title: 1953 Iranian coup d'état

text: To make matters worse, the Communist Tudeh Party, which supported the Soviet Union and had attempted to kill the Shah only four years earlier, began to infiltrate the military and send mobs to "support Mosaddegh" (but in reality to marginalize all non-Communist opponents). Earlier, the Tudeh had denounced Mosaddegh, but by 1953 they changed tack and decided to "support" him. The Tudeh violently attacked opponents under the guise of helping the prime minister (the cousin of the future queen of Iran, Farah Pahlavi, was stabbed at the age of 13 in his school by Tudeh activists), and unwittingly helped cause Mosaddegh's reputation to decline, despite the fact that he never officially endorsed them. However, by 1953 he and the Tudeh had formed an unofficial alliance of convenience with each other; the Tudeh were the "foot soldiers" for his government, effectively replacing the Fadaiyan in that role, all the while secretly hoping that Mosaddegh would institute communism. Pro-Shah mobs also carried out attacks on Mosaddegh opponents, and there may have been some CIA coordination.


title: 1953 Iranian coup d'état

text: Worried about Britain's other interests in Iran, and (thanks to the Tudeh party) believing that Iran's nationalism was really a Soviet-backed plot, Britain persuaded US Secretary of State John Foster Dulles that Iran was falling to the Soviets—effectively exploiting the American Cold War mindset. Since President Harry S. Truman was busy fighting a war in Korea, he did not agree to overthrow the government of Prime Minister Mohammad Mosaddegh. However, in 1953, when Dwight D. Eisenhower became president, the UK convinced the U.S. to undertake a joint coup d'état.


title: 1953 Iranian coup d'état

text: By 1953, economic tensions caused by the British embargo and political turmoil began to take a major toll on Mosaddegh's popularity and political power. He was increasingly blamed for the economic and political crisis. Political violence was becoming widespread in the form of street clashes between rival political groups. Mosaddegh was losing popularity and support among the working class which had been his strongest supporters. As he lost support, he became more autocratic. As early as August 1952, he began to rely on emergency powers to rule, generating controversy among his supporters. After an assassination attempt upon one of his cabinet ministers and himself, he ordered the jailing of dozens of his political opponents. This act created widespread anger among the general public, and led to accusations that Mosaddegh was becoming a dictator. The Tudeh party's unofficial alliance with Mosaddegh led to fears of communism, and increasingly it was the communists who were taking part in pro-Mosaddegh rallies and attacking opponents.


title: 1953 Iranian coup d'état

text: By mid-1953 a mass of resignations by Mosaddegh's parliamentary supporters reduced the National Front seats in Parliament. A referendum to dissolve parliament and give the prime minister power to make law was submitted to voters, and it passed with 99.9 percent approval, 2,043,300 votes to 1300 votes against. The referendum was widely seen by opponents as treason and an act against the Shah, who was stripped of military power and control over national resources. This act would be one of many key factors in a chain of events leading to Mosaddegh's deposition.


title: 1953 Iranian coup d'état

text: The Shah himself initially opposed the coup plans and supported the oil nationalization, but he joined in after being informed by the CIA that he too would be "deposed" if he didn't play along. The experience left him with a lifelong awe of American power and would contribute to his pro-US policies while generating a hatred of the British. Mosaddegh's decision to dissolve Parliament also contributed to his decision.


title: 1953 Iranian coup d'état

text: The official pretext for the start of the coup was Mosaddegh's decree to dissolve Parliament, giving himself and his cabinet complete power to rule, while effectively stripping the Shah of his powers. It resulted in him being accused of giving himself "total and dictatorial powers." The Shah, who had been resisting the CIA's demands for the coup, finally agreed to support it.


title: 1953 Iranian coup d'état

text: Having obtained the Shah's concurrence, the CIA executed the coup. Firmans (royal decrees) dismissing Mosaddegh and appointing General Fazlollah Zahedi (a loyalist who had helped Reza Shah reunify Iran decades earlier) were drawn up by the coup plotters and signed by the Shah. Having signed the decrees and delivered them to General Zahedi, he and Queen Soraya departed for a week-long vacation in northern Iran. On Saturday 15 August, Colonel Nematollah Nassiri, the commander of the Imperial Guard, delivered to Mosaddegh a firman from the Shah dismissing him. Mosaddegh, who had been warned of the plot, probably by the Communist Tudeh Party, rejected the firman and had Nassiri arrested. Mosaddegh argued at his trial after the coup that under the Iranian constitutional monarchy, the Shah had no constitutional right to issue an order for the elected Prime Minister's dismissal without Parliament's consent. However, the constitution at the time did allow for such an action, which Mosaddegh considered unfair. The action was publicized within Iran by the CIA and in the United States by "The New York Times". Mosaddegh's supporters took to the streets in violent protests. Following the failed coup attempt, the Shah, accompanied by his second wife Soraya Esfandiary-Bakhtiari and Aboul Fath Atabay fled to Baghdad. Arriving unannounced, the Shah asked for permission for himself and his consort to stay in Baghdad for a few days before continuing on to Europe. After high-level Government consultations, they were escorted to the White House, the Iraqi Government's guest house, before flying to Italy in a plane flown by Mohammad Amir Khatami.


title: 1953 Iranian coup d'état

text: After the first coup attempt failed, General Zahedi, declaring that he was the rightful prime minister of Iran, shuttled between multiple safe houses attempting to avoid arrest. Mosaddegh ordered security forces to capture the coup plotters, and dozens were imprisoned. Believing that he had succeeded, and that he was in full control of the government, Mosaddegh erred. Assuming that the coup had failed, he asked his supporters to return to their homes and to continue with their lives as normal. The Tudeh party members also returned to their homes, no longer carrying out enforcement duties. The CIA was ordered to leave Iran, although Kermit Roosevelt Jr. was slow to receive the message—allegedly due to MI6 interference—and eagerly continued to foment anti-Mosaddegh unrest. The Eisenhower administration considered changing its policy to support Mosaddegh, with undersecretary of state Walter Bedell Smith remarking on 17 August: "Whatever his faults, Mosaddegh had no love for the Russians and timely aid might enable him to keep Communism in check."


title: 1953 Iranian coup d'état

text: General Zahedi, who was still on the run, met with the pro-Shah Ayatollah Mohammad Behbahani and other Shah supporters in secret. There (using CIA money deridingly known as "Behbahani dollars"), they quickly created a new plan. Already, much of the country's upper class was in shock from the Shah's flight from Iran, fears of communism, and Mosaddegh's arrests of opponents. They capitalized on this sentiment in their plans. The Ayatollah Behbahani also used his influence to rally religious demonstrators against Mosaddegh.


title: 1953 Iranian coup d'état

text: On 19 August, hired infiltrators posing as Tudeh party members began to organize a "communist revolution". They came and encouraged real Tudeh members to join in. Soon, the Tudeh members took to the streets attacking virtually any symbols of capitalism, and looting private businesses and destroying shops. Much of southern Tehran's business district, including the bazaars, were vandalized. With sudden mass public revulsion against this act, the next part of Zahedi's plan came into action. From the vandalized bazaars, a second group of paid infiltrators, this time posing as Shah supporters, organized angry crowds of common Iranians who were terrified about a "communist revolution" and sickened by the violence.


title: 1953 Iranian coup d'état

text: The CIA hired the two biggest gangsters of the South Tehran ghetto,  "Icy Ramadan" and Shaban Jafari A.K.A "Brainless Shaban", to mobilize protest against Mosaddegh.


title: 1953 Iranian coup d'état

text: By the middle of the day, large crowds of regular citizens, armed with improvised weapons, took to the streets in mass demonstrations, and beat back the Tudeh party members. Under Zahedi's authority, the army left its barracks and drove off the communist Tudeh and then stormed all government buildings with the support of demonstrators. Mosaddegh fled after a tank fired a single shell into his house, but he later turned himself in to the army's custody. To prevent further bloodshed, he refused a last attempt to organize his supporters. By the end of the day, Zahedi and the army were in control of the government. Despite the CIA's role in creating the conditions for the coup, there is little evidence to suggest that Kermit Roosevelt Jr. or other CIA officials were directly responsible for the actions of the demonstrators or the army on 19 August. It has even been suggested that Roosevelt's activities between 15 and 19 August were primarily intended to organize "stay-behind networks as part of the planned CIA evacuation of the country," although they allowed him to later "claim responsibility for the day's outcome." In 2014, historian Ray Takeyh conclusively showed that the US-led coup attempt was unsuccessful, with the CIA writing to Eisenhower that "The move failed […] We now [...] probably have to snuggle up to Mosaddeq if we’re going to save [our influence in Iran];” the demonstrations that led to Mosaddeq's resignation took place some weeks after the Roosevelt-organized ones, and were composed of average citizens, not the thugs-for-hire that the CIA and MI6 had recruited.


