Inspired by the game 'the cat and the coup'.
In 1951, Dr. Mohammad Mosaddegh became the first democratically elected Prime Minister of Iran. Due to his fierrce nationalism and opposition to foreign control within his country, he incurred the wrath of the United States and United Kingdoms. Following his nationalization of the Iranian oil industry, the CIA organized and carried out a coup at the request of MI6.
Consequently, the Shah was installed as ruler of Iran and governed as an absolute ruler until the Islamic Revolution of 1979.
What if, for whatever reason, there had been no 1953 coup and Mohammad Mosaddegh remained in office? How would this influence the development of the Middle East and the world? Most topics regarding Mosaddegh seem to die prematurely.
As I said to Emperor Norton regarding his "CP/Entente Cold War" question--you really have to specify just how this highly divergent result comes about.
There were deep reasons for the American intervention, for the Soviet Union's lack of effective countervailing offers and threats, for Mosaddegh to be in a weak position to either see the threat coming or divert it if he did see it. Just how some factor is changed has tremendous bearing on what happens next.
Is the USA, for some reason, reluctant to get involved? How could that happen, in the context of the early 1950s? A President with lofty notions of conducting policy in full and broad daylight, who concedes the justice of the Iranian position--that's the sort of President I
wish we generally had and I try hard every four years to get one but I can't say I've had much luck at it! In 1952, with the Korean War going on, how can such a President be elected and if elected, permitted to go on with such "naive" policies in the face of the power Establishment?
Is the Soviet Union stronger and bolder? How? Anyway if it is deeper and broader butterflies are flapping their wings all over the world, and meanwhile Mosaddegh and Iran might be not one little bit better off!
Perhaps the plotted coup goes forward but stumbles and fails, becoming a "putsch" instead? That seems the likeliest way to me to get the divergent result--but what exactly prevents the Americans, the British, or some clique of oil companies hiring filibusters from trying again and again until they get it right?
What happens after that depends on the scenario that allows the result to be divergent. Intervention in Iran was not a casual or marginal decision, as demonstrated by the parallel coup executed at the same time against the democratically elected government of Guatemala. It was a policy, policy consistent with generations of US policy in Latin America and the way Britain ran its Empire; presumably had the US demurred the British would have gone ahead with a similar plot of their own unless the USA actively dissuaded them from it.
One way the coup might have come to grief I can imagine is that the American leftist-independent press might have exposed it, leading to a political shake-up and impeding such moves across the board. I can imagine it, the way I can imagine a noble US President who deals with all world interests with firm but generous and fair-minded high principle. In fact I can go farther and suspect, based on my own experience with the leftist alternate media being right on top of stories that should be major global scandals, as they happen, only to be ignored or distorted out of all recognition by the mainstream press and power structure, that OTL there
were muckraking journalists printing stories in magazines like
The Progressive that were spot-on in analyzing the nature of "plausibly deniable" interventions and even documenting week to week the maneuvers against both Guatemala and Iran--but mere cries in the wilderness as far as mainstream society went. Nor do our power brokers ever seem to get a sudden fit of conscience when, decades after the fact, the chickens come home to roost and belatedly realize those beatniks were trying to tell them something important. Nope, down the memory hole, with a lubricant of disdain for their annoying premature insight!
Again in the context of the ongoing Korean War, it's hard to imagine anything arousing public opinion to indignation at these schemes, and one supposes merely exposing their development would be good for some long jail sentences for espionage and giving aid and comfort to the enemy.
No, if the coup is going to be tried but fail it probably has to be defeated in Iran itself, by Iranians. And this is where I'd hand the speculation ball over to someone who actually knows in great detail what Iran was like in the early 1950s and can identify some combination of factors that could foil the one coup and deter or block other tries at it down the line.