While many readers may not be familiar with the inner workings of constitutional monarchies, it is important to keep in mind that a prime minister serves at the pleasure of the monarch, in whose name the prime minister forms a government. While not common, the monarch can remove the prime minister due to a loss of confidence. In the case of Iran (1953), the Shah saw Mosaddeq as a threat to the constitutional order, which, in fact, he was.

The Shah’s restoration of constitutional order in 1953 also addressed three important geostrategic issues. The first concerned the nature of Iran’s government and how its leadership would be determined. In 1951, as a member of the parliament or Majles, and subsequently as prime minister, Mosaddeq pushed for a public referendum to have the parliament dismissed and the constitutional monarchy eliminated, which would have given him virtual dictatorial powers to rule.

By 1953, as prime minister, Mosaddeq again called for just such a public referendum to choose between his government by decree and what he viewed as an antiquated monarchy. The referendum passed overwhelmingly, and Mosaddeq signed a decree calling for the results to be implemented although Iran’s constitution recognized no such role for referendums. The prime minister was clearly seeking to engage in unconstitutional activities.

The second issue was Mosaddeq’s long sought effort to nationalize Iran’s oil reserves, then controlled jointly through the Anglo-Persian Oil Company. In 1951, prior to becoming prime minister, he led parliament to pass legislation nationalizing Iranian oil assets. The United Kingdom took Iran to the International Court of Justice (ICJ), but because Iran did not recognize the authority of the ICJ, the court dismissed the lawsuit in 1952. This ultimately led the UK to organize a boycott of Iranian oil exports, which was effective in preventing Iranian oil, 50 percent of the nation’s foreign currency assets, from being sold on the international market.

The third issue was Mosaddeq’s growing rapprochement with the Soviet Union (USSR) and reliance on the pro-Soviet Tudeh Party as an important source of political support. Moscow was looking to control more oil resources, particularly those in Iran and the Middle East, which led the Soviets to actively engage in the spread of communist propaganda and revolutionary efforts in the region.

The American Role

For supporters of today’s regime in Tehran, it is an article of faith that the US and UK illegitimately overthrew a popular and democratic ruler, Mosaddeq, over a desire to keep Iranian oil resources under British control and an unwarranted fear of communism.

The Associated Press for example, concluded that what they saw was a “reactionary CIA-led 1953 coup against revolutionary Mosaddeq” which “lit the fuse” for the 1979 Islamic revolution a quarter century later. All the elements were there—greed for oil, a supposed push to stop popular democracy, and an irrational fear of communism—to make the United States, the United Kingdom, and the Central Intelligence Agency (CIA) the “bad guys” in this narrative.

By accepting the narrative that Iran’s path toward progressive democracy was hijacked by the CIA, wholesale excuses are possible to explain away Iran’s terrorist enterprise over the past four decades. For many fellow travelers in the West, the fictional “coup” against Mosaddeq provided an excuse for avoiding a confrontation with Iran over its rogue behavior.

Iran’s mullahs describe American and British action from 1953–1979 as “the great arrogance”—the meddling in Iranian affairs by foreign interests. However, the legitimate constitutional restoration of the Shah (1953) was led by a completely legitimate loyalist-royalist coalition made up of members of the Iranian military, the Iranian theocracy, Shah Mohamed Reza Pahlavi’s supporters, and supporters of the Iranian constitution. The Shah legitimately issued two decrees on August 19, 1953, dismissing Mosaddeq as prime minister and appointing General Fazlollah Zahedi as prime minister.

The American desire to staunch the spread of communism was a perfectly legitimate concern that led President Dwight D. Eisenhower to support constitutional government under the Shah. For the British, without whose investment in infrastructure, processing, and export there would be no Iranian oil to export, legitimate financial interests were at stake. The Soviet Union also cared about oil. In the early 1950s, Iranian oil and gas reserves were a growing part of known oil and gas reserves. Control over them would provide economic and diplomatic leverage for an economically impoverished Soviet state.

It should come as no surprise that a false narrative surrounding Mosaddeq’s removal developed almost immediately. Reality, however, is far different. Mohammad Mosaddeq was legitimately removed from power for attempting to topple the constitutional monarchy on behalf of the Soviet-supported Tudeh party. American and British support was exactly what the Shah required to restore the constitution. The ultimate collapse of the Shah’s government and its replacement with an Islamic fundamentalist theocracy is a tragedy the United States regrets even to this day.

Peter Huessy and Joe Buff are Senior Fellows at the National Institute for Deterrence Studies. The views expressed are their own.

Iran’s 1953 Coup that Wasn’t was originally published on Global Security Review.

