# The US support for the Shah in 1953 and what happened in Berlin 14 years later **URL:** \ **Category:** In My Humble Opinion\ **Tags:** trump\ **Created:** [March 25, 2026, 11:03pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/the-us-support-for-the-shah-in-1953-and-what-happened-in-berlin-14-years-later/1028770 "2026-03-25T23:03:11Z")\ **Posts on this page:** 18\ **Page:** 2
**Author:** ![Babale](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/babale/32/15666_2.png) [@Babale](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Babale)\ **Post date:** [March 26, 2026, 2:47pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/the-us-support-for-the-shah-in-1953-and-what-happened-in-berlin-14-years-later/1028770/21 "2026-03-26T14:47:53Z")
> [@DPRK](#): > > Whatever issues his government may have had, up to and including risks of collapse, it is the US and UK who ensured his legacy as an Iranian national hero. Uh, what? Cite for the claim that he is viewed as an “Iranian national hero”? According to these surveys, Iranians are about as likely to view him positively as Mohammad Reza Pahlavi (the old Shah) - is he also an Iranian national hero? If he was a hated American backed dictator, how come he’s got identical approval ratings to Mossadegh? Most curious. > **[Iranians’ Attitudes toward Political Systems: A 2022 Survey Report – Gamaan](https://gamaan.org/2022/03/31/political-systems-survey-english/)** > [@DPRK](#): > > Did he, now? Yes, he did: > **[IRAN: 99.93% Pure](https://time.com/archive/6795622/iran-99-93-pure/)** > > Hitler's best as a vote-getter was 99.81% Ja's in 1936; Stalin's peak was 99.73% Da's in 1946. Last week Premier Mohammed Mossadegh, the man in the iron cot, topped them all... ---
**Author:** ![bordelond](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/bordelond/32/150_2.png) [@bordelond](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/bordelond)\ **Post date:** [March 26, 2026, 2:57pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/the-us-support-for-the-shah-in-1953-and-what-happened-in-berlin-14-years-later/1028770/22 "2026-03-26T14:57:42Z")
It’s interesting. In the U.S. – if you run across references to Mossadegh at all – he’s invariably titled “the democratically elected President of Iran”. It’s also invariably reported that Mossadegh’s one and only flaw – that which the US and UK could not abide – was that he was going to nationalize Iran’s oil production. That TIME article is long-forgotten ancient history. ---
**Author:** ![Babale](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/babale/32/15666_2.png) [@Babale](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Babale)\ **Post date:** [March 26, 2026, 2:57pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/the-us-support-for-the-shah-in-1953-and-what-happened-in-berlin-14-years-later/1028770/23 "2026-03-26T14:57:44Z")
Some more context about Mossadegh and the 1953 “coup” (which is more accurately described as a counter-coup putting down Mossadegh’s attempted takeover…): [https://www.tabletmag.com/sections/israel-middle-east/articles/cia-coup-in-iran-that-never-was-mossadegh](https://www.tabletmag.com/sections/israel-middle-east/articles/cia-coup-in-iran-that-never-was-mossadegh) Eta: > [@bordelond](#): > > It’s interesting. In the U.S. – if you run across references to Mossadegh at all – he’s invariably titled “the democratically elected President of Iran”. It’s also invariably reported that Mossadegh’s one and only flaw – that which the US and UK could not abide – was that he was going to nationalize Iran’s oil production. Indeed, this article makes reference to that to fact: _The Iranian parliament’s role in the choice of a prime minister was similar to, but weaker than, the U.S. Senate’s role in confirming presidential appointments, such as, among others, Supreme Court justices, some cabinet posts, and ambassadors. Yet despite this even stronger legislative role, no one refers to “the democratically elected Justice Samuel Alito,” the “democratically elected Secretary of State Antony Blinken,” or “the democratically elected Ambassador Pamela Harriman.”_ _This fetishistic formulation, applied to Mossadegh is even odder, for reasons that are worth examining._ ---
