By Crosby S. Noyes

What really happened in Iran? What course of events led to the blowup on August 19 which resulted in the overthrow of Premier Mossadegh and the triumphal return of the Shah?

The Communists charge the entire episode was engineered by American spies. Our Government has insisted that Mossadegh was the victim of an entirely spontaneous uprising.

There is, however, another story of the affair, one which ascribes a leading role in this historic drama to an almost unknown character — a colorful and very competent princess named Ashraf. Some of the elements of this story, now making the rounds in diplomatic circles here, seem to bear out the Communist line that American agents had a hand in what transpired. They refute, however, the charge that the United States master-minded the revolt entirely on its own hook.

The Circumstantial Case

The evidence supporting this version of the Iranian coup is, to be sure, fragmentary and circumstantial. But there is one significant point to be made in its favor. Some diplomatic observers in Washington, it is now known, accurately predicted, in secret dispatches to their home governments, what was going to happen in Iran, and their prediction was based on the evidence assembled below.

First, back to the lady in the case:

Princess Ashraf is the twin sister of Mohammed Reza Pahlevi, Shah of Iran. [Mohammad Reza Pahlavi] According to the people who know her, she is quite an operator. The old Shah is said to have remarked it was too bad that she, and not her brother, was born a woman. [Reza Shah Pahlavi, her father] She is still rated as being twice the man that the Shah is.

From the beginning of his rise to power, Iran’s vaporish Premier Mohammed Mossadegh found a natural enemy in the Princess. As the old man tearfully tightened his hold on the levers of national authority, Ashraf fought him openly. While her brother vacillated in his pink marble palace, Ashraf was taking an active part in more than one abortive plot to oust Mossadegh and restore the authority of the Shah.

Ousted by Mossadegh

As soon as it was safe for him to do so, Mossadegh had her exiled. Ashraf took her family to Europe. Dividing her time between Switzerland, Rome and Paris, she continued drumming up support to overthrow Iran’s dictatorial Premier.

Meanwhile, as Mossadegh moved into increasingly close cahoots with the Communist Tudeh Party, a significant stir of activity was observed in Washington. [No proof of such “cahoots”.]

At least four Middle Eastern experts left the Capital for various destinations early last summer. By the beginning of August, word had trickled back to Washington that all of them had shown up in Teheran.

The State Department, meanwhile, seemed to have something up its sleeve. On May 28, Mossadegh wrote to President Eisenhower; asking for immediate financial help from the United States. It was blackmail in its simplest form: Mossadegh had already made it clear that a refusal would drive him closer into the arms of the Tudeh Party and force him to turn to Russia as a source of revenue.

Gen. Eisenhower waited a month before acting. Then, with the backing of his top State Department advisers, he turned Mossadegh down flatly. With the political future of the whole Middle East at stake, the Premier was told, in effect, to go jump in the lake. Quite apart from the rights and wrongs of the matter, it was a gamble that might be considered unthinkable without solid reassurance that Mossadegh would never be able to carry out his threat.

Soon after the letter incident, our Ambassador at Teheran, Loy Henderson, packed up and left for a vacation in Switzerland. In view of the critical political situation in Iran, the trip aroused some comment. [There was no trip there, his excuse was that he was ill. This was all part of the coup plot.] Coincidentally, perhaps, Allen Dulles, director of the Central Intelligence Agency, left Washington on August 10—also for a vacation in Switzerland. [Rome, not Switzerland] And, as a final coincidence, the Princess Ashraf, who had just made a quick trip to Teheran to see her brother, was there, too.

According to reports from Teheran, Ashraf’s visit to the Iranian capital had featured a long and stormy interview between the royal pair. Many believe she attempted to persuade the Shah that he would have to play a decisive role in what was coming.

But whatever success the lady may or may not have had in lining up her brother, another messenger is credited with the last-minute persuasion of the Shah. He is an American with unusual qualifications as an Iranian expert, Brig. Gen. H. Norman Schwarzkopf.

Gen. Schwarzkopf’s present connection with the United States Government is exceedingly vague. He first came to the attention of the public in 1932 when, as head of the New Jersey police force, he led the investigation of the Lindbergh kidnaping case. He became known in Iran a decade later when, as an Army colonel, he was detailed at the request of the Iranian government to reorganize the national police force.

A Complex Job

Being a police chief in Iran is not quite the same thing as being police chief in New Jersey. The job goes well beyond the routine rounding up of routine criminals. To be head of a state police force for very long demands an intimate knowledge of the different political, economic and military interests that make up the real power of the state. It is a dangerous and delicate job. Gen. Schwarzkopf took to it naturally. In the course of almost six years (he quit the job in 1948) Gen. Schwarzkopf became one of the most important and powerful figures on the Iranian landscape. Being a methodical man, he built up a filing system that made him undoubtedly the best-informed person in Iran in his special field. His knowledge of Iranian politics and people started at the top and spread from there to the darkest alleyways of Teheran and to the most remote frontier tribe. This year, it happened that Gen. Schwarzkopf’s summer vacation trip took him to the Middle East. In a leisurely way, he rambled around through Lebanon, Syria and Pakistan. Almost inevitably, he showed up in Iran before the middle of August.

