Petherick - The CIA in Iran - The 1953 Coup and the Origins of the US-Iran Divide (2006)

This is Christopher J. Petherick's mindblowing book The CIA in Iran - The 1953 Coup and the Origins of the US-Iran Divide (2006) which reveals in shocking detail an once-top-secret CIA report showing how U.S. and British operatives employed every dirty trick at their disposal, including bribery, murder and terrorism, to topple a government they could not control so they could replace it with one they thought they could. Few Americans today have any idea why Iran and America seem forever to be at loggerheads or even why Iran held 52 American hostages for 444 days in Tehran after the overthrow of the shah, America’s best ally in the region. But Iranians remember well the 1953 CIA-orchestrated coup that forcibly removed democratically elected Prime Minster Mohammad Mossadeq, a man dedicated to loosening the grip the Western oil companies had over Iran and her oil. Today, a similar role is played by Venezuelan president Hugo Chavez with similar propaganda against him. Now, for the first time, is the story of the coup d’etat that placed the dreaded Shah of Iran in power as told by former CIA operative Donald Wilber, a deep cover CIA asset in Iran at the time. Wilber lays out the whole plan - every dirty trick and rotten scheme - which so successfully removed Prime Minister Mossadeq, by all accounts a good nationalist and a wise leader. Today, the rift between the United States and Iran, short of war, could not be much wider. The CIA in Iran educates us about U.S. policies in the Middle East and sheds some light on the seminal event that instigated the bloody and tragic divide between the United States and Iran. Find out what really happened in those dramatic events over 50 years ago and how it still influences us today. 155 pages, many pictures. A must read for everyone.