Ervand Abrahamian. Oil Crisis in Iran: From Nationalism to Coup d’ Etat.
Year: 2023
Type: article
Abstract: The events during the oil nationalization crisis that culminated in the CIA-orchestrated coup of August 1953 and the overthrow of the constitutional government of Mohammed Mossdegh are regarded by Abrahamian and other notable historians of modern Iran as constituting a seminal moment in the political history of the country. Alternative histories of those events have been written by different participants and by historians. With the growing availability of British and US official records, a large literature has grown over time, converging on a more or less common understanding of the course of events and the motives and consequential actions of the main participants in the events. In this book, Ervand Abrahamian challenges aspects of this convergent view through a forensic investigation of the new and less redacted version of the long overdue US government official documents released in 2017. Some historians who have focused on the 1953 coup itself declared that the new sources were devoid of information that could shed new light on these events. Abrahamian delves deeper into the newly released materials and shows that they reveal important new information regarding the involvement and motives of the US government from the onset of the oil nationalization crisis to its end.
Source: The American Historical Review
DOI: 10.1093/ahr/rhad205
Author: Massoud Karshenas
Institution: SOAS University of London
Language: English
Topic: Islamic Studies and History
Field: Social Sciences
Domain: Social Sciences
Open Access status: green
OpenAlex ID: W4381610869