title: 1953 Iranian coup d'état

text: The Shah stayed in a hotel in Italy until he learned what had transpired, upon which he "chokingly declared": "I knew they loved me." Allen Dulles, the director of the CIA, flew back with the Shah from Rome to Tehran. Zahedi officially replaced Mosaddegh. Mosaddegh was arrested, tried, and originally sentenced to death. But on the Shah's personal orders, his sentence was commuted to three years' solitary confinement in a military prison, followed by house arrest until his death.


title: 1953 Iranian coup d'état

text: As a condition for restoring the Anglo-Iranian Oil Company, in 1954 the US required removal of the AIOC's monopoly; five American petroleum companies, Royal Dutch Shell, and the Compagnie Française des Pétroles, were to draw Iran's petroleum after the successful coup d'état—Operation Ajax. The Shah declared this to be a "victory" for Iranians, with the massive influx of money from this agreement resolving the economic collapse from the last three years, and allowing him to carry out his planned modernization projects.


title: 1953 Iranian coup d'état

text: As part of that, the CIA organized anti-Communist guerrillas to fight the Tudeh Party if they seized power in the chaos of Operation Ajax. Released National Security Archive documents showed that Undersecretary of State Walter Bedell Smith reported that the CIA had agreed with Qashqai tribal leaders, in south Iran, to establish a clandestine safe haven from which U.S.-funded guerrillas and spies could operate.


title: 1953 Iranian coup d'état

text: Operation Ajax's formal leader was senior CIA officer Kermit Roosevelt Jr., while career agent Donald Wilber was the operational leader, planner, and executor of the deposition of Mosaddegh. The coup d'état depended on the impotent Shah's dismissing the popular and powerful Prime Minister and replacing him with General Fazlollah Zahedi, with help from Colonel Abbas Farzanegan—a man agreed upon by the British and Americans after determining his anti-Soviet politics.


title: 1953 Iranian coup d'état

text: The CIA sent Major General Norman Schwarzkopf Sr. to persuade the exiled Shah to return to rule Iran. Schwarzkopf trained the security forces that would become known as SAVAK to secure the shah's hold on power.


title: 1953 Iranian coup d'état

text: The coup was carried out by the US administration of Dwight D. Eisenhower in a covert action advocated by Secretary of State John Foster Dulles, and implemented under the supervision of his brother Allen Dulles, the Director of Central Intelligence. The coup was organized by the United States' CIA and the United Kingdom's MI6, two spy agencies that aided royalists and royalist elements of the Iranian army. Much of the money was channeled through the pro-Shah Ayatollah Mohammad Behbahani, who drew many religious masses to the plot. Ayatollah Kashani had completely turned on Mosaddegh and supported the Shah, by this point.


title: 1953 Iranian coup d'état

text: According to a heavily redacted CIA document released to the National Security Archive in response to a Freedom of Information request, "Available documents do not indicate who authorized CIA to begin planning the operation, but it almost certainly was President Eisenhower himself. Eisenhower biographer Stephen Ambrose has written that the absence of documentation reflected the President's style."


title: 1953 Iranian coup d'état

text: CIA officer Kermit Roosevelt Jr., the grandson of former President Theodore Roosevelt, carried out the operation planned by CIA agent Donald Wilber. One version of the CIA history, written by Wilber, referred to the operation as TPAJAX.


title: 1953 Iranian coup d'état

text: During the coup, Roosevelt and Wilber, representatives of the Eisenhower administration, bribed Iranian government officials, reporters, and businessmen. They also bribed street thugs to support the Shah and oppose Mosaddegh. The deposed Iranian leader, Mosaddegh, was taken to jail and Iranian General Fazlollah Zahedi named himself prime minister in the new, pro-western government.


title: 1953 Iranian coup d'état

text: Another tactic Roosevelt admitted to using was bribing demonstrators into attacking symbols of the Shah, while chanting pro-Mosaddegh slogans. As king, the Shah was largely seen as a symbol of Iran at the time by many Iranians and monarchists. Roosevelt declared that the more that these agents showed their hate for the Shah and attacked his symbols, the more it caused the average Iranian citizen to dislike and distrust Mosaddegh.


title: 1953 Iranian coup d'état

text: The British and American spy agencies strengthened the monarchy in Iran by backing the pro-western Shah for the next 26 years. The Shah was overthrown in 1979. The overthrow of Iran's elected government in 1953 ensured Western control of Iran's petroleum resources and prevented the Soviet Union from competing for Iranian oil. Some Iranian clerics cooperated with the western spy agencies because they were dissatisfied with Mosaddegh's secular government.


title: 1953 Iranian coup d'état

text: While the broad outlines of the operation are known, "...the C.I.A.'s records were widely thought by historians to have the potential to add depth and clarity to a famous but little-documented intelligence operation," reporter Tim Weiner wrote in "The New York Times" 29 May 1997.


title: 1953 Iranian coup d'état

text: "The Central Intelligence Agency, which has repeatedly pledged for more than five years to make public the files from its secret mission to overthrow the government of Iran in 1953, said today that it had destroyed or lost almost all the documents decades ago."


title: 1953 Iranian coup d'état

text: A historian who was a member of the CIA staff in 1992 and 1993 said in an interview today that the records were obliterated by "a culture of destruction" at the agency. The historian, Nick Cullather, said he believed that records on other major cold war covert operations had been burned, including those on secret missions in Indonesia in the 1950s and a successful CIA-sponsored coup in Guyana in the early 1960s.


title: 1953 Iranian coup d'état

text: Donald Wilber, one of the CIA officers who planned the 1953 coup in Iran, wrote an account titled, "Clandestine Service History Overthrow of Premier Mossadeq of Iran: November 1952 – August 1953". Wilber said one goal of the coup was to strengthen the Shah.


title: 1953 Iranian coup d'état

text: In 2000, James Risen at "The New York Times" obtained the previously secret CIA version of the coup written by Wilber and summarized its contents, which includes the following.


title: 1953 Iranian coup d'état

text: In early August, the CIA increased the pressure. Iranian operatives pretending to be Communists threatened Muslim leaders with "savage punishment if they opposed Mossadegh," seeking to stir anti-Communist sentiment in the religious community.


title: 1953 Iranian coup d'état

text: In addition, the secret history says, the house of at least one prominent Muslim was bombed by CIA agents posing as Communists. It does not say whether anyone was hurt in this attack.


title: 1953 Iranian coup d'état

text: The agency was intensifying its propaganda campaign. A leading newspaper owner was granted a personal loan of about $45,000, "in the belief that this would make his organ amenable to our purposes."


title: 1953 Iranian coup d'état

text: The Shah remained intransigent. In a 1 August meeting with General Norman Schwarzkopf, he refused to sign the C.I.A.-written decrees firing Mr. Mossadegh and appointing General Zahedi. He said he doubted that the army would support him in a showdown.


title: 1953 Iranian coup d'état

text: The National Security Archive at George Washington University contains the full account by Wilber, along with many other coup-related documents and analysis.


title: 1953 Iranian coup d'état

text: In a January 1973 telephone conversation made public in 2009, US President Richard Nixon told CIA Director Richard Helms, who was awaiting Senate confirmation to become the new U.S. Ambassador to Iran, that Nixon wanted Helms to be a "regional ambassador" to Persian Gulf oil states, and noted that Helms had been a schoolmate of Shah Reza Pahlavi.


title: 1953 Iranian coup d'état

text: In August 2013, on the 60th anniversary of the coup, the US government released documents showing they were involved in staging the coup. The documents also describe the motivations behind the coup and the strategies used to stage it. The UK had sought to censor information regarding its role in the coup; a significant number of documents about the coup remained classified. The release of the declassified documents, which marked the first US official acknowledgement of its role, was seen as a goodwill gesture on the part of the Obama administration. According to Aljazeera, the deputy director of the National Security Archive, Malcolm Bryne, disclosed that the CIA documented the secret histories purposely for official use.


title: 1953 Iranian coup d'état

text: In June 2017, the United States State Department's Office of the Historian released its revised historical account of the event. The volume of historical records "focuses on the evolution of U.S. thinking on Iran as well as the U.S. Government covert operation that resulted in Mosadeq's overthrow on 19 August 1953". Though some of the relevant records were destroyed long ago, the release contains a collection of roughly 1,000 pages, only a small number of which remain classified. One revelation is that the CIA "attempted to call off the failing coup but was salvaged by an insubordinate spy." The reports released by the U.S. had reached 1,007 pages, consisting of diplomatic cables and letters according to VOA News.


