Channel 4 Programme on the Queen’s Role in the 1953 Coup against Iran’s Mossadeq

Another interesting programme listed in next week’s Radio Times is Channel 4 documentary on Sunday, 14th June 2020, The Queen and the Coup. This is about how MI6 and the CIA conspired to overthrow Iran’s last democratically elected prime minister, Mohammed Mossadeq, and how the Queen was manipulated by the intelligence agencies as part of it. Mossadeq had committed the crime of nationalising his country’s oil industry, which was owned by the British company Anglo-Persian Oil, which eventually became BP.

The blurb for the programme runs

It’s February 1953, the first anniversary of Queen Elizabeth’s reign, but the monarch is unaware that she is about to be deployed in a US plot to topple Iran’s democratic leader in favour of an all-powerful shah. Planned by MI6 and executed by the CIA, the coup destroyed Iran’s democracy and damaged relations between Iran and the West for many decades; this documentary reveals how the truth about the Queen’s role was hidden, even from her.

The piece about it by David Butcher a few pages earlier reads

This is one of those brilliantly detailed documentaries on recent history that uses declassified documents to explore a bizarre and little-known episode.

Professors Rory Cormac and Richard Aldrich have unearthed a paper trail in national archives showing how the 1953 coup d’etat to unseat Iran’s elected leader (Mohammed Mossadeq, whose crime had been to national British oil assets) relied at a crucial moment on using the young Queen Elizabeth’s name – unbeknownst to her.

It’s a fascinating, at times farcical yarn of MI6 and CIA intrigue, and the events had a huge effect on global politics; relations between Iran and the West never recovered.

The programme’s on at 9.00 pm.

Historians have known about the 1953 coup against Mossadeq for some time. The parapolitics/conspiracies magazine Lobster has published articles about it. I’ve posted pieces about it on this blog. However, it’s been largely ignored by the establishment because it is a real, genuine government conspiracy of the type that Britain and the US supposedly don’t commit. Lobster has been lamenting for decades how the majority of historians don’t take seriously the existence of real conspiracies committed by covert governmental, political or industrial groups as it contradicts the accepted idea of how politics operates and is conducted.

One of the presenters, Rory Cormac, is the author of a book on British official conspiracies and plots, Disrupt and Deny: Spies, Special Forces, and the Secret Pursuit of British Foreign Policy (Oxford: OUP 2018). This revealed how the British government, armed forces and intelligence agencies had secretly conspired and interfered in countries right across the globe from Northern Ireland in Britain itself, to Africa, Indonesia and elsewhere, removing leaders, rigging elections and overthrowing regimes that were an obstacle to British foreign policy. One of those countries was Iran, and the anti-Mossadeq coup is discussed in Chapter 5, ‘Operation Boot: Regime Change in Iran.’

This is all historical fact. But the coup was authorized and supporter by Boris’ hero, Winston Churchill. I wonder what the reaction of the Tory press to it will be? Assuming they deign to notice, of course.

Tags: 'Disrupt and Deny: Spies Special Forces and the Secret Pursuit of British Foreign Policy', 'The Queen and the Coup', Armed Forces, BP, Channel 4, CIA, Conservatives, Conspiracies, Elections, Intelligence Agencies, Lobster, MI6, Mohammed Mossadeq, Nationalisation, Northern Ireland, Oil Industry, Radio Times, Richard Aldrich, Rory Cormac, The Queen, The Shah, Winston Churchill