and secure the overthrow ofnglossadegh by legal or quasi legal means ambassador was Shegu_rd It was the decision of the foreign secretary without consulting his permanent officials Strang wouldn't have known This is where we would have some 4 not to mention the Rashidian brothers all of whom are now dead Were you under Zaehner's orders I was responsible to Monty When Mossadegh broke off relations and we all left and drove across to Iraq and then eventually to Beirut and Monty took on another post in London and I took over from him running the Persian station in exile from Cyprus Your presumably had a lot of contacts and friends in Persia and amongst them were the Rashidian quickly did Zaehner start He did it very quickly To begin with we were not officially aware of what he was trying to do except that having lived with the man for 3%-years and acting as his paymaster vast sums of money were being spent and we were doing it our way and getting can-hull hack Inn nca tn biscuit tins With -A- tape 1 damn great notes And he Spent a lot but did not succeed in '51 This was going on behind the scenes all the time that Stokes and Harriman were out there Yes I think he spent well over a million and a half pounds iThe coup cost 700-thousand pounds I know because I spent it The money was going via the Rashidian brothers to people to keep them sweet and see what they could do that you buy a Fate and once vote has come up if you ve paid enough thatifair enough the other way of course is that if you are a possible candidate for the premiership then you obviously have your own what they call ichsuhn - group and if you are looking a likely candidate then you could start negotiating with whoever's vote you might want combination of legal Persian practises and quasi-legal which is straightforward bribery Shepherd tried and failed to get the Shah to sign the document 0 Meanwhile as we move toward the break in relations then they started thinking in terms of a possible coup In terms of 1951 the Shah wouldn't sack Mossadegh but it wasn't until '52 that there was an attempt with That flew off the handle Didn't work at all Never a starter Julian amery failed miserably We had underestimated the Nossadegh position and so had the Shah Probably not enough was spent or could be to buy off the have to weigh money in the hand against a promise by Mossadegh of positions of authority which would lead eventually to a lot more money Also remember Mossadegh had in his government ahember of the Tudeh party and the Russians were hoping toakeep Mossadegh in this was a potential problem andkl had to keep an on The Tudeh party had been prescribed after the attempt on the Shah s life in 19h9 and it was still prescribed that Mossadegh should introduce a memeber of the Tudeh communitt party into his have have to look his name up What was the name of the civil servant that you used there was a man who used to attend cabinet meetings because his minister had resigned or was not there in about '52 353 He doesn't remember It is agreed that they will draw up a list of points for him tb think about Division of labour What was your specific job in '51 '52 Telling Sam what to say to the Rashidian and keeping informed in general terms on the political situation not only on the Bashidian but dozens of others And working with Zaehner on what needed to be done When it looked very much as if Mossadegh was bound to break relations we started talking with the -l mnn inn A nrnbablv tape 1 innmdiately aftedbe had departed Sam and I at that stage drafted an outline plan for implementation say for about 10 days after we had left This convoy left Tehran and ended up in Beirut Sam and Irreft it in Bagdad and flew on to Beirut with our plan in our pockets and there we had a 'first meeffng with the Americans inviting their cooperation but after much discussion that was turned down That meeting 'was totally inconsequential The plan would have involved seizure of key points in the city by what units we thought were loyal to the Shah and possibly anti-Mossadegh seizure of the radio station classical plan By this time though people weren't quite aware of the depth of organisation the Rashidians had and they thouuht it was far too great a risk to take and that if it backfired both the Americans and the foreign 'talked to the CIA with foreign office knowledge but they had cold feet -very much more than we had to begin with because it was quite clear that they didn't have anything near like what we had on the ground 'and so we went on to Cyprus we had issued the Rashidians with radio sets 41two of them were arrested at one stage the third one jumped over the back wall and he was the one who stayed at large right to eh end His first name was Ceyphulla _he is the one who had a house over here but in fact they maintaiqfthe family suite at Groswenor House practically until they died They were an extraordinary bunch of brothers because none of th g really spoke English except Ceyfella did a bit towards the end but after allthis was over in that if they had dealings with the west he did