**Author:** ![griffin1977](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/g/977dab/32.png) [@griffin1977](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/griffin1977)\ **Post date:** [March 26, 2026, 3:54pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/the-us-support-for-the-shah-in-1953-and-what-happened-in-berlin-14-years-later/1028770/24 "2026-03-26T15:54:28Z")
> [@Babale](#): > > no one refers to “the democratically elected Justice Samuel Alito,” the “democratically elected Secretary of State Antony Blinken,” or “the democratically elected Ambassador Pamela Harriman.” I fear the US is about to discover the reason for that. Namely: we don’t as they are one in a long line of democratically elected leaders in a political culture of democratically elected leaders. That may not be the case much longer in the US. It certainly wasn’t after Mossadegh was deposed. Thats why he’s referred to that way, he wasn’t just one of a line of unelected strongmen, he was the end of the period where Iran had Democratically elected leaders. ---
**Author:** ![Babale](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/babale/32/15666_2.png) [@Babale](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Babale)\ **Post date:** [March 26, 2026, 4:33pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/the-us-support-for-the-shah-in-1953-and-what-happened-in-berlin-14-years-later/1028770/25 "2026-03-26T16:33:21Z")
> [@griffin1977](#): > > Thats why he’s referred to that way, he wasn’t just one of a line of unelected strongmen, he was the end of the period where Iran had Democratically elected leaders. While it may be true that Iran had a period of democratically elected leaders that ended around that time, it is crucial to note that Mossadegh _was not one of them_, and that right before he was exposed by allies of the Shah he was in the process of taking power away from bodies like parliament and the courts and hoarding it for himself. ---
**Author:** ![griffin1977](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/g/977dab/32.png) [@griffin1977](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/griffin1977)\ **Post date:** [March 26, 2026, 4:43pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/the-us-support-for-the-shah-in-1953-and-what-happened-in-berlin-14-years-later/1028770/26 "2026-03-26T16:43:45Z")
> [@Babale](#): > > Mossadegh _was not one of them_ Yes he was. He was elected prime minister by the Democratically elected parliament of which he was a Democratically elected member. It is entirely correct to refer to him as the Democratically elected president ---
**Author:** ![DPRK](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/d/4491bb/32.png) [@DPRK](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/DPRK)\ **Post date:** [March 26, 2026, 4:57pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/the-us-support-for-the-shah-in-1953-and-what-happened-in-berlin-14-years-later/1028770/27 "2026-03-26T16:57:54Z")
From _America and Iran: A History_, Chapter 19: > [@](#): > > In the early morning hours of March 5, 1979—exactly three weeks after the victory of the revolution—hundreds of thousands of Iranians did something that would have been inconceivable only a year earlier. They publicly marked the twelfth anniversary of the death of Mohammad Mosaddeq. > > Never before had Iranians been allowed to grieve publicly for the old prime minister, and never before had Iran seen a funeral like this. For sixty solid miles, the highway from Tehran to Mosaddeq’s burial site in Ahmad Abad transformed into a massive, unbroken daisy chain of cars, crawling bumper to bumper from one of the world’s largest cities toward a place too small to even be marked on the map. In the final seven or eight miles approaching the village, traffic became so gridlocked that mourners were forced to abandon their vehicles and complete the journey on foot—a great stream of people tromping through freshly plowed fields, carrying flower wreaths, banners, and bouquets of carnations. By day’s end, no one knew just how many people had made the journey to Ahmad Abad, but the country’s official newspaper, _Ettela’at,_ estimated the crowd at over a million. > > In the remote and dusty village where, twelve years earlier, Mosaddeq had passed away quietly—buried under a slab in the dining room by a few family members as Iranian newspapers said almost nothing—the country’s most prominent leaders now eulogized him over loudspeakers. “Once upon a time, our national aspirations were stifled by criminals, by gangsters,” roared frail but unbreakable Ayatollah Taleqani, who had spent much of the last thirty years in prison for his unwavering devotion to Mosaddeq. “Our bodies were enslaved, but our minds and our thoughts were never enslaved!” > > For years, the mere mention of Mosaddeq’s name had been enough to land a man in jail. But now, with the shah’s elaborate and once-dreaded security apparatus in ruins, the old man was getting the funeral he had so long been denied. It was, for a country that had been through twenty-five years of darkness and dictatorship, a day when gravestones were allowed to speak again—an unforgettable moment of national catharsis. Stamps issued in his honor: [![](https://thumbs.dreamstime.com/b/mohammed-mossadegh-iranian-politician-cancelled-postage-stamp-printed-iran-shows-circa-288776267.jpg) ](https://thumbs.dreamstime.com/b/mohammed-mossadegh-iranian-politician-cancelled-postage-stamp-printed-iran-shows-circa-288776267.jpg) ---
