19 AUGUST

MI6 OVERTHROW MOSSADEGH – THE POPULAR MODERATE PRIME MINISTER OF IRAN.

[ 19 August 1953 ]

Today in 1953, British intelligence, helped by the CIA, staged a coup to oust Muhammad Mossadegh, the moderate nationalist prime minister of Iran, who had been a firm believer in liberal values, democracy and the rule of law. London’s angst was over Mossadegh’s determination that Iran should be able to run its own oil industry, which had been in British hands,  the revenue from which he hoped would help improve the lives of all Iranians, including the poor.¹

AT A LONDON MEETING, A FORMER US ATTORNEY GENERAL ATTACKS SANCTIONS ON IRAQ

[ 19 August 1995 ]

On this day in 1995, Ramsey Clark, a former US attorney general, addressing a meeting of the Commission of Inquiry on Economic Sanctions in London, said that while both nuclear weapons on Hiroshima and Nagasaki killed a quarter of a million, the sanctions imposed on Iraq by the United Nations security council (which the United Kingdom had advocated and supported as a permanent member) had killed twice as many – half a million.² Later the same year, the Lancet estimated the number of child fatalities resulting from sanctions at 567,000.

FOOTNOTES

1. Cited in Christopher De Bellaigue, Patriot of Persia: Muhammad Mossadegh and a Very British Coup, Vintage, London, 2013, p. 3
2. Ruth Winstone (editor), Tony Benn: Free at Last ! Diaries 1991-2001, Arrow Books, London, 2003, pp. 328-329.

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