Eisenhower in War and Peace

by Jean Edward Smith

  Writing about Dien Bien Phu years later, Eisenhower said that he had been moved by public opinion, which was clearly opposed to American intervention, but that this factor was not decisive. Far more serious were the consequences that would have resulted from sending the American Army into Vietnam. “The presence of ever more numbers of white men in uniform would have aggravated rather than assuaged Asiatic resentments,” Ike wrote. “Among all the powerful nations of the world the United States is the only one with a tradition of anti-colonialism.” That was an asset of incalculable value. “It means our counsel is trusted where that of others may not be. It is essential to our position of leadership in a world wherein the majority of the nations have at some time or another felt the yoke of colonialism.” As Ike saw it, “the moral position of the United States was more to be guarded than the Tonkin Delta, indeed than all of Indochina.”

  Eisenhower throwing out the first pitch at Griffith Stadium, April 13, 1954, with Bucky Harris and Casey Stengel standing by. (illustration credit 22.1)

  Eisenhower wrote those words in 1963 for the chapter on Indochina in his memoir Mandate for Change. Whether because of space requirements, or out of deference to the Kennedy-Johnson administration, which was slowly building an American presence in Vietnam, he deleted them from the final version.24 Unlike his successors, Eisenhower had served four years in the Philippines. He understood the issue of colonialism far better than they—and far better than Dulles, Radford, and Nixon for that matter. He had also seen the terror of war firsthand and was not going to lead the country into another one. “That may not have been bold leadership,” one scholar has written, “but it was wisdom.”25

  Eisenhower was less sure-footed when it came to dealing with Iran. In Vietnam, Ike took the lead and kept the United States out of war. In Iran, he listened to the advice that bubbled up from below and authorized the CIA-directed coup that ousted Mohammad Mossadegh, Iran’s legitimately elected prime minister, terminating democratic government in Teheran and installing what became the twenty-five-year dictatorship of the shah. That dictatorship spawned the Islamic Revolution of 1979, which brought to power the passionately anti-American Iranian theocracy that has bedeviled world politics since.26 Eisenhower had served much of his military career in Europe and Asia, and understood the elemental forces at work there. The Middle East was terra incognita, and Ike initially accepted the advice of diplomatic and intelligence professionals who tended to see Communists lurking on every street corner. In Vietnam, the president had refused to bail out French colonialism; in Iran he was only too happy to rescue British commercial interests under the guise of fighting Communism. The Eisenhower administration, and Ike himself, bear heavy responsibility for snuffing out responsible government in Iran.

  The issue was oil. In 1933, Mohammad Reza Pahlavi, the shah’s father, granted the Anglo-Iranian Oil Company (later British Petroleum—BP) an exclusive sixty-year concession to extract oil from Iran. Under the terms of the concession, Iran would receive 16 percent of the proceeds. Accounting was spotty, Iranian workers lived in deplorable conditions, and payoffs to the royal family were routine. For Britain, on the other hand, the concession proved a bonanza. The British government owned 52 percent of the Anglo-Iranian Oil Company (AIOC), and after World War II effectively balanced its budget through the sale of Iranian oil. By the late 1940s, Iran had become the world’s fourth largest oil exporter, supplying 90 percent of Europe’s petroleum.27

  Given the lopsided distribution of benefits, Iranian public opinion clamored for a renegotiation of the 1933 concession, and there were precedents for doing so. In 1948, the Venezuelan government of Romulo Gallegos and Creole Petroleum agreed to a fifty-fifty compromise on profits, and in 1950 the Arabian American Oil Company (ARAMCO) reached a similar accord with the Saudi government. But AIOC refused to negotiate. The oil was theirs for sixty years (until 1993), and the British insisted the agreement was binding.