‘Just Dropped In’

His arrival stirred speculation which escaped neither the Russians nor Premier Mossadegh. [There’s no evidence Mossadegh knew of it.] For his part, Gen. Schwarzkopf shrugged off the talk. He had dropped in, he said, to “meet old friends.” One of them, in all probability, was his former colleague on the Iranian police force, Maj. Gen. Fazollah Zahedi. [Also no evidence he visited Fazlollah Zahedi] Another was the Shah. [Schwarzkopf was dispatched to persuade the Shah to dismiss Mossadegh.]

By this time, things had progressed to the point where Teheran was seething with rumors of impending revolt. The Communist press, which had been screaming shrilly about the activities of American agents, seized on the Schwarzkopf visit as confirmation of their worst fears. In Moscow, Pravda charged that a plot was in the making, financed out of funds appropriated by Congress for “subversive work in other countries.”

Financing aside, there would have been plenty for an American agent to do in Teheran in those final days before the showdown. Much of it concerned the military operations that were expected—the question of what troops could be counted on to remain loyal to the Shah and also the question of having them in the right place and in condition to fight when the time came. Logistics as a science is not the strong point of the Iranian military.

Organizing Problem

There also was the business of preparing for the situation that might be expected to develop in the streets. The action of mobs cannot be plotted in advance, of course. But mobs are highly suggestible. How to present the man in the street with the right stimulus at the right time undoubtedly was a problem for both sides as the crisis hour approached.

By the middle of August, the most doubtful element in the Iranian situation was the Shah himself. The young ruler had kept conspicuously aloof from the currents of intrigue swirling through his capital. At the time, he was on “vacation” at the resort town of Ramsar on the Caspian Sea.

There are those who find it incredible that Gen. Schwarzkopf, assuming that he was involved in a plan of revolt, should have gone to Iran to talk with the Shah. What surer way could have been found, they ask, to put Mossadegh and his Communist cronies on their guard against what was coming?

The answer may be, first, that the Shah himself was a vital part of the plan. Unless he was willing to play his part, the whole show might be doomed. No one could have been in a stronger position to stiffen the determination of the vacillating ruler than his former police chief.

Secondly, by the time Gen. Schwarzkopf arrived in Iran, the need for secrecy may have passed. The Communists were already thoroughly alert to the danger and preparations were as complete as they could be made. The plan was simple enough: Bring on a show down with Mossadegh—make him show his hand—then counterattack. The Shah had the job of throwing the switch.

Certainly, after Gen. Schwarzkopf’s visit to Iran, events moved swiftly, although the general denied to The Star any involvement in the coup. Certainly, also, the Communists and Mossadegh were waiting for the opening gun.

The switch was thrown on Thursday, August 13. [Around midnight on Aug. 15 or 16] The Shah issued two decrees. One fired Mossadegh— the other named Gen. Zahedi to replace him. The head of the Imperial Guard, Col. Nematollah Nashiri, was sent off to Teheran to deliver the ukases. [Nematollah Nassiri]

When the colonel, accompanied by a handful of guards, arrived at Mossadegh’s home at midnight on Saturday, they ran headon into a cordon of army tanks and jeeps. Col. Nashiri’s guards were disarmed and he was arrested. The same night, most of the Iranian army moved into town armed to the teeth. Gen. Zahedi slipped out of sight and Premier Mossadegh issued a proclamation that the revolt had been crushed.

For a while, it looked as if he were right. To be on the safe side, the Shah and his Queen left hastily for Iraq—proceeding later to Rome.

Enter the Mob

Then, Wednesday morning a curious thing happened. As the scene was described by a reporter for the New York Times: “A group of weight-lifters, tumblers and wrestlers, armed with iron bars and knives, began marching toward the heart of the city shouting pro-Shah slogans.” [Reversal In Iran, Aug. 23, 1953. The NYT correspondent, possibly Kennett Love, was unnamed.]

There is no hint where this curious professional shock-force was recruited or how its members happened to join in concerted activity just at that time. It was, however, enough to swing the precarious balance of crowd psychology to the Shah’s favor.

In the serious fighting that followed. there is some evidence that the logistical brains were on the right side. When the nine-hour tank battle ended before the home of Premier Mossadegh, it was his forces which exhausted their ammunition and had to surrender.

By Wednesday night, it was all over. Mossadegh, his forces dispersed and disarmed, had fled in his silk pajamas. Gen. Zahedi, who had emerged from hiding during the fight, proclaimed himself the new Premier by order of the Shah. In Rome, the bewildered young monarch prepared to go home.

“Ninety-nine per cent of the population is for me,” he told newsmen. “I knew it all the time.”

It remains an open question whether the outcome in Iran indeed resulted simply from the Shah’s popularity, or from the efforts of a small group of highly competent individuals. It is, of course, possible to find plausible explanations for any of the coincidences assembled here—explanations which support the theory of a purely spontaneous revolt.

Possible—but . . .

It is possible that the CIA agents, whose departure from Iran was observed and reported, were on purely routine intelligence missions. It is possible—as a leading columnist has suggested—that Mr. Henderson’s trip to Switzerland was no more than a policy of “studied indifference” on the part of the State Department toward the Mossadegh regime. A friend of the Princess Ashraf here in Washington holds stoutly to the view that her visit with the Shah was undertaken simply to ask him for money. It is possible that Allen Dulles is genuinely fond of mountain-climbing and that Gen. Schwarzkopf just happened to show up in Teheran at a critical moment.

It is all perfectly possible. But as long as the practice of putting two and two together continues, the argument about what really happened in Iran last summer seems likely to continue.