title: 1953 Iranian coup d'état

text: In March 2018, the National Security Archive released a declassified British memo alleging that the United States Embassy sent "large sums of money" to "influential people"—namely senior Iranian clerics—in the days leading up to Mosaddeq's overthrow. According to the Guardian, despite the U.S. showing regrets about the coup, it has failed to officially issue an apology over its involvement.


title: 1953 Iranian coup d'état

text: The CIA paid a large sum to carry out the operation. Depending on the expenses to be counted, the final cost is estimated to vary from $100,000 to $20 million. CIA gave Zahedi's government $5 million after the coup with Zahedi himself receiving an extra million.


title: 1953 Iranian coup d'état

text: Historians disagree on what motivated the United States to change its policy towards Iran and stage the coup. Middle East historian Ervand Abrahamian identified the coup d'état as "a classic case of nationalism clashing with imperialism in the Third World". He states that Secretary of State Dean Acheson admitted the Communist threat' was a smokescreen" in responding to President Eisenhower's claim that the Tudeh party was about to assume power.


title: 1953 Iranian coup d'état

text: Abrahamian states that Iran's oil was the central focus of the coup, for both the British and the Americans, though "much of the discourse at the time linked it to the Cold War". Abrahamian wrote, "If Mosaddegh had succeeded in nationalizing the British oil industry in Iran, that would have set an example and was seen at that time by the Americans as a threat to U.S. oil interests throughout the world, because other countries would do the same." Mosaddegh did not want any compromise solution that allowed a degree of foreign control. Abrahamian said that Mosaddegh "wanted real nationalization, both in theory and practice".


title: 1953 Iranian coup d'état

text: Tirman points out that agricultural land owners were politically dominant in Iran well into the 1960s, and the monarch Reza Shah's aggressive land expropriation policies—to the benefit of himself and his supporters—resulted in the Iranian government being Iran's largest land owner. "The landlords and oil producers had new backing, moreover, as American interests were for the first time exerted in Iran. The Cold War was starting, and Soviet challenges were seen in every leftist movement. But the reformers were at root nationalists, not communists, and the issue that galvanized them above all others was the control of oil." The belief that oil was the central motivator behind the coup has been echoed in the popular media by authors such as Robert Byrd, Alan Greenspan, and Ted Koppel.


title: 1953 Iranian coup d'état

text: Middle East political scientist Mark Gasiorowski states that while, on the face of it, there is considerable merit to the argument that U.S. policymakers helped U.S. oil companies gain a share in Iranian oil production after the coup, "it seems more plausible to argue that U.S. policymakers were motivated mainly by fears of a communist takeover in Iran, and that the involvement of U.S. companies was sought mainly to prevent this from occurring. The Cold War was at its height in the early 1950s, and the Soviet Union was viewed as an expansionist power seeking world domination. Eisenhower had made the Soviet threat a key issue in the 1952 elections, accusing the Democrats of being soft on communism and of having 'lost China.' Once in power, the new administration quickly sought to put its views into practice."


title: 1953 Iranian coup d'état

text: A 2019 study by Gasiorowski concluded "that U.S. policymakers did not have compelling evidence that the threat of a Communist takeover was increasing substantially in the months before the coup. Rather, the Eisenhower administration interpreted the available evidence in a more alarming manner than the Truman administration had."


title: 1953 Iranian coup d'état

text: Gasiorowski further states "the major U.S. oil companies were not interested in Iran at this time. A glut existed in the world oil market. The U.S. majors had increased their production in Saudi Arabia and Kuwait in 1951 in order to make up for the loss of Iranian production; operating in Iran would force them to cut back production in these countries which would create tensions with Saudi and Kuwaiti leaders. Furthermore, if nationalist sentiments remained high in Iran, production there would be risky. U.S. oil companies had shown no interest in Iran in 1951 and 1952. By late 1952, the Truman administration had come to believe that participation by U.S. companies in the production of Iranian oil was essential to maintain stability in Iran and keep Iran out of Soviet hands. In order to gain the participation of the major U.S. oil companies, Truman offered to scale back a large anti-trust case then being brought against them. The Eisenhower administration shared Truman's views on the participation of U.S. companies in Iran and also agreed to scale back the anti-trust case. Thus, not only did U.S. majors not want to participate in Iran at this time, it took a major effort by U.S. policymakers to persuade them to become involved."


title: 1953 Iranian coup d'état

text: In 2004, Gasiorowski edited a book on the coup arguing that "the climate of intense cold war rivalry between the superpowers, together with Iran's strategic vital location between the Soviet Union and the Persian Gulf oil fields, led U.S. officials to believe that they had to take whatever steps were necessary to prevent Iran from falling into Soviet hands." While "these concerns seem vastly overblown today" the pattern of "the 1945–46 Azerbaijan crisis, the consolidation of Soviet control in Eastern Europe, the communist triumph in China, and the Korean War—and with the Red Scare at its height in the United States" would not allow U.S. officials to risk allowing the Tudeh Party to gain power in Iran. Furthermore, "U.S. officials believed that resolving the oil dispute was essential for restoring stability in Iran, and after March 1953 it appeared that the dispute could be resolved only at the expense either of Britain or of Mosaddeq." He concludes "it was geostrategic considerations, rather than a desire to destroy Mosaddeq's movement, to establish a dictatorship in Iran or to gain control over Iran's oil, that persuaded U.S. officials to undertake the coup."


title: 1953 Iranian coup d'état

text: Faced with choosing between British interests and Iran, the U.S. chose Britain, Gasiorowski said. "Britain was the closest ally of the United States, and the two countries were working as partners on a wide range of vitally important matters throughout the world at this time. Preserving this close relationship was more important to U.S. officials than saving Mosaddeq's tottering regime." A year earlier, British Prime Minister Winston Churchill used Britain's support for the U.S. in the Cold War to insist the United States not undermine his campaign to isolate Mosaddegh. "Britain was supporting the Americans in Korea, he reminded Truman, and had a right to expect 'Anglo-American unity' on Iran."


title: 1953 Iranian coup d'état

text: According to Kinzer, for most Americans, the crisis in Iran became just part of the conflict between Communism and "the Free world". "A great sense of fear, particularly the fear of encirclement, shaped American consciousness during this period. ... Soviet power had already subdued Latvia, Lithuania, and Estonia. Communist governments were imposed on Bulgaria and Romania in 1946, Hungary and Poland in 1947, and Czechoslovakia in 1948. Albania and Yugoslavia also turned to communism. Greek communists made a violent bid for power. Soviet soldiers blocked land routes to Berlin for sixteen months. In 1949, the Soviet Union successfully tested a nuclear weapon. That same year, pro-Western forces in China lost their Civil War to communists led by Mao Zedong. From Washington, it seemed that enemies were on the march everywhere." Consequently, "the United States, challenged by what most Americans saw as a relentless communist advance, slowly ceased to view Iran as a country with a unique history that faced a unique political challenge." Some historians, including Douglas Little, Abbas Milani and George Lenczowski have echoed the view that fears of a communist takeover or Soviet influence motivated the U.S. to intervene.


title: 1953 Iranian coup d'état

text: On 11 May 1951, prior to the overthrow of Mosaddegh, Adolf A. Berle warned the U.S. State Department that U.S. "control of the Middle East was at stake, which, with its Persian Gulf oil, meant 'substantial control of the world.'"


title: 1953 Iranian coup d'état

text: When Mosaddegh called for the dissolution of the Majlis in August 1953, the editors of the "New York Times" gave the opinion that: "A plebiscite more fantastic and farcical than any ever held under Hitler or Stalin is now being staged in Iran by Premier Mosaddegh in an effort to make himself unchallenged dictator of the country."


title: 1953 Iranian coup d'état

text: A year after the coup, the "New York Times" wrote on 6 August 1954, that a new oil "agreement between Iran and a consortium of foreign oil companies" was "good news indeed".


title: 1953 Iranian coup d'état

text: Costly as the dispute over Iranian oil has been to all concerned, the affair may yet be proved worthwhile if lessons are learned from it: Underdeveloped countries with rich resources now have an object lesson in the heavy cost that must be paid by one of their number which goes berserk with fanatical nationalism. It is perhaps too much to hope that Iran's experience will prevent the rise of Mossadeghs in other countries, but that experience may at least strengthen the hands of more reasonable and more far-seeing leaders. In some circles in Great Britain the charge will be pushed that American "imperialism"—in the shape of the American oil firms in the consortium!—has once again elbowed Britain from a historic stronghold.


