Although this is a documentary film, it will probably appeal to spy novel fans and those who like cloak and dagger stories, especially since real life agents describe their roles and actions during the 1953 Iranian coup. The interviews took place in the early 80’s for a British television series that focused on the declining British Empire. The makers of the documentary were able to obtain the original film of the intelligence officers being interviewed, which were digitized and became a part of the film, which was completed in 2019.
To understand why the coup occurred, I’ll go over the events that led to the arrest of Prime Minister Mossadegh. The British government owned a controlling interest in the Anglo-Iranian Oil Co., which became British Petroleum (BP) after the coup, and by 1951 had controlled the oil fields for nearly four decades. As a reaction to Britain receiving 80–85% of oil profits, a political party in Iran supported a prime minister candidate, Dr. Mossadegh, who ran on a platform of nationalizing the oil fields. He won the election and, as promised, started the process of taking control of the oil fields away from England.
I’m not a historian or scholar, but from what I have read and learned from the film, Iran had a monarch, the Shah, who had power over the Prime Minister and Parliament. Churchill, still leading England, wasn’t going to allow the control of the oil fields to slip away, so he approved a plan by MI6, Britain’s intelligence service, to take Mossadegh out. The first coup attempt in 1952 failed, so the prime minister closed the British embassy and expelled the diplomats (most likely spies) from Iran.
