David S. Painter and Gregory Brew. The Struggle for Iran

David S. Painter and Gregory Brew have done historians a great service by bringing together their collective research into one volume: The Struggle for Iran: Oil, Autocracy, and the Cold War, 1951–1954. During this four-year period, the struggle for Iranian oil—the focus of the book—sparked an international crisis within the context of the early Cold War and the overlapping histories of global capitalism and decolonization. The authors advance a compelling thesis that, “At the heart of the crisis was the question of who would control Iranian oil—whether its riches would pass primarily to the Iranian people or to foreign actors and Iranian elites intent on using them for their own ends” (10). Spoiler alert: it was the latter scenario that prevailed by the end of the period under examination in the book. Painter and Brew are most interested how the United States moved to the center of what started as an Anglo-Iranian oil dispute. The core of the book begins in spring 1951, when Iran’s prime minister, Mohammad Mosaddeq, nationalized the British-controlled Anglo-Iranian Oil Company. The United States, though initially on the fence, sided with its British ally instead of Iranian nationalists. The authors detail the ways in which, during the Truman and Eisenhower presidencies, the United States failed to serve as an “honest broker” (208–09) between the Iranians and the British. In August 1953, the Eisenhower and Churchill governments cosponsored an Anglo-American coup that overthrew Mosaddeq. In contrast to most authors, Painter and Brew argue that the coup “did not mark the end of the struggle for Iran” (175). In 1954, the United States and its allies established an international consortium (see the chart on 193) of Western oil companies to manage Iran’s industry. If Mosaddeq had nationalized Iranian oil, the consortium “effectively reversed nationalization” (209). With the question of oil as their analytic anchor, the authors conclude that it was the establishment of the consortium in 1954, not the previous year’s political coup, that ended the titular struggle for Iran.

Ancient history · Art · Art history · Autocracy · Cold war · Economic history · Oil painting · Painting · Political science · Politics · Historical Studies and Socio-cultural Analysis · History · Law · Vietnamese History and Culture Studies