title: 1953 Iranian coup d'état

text: The documentary "Cinematograph" aired on 18 August 2011 on the anniversary of the coup. In it, BBC admitted for the first time to the role of BBC Persian radio as the propaganda arm of the British government in Iran. The "Cinematograph" narrator said:


title: 1953 Iranian coup d'état

text: The documentary quoted a 21 July 1951 classified document in which a Foreign Office official thanked the British ambassador for his proposals that were precisely followed by the BBC Persian radio to strengthen its propaganda against Mosaddegh:


title: 1953 Iranian coup d'état

text: The document further stressed that the Foreign Office "shall be grateful for [the ambassador's] comments on the propaganda line we have proposed".


title: 1953 Iranian coup d'état

text: An early account of the CIA's role in the coup appeared in "The Saturday Evening Post" in late 1954, purporting to explain how "the strategic little nation of Iran was rescued from the closing clutch of Moscow." The report was approved by the CIA, and its authors may have been assisted by Kermit Roosevelt Jr., who had written for the "Post" before.


title: 1953 Iranian coup d'état

text: Despite the British government's pressure, the National Security Archive released two declassified documents in August 2017 which confirm the British solicitation of the United States' assistance in ousting Mosaddegh. According to these records, the British first approached the American government about a plan for the coup in November 1952 "repeatedly" asking U.S. to join the coup, claiming that the Mosaddegh government would be ineffective in preventing a communist takeover, and that Mosaddegh was a threat to America's global fight against communism, which they believed necessitated action; the records also state that UK and U.S. spy agencies had by then had "very tentative and preliminary discussions regarding the practicability of such a move". At the time, the American government was already preparing to aid Mosaddegh in his oil dealings with the British, and believed him to be anti-communist—considerations which made the U.S. government skeptical of the plot. Since President Truman's term was drawing to a close in January 1953, and there was too much uncertainty and danger associated with the plot, the U.S. government decided not to take action against Mosaddegh at the time.


title: 1953 Iranian coup d'état

text: According to the 1952 documents, it was Christopher Steel, the No 2 official in the British embassy in Washington, who "pitched" the idea of the coup to US officials amid the US-Britain talks which had begun in October. The document also says that the British officials rejected Paul Nitze's suggestion that, instead of executing a coup, they mount a "campaign" against Ayatollah Abolqasem Kashani, "a leading opponent of British involvement in Iran's oil industry", and the communist Tudeh Party. They "pressed US for a decision" since they knew "the Truman administration was in its final weeks". According to Wilber, the British Secret Intelligence Service worked with CIA to form a propaganda campaign via "the press, handbills and the Tehran clergy" to "weaken the Mossadeq government in any way possible".


title: 1953 Iranian coup d'état

text: Oil nationalization law led to a "direct conflict" between Mosaddegh and the British government. So, Britain tried to regain its control over the oil industry in Iran by following a "three-track strategy" aimed at either "pressuring him into a favorable settlement or by removing him from the office." The three component of Britain strategy was: I) "legal maneuvers" including refusing direct negotiation with Mosaddegh, II) Imposing economic sanctions on Iran accompanied by performing war games in the region and III) Removal of Mosaddegh through "covert political action".


title: 1953 Iranian coup d'état

text: Mosaddegh appointed a series of secular ministers to his cabinet during his premiership, losing his support with the clergy. In 1953, Ayatollah Abol-Qasem Kashani and his followers organised a series of protests against Mosaddegh's liberal reforms - such as the extension of the vote to women. By July 1953 when Mosaddegh asked for a critical extension of his emergency powers, "... Clerical members of the Majles who supported Kashani left the National Front Coalition and set up their own Islamic Faction...". (Muslim Warriors). This faction then boycotted the 1953 referendum about the dissolution of parliament.


title: 1953 Iranian coup d'état

text: At 8am on 18 August Ayatollah Behbahan mobilised 3000 stick and club wielding anti-shah protestors formed a mob in Tehran. This was done in the hope that the removal of Mosaddegh would create a more religious government. Separate mobilisation was instigated by Ayatollah Kashani in the country at this time. There has been documentation that both Ayatollah Behbahani and Khomeini received funds from the CIA by some sources. The former's mob would lead Mosaddegh to abandon his residence, and ultimately his capture. Iranian Historian Michael Axworthy stated that "... [The clergy's] move to oppose Mossadeq was the decisive factor in his downfall...".


title: 1953 Iranian coup d'état

text: The coup caused long-lasting damage to the U.S. reputation, according to documents released to the National Security Archive and reflected in the book "Mohammad Mosaddeq and the 1953 Coup in Iran".


title: 1953 Iranian coup d'état

text: The '28 Mordad' coup, as it is known by its Persian date [in the Solar Hijri calendar], was a watershed for Iran, for the Middle East and for the standing of the United States in the region. The joint US-British operation ended Iran's drive to assert sovereign control over its own resources and helped put an end to a vibrant chapter in the history of the country's nationalist and democratic movements. These consequences resonated with dramatic effect in later years. When the Shah finally fell in 1979, memories of the US intervention in 1953, which made possible the monarch's subsequent, and increasingly unpopular, 25-year reign intensified the anti-American character of the revolution in the minds of many Iranians.


title: 1953 Iranian coup d'état

text: The authoritarian monarch appreciated the coup, Kermit Roosevelt wrote in his account of the affair. "'I owe my throne to God, my people, my army and to you!' By 'you' he [the shah] meant me and the two countries—Great Britain and the United States—I was representing. We were all heroes."


title: 1953 Iranian coup d'état

text: On 16 June 2000, "The New York Times" published the secret CIA report, "Clandestine Service History, Overthrow of Premier Mossadeq of Iran, November 1952 – August 1953," partly explaining the coup from CIA agent Wilber's perspective. In a related story, "The New York Times" reporter James Risen penned a story revealing that Wilber's report, hidden for nearly five decades, had recently come to light.


title: 1953 Iranian coup d'état

text: In the summer of 2001, Ervand Abrahamian writes in the journal "Science & Society" that Wilber's version of the coup was missing key information some of which was available elsewhere.


title: 1953 Iranian coup d'état

text: In a review of Tim Weiner's "Legacy of Ashes", historian Michael Beschloss wrote, "Mr. Weiner argues that a bad C.I.A. track record has encouraged many of our gravest contemporary problems... A generation of Iranians grew up knowing that the C.I.A. had installed the shah," Mr. Weiner notes. "In time, the chaos that the agency had created in the streets of Tehran would return to haunt the United States."


title: 1953 Iranian coup d'état

text: The administration of Dwight D. Eisenhower considered the coup a success, but, given its blowback, that opinion is no longer generally held, because of its "haunting and terrible legacy". In 2000, Madeleine Albright, U.S. Secretary of State, said that intervention by the U.S. in the internal affairs of Iran was a setback for democratic government. The coup is widely believed to have significantly contributed to the 1979 Iranian Revolution, which deposed the "pro-Western" Shah and replaced the monarchy with an "anti-Western" Islamic republic.


title: 1953 Iranian coup d'état

text: "For many Iranians, the coup demonstrated duplicity by the United States, which presented itself as a defender of freedom but did not hesitate to use underhanded methods to overthrow a democratically elected government to suit its own economic and strategic interests", the Agence France-Presse reported.


title: 1953 Iranian coup d'état

text: United States Supreme Court Justice William O. Douglas, who visited Iran both before and after the coup, wrote that "When Mosaddegh and Persia started basic reforms, we became alarmed. We united with the British to destroy him; we succeeded; and ever since, our name has not been an honored one in the Middle East."


title: 1953 Iranian coup d'état

text: When the Shah returned to Iran after the coup, he was greeted by a cheering crowd. He wrote in his memoirs that while he had been a king for over a decade, for the first time he felt that the people had "elected" and "approved" of him, and that he had a "legitimate" popular mandate to carry out his reforms (although some in the crowd may have been bribed). The Shah was never able to remove the reputation of being a "foreign imposed" ruler among non-royalist Iranians. The Shah throughout his rule continued to assume that he was supported by virtually everybody in Iran, and sank into deep dejection when in 1978 massive mobs demanded his ouster. The incident left him in awe of American power, while it also gave him a deep hatred of the British.


title: 1953 Iranian coup d'état

text: An immediate consequence of the coup d'état was the Shah's suppression of all republicanist political dissent, especially the liberal and nationalist opposition umbrella group National Front as well as the (Communist) Tudeh party, and concentration of political power in the Shah and his courtiers.


