The Divide: Global Inequality from Conquest to Free Markets

by Jason Hickel

politician. As prime minister, he introduced unemployment compensation and benefits for sick and injured workers. He abolished forced agricultural labour. He raised taxes on the rich in order to fund rural development projects. And, most famously, he sought to renegotiate ownership of the country’s oil reserves, which at that point were controlled by the British-owned Anglo-Iranian Oil Company, now BP. When the company refused to cooperate with an audit of its accounts, the Iranian Parliament voted unanimously to nationalise the company’s assets. This move further boosted Mossadegh’s popularity at home. But it outraged the British government, which quickly turned to the United States for assistance. The option of military intervention was on the table, but they worried that it might provoke the USSR into coming to Iran’s aid and set off a proxy war. So they worked covertly through a secret project called Operation Ajax, which was led by CIA agent Kermit Roosevelt (the grandson of Theodore Roosevelt, the man who established the Roosevelt Corollary to the Monroe Doctrine and paved the way for US intervention abroad). It was a clever plan. First, they bribed politicians to whip up anti-government sentiment and paid demonstrators to take to the streets to create the false impression that Mossadegh was unpopular. Then they convinced the military to depose Mossadegh and hand power over to the Shah of Iran, Mohammad Reza Pahlavi. It worked: the coup in August 1953 toppled Mossade...