speak some Ebglish and therefore was the relations man his older brother who was a merchant and a commercailly minded chap- he owned and ran cinemas and bought films- his name was Qudratullah and the third was Asa dullah he was the political end of the trio it was he who knew anngalt with the Shah They werglate BOs or early AOs They were fascinated by the idea of politics altogether and intrigued by being in contact with the British and delighted to take our money for something which they believed in themselves They felt Mossadegh was very much a threat and their father had been earlier on in the century had been a well known respected figure and took refuge in the embassy They had always been brought up by the old man believing the British were very good they also believed in English education all of their children went 6 school in England the girls in the Isle of Wight tape ends tape 2 this is one of the other sons No this waslthe sister's son He eventually became a qualified pilot and pior captain in Iran air but he did all his training here The Bashidian brothers saw in Mossadegh a direct threat to Iran they wanted Iran totally independent of Russia and they said give him two years and you will have a Tudeh in Iran I really do believe it because Mossadegh was a fairly weak character after all he had no real understanding of internatinal politics and once you get highly trained members of the communist party in it doesn't take long we didn't share the American view that the was acting as a bulwark against thought he would be pushed over by the communists in the long run and I think that I am right in saying that we had a little more experience in Iran than they had d don t think that we saw things really in the proper light tape 2 because we didn't realize even then the importance that oil was going to play the major role in the Middle East during the 50s 60s and 70s Let me take you back a little because it may be of interest to talk about nationalisation As early as 19% I and Basil Bumley moved a great deal in Persian circles in a way that other members of the embassy didn't what is said politely in English at a cocktail party to antibassador is very different from what emerges with a group of'young people It was clear that there was considerable feeling against the we mounted what you might call a clandestine gallup poll we wrote it we framed the questions it showed us that the Persians thought they had a raw deal they were bitterfy resentful of the way they were being treated by the AIOC because as you probably know the AIOC were to many ex patriots who called anyone west of Calais a wog and to them Iranians were wogs Th fact that they had just as qualified engineers and chemists as the AIOC was irrelevant the Persians were not allowed to be members of the 'Club' which of course was the British c1ub -you didn't miszrits and Persians kept separate and they were treated as inferior citizens and of course they had the feeling that they were being screwed the whole time and quite too and from about 1920 onwards We showed this to London and the ambassador John Le ougetelle and he took one look and said 'Oil oil dear boy that's for the comercial department and he refused to read any further and so that is roughly the reception it got when it was in London what are you muttering about oil 0f course they were totally wrong as it proved A years later This is the sort of thing that you won't find in any book I don't think BP would admit that now Peter Amery wasn't aware of that gallup poll but he felt it was coming was the oil company aware of what you and Zaehner were doing No Immediately after the war although there were intelligence is army officers in Iran they made it clear through the embassy in Tehran that they regarded themselves as the experts on the oil producing areas and they were perfectly able to look after their own security etcu_and therefore SIS were never allowed to operate on the oil company areas until it became very obviovs that so ghing was going to hhppen in Abadan and it was nationalisation and the problem arose were we or were we not going to take Ahadan It was when Mossadegh said he was going to nationalise Persian and the A166 turned desperately to us and asked for intelligence and what the intentions of the Persianswage And again it was virtually dwpeless task but it was ILwas sent the Khoramshah trying to build up in 5 weeks what we had been trying to build up and been denied for 7 years This was a str gg forward intellignence operation my purpose was to find out what the Persians intended to do and what strength they were on the ground I had an introduction to the then commander-in-chief of the Persian forces on the ground in Abadan and I called on him officially as the new vice consul I put it to him that I really didn't want to see a bloodbath in Abadan it would be better to know what we should avoid etc in terms of the forces at his disposal and how he dispersed them etc and he fell for it and oddly he was a distant relative of Dr Mossadegh's he told me exactly where his troops were