title: 1953 Iranian coup d'état

text: The minister of Foreign Affairs and the closest associate of Mosaddegh, Hossein Fatemi, was executed by order of the Shah's military court by firing squad on 10 November 1954. According to Kinzer, "The triumphant Shah [Pahlavi] ordered the execution of several dozen military officers and student leaders who had been closely associated with Mohammad Mosaddegh".


title: 1953 Iranian coup d'état

text: As part of the post-coup d'état political repression between 1953 and 1958, the Shah outlawed the National Front, and arrested most of its leaders. The Shah personally spared Mosaddegh the death penalty, and he was given 3 years in prison, followed by house arrest for life.


title: 1953 Iranian coup d'état

text: Many supporters of Iran continued to fight against the new regime, yet they were suppressed with some even being killed. The political party that Mosaddegh founded, the National Front of Iran, was later reorganized by Karim Sanjabi, and is currently being led by the National Poet of Iran Adib Boroumand, who was a strong Mosaddegh supporter and helped spread pro-Mosaddegh propaganda during the Abadan Crisis and its aftermath.


title: 1953 Iranian coup d'état

text: The Communist Tudeh bore the main brunt of the crackdown. The Shah's security forces arrested 4,121 Tudeh political activists including 386 civil servants, 201 college students, 165 teachers, 125 skilled workers, 80 textile workers, and 60 cobblers. Forty were executed (primarily for murder, such as Khosrow Roozbeh), another 14 died under torture and over 200 were sentenced to life imprisonment. The Shah's post-coup dragnet also captured 477 Tudeh members ("22 colonels, 69 majors, 100 captains, 193 lieutenants, 19 noncommissioned officers, and 63 military cadets") who were in the Iranian armed forces. After their presence was revealed, some National Front supporters complained that this Communist Tudeh military network could have saved Mosaddegh. However, few Tudeh officers commanded powerful field units, especially tank divisions that might have countered the coup. Most of the captured Tudeh officers came from the military academies, police and medical corps. At least eleven of the captured army officers were tortured to death between 1953 and 1958.


title: 1953 Iranian coup d'état

text: After the 1953 coup, the Shah's government formed the SAVAK (secret police), many of whose agents were trained in the United States. The SAVAK monitored dissidents and carried out censorship. After the 1971 Siahkal Incident, it was given a "loose leash" to torture suspected dissidents with "brute force" that, over the years, "increased dramatically", and nearly 100 people were executed for political reasons during the last 20 years of the Shah's rule. After the revolution, SAVAK was officially abolished, but was in reality "drastically expanded" into a new organization that killed over 8,000–12,000 prisoners between 1981 and 1985 alone, and 20,000–30,000 in total, with one prisoner who served time under both the Shah and the Islamic Republic declaring that "four months under (Islamic Republic's) warden Asadollah Lajevardi took the toll of four years under SAVAK".


title: 1953 Iranian coup d'état

text: Another effect was sharp improvement of Iran's economy; the British-led oil embargo against Iran ended, and oil revenue increased significantly beyond the pre-nationalisation level. Despite Iran not controlling its national oil, the Shah agreed to replacing the Anglo-Iranian Oil Company with a consortium—British Petroleum and eight European and American oil companies; in result, oil revenues increased from $34 million in 1954–1955 to $181 million in 1956–1957, and continued increasing, and the United States sent development aid and advisers. The Shah's government attempted to solve the issue of oil nationalization through this method, and Iran began to develop rapidly under his rule. The Shah later in his memoirs declared that Mosaddegh was a "dictator" who was "damaging" Iran through his "stubbornness", while he (the Shah) "followed" the smarter option. By the 1970s, Iran was wealthier than all of its surrounding neighbors, and economists frequently predicted that it would become a major global economic power, and a developed country.


title: 1953 Iranian coup d'état

text: When the Shah attempted during the 1970s to once again control the oil prices (through OPEC), and cancel the same oil consortium agreement that caused the 1953 coup, it resulted in a massive decline in US support for the Shah, and ironically, hastened his downfall.


title: 1953 Iranian coup d'état

text: CIA staff historian David Robarge stated: "The CIA carried out [a] successful regime change operation. It also transformed a turbulent constitutional monarchy into an absolutist kingship and induced a succession of unintended consequences." The 1979 Iranian Revolution was a most impactful unintended consequence.


title: 1953 Iranian coup d'état

text: Kinzer wrote that the 1953 coup d'état was the first time the United States used the CIA to overthrow a democratically elected, civil government. The Eisenhower administration viewed Operation Ajax as a success, with "immediate and far-reaching effect. Overnight, the CIA became a central part of the American foreign policy apparatus, and covert action came to be regarded as a cheap and effective way to shape the course of world events"—a coup engineered by the CIA called Operation PBSuccess toppling the duly elected Guatemalan government of Jacobo Arbenz Guzmán, which had nationalised farm land owned by the United Fruit Company, followed the next year.


title: 1953 Iranian coup d'état

text: A pro-American government in Iran extended the United States' geographic and strategic advantage in the Middle East, as Turkey, also bordering the USSR, was part of NATO.


title: 1953 Iranian coup d'état

text: In 2000, U.S. Secretary of State Madeleine K. Albright, acknowledged the coup's pivotal role in the troubled relationship and "came closer to apologizing than any American official ever has before".


title: 1953 Iranian coup d'état

text: The Eisenhower administration believed its actions were justified for strategic reasons. ... But the coup was clearly a setback for Iran's political development. And it is easy to see now why many Iranians continue to resent this intervention by America in their internal affairs.


title: 1953 Iranian coup d'état

text: In June 2009, the U.S. President Barack Obama in a speech in Cairo, Egypt, talked about the United States' relationship with Iran, mentioning the role of the U.S. in 1953 Iranian coup saying:


title: 1953 Iranian coup d'état

text: In the Islamic Republic, remembrance of the coup is quite different from that of history books published in the West, and follows the precepts of Ayatollah Khomeini that Islamic jurists must guide the country to prevent "the influence of foreign powers". Kashani came out against Mosaddegh by mid-1953 and "told a foreign correspondent that Mosaddegh had fallen because he had forgotten that the shah enjoyed extensive popular support." A month later, Kashani "went even further and declared that Mosaddegh deserved to be executed because he had committed the ultimate offense: rebelling against the shah, 'betraying' the country, and repeatedly violating the sacred law."


title: 1953 Iranian coup d'état

text: Men associated with Mosaddegh and his ideals dominated Iran's first post-revolutionary government. The first prime minister after the Iranian revolution was Mehdi Bazargan, a close associate of Mosaddegh. But with the subsequent rift between the conservative Islamic establishment and the secular liberal forces, Mosaddegh's work and legacy has been largely ignored by the Islamic Republic establishment. However, Mosaddegh remains a popular historical figure among Iranian opposition factions. Mosaddegh's image is one of the symbols of Iran's opposition movement, also known as the Green Movement. Kinzer writes that Mosaddegh "for most Iranians" is "the most vivid symbol of Iran's long struggle for democracy" and that modern protesters carrying a picture of Mosaddegh is the equivalent of saying "We want democracy" and "No foreign intervention".


title: 1953 Iranian coup d'état

text: In the Islamic Republic of Iran, Kinzer's book "All the Shah's Men: An American Coup and the Roots of Middle East Terror" has been censored of descriptions of Ayatollah Abol-Ghasem Kashani's activities during the Anglo-American coup d'état. Mahmood Kashani, the son of Abol-Ghasem Kashani, "one of the top members of the current, ruling élite" whom the Iranian Council of Guardians has twice approved to run for the presidency, denies there was a coup d'état in 1953, saying Mosaddegh was obeying British plans to undermine the role of Shia clerics.


title: 1953 Iranian coup d'état

text: This allegation also is posited in the book "Khaterat-e Arteshbod-e Baznesheshteh Hossein Fardoust" (The Memoirs of Retired General Hossein Fardoust), published in the Islamic Republic and allegedly written by Hossein Fardoust, a former SAVAK officer. It says that rather than being a mortal enemy of the British, Mohammad Mosaddegh always favored them, and his nationalisation campaign of the Anglo-Iranian Oil Company was inspired by "the British themselves". Scholar Ervand Abrahamian suggests that the fact that Fardoust's death was announced before publication of the book may be significant, as the Islamic Republic authorities may have forced him into writing such statements under duress.


title: 1953 Iranian coup d'état

text: Ruhollah Khomeini said the government did not pay enough attention to religious figures which caused the coup d'état to take place and described the separation between religion and politics as a fault in contemporary history.


title: 1953 Iranian coup d'état

text: Ali Khamenei believed that Mosaddegh trusted the United States and asked them to help confront Britain. As a result, the 1953 coup d'état was executed by the U.S. against Mosaddegh.


