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[Roosevelt Jr.] had this notion of America forming an alliance with the Arab countries as they emerged from under the sway of Britain and France. He was very concerned with backing Arab nationalists in the region. He saw that as the best way of keeping it within the American orbit, as the Cold War was gathering momentum.... [8]
The views of the CIA Arabists were not in isolation since Wilford notes that the "Eisenhower administration [including Secretary of State John Foster Dulles, was] initially quite sympathetic towards... Roosevelt's Arabist agenda" and willing to oppose Middle Eastern regimes seen "as backing the Soviet Union rather than the U.S." Ultimately, the emergence of American public support for Israel and the administration's evolving framework to respond to its principal Cold War adversary, the Soviet Union, would lead to failure of the Arabist agenda of Roosevelt and his colleagues. [8] In discussing Roosevelt's role, Wilford describes him as being among "the most important intelligence officers of their generation in the Middle East." [8]
Roosevelt played a highly-critical role in Operation Ajax as the ground operational planner, especially in getting the Shah to issue the firmans, or decrees, dismissing Mossadegh. [12] He established networks of Anglophiles and sympathizers in Iran, who were willing to take part in various aspects of the coup. [2] The tactics aided in dividing and dissolving Mossadegh's political power base within the National Front, the Tudeh, and the clerics. However, the first attempt at the coup failed, likely because Mossadegh had learned of his impending overthrow. Although the CIA sent Roosevelt a telegram to flee Iran immediately, he began work on the second coup and circulated a false account that Mossadegh attempted to seize the throne and bribed Iranian agents. The coup was a success and hence was adapted for use in other Third World countries during the Cold War. Eisenhower secretly awarded Roosevelt the National Security Medal in 1954 for his work. [13] In 2014, the National Security Archive released telegrams and accounts of the CIA operation, many of which are revealing as to the part he played in the operation. [14]
Roosevelt, 26 years after the Mossadeq coup, wrote a book about how he and the CIA had carried out the operation, Countercoup. According to him, he had slipped across the border under his CIA cover as "James Lochridge" on July 19, 1953. [15]
Roosevelt submitted his Countercoup manuscript to the CIA for pre-publication approval. The agency proposed various alterations, and in the perspective of a CIA reviewer, "Roosevelt has reflected quite faithfully the changes that we suggested to him. This has become, therefore, essentially a work of fiction." The conclusion allowed the release of the book; a catalog of the actual changes made during the review is available. [16]
A former senior adviser to the Obama administration and Council on Foreign Relations Iran expert, Ray Takeyh, [17] wrote in 2014 that "Contrary to Roosevelt's account [in Countercoup], the documentary record reveals that the Eisenhower administration was hardly in control and was in fact surprised by the way events played out." [18] William Blum wrote that Roosevelt had provided no evidence for his claim that a communist takeover in Iran was imminent but rather "mere assertions of the thesis which are stated over and over." [19] Abbas Milani wrote, "Roosevelt's memoir inflated his own and, in turn, America's centrality to the coup. He tells the story with the relish of a John le Carré knock-off.... Eisenhower, for one, considered reports like this to be the stuff of 'dime novels.'" [20]
After Iran, Roosevelt became assistant deputy director of the Directorate of Plans. [21]
Dulles asked Roosevelt to lead the CIA-sponsored 1954 coup in Guatemala, which deposed the government of Jacobo Árbenz. Roosevelt refused: "AJAX had succeeded, he believed, chiefly because the CIA's aims were shared by large numbers of Iranians, and it was obvious that the same condition did not obtain among Guatemalans." Noting that Árbenz's resignation had been forced largely by rumors "that a full-scale U.S. invasion was imminent," Roosevelt later remarked, "We had our will in Guatemala, [but] it wasn't really accomplished by clandestine means." [22]
Roosevelt left the CIA in 1958 [23] to work for American oil and defense firms. He often visited former operatives and the Shah in Iran.[ citation needed ]
Roosevelt married Mary Lowe "Polly" Gaddis in 1937, and they had four children: Kermit III (father of Kermit IV, who also goes by Kermit III), Jonathan, Mark, and Anne. [2]
Roosevelt died in 2000 at a retirement community in Cockeysville, Maryland. He was survived by his wife, children, a brother, and seven grandchildren. [24]
Roosevelt was the recipient of the National Security Medal which was awarded by Dwight D. Eisenhower to him in a secret ceremony on March 26, 1956 for his services in Egypt and Iran. [25]
Mohammad Mosaddegh was an Iranian politician, author, and lawyer who served as the 30th Prime Minister of Iran from 1951 to 1953, elected by the 16th Majlis. He was a member of the Iranian parliament from 1923, and served through a contentious 1952 election into the 17th Iranian Majlis, until his government was overthrown in the 1953 Iran coup aided by the intelligence agencies of the United Kingdom (MI6) and the United States (CIA), led by Kermit Roosevelt Jr. His National Front was suppressed from the 1954 election.