**Author:** ![Babale](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/babale/32/15666_2.png) [@Babale](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Babale)\ **Post date:** [March 26, 2026, 5:19pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/the-us-support-for-the-shah-in-1953-and-what-happened-in-berlin-14-years-later/1028770/28 "2026-03-26T17:19:52Z")
> [@griffin1977](#): > > Yes he was. He was elected prime minister by the Democratically elected parliament of which he was a Democratically elected member. Incorrect, he was appointed Prime Minister by the Shah after some consultation with the democratically eleced parliament. And then he suspended that parliament, because he was a dictator. > [@griffin1977](#): > > It is entirely correct to refer to him as the Democratically elected president He was less democratically elected than Hitler, in the same ballpark of “democratically elected” as Elon Musk in his role as head of DOGE. ---
**Author:** ![Babale](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/babale/32/15666_2.png) [@Babale](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Babale)\ **Post date:** [March 26, 2026, 5:22pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/the-us-support-for-the-shah-in-1953-and-what-happened-in-berlin-14-years-later/1028770/29 "2026-03-26T17:22:27Z")
> [@DPRK](#): > > From _America and Iran: A History_, Chapter 19: Well, yes, I’m aware that the Ayatollah Regime in their attempt to present themselves as revolutionary anti-colonialists rather than the imperialist religious fanatics they are, has claimed his legacy. That doesn’t mean that actual Iranian people view him positively. ---
**Author:** ![griffin1977](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/g/977dab/32.png) [@griffin1977](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/griffin1977)\ **Post date:** [March 26, 2026, 6:40pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/the-us-support-for-the-shah-in-1953-and-what-happened-in-berlin-14-years-later/1028770/30 "2026-03-26T18:40:11Z")
> [@Babale](#): > > Incorrect, he was appointed Prime Minister by the Shah after some consultation with the democratically eleced parliament. By those standards Kier Stamer is not democratically elected ---
**Author:** ![74westy](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/74westy/32/3950_2.png) [@74westy](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/74westy)\ **Post date:** [March 26, 2026, 8:35pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/the-us-support-for-the-shah-in-1953-and-what-happened-in-berlin-14-years-later/1028770/31 "2026-03-26T20:35:22Z")
By that standard no country with a parliamentary system is a democracy. ---
**Author:** ![Pardel-Lux](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/pardel-lux/32/20182_2.png) [@Pardel-Lux](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Pardel-Lux)\ **Post date:** [March 26, 2026, 8:38pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/the-us-support-for-the-shah-in-1953-and-what-happened-in-berlin-14-years-later/1028770/32 "2026-03-26T20:38:16Z")
The UK parliamentary system has many faults indeed, and the voting system is awful. First past the post ha given Labour a majority they did not deserve, and if Farage gets elected PM by that system some day they will regret not having changed the system when they still could. But that is a story for another day. ---
