| In August 1953, mobs instigated by CIA-funded agents overthrew Iran's Prime Minister, Mohammed Mossadegh. His overthrow enabled the American-backed Mohammed Reza Shah to lead a militaristic autocracy until the dramatic Islamic Revolution of 1979. Most scholars assign the 1953 coup as the foundation for the anti-Americanism that characterized the 1979 revolution and colors American-Iranian relations to this day. Unexamined, however, has been the role of American soft power in the crucial years leading up to and immediately after the 1953 coup. The American-Iranian relationship, as promoted and built up by the State Department, grew from almost nothing to a major propaganda and public diplomacy endeavor in less than half a decade. While it sought to reach the Iranian populace as a whole, the State Department's only consistent successes came in reaching out to the literate political, business, and middle classes of Tehran. For a variety of reasons, the vast majority of the rural populace was unreachable, and the religious classes deliberately ignored. All the while, the soft power and propaganda campaign extolled the virtues of American civilization and invested in technical assistance for Iran. It was not simply the CIA overthrow of Mossadegh and subsequent American support for the Shah that fostered the potent anti-Americanism of the 1979 revolution. American soft power created unrealistic expectations and further stratified Iranian society, bringing the elites closer to the United States, and ignoring or marginalizing other sectors of Iranian society. |
