Below is the entire set of photos claimed to be taken by William Arthur Cram with his original captions, followed by analysis by Arash Norouzi. As The Guardian has unnecessarily Anglicized the spelling of Cram’s descriptions, they have been reverted back to their original American form for historical integrity.
August 2: Russian ambassador, Anatoly Lavrentiev, arrived in Tehran on July 26 and met with Iran’s prime minister, Mohammad Mossadegh, on July 28 and August 2. Lavrentiev was sent to replace Ivan Sadchikov as ambassador to Iran. Mossadegh’s last photo before the events of mid-August shows him conferring with the Red envoy.
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A rare image of the freshly appointed Lavrentiev and Mossadegh together (I’ve only ever seen one other). Unfortunately, the nature of their discussions are not indicated. The dates given would be useful, if accurate, though I have yet to manage to corroborate them with any internal U.S. records. I have, however, found State Dept. documents referencing Lavrentiev’s meeting with the Shah on Sept. 8, 1955.
Mr. Cram’s claim that this was the last photo of Premier Mossadegh prior to the coup, while possible, is both presumptuous and unlikely.
August 3: Mossadegh pushes ahead with his idea to call for a referendum in order to curb the power of the Shah. A huge meeting was arranged, but Mossadegh ordered soldiers to come in between his own men and the Reds (Iran’s communist Tudeh party).
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The purpose of the referendum was to dissolve the Majles (Parliament), it wasn’t about the Shah. At the time, the Majles was said to have become too corrupted by foreign elements and anti-government intrigues, hence the question of its dissolvement.
I’m not currently familiar with, nor able to verify, the description of what this photo is allegedly depicting. That said, it’s curious that Cram seems here to portray Mossadegh as deliberately distancing himself from “the Reds”, yet immediately contradicts this with the next image and others that follow. His narrative simply doesn’t make much sense.
August 3: After this meeting, Mossadegh approached the Tudeh party still more closely. The Reds sent 50,000 to referendum polls.
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Vague, hazy innuendo, lacking specifics. Cram’s suggestion that Mossadegh called out the Communists to arrive in droves at the polls is unsupported by any known evidence, even after six decades of analysis by researchers and academics.
The 50,000 figure Cram cites derived not from personal observation but U.S. media reports, which made no attempt to insinuate that Mossadegh had any role in the Tudeh arrival.
This photo had already been released before (not “unseen”).
August 4: While Mossadegh’s own men participated in the referendum, the Reds stole the show. Even women, who have no franchise, were sent to public squares to impress others.
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Still more hard to verify allegations from a non-neutral source. How would Cram know if women were “sent” to the polls? Curiously, Cram fixated only on the Communist aspect, but made no mention of the non-secret ballot for which Mossadegh was roundly thrashed in the Western press.
August 16: With spectacular results – 1 million votes for, 67 votes against the dissolution of the Majlis (the parliament) – the government sent a note to the Shah asking to dissolve it. But the Shah dismissed Mossadegh and sent his bodyguard, Col. Nematollah Nasiri (now a general), to deliver a letter to Mossadegh. Nasiri was taken prisoner by the prime minister’s bodyguards and the government announced early the next morning that a “coup d’état” by the royalists was now frustrated. In the letter, the Shah had appointed Gen Fazlollah Zahedi prime minister.
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Cram dates this photo August 16th, even though it could have only possibly been taken either before or after that date. That’s because, as Cram notes, Nassiri was promptly arrested after delivering the Shah’s farman to Mossadegh’s residence. So Nassiri would have been in jail and certainly not smiling at the time.
The missing detail here, of course, is that the decree dismissing Mossadegh formed the nucleus of an illegal CIA plot. Whether or not Cram had any inkling of this remains a mystery.
August 16: Next morning’s headlines read: “Coup d’etat failed... we want republic.” At 9am the Shah left in his own private plane for Baghdad. At 2pm Radio Tehran asked all parties for a meeting in Parliament Square. Everyone was certain the Shah would abdicate and a republic would be announced. Crowds shouted: “We want a republic...death to the Shah.” Of the huge crowd, 85% were of the Tudeh party.