**Author:** ![Babale](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/babale/32/15666_2.png) [@Babale](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Babale)\ **Post date:** [March 26, 2026, 8:49pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/the-us-support-for-the-shah-in-1953-and-what-happened-in-berlin-14-years-later/1028770/33 "2026-03-26T20:49:55Z")
> [@griffin1977](#): > > By those standards Kier Stamer is not democratically elected The UK is a country where the parliament has a very long history and where a monarch going against parliament would shatter the monarch’s own legitimacy. That wasn’t the case in Iran in 1953. Further, if Kier Stramer was actively plotting against the king to the point where Charles had to flee to France to avoid being assassinated, and then Stramer suspended Parliament and ran a sham referendum where you could either anonymously say “yes, suspending parliament was based” or you could travel to Cornwall where you could vote in an open ballot in front of a bunch of angry looking soldiers if you wanted to vote “no that was not OK” which he won with 99.99% of the vote, and after he did all that he was deposed by the head of the RAF on behalf of King Charles, and then after all that people still insisted on calling him “the democratically elected Kier Stramer who was deposed by the CIA” I’d roll my eyes and raise my eyebrows at that. ---
**Author:** ![Schnitte](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/schnitte/32/9033_2.png) [@Schnitte](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Schnitte)\ **Post date:** [April 3, 2026, 8:31pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/the-us-support-for-the-shah-in-1953-and-what-happened-in-berlin-14-years-later/1028770/34 "2026-04-03T20:31:17Z")
> [@griffin1977](#): > > Another random fact about the Entebe raid is during it the cousin Ugandan leader Idi Amin and the cousin of future Israeli pm Benjamin Netanyahu were both killed in the same fire fight. It was Benjamin Netanyahu’s brother (not cousin) Yonatan who was killed at Entebbe. Still held in high esteem as a hero in Israel, with books and films about him. ---
**Author:** ![Schnitte](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/schnitte/32/9033_2.png) [@Schnitte](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Schnitte)\ **Post date:** [April 3, 2026, 8:37pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/the-us-support-for-the-shah-in-1953-and-what-happened-in-berlin-14-years-later/1028770/35 "2026-04-03T20:37:46Z")
By the way, I know nobody asked, but I still think it’s an interesting aspect of the iconic (at least in Germany) photo in the OP’s post: The woman holding Benno Ohnesorg’s body is Friederike Hausmann, née (and at the time) Dollinger; she’s now a recognised historian specialising in Italian history and translator of Italian books into German. The reason why she’s so elegantly dressed in that photo, with earrings and black evening gown, is that she was planning to sneak into an opera attended by the Shah that night to protest. ---
**Author:** ![Pardel-Lux](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/pardel-lux/32/20182_2.png) [@Pardel-Lux](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Pardel-Lux)\ **Post date:** [April 3, 2026, 8:42pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/the-us-support-for-the-shah-in-1953-and-what-happened-in-berlin-14-years-later/1028770/36 "2026-04-03T20:42:51Z")
I didn’t know that, how interesting! Thank you! ---
**Author:** ![Schnitte](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/schnitte/32/9033_2.png) [@Schnitte](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Schnitte)\ **Post date:** [April 3, 2026, 9:47pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/the-us-support-for-the-shah-in-1953-and-what-happened-in-berlin-14-years-later/1028770/37 "2026-04-03T21:47:10Z")
> [@Pardel-Lux](#): > > The UK parliamentary system has many faults indeed “The constitutional monarchy is like cricket. It looks crazy, but it actually works.” (Attributed to some legal scholar on British constitutional law whose name I don’t recall) ---
**Author:** ![Johanna](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/johanna/32/8318_2.png) [@Johanna](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Johanna)\ **Post date:** [April 4, 2026, 12:18am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/the-us-support-for-the-shah-in-1953-and-what-happened-in-berlin-14-years-later/1028770/38 "2026-04-04T00:18:15Z")
> [@DPRK](#): > > Mosaddeq Note the spelling. Moṣaddeq is the accurate transliteration of the name from Persian مُصَدِّق. Used by scholars who have studied Persian or at least use the contributions of those who have. “Mossadegh” is an artifact of a time before standardized transliterations. The name is of Arabic origin: مُصَدِّق muṣaddiq literally means one who believes that you’re telling the truth. A corroborator of truth telling. It’s cognate with Hebrew words like צֶדֶק tsedeq ‘righteousness’, צַדִּיק tsaddiq ‘righteous person’, and צְדָקָה tsedaqah ‘righteous deed’. Also cognate with Neil Sedaka! [Previous page](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/the-us-support-for-the-shah-in-1953-and-what-happened-in-berlin-14-years-later/1028770.md?page=1)