Each week, the Gaggle Book Club recommends a book for Gagglers to read and—most important—uploads a pdf version of it. Our practice is that we do not vouch for the reliability or accuracy of any book we recommend. Still less, do we necessarily agree with a recommended book's central arguments. However, any book we recommend will be of undoubted interest and intellectual importance.

Today's book club selection, very appropriate for this moment, is Stephen Kinzer’s "All the Shah’s Men: An American Coup and the Roots of Middle East Terror." Published in 2003, and revised in 2008, the book is one of the most readable accounts of the 1953 CIA–MI6 coup that overthrew Iranian Prime Minister Mohammad Mossadegh. It’s an entertaining, vivid, journalistically written narrative with a clear political message: American intervention in Iran set the stage for decades of mistrust, repression and violence—not only in Iran, but across the Middle East.

Stephen Kinzer, a former New York Times foreign correspondent, argues that the overthrow of Mossadegh was a major U.S. strategic blunder. By siding with imperial Britain and oil companies, rather than supporting a popular, elected leader, the United States destroyed Iran’s chance at democratic development.

The centerpiece of Kinzer's book is his account of Operation Ajax, the coup organized by CIA operative Kermit Roosevelt Jr. The coup adopted tactics with which the world was to become familiar in the coming years. The CIA unleashed a mixture of propaganda, bribery and staged demonstrations to destabilize Mossadegh’s government.

Kinzer's story begins with Great Britain’s control of Iranian oil via the Anglo-Iranian Oil Company (later British Petroleum). Mossadegh, an Iranian nationalist, sought to ensure that that oil revenues benefit Iranians, rather than the British. Elected prime minister in 1951, Mossadegh nationalized the Anglo-Iranian Oil Company. The enraged British resolved to seek his overthrow. They sensed an opportunity. Mossadegh, while popular with ordinary Iranians, was hated by the young Shah Reza Pahlavi, conservative clerics, landowners, the merchant class (bazaaris) and the upper echelons of the military.

The Truman administration vetoed the British coup plan. Things changed however with the coming to power in 1953 of the Eisenhower administration, which was not only strongly anti-Communist but determined to fight the Cold War with greater energy than its predecessor had done. John Foster Dulles’s State Department now found persuasive British claims that Mossadegh posed a “communist threat” to the West. The U.S. was now on board with British plans.

Out of this Anlo-American collaboration came Operation Ajax. Roosevelt's plan sought to destabilize Mossadegh’s government through tactics such as bribing journalists to publish anti-Mossadegh stories, paying mobs to protest against Mossadegh, using clerics to turn religious opinion against Mossadegh and encouraging military officers to rebel against Mossadegh.

The first coup attempt against Mossadegh failed. On the night of Aug.15, 1953, Colonel Nematollah Nassiri, a Shah loyalist, tried to arrest Mossadegh using a royal firman (order) dismissing him as prime minister and appointing General Fazlollah Zahedi in his place. However, Mossadegh had been warned about this coup attempt and had Nassiri arrested. The Shah, fearing for his safety, fled to Baghdad, then to Rome.

Roosevelt however refused to give up. He intensified the anti-Mossadegh campaign. He bribed Tehran police and military officers. He paid thugs and provocateurs to stage pro-Shah and anti-Mossadegh rallies. He used street mobs to create the illusion of popular opposition. He used newspapers funded by the CIA to print rumors that Mossadegh was abolishing the monarchy, aligning with the Soviet Union and persecuting the clergy.

Some clergy and conservative politicians, already uneasy with Mossadegh’s secular nationalism, began to turn against him. On Aug. 19, early in the day, CIA-paid mobs and provocateurs began rioting in Tehran, chanting pro-Shah slogans and denouncing Mossadegh. Army units, many of whose commanders had been bribed, joined the uprising. Mobs seized key locations in Tehran, including the radio station, police headquarters and military installations. Mossadegh refused to use force, hoping to preserve constitutional norms. By the afternoon, his house was shelled by army tanks, and he fled. By nightfall, General Zahedi appeared on radio as the new prime minister. Mossadegh surrendered the next day and was tried and placed under house arrest for the rest of his life.

The Shah returned, and ruled autocratically, though incompetently, until his overthrow in 1979. Kinzer views Iran 1953 as a prototype for later CIA operations in Guatemala (1954), Chile (1973), and elsewhere. He draws a straight line from the 1953 coup to the 1979 Islamic Revolution, the rise of anti-Americanism and broader regional instability, including terrorism, that has bedeviled the Middle East for generations.

One weakness of the book is Kinzer’s tendency to romanticize Mossadegh. While Mossadegh was indeed popular and anti-imperialist, Kinzer at times presents him in hagiographic terms. Kinzer underplays Mossadegh’s flaws. He lacked political flexibility, his economic record was scarcely stellar and his political opponents were not all on the CIA payroll.

Nonetheless, Stephen Kinzer’s "All the Shah’s Men" is a powerful, accessible account of one of the most consequential covert operations in modern history.