  AIOC’s refusal to renegotiate the concession produced growing popular sentiment in Iran to nationalize the company. Led by the elderly European-educated Dr. Mohammad Mossadegh, Iran’s most popular political figure, the nationalization movement won overwhelming control of the Iranian parliament (Majlis), and on March 15, 1951, adopted a resolution accepting “the principle that oil should be nationalized throughout Iran.” In Britain, Clement Att-lee’s Labour government appeared ready to compromise. “What argument can I advance against anyone claiming the right to nationalize the resources of their country?” asked Foreign Secretary Ernest Bevin. “We are doing the same thing here in coal, electricity, railways, transport, and steel.”28

  On May 1, 1951, the Iranian Majlis voted unanimously to revoke the 1933 concession and nationalize the Anglo-Iranian Oil Company. On May 6, the shah named Mossadegh prime minister. “Since nationalization is an accomplished fact,” Henry Grady, the U.S. ambassador in Teheran, told The Wall Street Journal, “it would be wise for Britain to adopt a conciliatory attitude. Mossadegh’s National Front Party is the closest thing to a moderate and stable element in the national parliament.”29

  But the British position had hardened. Bevin died in April and had been replaced as foreign minister by Herbert Morrison, one of the leading war hawks in London. Instead of negotiating, Morrison advocated sending the 16th Parachute Brigade, stationed in Cyprus, to retake AIOC’s massive Abadan refinery. When British plans for military intervention arrived in Washington, President Truman and Secretary of State Dean Acheson objected strongly. The United States was resolutely opposed to “the use of force or the threat of the use of force” against Iran, Acheson told Sir Oliver Franks, His Majesty’s ambassador. Truman said “no situation should be allowed to develop into an armed conflict between British and Persian forces.”30 Confronted with strenuous American objections, the Attlee government backed down.

  Throughout the summer of 1951, the Truman administration pressed the British to negotiate. Acheson told Franks that Mossadegh represented “a very deep revolution, national in character, which was sweeping not only Iran but the entire Middle East.”31 President Truman wrote Attlee that “negotiations should be entered into at once” to prevent a worsening of “the explosive situation in Iran.”32

  Despite American efforts the British position stiffened further. Churchill, scarcely a friend of decolonialization, defeated Attlee in the October 1951 general election, and his Conservative government was in no mood to compromise with Mossadegh. The British were fighting alongside the United States in Korea, Churchill reminded Truman, and he expected American support in Iran.

  When the British protested AIOC’s nationalization to the UN Security Council, Mossadegh flew to New York, presented Iran’s case, and won a smashing victory when the Security Council agreed it had no jurisdiction. President Truman invited Mossadegh to Washington, installed him in Blair House, across the street from the White House, and attempted to work out a compromise but with no success. On his return to Teheran, Mossadegh stopped in Egypt, received a hero’s welcome, and signed a friendship treaty with the government of King Farouk. Time magazine chose Mossadegh as its “Man of the Year” for 1951. “The British position in the whole Middle East is hopeless,” said Time. “They are hated and distrusted everywhere. The old colonial relationship is finished.”33

  The situation worsened in 1952. The British imposed an economic embargo on Iran, attempted a palace coup against Mossadegh, and brought suit in the World Court at The Hague on Anglo-Iranian’s behalf. The coup failed, the World Court dismissed Britain’s claim, and world opinion, particularly in the Middle East, turned against Britain because of the embargo. On October 16, 1952, Iran broke diplomatic relations with Great Britain and expelled all British diplomats. “We tried to get the blockheaded British to have their oil company make a fair deal with Iran,” wrote President Truman. “No, no, they couldn’t do that. They knew all about how to handle it—we didn’t according to them.”34

