There are anniversaries which mark events that help us in understanding the world we live in today. This month – August 19 to be exact – marks 70 years since the US-UK instigated coup d’état in Iran, toppling the nationalist government of Mohammed Mossadegh. The coup, orchestrated with the help of British and American intelligence, not only ushered in decades of savagely repressive rule for Iranians, but also restored crucial oil industry concessions for Western oil corporations.

Why is all this important? The 1953 coup d’état demonstrated the underhanded and criminal lengths to which oil and energy companies will go, assisted by the London-Washington political axis, in reversing measures by democratically elected, nationalist governments to confront their power and oil wealth. The 1953 indicates the falsity of claims by Whitehall (and the Pentagon) to be exemplars of democracy – they employ predatory and undemocratic methods to protect their class privileges.

Since the turn of the 19th-20th century, Persia, as Iran was then known, had been a British colony. No, there was never a formal declaration to that effect. However, through a network of political connections, coercion, economic agreements and concessions, the British came to dominate economic and political processes in Persia. The discovery of oil – large, commercially viable reservoirs of it – made Iran a target of imperialist interests. London was the first to push into Iran, and through its Anglo-Iranian Oil Company (AIOC), dominated the oil trade in Persia.

Business friendly Iranian politicians in Tehran, backed up by an informal network of British intelligence operatives and oil consultants, ensured that legislation was conciliatory towards Britain’s energy demands. No laws which restricted the outflow of profits, amounting to millions of pounds, would be tolerated by the largely supine political class in Iran. The Shah, indecisive and vacillating by nature, gave an air of imperial legitimacy to a ramshackle and corrupt regime.

The AIOC – formally known as Anglo-Persian Oil Company prior to 1935 – had a majority shareholder, the British government. Ironically, it was basically a nationalised oil company. I say ironically, because with the rise to power of Mohammed Mossadegh, he nationalised the AIOC assets, on the basis that the profits generated by Iranian oil should be shared by the Iranian people.

How were the Iranian oil workers treated? For an insight into how British-owned AIOC operated, we need look no further than its operational flagship refinery at Abadan. Workers laboured away in dangerous conditions, and child labourers were not unknown. While the oil company raked in the profits, people in Abadan existed on starvation wages, and the distended bellies of children attested to the existence of malnutrition. Not for nothing did the Welsh poet, Dylan Thomas, describe the city as ‘puking Abadan.’ Environmental and health-safety regulations were non-existent.

Iranian nationalist forces, part of a mosaic of Iranian political parties, came to power in 1951 in the shape of President Mohammed Mossadegh. Promptly nationalising the AIOC, Mossadegh struck down the crown jewel of British imperialism in Iran. Panic set in inside the corridors of power in London and Washington. The latter had their own reasons for wishing to see Mossadegh defeated, and the Americans swiftly began drawing up plans for Mossadegh’s removal – by hook or by crook.

The British government of Clement Attlee, (Labour) incensed at this display of rebellion by the uppity Iranians, moved into action. Using its network of sympathetic monarchist politicians, newspaper editors, British Petroleum (BP) oil executives and intelligence agents, London mobilised anti-nationalist Iranians for street rallies, sabotage and raising tensions inside Iran. The Shah, ever the coward, was leaned on by his British backers to acquiesce to Mossadegh’s removal.

By the way, BP is the rebranded image of the original AIOC.

The British relied on a collection of anti-Mossadegh Iranian forces – Islamic fundamentalists, monarchist military officers, pro-British street thugs and Iranian neo-Nazis. Yes, you read that correctly – Iranian racist neo-Nazi groups. The latter, while small, had a presence in Iran. Indeed, changing the nation’s nation’s name from Persia to Iran back in the 1930s, was a cynical manoeuvre by the then-Shah to curry favour with Nazi Germany. Iran means ‘land of the Aryans.’

The myth of Aryanism, its seemingly archaeological and esoteric ‘legitimacy’, was exploited by London to mobilise public hostility against the nationalist Mossadegh. The latter, in British and American propaganda, was routinely identified with the USSR and Communism. Initially, Britain’s plans went awry – Mossadegh was able to hang on to power. London’s tension strategy was not working. Masses of people, including from the rival but nationalist-friendly Iranian Communist Tudeh party, held off the weakling anti-nationalist forces.

To avoid a brewing civil war, Mossadegh relented and resigned office on August 19, 1953. The coup plotters were jubilant, and the Shah ruled with an iron hand from then on. The monarchist regime in Iran became one of the most savagely repressive governments in the world, and its Israeli-trained secret police, SAVAK, became notorious for its brutality. As for AIOC, now known as BP, the Iranian government negotiated a new concession, granting 40 percent ownership of Iran’s oil consortium. Britain’s power was diminished.

Another consequence of the 1953 coup should be noted here. Since the 1979 Iranian revolution, London and Washington have incessantly screamed about the dangers of the ‘mad ayatollahs’ in Tehran developing nuclear weapons. Whether the ayatollahs are mad or not I do not know. What is clear is that Iran’s nuclear ambitions were started and cultivated by the United States.

In the 1950s, US President Dwight Eisenhower initiated the Atoms for Peace initiative, which seeded nuclear ambitions for the Shah’s pro-American regime. The Shah, ever eager, wanted nuclear power, and sought out various vendors to build nuclear reactors. Tying his nation’s nuclear programme to Washington, numerous Iranian students studied the basics of nuclear engineering at MIT. The monarchy’s nuclear ambitions wedded it to an axis of pro-American regimes in the region.

Whenever we listen to the professed claims of concerns about human rights by Washington – and London’s – inside Iran, we must be skeptical. Former US President Trump may have committed numerous domestic crimes for which he has been indicted, but his main crime has gone unpunished – his war plans against Iran. It is not Iran’s theocratic practices that enrage the UK-US axis, but its political disobedience to Anglo-American dictates.

We must reorient our understanding of Iran, moving beyond the stereotypes of mad mullahs and domesticated hijab-wearing women, and examine the hypocrisies of our policies towards that rich and multicultural nation.