and what their communications were and by that time we had the cruiser and warships out there up -9 ouh - - - 1 - J - - A is 9 AvF4b b 3 5 WAS tape 2 and of course she had her guns open range across the refinery The tanks were there in the day but they were never there at night between dusk and dawn they parked in a straight line hub to was on board the Urius every day and every jing that he was telling me was checking out from our cracking of the Persan code and why'we didn't go in to me will always remain a mystery That was the 5 weeks that I had because it was then or nver The commander wanted to avoid shedding Persian blood just as we wanted to avoid shedding British book That cost HMG the princely sum of 21bs of Lipton tea because he couldn't get it in Persia and I got it for him and that is precisely what I paid him Eric Drake who was then general manager in Abadan he is on record as saying to the cabinet virtually what you said - you can walk in there and why don't you Must have been a political decision Of course Zaehner had left by then I think he left in September He left because it hadn't worked and the negotiations had broken down the Americans had got out Harriman had left the refinery had closed ddown What was next stage Did you stay down in Khoranshah It can't have been September it must have been June No September '51 I was due to come on leave that summer After the Khroamshah episode I came on leave but even then I was very uneasy about the situation and I took the precaution of getting a return visa before I left I was in the South of France and a week before returning to Tehran call from London The foreign office had invited a group of Persian journalists to visit England officially and a great program drawn up by Central Office of Information for touring mining industry new towns usual razzle dazzle But they had forgotten that not a single one spoke English and they had nobody available I spent a month with them The idea was theat they should return to Tehran and write up Britain in their tin pot newspapers 0n the final day of their tour we had a farewell lunch and at 5 o'clock that day Mossadegh broke off relations with Great Britain This was '52 Did you notife a difference in operational questions when the Tory government came in Did Eden make its presence felt Zaehner had gone They authorised us to go on financing the Rashidian brothers this is after the break of relations when we were out and to maintain contact by wireless They reported to us and told how they were building up strenght in their organization The mechanics were interesting I would occasionally have to arrange a cheque payable to so and so in Zurich New York and that meant he could have 50 000 or whatever for the arms and people were only too glad to get their money out brief discussion about Khavan incident Eden's trust in Julian work When did you first start wooing General Zahedi v th ape 2 Acoup is necessarily predicated on the use of armed force It had to be somebody who was loyal to the Shah who camanded a certain respect amongst his fellow army was a bit of joke and all they had done was virtually tribal skirmishes but they had never fought a battle Zahedi was suitable as a candidate because he had good standing in the army we knew the Shah trusted In the autumn of '52 after you had gone to Beirut the Americans weren't keen to take part Could we not have launched that coup by ourselves It wasn't considered because the organization wasn't strong enough withno one there to direct --well Persians are difficult to control - I think it was probably SIS's decision not to recommend it to the foreign secretary Unfortunately the head of SIS at the time Genral Sinclair knew about as much of the middle east as a 10 year old far more interested in cricket anyway Henderson only knew that we wanted to get rid of Mossadegh but he didn't know hwat means we were going to use what people etc Mossadegh's breaking off of relations - suspect conspiracy Arrested Rashidians and would have arrested He avoided arrest and I was invo ved in rotecting him as he moved from hous to house in ehran fstory then about American cars and Rashidians then in jail when telegram arrived for their car and was sent back saying they were in jail but would pick it up in 2% months I knew that it was easy for me to get into to Tehran bbacause I could fly in on American military'aircraft even hide my hair - my hair was very blond and I couldn't do anything except colour it once in I knew it would be no probleh I thought I ought ooto be on the spot because they would obviously do things at my behest in the intelligence world you play your cards pretty close to the chest we handled the money we didn't let the LIA touch it amd even if you have an ally you always go to to protect your own sources of information We on instruction were more forthcoming than CIA were with us But on the other hand knowing the thing well could read between the lines and could see who the CIA were using My request to gi in under American transport was turned downkeeping in touch by wireless