All The Shah's Men: An American Coup And The Roots Of Middle East Terror (2004) - Plot & Excerpts
"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 by Kinzer, called "Reset: Iran, Turkey, and America's Future," 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.As of the date of this review, I learned that Stephen Kinzer is working on a new book that pertains, specifically, to the lives of The Dulles Brothers. I cannot wait to learn more about these two men and how their life stories led them to key involvement with the coups. I expect the piece to be a highly-anticipated book. You can bet I'll be in line to read it, and I hope you will, too.
Bound: Iran So Far AwayStephen Kinzer Chronicles the Coup That Could Come AgainJohn HoodMiami SunPost 2/18/08It those who don’t know history are doomed to repeat it, what about those who’ve made history and not learned from their mistakes? Are they equally doomed? When it comes to the United States and Iran, well, that just may be the case.Of course, we’d have to assume our current administration is aware of its history; then we’d have to hope against hope that it knows history is still in its hands. And while the former is highly unlikely (the past is so yesterday); the latter is almost mutually assured.At least if the last seven years of saber rattling against Iran is any indication. But there remains a slim chance that someone in this administration would rather not deepen the everlasting scar of its legacy; someone who not only knows his or her history, but who knows enough to heed it; a someone smart enough to have read Stephen Kinzer’s All the Shah’s Men: An American Coup and the Roots of Middle East Terror (Wiley $14.95).Here’s some of what they’d learn:Once upon a very different time, believe it or not, Iranians viewed Americans with near universal regard. After all, a young Nebraskan schoolteacher named Howard Baskerville had fought and died alongside his Persian pals in 1909 during the Constitutional Revolution, and a Princeton Theological Seminary alum named Samuel Jordan not only founded one of the country’s first modern secondary schools (Alborz High School), his Presbyterian mission ran both a hospital and one of Iran’s only schools for girls.Then Iran democratically elected a leader named Mohammed Mossadegh and all the goodwill went to hell. Why? Because of the British and their pesky yen for crude, that’s why.See before Mossadegh, Britain had always run Iran as a kinda puppet fiefdom, first as a strategic crossroads between its colonial territories, then as a well-spring of oil. Sure there was the occasional skirmish (those natives can be so restless), but that patently British brand of strongarm diplomacy usually managed to keep a lid on things.But those who’ve been bent over backward for decade after decade eventually reach a breaking point, and when that happens it takes something decidedly stronger than a strong arm on a lid.It takes a coup.When Mossadegh dared nationalize Iran’s oil concerns, the Brits got the Yanks to gang up on him with every dirty trick yet to be written in the newly-formed CIA’s handbook, from mass media manipulations to out-and-out arrest. Unfortunately, Mossadegh, who till the end remained unequivocally committed to democracy, never suspected his American friends of betrayal; if he did, he refused to believe it. And that proved to be his downfall.Kinzer, a former New York Times correspondent with more than fifty countries notched on his belt, chronicles the proceedings with a reporter’s attention to detail and a dramatist’s eye for some of history’s most inexplicably prized minds: General H. Norman Schwarzkopf, forty years before his same-named son would lead us into Desert Strom; CIA op Kermit Roosevelt, grandson of Teddy, and his relentless commitment to mission; the Dulles brothers, Allen and John Foster, two of the archest, most adamant of Cold Warriors; outgoing President Truman, who had no taste for coups, implicit or otherwise; incoming Commander-in-Chief Eisenhower, who suffered no such compunction, especially after the Brits convinced him that Mossadegh was about to go Commie (which he wasn’t). And, the most pivotal player of all, the Anglo-Iranian Oil Company, now more commonly known as British Petroleum.It’s an ugly story, full of high stakes and hubris, but it’s all too true. It also happens to be the basis of what’s at best a very deep suspicion, and at worst, a very base hatred of the West. And since we’ve just nine months to go before the warmongers leave the oval office, it needs to be told and retold, lest we end up retelling it all over again, with an even uglier cast, and at far greater consequence.
What do You think about All The Shah's Men: An American Coup And The Roots Of Middle East Terror (2004)?