The 1953 Iranian coup d'état, known in Iran as the 28 Mordad coup d'état, was the U.S.- and British-instigated, Iranian army-led overthrow of the democratically elected Prime Minister Mohammad Mosaddegh in favor of strengthening the autocratic rule of the shah, Mohammad Reza Pahlavi, on 19 August 1953, with the objectives being to protect British oil interests in Iran after its government refused to concede to western oil demands. It was instigated by the United States and the United Kingdom. This began a period of dissolution for Iranian democracy and society whose effects on civil rights are prevalent to this day.
Christopher Montague Woodhouse, 5th Baron Terrington,, known as C. M. Woodhouse, was a British army SOE officer, MI6 intelligence officer and Conservative politician who served as Member of Parliament (MP) for Oxford from 1959 to 1966 and again from 1970 to 1974. He was also a visiting Fellow at Nuffield College, Oxford, from 1956 to 1964.
All the Shah's Men: An American Coup and the Roots of Middle East Terror is a book written by American journalist Stephen Kinzer. The book discusses the 1953 Iranian coup d'état backed by the U.S. Central Intelligence Agency (CIA) in which Mohammed Mossadegh, Iran's democratically elected prime minister, was overthrown by Islamists supported by American and British agents and royalists loyal to Shah Mohammad Reza Pahlavi.
Miles Axe Copeland Jr. was an American musician, businessman, and Central Intelligence Agency (CIA) founding member best known for his relationship with Egyptian leader Gamal Abdel Nasser and his public commentary on intelligence matters. Copeland participated in numerous covert operations, including the March 1949 Syrian coup d'état and the 1953 Iranian coup d'état.
Husni al-Za'im was a Syrian Kurdish military officer and who was head of state of Syria in 1949. He had been an officer in the Ottoman Army. After France instituted its colonial mandate over Syria after the First World War, he became an officer in the French Army. After Syria's independence in 1946 he was made Chief of Staff, and was ordered to lead the Syrian Army into war with the Israeli Army in the 1948 Arab-Israeli War. The defeat of the Arab league forces in that war shook Syria and undermined confidence in the country's chaotic parliamentary democracy, allowing him to seize power in 1949. However, his reign as head of state was brief, he was tried and executed in August 1949 by his former coup co-conspirators. Al-Za'im infamously executed Lebanese intellectual Antoun Saadeh in July 1949.
Hossein Fatemi was an Iranian scholar. A close associate of Prime Minister Mohammad Mosaddegh, he proposed nationalization of Iranian oil and gas assets. Initially a journalist, he served as minister of foreign affairs from 1951 to 1953. After the 1953 coup d'état toppled the government of Mosaddegh, Fatemi was arrested, tortured, and convicted by a military court of "treason against the Shah", and executed by a firing squad.
Archibald Bulloch Roosevelt Jr., the first grandson of U.S. President Theodore Roosevelt, was a soldier, scholar, polyglot, authority on the Middle East, and career CIA officer. He served as chief of the Central Intelligence Agency's stations in Istanbul, Madrid and London. Roosevelt had a speaking or reading knowledge of at least twenty languages.
Loy Wesley Henderson was a United States Foreign Service Officer and diplomat.
United States foreign policy in the Middle East has its roots in the early 19th-century Tripolitan War that occurred shortly after the 1776 establishment of the United States as an independent sovereign state, but became much more expansive in the aftermath of World War II. With the goal of preventing the Soviet Union from gaining influence in the region during the Cold War, American foreign policy saw the deliverance of extensive support in various forms to anti-communist and anti-Soviet regimes; among the top priorities for the U.S. with regards to this goal was its support for the State of Israel against its Soviet-backed neighbouring Arab countries during the peak of the Arab–Israeli conflict. The U.S. also came to replace the United Kingdom as the main security patron for Saudi Arabia as well as the other Arab states of the Persian Gulf in the 1960s and 1970s in order to ensure, among other goals, a stable flow of oil from the Persian Gulf. As of 2023, the U.S. has diplomatic relations with every country in the Middle East except for Iran, with whom relations were severed after the 1979 Islamic Revolution, and Syria, with whom relations were suspended in 2012 following the outbreak of the Syrian Civil War.
