(February 25, 2013) Oil was the last thing on the CIA’s mind in 1953 intervention.

This article was first published by the National Post.

Oscar winner Argo received darts from Canadian ambassador Ken Taylor for its shoddy portrayal of Canada’s role in rescuing six U.S. hostages after the Shah of Iran was deposed in 1979 — Canadian diplomats were not bystanders and then shills for the CIA, as the film portrays them, but rather, as president Jimmy Carter recently acknowledged, the driving force behind the rescue.

But Argo also deserves darts for its shallow set-up for the hostage taking, which repeats the myth that in 1953 the CIA overturned a legitimately elected prime minister of Iran who had nationalized the oil multinationals’ holdings, and in his place installed an evil Shah of Iran who starved his people.

In fact the prime minister — Mohammed Mosaddeq — was illegitimate while the Shah was not and the people suffered under Mosaddeq while they modernized and generally prospered under the Shah. Moreover, the oil multinational that was nationalized — the Anglo-Iranian Oil Co., later known as British Petroleum — had been expropriated without compensation. Rather than nobly “returning Iran’s oil to its people,” as Argo put it, Mosaddeq had ignobly repudiated a lawful concession negotiated decades earlier with the government of Iran.

Mosaddeq did come to power legitimately — the Shah had appointed him prime minister in 1951 under the country’s constitutional monarchy — but his continuance in power was anything but. To win re-election in 1952, Mosaddeq stopped the counting of votes midway, after most of the urban vote was in — Mosaddeq’s power base was in the cities — and before the rural votes could be counted. This “secular democrat,” as Argo describes him, then suspended parliament and ruled by emergency power, decreeing sweeping land reforms that expropriated the rural land owners and established a system of collective farming under government land ownership. To deal with objectors, Mosaddeq relied on goon squads from the Iranian Communist party.

By 1953 his popularity was tanking — his nationalization of the oil industry, though initially popular, led to an economically ruinous international boycott that cost him support with the public and splintered his National Front party, a sprawling coalition of socialists, nationalists, workers and clergy. Looming nationalizations in transportation and communications and attempts to control food production further polarized society, with many fearing Iran would come to resemble the neighbouring Soviet Union, where an atheistic state controlled the economy and society. The final straw was a referendum Mosaddeq called to dissolve parliament, which he won with 99.9% of the vote — those who might want to vote “no” had to use separate ballot boxes, sometimes in different polling places, where voters had to provide their names, addresses, and their identity cards. Within 10 days of the referendum, the people took to the streets and Mosaddeq was deposed.

The CIA did play a big role in Mosaddeq’s ouster — Argo got that right — but oil was the last thing on the CIA’s mind. The U.S. had no oil interests in Iran, as Argo’s scriptwriter wrongly assumed, and it was also largely indifferent to Britain’s anguish at losing its Iranian properties, which supplied 43% of Europe’s oil and represented Britain’s single most important property. The U.S., in fact, generally sided with Mosaddeq in his dispute with the British, turning against him only after it began to fear a Communist takeover of Iran. Here the U.S. shared the same fear as a great many Iranians who were only too pleased to enlist U.S. support in maintaining their freedoms.

Argo broad-brushes Iranians as fanatics and fools, a disservice to a country that was no one’s patsy — this is the world’s longest-lasting empire, with a gloried 2,500-year history. Iran under the Shah’s Pahlavi dynasty was dictatorial and politically repressive, as were other Middle Eastern states, but not uniformly evil. Thanks to oil royalties, Iran had been Westernizing rapidly, building schools and hospitals, roads and other infrastructure and liberating women by giving them the vote, modern dress, and an education. The Shah also deserves credit for resisting the expropriation of British oil holdings, which his government felt legally bound to honour. In hindsight it’s easy to claim that the British snookered the Iranians by obtaining concessions on the cheap, but the facts tell otherwise: A British firm obtained the Iranian concession by outbidding its competition and it then effectively went bankrupt when it failed to find oil — this was risky business with great unknowns on both sides.

Argo, a thriller of a movie, understandably if regrettably decided to play up American heroism at Canada’s expense — this movie plays mainly to American audiences, who would less appreciate a plot featuring a disguised film crew from the staid Canadian Broadcasting Corporation than one with larger-than-life Hollywood characters. But Argo would have lost none of its excitement by getting some simple historical facts straight, and giving American film audiences, and Iranians, their due.

Lawrence Solomon is executive director of Energy Probe.

This article was first published by the National Post.