title: 1953 Iranian coup d'état

text: President Barack Obama of the United States, said in regard to the role of the U.S. in the 1953 Iranian coup d'état that the U.S. played a major role in the overthrow of a democratically elected prime minister.


title: 1953 Iranian coup d'état

text: Directed by Hasan Fathi and written jointly with playwright and university professor Naghmeh Samini, the TV series "Shahrzad" is the story of a love broken apart by events in the aftermath of the 1953 coup that overthrew the democratically elected prime minister, Mohammad Mosaddegh.


title: 1953 Iranian coup d'état

text: Cognito Comics/Verso Books has published a nonfiction graphic novel of the history, "Operation AJAX: The Story of the CIA Coup That Remade The Middle East", that covers events leading to how the CIA hired rival mobs to create chaos and overthrow the country.


title: Anton Chigurh

text: Anton Chigurh () is a fictional character and the main antagonist of Cormac McCarthy's novel "No Country for Old Men". In the film adaptation of the same name, he is portrayed by Javier Bardem.


title: Anton Chigurh

text: Bardem's performance as Chigurh was widely lauded by film critics—he won an Academy Award, Golden Globe Award and a British Academy Film Award for the role. Other accolades include Chigurh's presence on numerous "Greatest Villain" lists, most notably in "Empire Magazine"s list of The 100 Greatest Movie Characters of All Time, in which he was ranked #44, as well as being named the most realistic film depiction of a psychopath by an independent group of psychologists in the "Journal of Forensic Sciences".


title: Anton Chigurh

text: Chigurh is devoid of conscience, remorse, and compassion. He is described by Carson Wells, a central character in the novel, as a "psychopathic killer", in his 30s, with a dark complexion, and eyes as "blue as lapis like wet stones". Other characters describe Chigurh's facial features as "exotic looking". His signature weapon is a captive bolt stunner, which he uses to kill his victims and also as a tool to shoot out door locks. He also wields a sound-suppressed Remington 11-87 semiautomatic shotgun and pistol (as well as a TEC-9 in the film adaptation). Throughout both the novel and the film, Chigurh flips a coin to decide the fate of some of his victims.


title: Anton Chigurh

text: The character is a recurrence of the "Unstoppable Evil" archetype frequently found in Cormac McCarthy's work, though the Coen brothers wanted to avoid one-dimensionality, particularly a comparison to The Terminator. To avoid a sense of identification, the Coens sought to cast someone "who could have come from Mars". The brothers introduced the character at the beginning of the film in a manner similar to the opening of the 1976 film "The Man Who Fell to Earth". Film critic David DuBos described Chigurh as a "modern equivalent of Death from Ingmar Bergman's 1957 film "The Seventh Seal"."


title: Anton Chigurh

text: When Joel and Ethan Coen approached Javier Bardem about playing Chigurh, he replied, "I don't drive, I speak bad English and I hate violence." The Coens responded, "That's why we called you." Bardem said he took the role because it was his dream to be in a Coen Brothers film.


title: Anton Chigurh

text: The Coen brothers got the idea for Chigurh's hairstyle from a book Tommy Lee Jones had. It featured a 1979 photo of a man sitting in the bar of a brothel with a very similar hairstyle and clothes similar to those worn by Chigurh in the film. Oscar-winning hairstylist Paul LeBlanc designed the hairdo. The Coens instructed LeBlanc to create a "strange and unsettling" hairstyle. LeBlanc based the style on the mop tops of the English warriors in the Crusades as well as the Mod haircuts of the 1960s. Bardem told LeBlanc each morning when he finished that the style helped him to get into character. Bardem supposedly said that he was "not going to get laid for two months" because of his haircut.


title: Anton Chigurh

text: His background and nationality are left undisclosed and largely open to speculation. When writer Cormac McCarthy visited the set, the actors inquired about Chigurh's background and the symbolic significance of his name. McCarthy simply replied, "I just thought it was a cool name." Some have claimed that the surname Chigurh originates from an unspecified Nigerian language, and translates to "The one who brings food".


title: Anton Chigurh

text: In 1980, Chigurh is hired to retrieve a satchel holding $2.4 million from the scene of a drug deal gone wrong in West Texas. He discovers that a local welder named Llewelyn Moss, who chanced upon the money while hunting, has taken it and left town. Chigurh tracks Moss down to a motel using a receiver that connects to a transponder hidden in the satchel. However, Moss has hidden the money in a ventilation duct, and when he returns to the motel, suspecting (correctly) that someone is in his room, he retrieves the money from the connected vent in a second rented room on the other side of the motel. His original room is occupied by a group of Mexican gangsters sent to ambush him. When Chigurh enters this room, he kills the gangsters and searches for the money, but it is nowhere to be found. Moss, meanwhile, has already fled after hearing the gunfire.


title: Anton Chigurh

text: Chigurh ruthlessly tracks Moss down. The hotel confrontation between Moss and Chigurh plays out very differently in the film than in the novel. In the novel, Chigurh steals the key from a murdered hotel clerk and quietly enters Moss's room, where Moss ambushes him and takes him captive at gunpoint. Then Moss runs and the chase/shootout begins. As Chigurh and Moss face off in the hotel and the streets, they are interrupted by a group of Mexicans, all of whom Chigurh kills. In the film, Chigurh punches out the lock on the hotel door and wounds Moss. During their ensuing face off, only Moss and Chigurh are shown fighting; the group of Mexicans is not present.


title: Anton Chigurh

text: Chigurh finds out that another bounty hunter and former colleague of his named Carson Wells has been hired to retrieve the money and eliminate him. Chigurh kills Wells, who tried to make a deal with Moss to give him protection in exchange for the money. Chigurh then intercepts a phone call from Moss in Wells' hotel room and offers to spare Moss's wife if he agrees to give up the money. Moss refuses and vows to track down and kill Chigurh. Chigurh kills the man who hired him and the Mexicans as an act of revenge for not trusting Chigurh to complete the job. Moss is eventually killed by Mexican hitmen while in a motel in El Paso. Moss again hides the money in the vents, unknown by the Mexicans at the time of their ambush. Chigurh shows up after the police have left, retrieves the money from the vent, and gives it back to the investor.


title: Anton Chigurh

text: Moss's widow returns home after her mother's funeral to find Chigurh inside waiting for her. After hearing her pleas for mercy, he asks her to bet her life on a coin toss. In the book, she calls heads; it comes up tails, and he shoots and kills her. In the film adaptation, she refuses to call the toss, saying, "the coin don't have no say. It's just you." The movie then cuts to a shot of Chigurh leaving the house and checking the soles of his boots for blood, implying that he has killed her. While driving away from her house, Chigurh is badly injured in a car accident, sustaining a compound fracture of his left ulna and walking away with a limp. At the scene of the accident, before the authorities arrive, he offers $100 to a teenager on a bicycle to give him his shirt, seeking to use it to bind up his wounds and use it as a sling for his now broken arm. Chigurh then flees the scene before the ambulance arrives.


title: Anton Chigurh

text: Chigurh is a violent psychopath who kills without compassion or remorse but always with deliberation. He is described as having his own twisted set of morals. While he does not kill without purpose, his reasons are at times abstract and typically selfish (e.g., murdering someone for the sole intention of taking his or her vehicle). He sees himself as a hand of fate; an instrument who exacts what is supposed to happen upon those he sees accountable. He gives many of his victims a chance to survive by making deals, either personally or by flipping coins in making decisions. He is incredibly unsettled when one of his victims points out that the coin has no say in his killings, suggesting his means of avoiding responsibility and hiding pleasure in murder are a facade. He is depicted as having a great deal of pain endurance, such as being capable of withstanding pain from multiple shotgun blasts or from a fractured arm.


title: Anton Chigurh

text: Chigurh kills or tries to kill almost every person he meets in the film. The only people he spares are the gas station proprietor (who correctly guesses Chigurh's coin flip), the woman at the trailer park office (when Chigurh hears a toilet flush in a nearby room), the woman at the motel front desk, and the two bicycle riding kids who give Chigurh one of their shirts after his accident.


title: Anton Chigurh

text: Chigurh's depiction as a seemingly inhuman foreign antagonist is said to reflect the apprehension of the post-9/11 era. Many of McCarthy's works portray individuals in conflict with society, acting on instinct rather than emotion or thought.


title: Anton Chigurh

text: Critics have praised Bardem's portrayal of Chigurh, for which he received an Academy Award, a Golden Globe and a BAFTA.


title: Anton Chigurh

text: Yale professor Harold Bloom labelled Chigurh the main weakness of "No Country for Old Men", saying "has none of the legitimacy or grandeur that Judge Holden has."


