The Jakarta Method: Washington's Anticommunist Crusade and the Mass Murder Program that Shaped Our World

by Vincent Bevins

Mossadegh and the Iranians had a lot of reasons to resent the British. During their period of imperial glory, Iran suffered a famine that took the lives of two million people. And after World War II, the British set up an arrangement in which they took twice as much income from petroleum as Iran, while local oil workers lived in shanties without running water. When Mossadegh and Iran’s elected parliament maneuvered around the Shah the British had put in place, London began looking for a way to claw back what it considered its own. The Americans, Wisner included, were wary of getting tied up in British imperial affairs. But their allies from across the pond appealed to their anticommunism. Mossadegh had legalized the well-organized, Communist-led Tudeh Party (along with all other political parties), and the Brits suggested to the Americans that, perhaps, the Tudeh could take over if they weren’t careful,