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Another shot that doesn’t seem to correspond with the date, or in this case, even with the image itself. Nassiri wasn’t the only one abducted that evening. As part of the coup plot, Foreign Minister Hossein Fatemi was dragged away in the middle of the night, wife and baby screaming, and reportedly told he would be executed by morning. After the scheme was busted, he was freed early that morning instead.
While it is technically possible for this photo to have been taken on August 16th, there’s good reason for doubt. Dr. Fatemi was extremely busy on that day, writing an impassioned anti-Shah editorial in Bakhtar Emrouz and famously delivering an angry speech before thousands of people in Baharestan Square. He did give a press conference at around 2:00pm, but Cram’s candid photo appears to be of a fairly private moment.
Why would Cram display an up-close photo of Hossein Fatemi, renowned journalist and one of the top officials in the Iranian government, yet neglect to identify him? Where did his 85% crowd estimate come from? Available CIA records contain no reference to any Tudeh presence at the rally.
I’ve identified another photo from this scene, shown here, in which Fatemi is seated wearing the same clothes and holding his cane, while the same unidentified men stand against the wall (the mustached guy with the striped tie conspicuosly wearing sunglasses indoors is seen in the corner). Most likely the same person (doubtfully Cram) was behind the camera.
August 16: Tehran rally with standards, flags and banners.
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This photo shows throngs of Mossadegh supporters from various backgrounds out in force (a number of them are holding signs with his picture). Banners representing the Pan-Iranist Party, The Iranian People’s Freedom Party, and others are displayed, and I also spotted a large painting of Mossadegh’s portrait in the crowd, obscured way in the background.
Judging by his bland description, Cram seemed to prefer to downplay the pro-Mossadegh contigent.
August 18: Unhindered by the police or by soldiers, young hooligans began pulling down statues of the Shah from public squares. Men rode the 25-foot statue of the Shah’s father, Reza Shah, in Sepah Square, Tehran’s main square.
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Cram labeled Iranians who attacked statues of the Pahlavis after the Shah’s treasonous coup attempt “hooligans”, but Iranians who behaved violently in the streets, burned down newspaper offices, or attacked, looted and ransacked Mossadegh’s home were christened “the people”.
August 18: The solid statue defied efforts but was finally pulled down.
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August 18: Even cranes could not pull it down – men brought hacksaws and sawed it down.
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August 18: Everybody tried to take a piece of the statue, but this bust of Reza Shah proved too heavy for these boys.
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Mr. Cram seemed to derive some satisfaction from their difficulty.
August 19, 9:00am: The previous day had been a sad one for the people, who had gone home with heavy hearts. On the following morning, pro-Shah sympathizers began gathering in the streets and riding comandeered buses.
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“The people” were sad. Cram had also just witnessed large numbers of Iranians desecrating anything to do with the Shah and his father, but, evidently, they didn’t count.
This photo had already been released before (not “unseen”).
August 19: 9:30am, August 19: With portraits of the Shah in their hands and anti-Mossadegh slogans filling the air, people on every corner jumped to action.
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These royalists are parading a dead comrade on a board atop their vehicle — one wonders why Cram did not mention it. Did he really take this photo? If he were there, then he should have noticed this at the time.
Another cause for doubt is this more posed frame of this scene I found in my collection, appearing to have occurred moments apart and from the same vantage point, published in U.S. media. Most likely it was the same photographer.
Are we to believe that Cram the educator was also freelancing, selling his pictures to press agencies on the side, or is he conning everyone?
August 19, 10:00am: At about 10am, tanks and soldiers appeared in the streets. But instead of preventing the riots, they gave free rides to rioters and headed for Mossadegh’s headquarters.
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The sign on the building reads “Auto Service Reza Shah”, which might locate the scene at Khiaban-e Reza Shah (Reza Shah Street).
August 19, 10:00am: People began their attacks on pro-government newspapers. The offices of Bakhtar, Hossein Fatemi’s newspaper, are on fire.
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A rare image showing the burning offices of Bakhtar Emrouz, an incident described in the CIA’s 1954 internal report Overthrow of Premier Mossadeq of Iran by Donald Newtown Wilber.
August 19, 11am: Communist papers and newsstands suffered in the same way.
