In many accounts the C.I.A. is regarded as the prime mover behind the 1953 coup in Iran, yet Britain was in fact the initial instigator and provided considerable resources to the plot, which U.K. planners named “Operation Boot.”
In the early 1950s, the Anglo–Iranian Oil Company (AIOC), or BP as it is now known, was run from London and owned jointly by the British government and private citizens. It controlled Iran’s main source of income and oil, and by 1951 had become, according to one British official, “in effect an imperium in imperio [an empire within an empire] in Persia.”
Iranian nationalists objected to the fact that the AIOC’s revenues from oil were greater than the Iranian government’s.
Britain’s ambassador in Tehran, Sir Francis Shepherd, had a typically colonialist take on the situation. The declassified files show his writing: “It is so important to prevent the Persians from destroying their main source of revenue…by trying to run it themselves.”
He added: “The need for Persia is not to run the oil industry for herself (which she cannot do) but to profit from the technical ability of the West.”
Of course, Iran was perfectly capable of running its own oil industry. In March 1951 the Iranian Parliament voted to nationalise oil operations, take control of the Anglo–Iranian Oil Company and expropriate its assets.
Hellbound and Down 