All the Shah’s Men
by Stephen Kinzer
Buy on AmazonThis is the first full-length account of the CIA's coup d'etat in Iran in 1953--a covert operation whose consequences are still with us today. Written by a noted New York Times journalist, this book is based on documents about the coup (including some lengthy internal CIA reports) that have now been declassified. Stephen Kinzer's compelling narrative is at once a vital piece of history, a cautionary tale, and a real-life espionage thriller.
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"This is by a former correspondent for the New York Times who focuses on the 1953 CIA-backed coup that removed the democratically elected prime minister of Iran, Mohammad Mosaddegh, and replaced him with the Shah. This was at the behest of the British because Mosaddegh had nationalised the Anglo-Iranian Oil Company. What he does in this book is give a good and quick introduction to Iranian history and its relationships with America and Britain. He draws an admittedly tenuous line from the 1953 coup to the 1979 Iranian revolution and then to the 9/11 attacks. That’s the narrative framework, and one of its strengths is to show how covert and overt interventions against democratically elected leaders has turned opinion in the Middle East against America. It’s written for a Western audience and explains why there is so much anger against Western intervention, given the history from the end of WWII, through the Cold War to now, where the West is intervening again."
Global Security · fivebooks.com