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This photo had already been released before (not “unseen”).
August 19, 1:00am: The people occupied the Tehran radio station. Here an army officer delivers speeches in the hall of the station.
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The seizure of Radio Tehran was a key moment in the 28 Mordad coup. This is the first coup image I have encountered from inside the radio station during its takeover.
August 19, 2:30pm: The bloodiest spot in the town was in front of Mossadegh’s home. People circulated the corpses in the street and excited other inhabitants.
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This photo had already been released before (not “unseen”). Another frame of this precise scene was widely published after the coup, including in TIME magazine. I sincerely doubt that Cram was even the photographer here.
August 19, 4:00pm: This demonstration went on all day. At 4pm, a battle was joined in front of Mossadegh’s home between his guards and the attackers. It now became known that a military uprising was in full swing.
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August 19, 7:30pm: Mossadegh’s house fell after five hours of fighting. This is all that is left of his famous living room where he received foreign diplomats.
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August 19, 7:30pm: The Point 4 Tehran Regional Office, which was rented from Mossadegh and which was next to his house, suffered complete ravage. Cars were destroyed. Mossadegh’s house was looted, even to the last window frame, and burned.
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Point Four, a U.S. technical assistance program, was the department Cram was recruited to work for as an educator. Another individual who worked there was Ardeshir Zahedi, a documented co-conspirator in the coup which replaced Mossadegh with his father as the new Premier of Iran.
August 23, 10:30am: The coup d’état was now firmly established. The Shah took the first KLM plane back to Baghdad from Rome and flew in his own private plane from Baghdad. Here is the Shah (in the dark suit) photographed at the airport with Zahedi on his right and Nasiri on his left.
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This photo had already been released before (not “unseen”). It was immediately sent over the wire at the time (known as a wire photo or radio photo) and used in media reports on the coup, usually cropped to show only the Shah and Zahedi. Here is how this exact photo was captioned:
Shah Makes Triumphal Return To Iran
Tehran, Iran...The Shah of Iran (right) is shown as he steps from his plane at Tehran airport yesterday to receive a hero’s welcome from thousands of subjects just days after he fled to Rome in exile after a thwarted attempt to overthrow the government of ex-Premier Mossadegh. With him is Premier Zahedi, designated to the post just before the Shah left for Rome. Zahedi was the one who engineered the coup that overthrew Mossadegh’s government.
This image is actually one of a set of images from this scene from the same vantage point, suggesting they were all by the same photographer. Other very similar photos have also been out there. In this specific frame, Zahedi has his eyes closed.
Cram did not take this photo! The actual source is a rather famous LIFE magazine photographer named Carl Mydans, who took a significant number of photos in Iran during and after Mossadegh’s premiership.
August 31: The new government needed financial help urgently. US ambassador Loy W. Henderson and Point 4 director William E. Warne saw Zahedi and promised $45m in aid. Left-to-right in this photo are: Norman Paul, a representative of Stassen; Henderson; Zahedi; Warne.
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William Warne was Ardeshir Zahedi’s boss — the son of Fazlollah Zahedi seated beside him. Loy Henderson, seated at Zahedi’s right, was a major figure in the operation to overthrow Mossadegh, CIA records have since revealed. “Stassen” refers to Harold Stassen, Director of the U.S. Foreign Operations Administration.
This photo had already been released before (not “unseen”).
September 5: With the monarchy saved, chieftains from all over Iran came to Tehran to pay homage to the young Shah.
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Court Minister Hossein Ala stands to the left of the Shah. One should not automatically assume, without verification, that these tribesman were ‘paying homage’ to the new all-powerful Shah simply out of conviction.
September 8: While Russian ambassador Lavrentiev was rumoured to have tried to commit suicide or to have taken seriously ill, more chieftains, even from the Russian frontier zones of Turkmenistan, arrived in Tehran and supported the Shah in his defense of the constitution.
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Very revealing comment by Cram, re: ‘defending the constitution’. What made him so sure what their ideology was?
Compare the Sept. 5th photo with the image below from Getty Images. It looks like it was taken by the same photographer — and it is very unlikely that he was William Arthur Cram!