Politicians don't like being embarrassed it would have been embarrassing if anything had gone wron I was in charge and London had decided it was me not Monty because I spole Farci and knew the brothers and had been there so long etc Monty was head of station in Tehran until the brak and then he was given another appointment in London I became his replecement in exile The actual running of the coup from our side was my reSponsibility discussion of setting up in rus difficult conditions bad wires mountainous country Zaehner felt that there wouldn't van-r ANS -9- tape 2 be sufficient support for it wither from London or the States He lost interest He left in the summer after the Khavan incident Once he left that was it he was an academic not a man of action In the early months of '53 we were building up with the Rashidians and we thought we had enough military unites to mount something but Lohdon started getting cold feet Eventually I received a direct ofder that the whole operation was to be run down Almost certainly Eden Because he had failed to get support with the Americans etc But they never got the message and then I was given I even clearer instructions saying you will and you will be montiored on the air to see whether it gets through As it happened that particular radio contact did fail and it was the next day that apologies starting flowing from Hold your horses the Americans have finally decided to come Roosevelt had been to see Sinclair and he had been to London and he wasn't convinced that we could do it alone - he had to persuade the CIA and this the American administration that it was a good idea It was a gamble Timing is always of the essence and secrecy the Persians aren't very good at either Roosevelt was obviously convinced of the need to do something but he wasn't sure that we could do it alone and he wasn't sure if he could swing it in washington tape ends continuing discussion of Roosevelt tape 3 Mossadegh rejected the last and final offer for mediation by the Americans a The whole of his book is slanted as though lthe operation was totally carried out by the Americans and that the Shah recognised this I wasn t allowed to go back inmediately when we picked up relations again because Americans were trying to cash-in very quickly and trying to establish a special relationship with the Shah The Shah as you know is avery complex character he clearly looked to America as the main supplier of arms of modern weapons aircraft but he had a sneaking regard for what you might call British intelligence rather more than for the American CIA who were always bungling thisngs In the 503 when he was reorganising the infamous Savak he turned to us rather than the Americans it was then that the special relationship began and developed to such a stage that I was seeing him regualrly once a fortnight in the 609 At this point Ashraff became very important We met by prearrangement in Paris and I thought I had known her before so that was alright I said that I can guarantee you that we are speaking on behalf of the American government I said that we would like to make quite sure that your brother the proposals that are being put to him in Tehran by the Rashidians we would like you to go to Tehran and assure him that he has the approval of Washington that is to say that we would like you to tell him that we can guarantee that the proposals made by the Rashidians do carry our approval We made it clear that we would pay expenses and when I produced a great wad of notes her eves alighted and she said that she would inst have to an -10- tape 3 to Nice for a week to clear things up eventually we said here is your first class ticket and you are booked for the day after tomorrow and this time I did let her get her hands on the money She was quite a flighty woman and Steve sho fancied anything fancied her Thisdwas Junly and everyone was away from Paris all our friends and the meeting wasn't until about 16th I had dozens of friends but they were all away fro the weekend aid I rang and rang and so did Steve but there was nobody and so we found ourselves wandering around Paris We were having a drink on the Champs Elysee and suddenly we were offered some postcards please note tape is very bad and rather muffled story about selling postcards for times what they paid Ashraff did in the end talk to the Shah because she gave him the message you know the old wartime habit of using the BBC which is something they don't like doing at all in peacetime but we finally persuaded them and gave her the message saying that if you do this you will notice a slight variation on the presentation program and that once he heard that he himself would know that it was official This was to confirm that he could believe Ashraff and also course the name Roosevelt meant something to and he was on him but being of a suspicious nature it could have crossed the spot well crossed his mind that Kim was saying this to him without it actual y being 100 per cent true and we wanted to hammer it home that it was and therefore we used the BBC By July Churchill was