A comparison of recommendations for multilateral diplomacy and sanctions written in 2007 and 2023 offer no evidence of success. Experts now say Tehran is within a few months of several working atom bombs, and a year or two at most from having nuclear-tipped missiles capable of reaching Israel and the European Union.

Israel’s bombings of plutonium-producing reactors under construction in Iraq in 1981 and Syria in 2007 are simpler examples of how to regain the initiative in civil defense—via prevention of nuclear attack to begin with. Iran’s underground nuclear weapon facilities at Natanz and Furdow should be neutralized with GBU57-A/B ground-penetrator ordnance, which are necessary to wreck their delicate centrifuges and cave in their adits (entrances).

Sanctions and diplomacy failed to stop North Korea from getting the bomb. Words and tighter sanctions will no longer work on Iran. Iran is a disruptive, warmongering, rogue state. Its repressive autocratic regime is entrenched.

Iran is controlled by a radical sect that believes killing perceived enemies is a sure route to Paradise. Iran’s leaders promise to “destroy Israel forever.”

The risk calculus, were Iran to field nuclear arms, would present the US, and Israel, especially, with something worse than the Cuban Missile Crisis. A nuclear-armed Iran is more intolerable than a nuclear-armed Cuba in 1962. The conditions favorable for a successful naval quarantine of Russia’s nuclear weapons, on the decks of cargo ships going to Cuba, do not apply to Iran.

It is unwise to look to nuclear deterrence against a nuclear-armed and radically hostile Iran to solve the problem, given their extremist ideology. Keeping nuclear weapons far away from bad actors is vital to effective nuclear counterterrorism.

Both Russia and China have separatist problems—including terrorists who might have or might develop Iran connections. Their best interests are aligned with the US and Israel in this instance. This is similar for Israel’s Arab neighbors. They should all want Tehran’s nuclear weapons program permanently terminated. Yet they stay on the sidelines, believing this is a Western problem.

North Korea shows that once a rogue state fields nuclear warheads on missiles, voluntary denuclearization becomes impossible. The US missed the opportunity to prevent the Kim regime from fielding a now-expanding nuclear arsenal.

As Iran’s supreme leader, Grand Ayatollah Ali Khamenei surely realizes, “Israel is a one-bomb country” because of its small size. This means that a single nuclear weapon could devastate any of Israel’s major cities.

The Kim regime played several American presidents while North Korea came to own dozens of nuclear missiles threatening South Korea, Japan, and, now, the continental United States. The ayatollahs are probably playing a similar game. Hamas’s attack could be Tehran’s premeditated sleight of hand to buy the little time they need to go nuclear.

Iran’s latest threats to attack Israel’s nuclear facilities and finish their own atom bomb, should Israel attack Iran’s nuclear assets, has unacceptable odds of being more Tehran double-talk while Iran’s covert weapons work presses forward. Intel that such worked ceased—like the nonexistent or ignored “intel” before September 11, 2001, and October 7, 2023—might be, quite literally, fatally flawed.

A clandestine approach to building fission weapons underground might be beyond already overstretched Mossad and CIA abilities to detect. Typical intel lapses, bureaucratic sluggishness, and political paralysis within and between concerned countries could get millions killed.

Barely 4 percent of the ballistic missiles Iran fired at Israel got through the layered multinational defenses defending Israel on April 13. But with further attrition of interceptors and less help from the outside being possible over the next year, one atom bomb might reach Israeli soil. Missile defenses alone are not the answer. An Iranian bomb could instead be delivered covertly, by a ship or a truck…or a camel…or mule.

A nuclear attack is likely to take place without warning. The heat and overpressure from an air blast over Tel Aviv would prove devastating. A ground burst could blanket Israel’s cities and towns with fallout.

It would be better and wiser to fight a larger regional conventional war now than a limited nuclear war in the Middle East in the months or years ahead. Yet more “mowing the grass,” or reticent watchful waiting, are short-term non-answers.

As a Department of State spokesman recently said, “Iran has no credible civilian justification for enrichment up to sixty percent.” Iran has already crossed an unacceptable red line. As Israel’s Prime Minister Binyamin Netanyahu recently said, “Israel will do whatever it needs to defend itself.”

Israel does not need more lectures about restraint. Israel needs to prevent nuclear annihilation at the hands of Islamic terrorists certain their religious obligation requires them to strike with whatever deadly weapons they possess.

Joe Buff is a senior fellow for the National Institute for Deterrence Studies and risk-mitigation actuary researching modern nuclear deterrence and arms control. The views expressed in this article are the author’s own.

Iran Shall Not Have the Bomb was originally published on Global Security Review.