Iran parliament to seek damage for US role in 1953 coup

In a recent talk with ICANA, Mohammad Reza Rezaei said the parliament “supports in unison the motion to sue those behind the coup for damages, financial and intellectual, inflicted on the Iranian people.”

On 19 August 1953, the US and the UK orchestrated a coup against Mosaddeq for strengthening the autocratic rule of Shah Mohammad Reza Pahlavi, depriving a nation of democracy and clearing the way for autocracy and brutality. The dictator continued to rule for 26 years until he was finally toppled by the Islamic Revolution led by the late Imam Khomeini in 1979.

The Guardian on 19 August 2013 reported that the CIA had publicly admitted for the first time to being behind the notorious coup, in documents that also showed how the British government tried to block the release of information about its own involvement in Mosaddeq’s overthrow.

On the 60th anniversary of an event often invoked by Iranians as evidence of western meddling, the US national security archive at George Washington University published a series of declassified CIA documents.

“The military coup that overthrew Mosaddeq and his National Front Cabinet was carried out under CIA direction as an act of US foreign policy, conceived and approved at the highest levels of government,” reads a previously excised section of an internal CIA history titled The Battle for Iran.

Rezaei urged the influential Majlis National Security and Foreign Policy Commission to pick up the matter, saying the issue of receiving reparations should be put on top of the commission’s agenda.

Addressing those who label the incident as an old one belonging to history books, he said, “If we do not follow this, it is nothing but negligence and carelessness.”

“We have to pursue this matter seriously to get our damages,” he concluded.

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