  Less than three weeks after Iran broke diplomatic relations with Britai
n, Eisenhower was elected president. The political climate in Washington changed, and the British were quick to take advantage. Whereas Truman and Acheson had discouraged intervention in Iran, Eisenhower and Dulles proved receptive, particularly if the issue was framed in terms of anti-Communism. In late November, senior British intelligence officials (MI6) visited their counterparts in the CIA and floated their plan to topple Mossadegh. “Not wishing to be accused of trying to use the Americans to pull British chestnuts out of the fire,” said senior agent Christopher Montague Woodhouse, “I decided to emphasize the Communist threat to Iran rather than the need to recover control of the oil industry.”35 Iran had a one-thousand-mile border with the Soviet Union, it possessed the world’s largest known oil reserves, and had an active Communist (Tudeh) Party. The possibility that Iran might become Communist provided a tailor-made opportunity for the new administration to demonstrate its prowess. Bedell Smith, then director of the CIA, and his deputy Allen Dulles quickly signed on to the British scheme. When Ike took office, Smith moved on to become undersecretary of state, and Allen Dulles succeeded him at the CIA. Smith, Allen Dulles, and John Foster Dulles, the new secretary of state, became the principal advocates in the administration for moving against Mossadegh.

  Eisenhower initially took little interest. When he met with President Truman at the White House two weeks after the election, Dean Acheson had mentioned the crisis in Iran and said “both sides were being unreasonable.” Acheson told Ike that he was planning to prod the British to hasten a settlement and warned that this might cause “some ill feeling in London.”36 In early January, Eisenhower met with Churchill in New York and pushed him to reach a settlement. “All that he [Churchill] did,” Ike confided to his diary, “was to get Mossadegh to accuse us of being a partner of the British in ‘browbeating a weak nation.’ ”

  Eisenhower’s efforts had little effect. “Winston is trying to relive the days of World War II,” Ike lamented.

  In the present international complexities, any hope of establishing such a relationship is completely fatuous.…

  The two strongest Western powers must not appear before the world as a combination of forces to compel adherence to the status quo. The free world’s hope of defeating the Communist aims does not include objecting to national aspirations.… Winston does not by any means propose to resort to power politics and disregard legitimate aspirations of weaker peoples. But he does take the rather old-fashioned, paternalistic approach.… I wish that he would turn over leadership of the British Conservative Party to younger men.37

  Insofar as Iranian national aspirations were concerned, Eisenhower was sympathetic. But he had a blind spot. He worried about the shutoff of Iranian oil to the West. Writing to his childhood friend Swede Hazlett from SHAPE the year before, Ike said the situation in Iran was tragic.

  A stream of visitors goes through my office, and some of the individuals concerned consider themselves authorities on the Iranian question. Numbers of them attach as much blame to Western stupidity as to Iranian fanaticism and Communist intrigue in bringing about all the trouble. Frankly, I’ve gotten to the point that I am concerned primarily, and almost solely, in some scheme or plan that will permit that oil to keep flowing to the westward. We cannot ignore the tremendous importance of 675,000 barrels of oil a day.

  Eisenhower told Swede that the West had failed in China. “I most certainly hope that this calamity does not repeat in the case of Iran.”38

  While Eisenhower settled into the White House, Bedell Smith and Allen Dulles stepped up planning for the coup. Kermit Roosevelt, Jr., the grandson of Theodore Roosevelt who headed CIA activities in the Middle East, was given operational control (Operation AJAX), and Dulles turned on the agency’s cash spigot to provide whatever funding was required to set events in motion. “Pull up your socks and get going,” Smith instructed Roosevelt.39 Mobs were bought and paid for, and rioting in the streets of Teheran became commonplace. The object was to create an impression of instability. On March 1, 1953, the CIA provided Eisenhower with a national estimate on Iran suggesting the situation was getting out of hand. “The result has been a steady decrease in the power and influence of the Western democracies and the building up of a situation where a Communist takeover is becoming more and more of a possibility.”40

  At the regular meeting of the National Security Council on March 4, Eisenhower asked plaintively if it wasn’t possible “to get some of the people in these downtrodden countries to like us instead of hating us?” Secretary of State Dulles responded with a summary of recent events in Iran. Dulles said that Mossadegh would likely remain in power, but that if he were assassinated “a power vacuum might occur and the Communists might easily take over. Not only would the free world be deprived of the enormous assets represented by Iranian oil production and reserves, but the Russians would secure these assets and thus henceforth be free of any anxiety about their petroleum situation.”