in comand Eden was ill By '53 despite Eden's cold feet the basic decision was we will go ahead with it as soon as we get the Americans inv What happened in the talks between M16 and the CIA were you actually involved Yes Washington Cyprus Rome andon Immediately after I had been told to reestablish contact and this must have been in about March Then the'Americans came in with John waller and Donaldh p who had a certain background knowledge of Iran not because he was a member of the CIA You weren't of the impreession that there were people within the CIA that did have doubts No Give the CIA action for anything and they'll take it They never came clean with us we came clean with them I would have preferred to have gone in myself and acted instead of at the last minute to coordinate everything I said all along that we should have back up in case something did leak or go wrong which it did and this is when it was decided to bring the boys out onto the streets This happened in the early hours of a Sunday morning - black Sunday and it was all over by Wednesday I was in Cyprus then When it first went wrong I heard about it from Roosevelt and from the radio and from the RAshidians LJE -11- tape 3 In order to try and get the Rashidians involved to try and save the day - would you say they did save the day 0 - Yes Ardeshir The role of Zahedi and Farzanegan who went over to the different units They were to go to A Kermansha and Isfahan to get them to advance on the capitol George Carol - CIA rebel rouser That's the word His line was 'I'd just hang the bastards' he was all for doing wild and peculiar things very wild indeed He was the CIA's paramilitary expert commando type and he didn't speak Persian I How important were the journalists What about the 2 - day demonstrations we spoke to someone who told us about people pulling down statues of the Shah Was it a turning point Yes It was sacrilege to do so there was more pro-Shah feeling than Mossadegh realised but once you start burning newspaper offices which are known to be pro Mossadegh the mob starts coming out and attacks the demonstrators and then it snowballs which is what we intened to do It worked It was the correct reading of the Persian mob character It was the Rashidians who provided people to infiltrate the demonstrations I was personally giving orders and directing It was a contingency plan because we had told them not to rely on Modsadegh folding Were you involved in Aishartus assassination Yes But it was never the intention that he shouldbe killed Something went wrong he was kidnapped and held in a cave Feeling ran very high and Afshartus was unwise enough to make derogatory comments about the Shah He was under guard by a young army officer and the young officer pulled out a gun and shot him That was never part of our program at all but that's how it happened What was the purpose was it to stop him retiring army officers Yews that was part of it also to give an indication that they -12 ape 3 c1tcome couldn't have it all their own way and to boost the morale of of the opposition but that was a totally undexpected and certainly unplanned liit 1U itt - it didn't help - Meetings with other Americans Differences What the British were hoping for - green light to go back in Dozens of meetings Timing - whether or not the picture being built up of growing organisation was correct or not their contacts were saying you can't trust so and so and our contacts were saying you can and vice versa How quickly we were going to recognise Zahedi Over oil it is quite true that the Jmericans wanted a special position over Iranian oil - it was clear the AIOC could never get back to what they had as more or less exclusive Oil was discussed but not so much in political terms tape stops comes back I think he was bought by us I never got to the bottom of that but one didn't enquire-when it had been successful But he didn't play a role much in this It is difficult to explain the Persian attitude to religion as you've seen with Khomeni the Shah irossly underestimated the religious influence in Iran but equally so did Mossadegh he was not by any means a religious man there is a thing in Iran -which in Persian literally means the house of strength -where they do all sorts of extraordinary athletic exercises with chains etc to the chanting of the Koran by highly trained clrummer These are the tough boys and Kasha qi controlled some oooo you could use them as street mob with the blessing of a Kashani then the more the merrier Were we considering Kashani as a'replacement for Mossadegh 1 As I said I think he was bought but how far it would take him The letters from Middleton to Eden and foreign office several of them say we need to launch a coup d'etat quite soon particularly o after tl1e Khavan thing YOu don't think it was the election of Eisenhower which _provided the turning point but it was sonrthing in around RFebruary ooo Definitely Timing of the operation itself Very simple What were you waiting for Signature of the Sha t Demonstration July 21st important turning point because theTudeh