The Central Intelligence Agency (CIA) has repeatedly intervened in the internal affairs of Iran, from the Mosaddegh coup of 1953 to the present day. The CIA is said to have collaborated with the last Shah, Mohammad Reza Pahlavi. Its personnel may have been involved in the Iran-Contra affair of the 1980s. More recently in 2007-8 CIA operatives were claimed to be supporting the Sunni terrorist group Jundallah against Iran, but these claims were refuted by a later investigation.
The United States (U.S.) Central Intelligence Agency (CIA) has been involved in covert actions and contingency planning in Iraq ever since the 1958 overthrow of the Iraqi monarchy, although the historiography of Iraq–United States relations prior to the 1980s is considered relatively underdeveloped, with the first in-depth academic studies being published in the 2010s.
Central Intelligence Agency activities in Syria since the agency's inception in 1947 have included coup attempts and assassination plots, and in more recent years, extraordinary renditions, a paramilitary strike, and funding and military training of forces opposed to the current government.
The American Friends of the Middle East (AFME) was an American international educational organization, formed in 1951. It was founded by columnist Dorothy Thompson, Kermit Roosevelt, Jr., Harry Emerson Fosdick, and 24 other American educators, theologians, and writers. The predecessor organization, with many of the same founders was the Committee for Justice and Peace in the Holy Land. The AFME organization was later linked to the Central Intelligence Agency (CIA). It existed as a pro-Arabist organization often critical of U.S. support for Israel.
Abdel Hamid Sarraj was a Syrian Army officer and politician. When the union between Egypt and Syria was declared, Sarraj, a staunch Arab nationalist and supporter of Egyptian president Gamal Abdel Nasser, played a key role in the leadership of the Syrian region of the UAR. Due to the repression by the UAR of the Syrian communists he was nicknamed Sultan Abdel Hamid referring to the Ottoman sultan Abdul Hamid II.
The March 1949 Syrian coup d'état was a bloodless coup d'état that took place on 30 March. It was the first military coup in modern Syrian history and overthrew the country's democratically-elected government. It was led by the Syrian Army chief of staff, Husni al-Za'im, who became president of Syria on 11 April 1949. Among the officers who assisted al-Za'im's takeover were Sami al-Hinnawi and Adib al-Shishakli, both of whom in sequence would later also become military leaders of the country. Syrian President Shukri al-Quwatli, was accused of purchasing inferior arms for the Syrian Army and poor leadership. He was briefly imprisoned, but then released into exile in Egypt. Syria's legislature, then called the House of Representatives, was dissolved. al-Za'im also imprisoned many political leaders, such as Munir al-Ajlani, whom he accused of conspiring to overthrow the republic.
James Hugh Keeley Jr. was an American diplomat.
Since the 19th century, the United States government has participated and interfered, both overtly and covertly, in the replacement of many foreign governments. In the latter half of the 19th century, the U.S. government initiated actions for regime change mainly in Latin America and the southwest Pacific, including the Spanish–American and Philippine–American wars. At the onset of the 20th century, the United States shaped or installed governments in many countries around the world, including neighbors Hawaii, Panama, Nicaragua, Mexico, Haiti, and the Dominican Republic.
Project FF or Fat Fucker was a Central Intelligence Agency (CIA) project aimed at pressuring King Farouk of Egypt to make political reforms that would lessen the likelihood of violent political change in the country contrary to American interests. The government of the United States was concerned that the ever-increasing political instability in Egypt, much of it linked to the perceived corruption and incompetence of both the royal court and the traditional political establishment, would inevitably result in the toppling of the Egyptian government if not remedied. In particular, they feared the prospect of a partial or full communist takeover. The project was masterminded by CIA Director Allen Dulles, Secretary of State Dean Acheson, CIA operative Kermit "Kim" Roosevelt Jr., and CIA Station Chief in Cairo Miles Copeland, Jr.
Norman Darbyshire (1924–1993) was a British spy who worked for the SOE and the MI6. He played a key role in the 1953 coup d'état that overthrew Mohammed Mossadegh, the democratically-elected prime minister of Iran.