  Treasury Secretary George Humphrey asked Dulles if he was convinced Russia would ultimately secure Iran. According to the official record of the meeting, “Secretary Dulles replied in the affirmative, and Mr. [Robert] Cutler pointed out that this, of course, meant that with the loss of Iran we would lose the neighboring countries of the Middle East and that loss would be terribly serious.”

  Eisenhower allowed that if the Soviets did move against Iran, the United States would have to act quickly. “If I had $500,000,000 of money to spend in secret, I would get $100,000,000 of it to Iran right now.”41

  British foreign secretary Anthony Eden arrived in Washington the next day for a series of high-level conferences on the Middle East. When he broached the subject of Iran and the proposed coup, he found everyone supportive except Eisenhower. Ike told Eden he considered Mossadegh “the only hope for the West in Iran,” and was greatly concerned about the possibility of a Communist takeover if Mossadegh fell. “I would like to give the guy ten million bucks,” said Ike. In the discussions that followed, Eden did his best to discredit Mossadegh, arguing that the longer he stayed in power, the more harm he could do to the West. “We should be better occupied looking for alternatives to Mossadegh rather than trying to buy him off,” he told Eisenhower.42 Later, Eden cabled Churchill, saying that “the President seemed obsessed by the fear of a Communist Iran. [His] experts had told him that a pipeline could be built from Abadan to the Caucasus in a matter of a couple of years.”43

  Eden’s intervention evidently shook Eisenhower’s resolve. At the next meeting of the National Security Council, on March 11, Defense Secretary Charles Wilson asked whether the United States might not negotiate directly with Iran concerning their oil. Ike replied he had “very real doubts whether … we could make a successful deal with Mossadegh. It would not be worth the paper it was written on, and the example might have very grave effects on United States oil concessions in other parts of the world.”44

  As the violence escalated on the streets of Teheran, Eisenhower swung more and more against Mossadegh. By late spring Ike had come to the conclusion that Iran was collapsing and that the collapse could not be prevented so long as Mossadegh remained in power.45 Eden’s suggestion that they find an alternative looked increasingly attractive. As one biographer put it, “Eisenhower and Foster Dulles spent many a cocktail hour together,” and over drinks in the evening Ike was brought around to accept a coup, providing America’s hand would not be visible. With Eisenhower’s tacit approval, the CIA and British MI6 accelerated plans for taking action in Teheran.46

  On May 28 Mossadegh appealed to Eisenhower for American aid to offset the effects of the British economic embargo. “The Iranian people,” said Mossadegh, were “suffering financial hardships and struggling with political intrigues carried on by the former oil company and the British government.”47 Eisenhower did not reply immediately. Instead, on June 14, Allen Dulles went to the White House to brief Ike on Operation AJAX. Sensing that the president did not want to know too much, Dulles gave him what Kermit Roosevelt called only a �
��broad brush outline of what was proposed.” Eisenhower signed on, and shortly afterward Churchill gave his much more enthusiastic approval.48

  On June 25 Kermit Roosevelt returned to Washington to brief officials on the details of AJAX. The meeting was held in the Foggy Bottom office of Secretary of State Dulles. Eisenhower did not attend. When Roosevelt finished, Dulles asked the others what they thought. Allen Dulles, Bedell Smith, and Defense Secretary Wilson endorsed the plan for the coup without reservation. Loy Henderson, who had succeeded Henry Grady as American ambassador in Teheran, said, “We have no choice.” Secretary of State Dulles agreed. “That’s that, then. Let’s get going.”49

  On June 30, after the coup had been agreed to, Eisenhower dispatched his belated reply to Mossadegh. The president told the Iranian leader that American help would not be forthcoming. Instead, Mossadegh should settle with the British. “There is a strong feeling in the United States,” said Ike, “that it would not be fair to the American taxpayers for the United States Government to extend any considerable amount of economic aid to Iran so long as Iran could have access to funds derived from the sale of its oil.” American policy toward Iran had undergone a sea change. “I refused to pour more American money into a country in turmoil in order to bail Mossadegh out of troubles rooted in his refusal to work out an agreement with the British,” Ike wrote later.50