demonstration was far larger than the nationalist Americans saw the danger more clearly But they had already decided by then Timing was solely affected by the signature of the Shah tape 3 Had it been even 10 days or a fortnight earlier - Kim was there in Tehran trying to persuade him to sign - it might have succeeded With every passing day word got around and word got to Moasadegh so he was ready I was only 29 but I had spent more or less 10 years in Iran I think what would have happened is that you would have had Mossadegh with the country going into economic debline and promising the earth and not being able to deliver gradually weakening on the political pressures on the Tudeh party egged on by the Russians who would have certainly kpressed for total abolition of proscription and then more pressure to have more members more portfolios in the cabinet than to the Tudeh party then eventually a takeover Then Russia would have achieved what she always wanted access to the ports on the gulf The failure wasn't immediately apparent The Russians had burnt their fingers once and they didn't want to do it quite so quickly because it was a definite failure in Azebaijan Stalin had just died leadership was uncertain I wrote up the whole thing from beginning to end_and that is definitely on file that's what you want I can't lay my hands on think I could persuade them to let me see it officials can see their own papers Were the negotiations that took place in '52 essentially face- saving for the British Yes They would have wanted to oust Messadegh regardless of whether he would have signed an agreement favorable to the British - eventually they would have been forced to have considered getting rid of him to prevent a Russian takeover I am convinced that was on the cards was the embargo on oil sales that was going on important in rallying the opposition As the economice situation worsened the better it was for us- it was easier for us because people began to realise that promises were empty If a settlement had meant starting up the oil industry again it would not have necessarily been what you wanted No I think we were better off getting rid of him The fact that these ideas were accepted by the government meant that they weren't really interested in a settlement Eden said so in his memoirs They had to go through the motions but I think they would have given him a fiar chance of making that settlement stick but they would have still reserved judgement on the internal position of Mossadegh even after an agreement for strategic reasons How much were they to do with keeping the Amrricans on our side tape ends tape -1h tape A We were not getting on very well with Khavan at the time who was then Primi minister Someone dreamt up the idea that it would be a-good thing to have a free independent Persian radio broadcasting to Iran Zaehner and I were commissioned to go to Jerusalem and using the facilities of dto run a fne 'statiou we got this set up and more or less ready to go on the air there was fighting in Jerusalem Eventually Sharkeladar moved from Jerusalem to Cyrpus where they went on being the most popular radio station in the Middle East until Suez That was the end because it had no credibility and Nasser set up his rival station One person who was a senior officer in the Palestine police and eventually became a member of SIS is now retired was John Briance He was in Iran too wasn't there an ammy officer captured with a load of membership lists of the Tudeh party in 195 Yes That was when the great executions took place People had not realised how deeply Tudeh had infitrated - the party Had we known how much thay had infiltrated it would have been all the more reason to mount it as quickly as pozgible the coup - we knew that if they could infiltrate into cabinet and into the army then you've go no control Witht the situation of chaos in internal Russia meant that had they wanted to the Russians really couldn't have exploited lhe situatitn They did not want to risk yet another failure following Azebaijan - we were licky It had to work then or never The policy makers view was affected once they got American support -everyone was in agreemnnt that the sooner the better get it over and done with But it was perhaps1a calculated risk was there no opposition to the idea of a coup in Britain that you were aware of 1 Until we lost the oil very few people thought about it politically - certainly didn't stike the general public Mossadegh's popularity A certain notioriety not popularity It's like Sadat man of the year' visiting Jerusalem that didn't make him a terribly popular figure - Why were we able to do this successfully in Iran and yet it would not have succeeded in Egypt - was it because of the calibre of the man like Nasser compared with Moassadegh What are the factors No we knew there were plots going on against Farouk It is the difference between the Iranian and the Egyptian character The constitutional position which the Shah had was not occupied by anyone else Nasser was ad dictator who ousted Farouk nobody was sorry to see him go