title: Anton Chigurh

text: UGO.com ranked him in its list of top 11 "silver screen psychos", saying, "Chigurh is an assassin of little words and interesting choices of weaponry—is a man without a sense of humor. Others might say he's got a warped sense of principles. One thing that most can agree on, is Chigurh is one crazy S.O.B.—ruthlessly killing damn near anyone who sets eyes on him, let alone those who get in his way. And apparently, the only way you can survive a run-in with the man is the 50–50 chance of a coin toss, but Dear God, don't question his motives, it just seems to irritate him even more so."


title: Anton Chigurh

text: Empire.com ranked him #46 in their list of the 100 Greatest Movie Characters of All Time, praising the look on his face when he strangles a cop with his own handcuffs and that "when American novelist Cormac McCarthy wants to throw a dark character at you, it's a safe assumption that you're not going to be able to get them out of your head for a good, long while—if ever. One of his best is Chigurh, and between the Coens and Bardem, they never missed a beat in bringing this monster to the screen. With the kind of unholy relentlessness usually reserved for horror icons, the hired killer has an almost supernatural ability to track his prey, and is rather short in the mercy department, preferring to leave the tough decisions to a coin toss. And that bowl cut is utterly terrifying."


title: Anton Chigurh

text: Being well received after the theatrical run of "No Country for Old Men", Chigurh has been parodied in other media, mainly as a spoof of the film's most memorable scenes. Ike Barinholtz plays Anton Chigurh in the spoof movie "Disaster Movie", while Carlos Areces plays Anton Chigurh in the spoof movie "Spanish Movie". The British comedy series "Benidorm" also parodied the character in the 2009 special.


title: Anton Chigurh

text: "The Simpsons" episode "Waverly Hills, 9-0-2-1-D'oh" spoofed Chigurh as a city inspector for Waverly Hills, while the episode "Daddicus Finch" showed character Nelson Muntz portraying a Chigurh-like character during a school performance.


title: Anton Chigurh

text: A parody titled "There Will Be Milkshakes for Old Men" was featured in Episode 5 of Season 33 of NBC’s "Saturday Night Live", which aired on February 23, 2008. Fred Armisen makes an appearance as Anton Chigurh, complete with captive bolt pistol and pageboy haircut, mimicking his famous gas stop scene. The same "Saturday Night Live" episode also featured a parody of "No Country for Old Men" titled "Grandkids in the Movies". Professional wrestler Chris Jericho has stated the heel version of his character debuted in 2008 was directly inspired by Anton Chigurh's calm, indomitable demeanor.


title: Anton Chigurh

text: In the animated series "Bob's Burgers", Louise dresses up as Chigurh for Halloween in the episode "The Wolf of Wharf Street".


title: Green Revolution

text: The Green Revolution, or the Third Agricultural Revolution (after the Neolithic Revolution and the British Agricultural Revolution), was a period of technology transfer initiatives that saw a dramatic increase in crop yields and agricultural production. These changes in agriculture began in developed nations following WWII and continued globally until the late 1980s. Starting in the late 1960s farmers began adopting new technologies into farming such as, high-yielding varieties (HYVs) of cereals, especially dwarf wheat and rice. Moreover, agriculture began moving towards the widespread usage of chemical fertilizers, pesticides, and a controlled water-supply (usually involving irrigation) and newer methods of cultivation, including mechanization. All of these together were seen as a 'package of practices' to supersede 'Traditional' technology and to be adopted as a whole.


title: Green Revolution

text: Both the Ford Foundation and the Rockefeller Foundation were heavily involved in its initial development in Mexico. One key leader was agricultural scientist Norman Borlaug, the "Father of the Green Revolution", who received the Nobel Peace Prize in 1970. He is credited with saving over a billion people from starvation. The basic approach was the development of high-yielding varieties of cereal grains, expansion of irrigation infrastructure, modernization of management techniques, distribution of hybridized seeds, synthetic fertilizers, and pesticides to farmers. As crops began to reach the maximum improvement possible through selective breeding, genetic modification technologies were developed to allow for continued efforts.


title: Green Revolution

text: Studies show that the Green Revolution contributed to widespread reduction of poverty, averted hunger for millions, raised incomes, reduced greenhouse gas emissions, reduced land use for agriculture, and contributed to declines in infant mortality.


title: Green Revolution

text: According to The Limits to Growth the first genetic experiments, which a hundred years later resulted in high-yield agricultural crops, took place in a European monastery.


title: Green Revolution

text: The term "Green Revolution" was first used by William S. Gaud, the administrator of the U.S. Agency for International Development (USAID), in a speech on 8 March 1968. He noted the spread of the new technologies as:


title: Green Revolution

text: "These and other developments in the field of agriculture contain the makings of a new revolution. It is not a violent Red Revolution like that of the Soviets, nor is it a White Revolution like that of the Shah of Iran. I call it the Green Revolution."


title: Green Revolution

text: Mexico has been called the 'birthplace' and 'burial ground' of the Green Revolution. It began with great promise and it has been argued that "during the twentieth century two 'revolutions' transformed rural Mexico: the Mexican Revolution (1910–1920) and the Green Revolution (1950–1970)."


title: Green Revolution

text: It was on the lead of the Mexican government in 1943, under Presidential order and finance of the Mexican President Manuel Ávila Camacho, and support of the U.S. government, the United Nations, the Food and Agriculture Organization (FAO), and the Rockefeller Foundation. For the U.S. government, its neighbor Mexico was an important experimental case in the use of technology and scientific expertise in agriculture that became the model for international agricultural development. Mexico made a concerted effort to transform agricultural productivity, particularly with irrigated rather than dry-land cultivation in its northwest, to solve its problem of lack of food self-sufficiency. In the center and south of Mexico, where large-scale production faced challenges, agricultural production languished. Increased production promised food self-sufficiency in Mexico to feed its growing and urbanizing population with the increase in a number of calories consumed per Mexican. The technology was seen as a valuable way to feed the poor and would relieve some pressure of the land redistribution process. In general, the success of "Green Revolution" depended on the use of machinery for cultivation and harvest, on large-scale agricultural enterprises with access to credit (often from foreign investors), government-supported infrastructure projects, and access to low-wage agricultural workers.


title: Green Revolution

text: Mexico was the recipient of knowledge and technology of the Green Revolution, and it was an active participant with financial supports from the government for agriculture and Mexican agronomists. In the aftermath of the Mexican Revolution, the government had redistributed land to peasants in some parts of the country which had broken the back of the hacienda system. During the presidency of Lázaro Cárdenas (1934-1940), land reform in Mexico reached its apex in the center and south of Mexico. Agricultural productivity had fallen significantly by the 1940s. American Vice President Henry A. Wallace, previously president Franklin Delano Roosevelt's Secretary of Agriculture, visited Mexico who helped in uplifting the research program in Mexico that emphasized in increased productivity rather than land reform.


title: Green Revolution

text: During the administration of Manuel Avila Camacho (1940–46), the government put resources into developing new breeds of plants and partnered with the Rockefeller Foundation, and was also supported by the U.S. Department of Agriculture. In 1941, a team of U.S. scientists, Richard Bradfield (Cornell University), Paul C. Mangelsdorf (Harvard University), and Elvin Charles Stakman (University of Minnesota) surveyed Mexican agriculture to recommend policies and practices. Norman Borlaug, a key figure developing Green Revolution practices in Mexico, studied with Stakman at University of Minnesota. In 1943, the Mexican government founded the International Maize and Wheat Improvement Center (CIMMYT), which became a base for international agricultural research.


title: Green Revolution

text: Agriculture in Mexico had been a sociopolitical issue, a key factor in some regions' participation in the Mexican Revolution. It was also a technical issue enabled by a cohort of trained agronomists who advised peasants how to increase productivity. In the post-World War II era, the government sought development in agriculture that bettered technological aspects of agriculture in regions—not dominated by small-scale peasant cultivators. This drive for agricultural transformation would have the benefit to Mexico on self-sufficiency in food and in the political sphere during the Cold War (potentially stem unrest and the appeal of Communism). Technical aid can also be seen as serving political ends in the international sphere. In Mexico, it also served political ends separating peasant agriculture based on the ejido and considered one of the victories of the Mexican Revolution, from agribusiness that requires large-scale land ownership, irrigation, specialized seeds, fertilizers, and pesticides, machinery, and a low-wage paid labor force.


