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The man who capitalized. on the oil-brought discontent is still widely revered in Iran. Mohammed Mossadegh, a wealthy landowner, started with no coherent platform except blind xenophobia and the understandable conviction that the British payment of four gold shillings a ton, plus a sum equal to about 20% of company dividends, was far too little for the right to exploit Iran's major resource. In 29 swirling months beginning in 1951, Mossadegh parlayed these prejudices into the premiership of Iran. When the Shah tried to curb him, worried both by Mossadegh's street popularity and the fact that his defiant policies threatened to land Iran in bankruptcy, the weepy little Premier turned to the Communist-led city mob and, in effect, replaced his royal master as ruler of Iran.
The Shah bided his time until August 1953, then gave his backstairs blessing to a coup against Mossadegh. The first reports to reach the Shah at a Caspian resort were that the coup had failed. At the controls of his own twin-engined Beechcraft D185, the Shah fled Iran accompanied only by Soraya, the royal gamekeeper and Air Force Colonel Mohammed Khatemi (now commanding general of the Iranian Air Force and husband of the Shah's sister. Princess Fatemeh). Six days later, after holing up in Rome (where Allen Dulles, boss of the U.S. Central Intelligence Agency, just happened to be vacationing), the Shah realized that the coup was a success and flew home to a tumultuous wel come in Teheran.
Atonement. Perhaps as partial atonement for his flight, the Shah subsequently married his daughter, Princess Shahnaz. to the son of the general who led the coup. As a more permanent atonement, the Shah has tried conscientiously ever since to provide Iran, against uphill odds, with the prerequisites of stability.