A must-read for anyone who wants to be able to put current events into perspective (4.5 stars)All the Shah's Men: An American Coup and the Roots of Middle East Terror was a terrific book - a detailed and well-balanced historical non-fiction that at times reads like a spy thriller and throughout made me unbelievably angry and sad. Stephen Kinzer does a wonderful job of taking you behind the scenes of Mossadegh's overthrow and includes information from all the key players. He provides an enlightening brief history of Iran and a well-written explanation of what led up to the Anglo-Iranian Oil Company's problems, Mossadegh's rise to power, his nationalization of the oil industry, and the subsequent problems that eventually resulted in the end of his political career and his public life.The arrogance of these men who thought they could play with a people and a nation as if they were playing a game of Risk ... it's seriously abhorrent. To think of what has happened as a result of the Anglo-Iranian Oil Company's greed (a company now known as BP), the British Empire's inability to let go of colonialism, and the US's obsession with stopping the spread of Communism at all cost - it boggles the mind. The covert institutions of these two countries literally played with the Iranian people and the country's future as if it was just a child's board game, disregarding not only the longterm implications of their actions, but also the unbelievable immorality of them.So many times - so many times! - the Iranian people and democracy won out despite manipulations, backhand deals, palm-greasing, propaganda, and outright lies. After all that shady work by the US and Britain, the CIA's first attempt to overthrow Mossadegh on August 15, 1953 didn't even work!! And if Mossadegh hadn't been such a scrupulously honest and moral person and so devoted to the idea of democracy, freedom, and keeping his word, their second attempt on August 19 would also have failed. But it didn't, and we are all the worse off for it.As Kinzer and other historians point out, one can trace a line from the CIA and MI6's overthrow of Mossadegh to the attacks against Americans and US institutions in Iran in the 70s, the 1979 Iranian Revolution, the embassy hostage crisis, the current (deplorable) state of democracy in the Middle East, and the emergence and strength of extremist and terrorist groups like Al Qaeda.In the last chapter of All the Shah's Men, Kinzer writes: "It is not far-fetched to draw a line from Operation Ajax [the name of the operation to overthrow Mossadegh:] through the Shah's repressive regime and the Islamic Revolution to the fireballs that engulfed the World Trade Center in New York. The world has paid a heavy price for the lack of democracy in most of the Middle East. Operation Ajax taught tyrants and aspiring tyrants there that the world's most powerful governments were willing to tolerate limitless oppression as long as oppressive regimes were friendly to the West and to Western oil companies. That helped tilt the political balance in a vast region away from freedom and toward dictatorship" (p203-204).How does the saying go? ... Oh right: "Those who cannot remember the past are condemned to repeat it" (George Santayana, 1905). I fear that the lessons from Mossadegh's overthrow aren't ones we've forgotten, but ones we unfortunately never learned to begin with.OTHER BOOKS BY STEPHEN KINZERBitter Fruit: The Story of the American Coup in Guatemala, Revised and Expanded (1982) Crescent and Star: Turkey Between Two Worlds (2001) Overthrow: America's Century of Regime Change from Hawaii to Iraq (2006) Blood of Brothers: Life and War in Nicaragua), co-author Merilee S. Grindle (2007) A Thousand Hills: Rwanda's Rebirth and the Man Who Dreamed It (2008)Reset: Iran, Turkey, and America's Future (2010)
—Juliana
And we were once so naive as to believe that America's problems in the Middle East stemmed from our strong support of Israel in the Yom Kippur War of 1973 -- remember that oil embargo that was going to cause us, greedy Americans that we were, to do something about our "dependence on foreign oil"?Try 1953. A national election in Iran that was actually won fair and square by someone who threatened to upset our playground. Well, he couldn't stay in power, could he? Enter Kermit Roosevelt, grandson
—Janet
I didn't know anything about these events before reading this book. This tells a frustrating and saddening story about the roots of Iran's resentment of the United States--the CIA-led coup to overthrow Mossadegh, a popular (I won't say democratically elected) prime minister of Iran. It was a very compelling read from start to finish--it's getting a star knocked off only because I didn't feel like there was sufficient detail about some things that I would have liked to have heard more about to understand the full context. For example, the author makes some broad assertions about the Shah's 25-year rule following the overthrow of Mossadegh, but doesn't really go into any detail about what made it bad, what made Iranians hate him, etc. I know it wasn't the part of Iranian history that this book was focused on, but it was a central part of the author's thesis that the CIA ushered in a hated regime, so I would have liked to hear more about what drove that hatred.Overall, though, it's a very good overview of a part of history that I expect many Americans know nothing about.
—Katey
