Train Ride to War

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United States · Ike · 1953

LTITDK

To Coup or Not to Coup

Mossadegh is elected PM, nationalizes the oil. Britain wants it back. CIA and MI6 would like to run a coup.

Referee notes

LT: Mohammad Mossadegh is prime minister. Oil is nationalized. Britain wants the company back. CIA and MI6 are asking Washington to run a coup that would put Mohammad Reza Pahlavi back on the throne. It has not happened yet.

IT: Washington will sell it as stop-a-Soviet-grab. Tudeh is real and organized. A communist Iran in 1953 is a fear with a file, not a proof. Mossadegh is a nationalist, not a master of the street. The army and the court still have guns.

Context the American player did not pack: the US just finished a world war. Europe is dumping colonies into Washington's lap. This is not a unique sin. It is the week the new empire inherits the old one's oil problem.

DK: nobody has a clean file on the week Washington does not pick up the phone.

What do you want to do?

Advisors

They are briefing you now. They do not know the ending.

  • CIA

    This is still a cable. We think we can rent a mob. We think we have a general. Mohammad Reza, the young Shah, packed a suitcase earlier this year when the fight with Mossadegh got hot. He is not a lion. He is a nervous client. Tudeh is a file. The street will chant about the oil. That is not a government. We are asking you to authorize a coup. We are not telling you it already worked.

  • My party (R)

    Sell it as anti-Soviet. Korea is still the other headline. A king photographs. A company does not.

  • Opposing (D)

    Do it and we will live with it this week. We will have a sentence ready for a later decade.

  • US media

    A king looks like a king. That photographs. Nobody is going to explain the Anglo-Iranian Oil Company to a dinner table in Ohio.

  • Saudis

    Keep the neighborhood conservative. A left-nationalist in Tehran is a sermon we do not want preached to our own oil workers. Quiet yes.

  • Europeans

    London wants the company back. Paris and the rest want the precedent to die. Washington has the bag. This is what 'special relationship' looks like when the empire is tired.