title: Green Revolution

text: The Mexican government created the Mexican Agricultural Program (MAP) to be the lead organization in raising productivity. One of their successes was in wheat production with varieties dominating wheat production as early as 1951 (70%), 1965 (80%), and 1968 (90%). Mexico became the showcase for extending the Green Revolution to other areas of Latin America and beyond, into Africa and Asia. New breeds of maize, beans, and wheat produced bumper crops with proper inputs (such as fertilizer and pesticides) and careful cultivation. Many Mexican farmers who had been dubious about the scientists or hostile to them (often a mutual relationship of discord) came to see the scientific approach to agriculture as worth adopting.


title: Green Revolution

text: The requirement for the full package of inputs of new strains of seeds, fertilizer, synthetic pesticides, and water were often not within the reach of small-scale farmers. The application of pesticides could be hazardous for farmers. Their use often damaged the local ecology, contaminating waterways and endangering the health of workers and newborns.


title: Green Revolution

text: One of the participants in the Mexican experiment, Edwin J. Wellhausen, summarized the factors leading to its initial success. These include: high yield plants without disease resistivity, adaptability, and ability to use fertilizers; improved use of soils, adequate fertilizers, and control of weeds and pests; and "a favorable ratio between the cost of fertilizers (and other investments) to the price of the produce."


title: Green Revolution

text: In 1960 the Government of the Republic of the Philippines with the Ford Foundation and the Rockefeller Foundation established the International Rice Research Institute (IRRI). A rice crossing between Dee-Geo-woo-gen and Peta was done at IRRI in 1962. In 1966, one of the breeding lines became a new cultivar: IR8 rice. IR8 required the use of fertilizers and pesticides, but produced substantially higher yields than the traditional cultivars. Annual rice production in the Philippines increased from 3.7 to 7.7 million tons in two decades. The switch to IR8 rice made the Philippines a rice exporter for the first time in the 20th century, though imports still exceeded exports, according to data from the United Nations Food and Agriculture Organization. From 1966 to 1986, the Philippines imported around 2,679,000 metric tons and exported only 632,000 metric tons of milled rice.


title: Green Revolution

text: In 1961, India was on the brink of mass famine. Norman Borlaug was invited to India by the adviser to the Indian Minister of Agriculture Dr. M. S. Swaminathan. Despite bureaucratic hurdles imposed by India's grain monopolies, the Ford Foundation and Indian government collaborated to import wheat seed from the International Maize and Wheat Improvement Center (CIMMYT). The state of Punjab was selected by the Indian government to be the first site to try the new crops because of its reliable water supply, the presence of Indus plains which make it one of the most fertile plains on earth, and a history of agricultural success. India began its own Green Revolution program of plant breeding, irrigation development, and financing of agrochemicals.


title: Green Revolution

text: India soon adopted IR8—a semi-dwarf rice variety developed by the International Rice Research Institute (IRRI) that could produce more grains of rice per plant when grown with certain fertilizers and irrigation. In 1968, Indian agronomist S.K. De Datta published his findings that IR8 rice yielded about 5 tons per hectare with no fertilizer, and almost 10 tons per hectare under optimal conditions. This was 10 times the yield of traditional rice. IR8 was a success throughout Asia, and dubbed the "Miracle Rice." IR8 was also developed into Semi-dwarf IR36.


title: Green Revolution

text: In the 1960s, rice yields in India were about two tons per hectare; by the mid-1990s, they had risen to 6 tons per hectare. In the 1970s, rice cost about $550 a ton; in 2001, it cost under $200 a ton. India became one of the world's most successful rice producers, and is now a major rice exporter, shipping nearly 4.5 million tons in 2006.


title: Green Revolution

text: China's Green Revolution came from its own fruition, and cannot necessarily be credited to practices popularized by Norman Borlaug. China's large and increasing population meant that increasing food production, principally rice, was a top priority for the Chinese government. When the People's Republic of China was established in 1949, the Chinese Communist Party made it a priority to pursue agricultural development. They sought to solve China's food security issues by focusing on traditional crop production, the implementation of modern technology and science, creating food reserves for the population, high-yield seed varieties, multi-cropping, controlled irrigation, and protecting food security. This began with the Agrarian Reform Law of 1950, which ended private land ownership and gave land back to the peasants. The beginning of China's Green Revolution is marked by the government's sponsorship of agricultural research, specifically in producing a high-yielding rice variety for the rapidly growing population. These efforts began during the Great Leap Forward, a time from 1959 to 1961 where the Government launched a campaign to reconstruct their agrarian economy into a communist society and established the People's Commune.


title: Green Revolution

text: Prominent in the development of productive hybrid rice was Yuan Longping, whose research hybridized wild strains of rice with existing strains. He has been dubbed “the father of hybrid rice,” and was considered a national hero in China. Chinese rice production met the nation's food security needs, and today they are a leading exporter of rice. In recent years, however, extensive use of ground water for irrigation has drawn down aquifers and extensive use of fertilizers has increased greenhouse gas emissions. China has not expanded the area of cultivable land, but the Green Revolution with high yields per hectare gave China the food security it sought.


title: Green Revolution

text: In 1979, there were 490 million Chinese people living in poverty. In 2014, there were only 82 million. Half of China's population had once been hungry and in poverty, but by 2014, only 6% remained so. If China's stats were to be excluded entirely from Green Revolution studies, they would find that world hunger actually increased. Unlike in China, where locally grown produce would stay within local markets, the food in other countries was being placed on the global market, never to be eaten by those who grew it.


title: Green Revolution

text: Brazil's vast inland cerrado region was regarded as unfit for farming before the 1960s because the soil was too acidic and poor in nutrients, according to Norman Borlaug. However, from the 1960s, vast quantities of lime (pulverised chalk or limestone) were poured on the soil to reduce acidity. The effort went on for decades; by the late 1990s, between 14 million and 16 million tonnes of lime were being spread on Brazilian fields each year. The quantity rose to 25 million tonnes in 2003 and 2004, equalling around five tonnes of lime per hectare. As a result, Brazil has become the world's second biggest soybean exporter. Soybeans are also widely used in animal feed, and the large volume of soy produced in Brazil has contributed to Brazil's rise to become the biggest exporter of beef and poultry in the world. Several parallels can also be found in Argentina's boom in soybean production as well.


title: Green Revolution

text: There have been numerous attempts to introduce the successful concepts from the Mexican and Indian projects into Africa. These programs have generally been less successful. Reasons cited include widespread corruption, insecurity, a lack of infrastructure, and a general lack of will on the part of the governments. Yet environmental factors, such as the availability of water for irrigation, the high diversity in slope and soil types in one given area are also reasons why the Green Revolution is not so successful in Africa.


title: Green Revolution

text: A recent program in western Africa is attempting to introduce a new high-yielding 'family' of rice varieties known as "New Rice for Africa" (NERICA). NERICA varieties yield about 30% more rice under normal conditions, and can double yields with small amounts of fertilizer and very basic irrigation. However, the program has been beset by problems getting the rice into the hands of farmers, and to date the only success has been in Guinea, where it currently accounts for 16% of rice cultivation.


title: Green Revolution

text: After a famine in 2001 and years of chronic hunger and poverty, in 2005 the small African country of Malawi launched the "Agricultural Input Subsidy Program" by which vouchers are given to smallholder farmers to buy subsidized nitrogen fertilizer and maize seeds. Within its first year, the program was reported to have had extreme success, producing the largest maize harvest of the country's history, enough to feed the country with tons of maize left over. The program has advanced yearly ever since. Various sources claim that the program has been an unusual success, hailing it as a "miracle". Malawi experienced a 40% drop in maize production in 2015 and 2016.


title: Green Revolution

text: A 2021 randomized control trial on temporary subsidies for maize farmers in Mozambique found that adoption of Green Revolution technology led to increased maize yields in both the short- and long-term.


title: Green Revolution

text: In 1970, foundation officials proposed a worldwide network of agricultural research centers under a permanent secretariat. This was further supported and developed by the World Bank; on 19 May 1971, the Consultative Group on International Agricultural Research (CGIAR) was established, co-sponsored by the FAO, IFAD, and UNDP. CGIAR has added many research centers throughout the world.


title: Green Revolution

text: CGIAR has responded, at least in part, to criticisms of Green Revolution methodologies. This began in the 1980s, and mainly was a result of pressure from donor organizations. Methods like agroecosystem analysis and farming system research have been adopted to gain a more holistic view of agriculture.


title: Green Revolution

text: According to a 2012 review in "Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences" of the existing academic literature, the Green Revolution "contributed to widespread poverty reduction, averted hunger for millions of people, and avoided the conversion of thousands of hectares of land into agricultural cultivation."


title: Green Revolution

text: The Green Revolution spread technologies that already existed, but had not been widely implemented outside industrialized nations. Two kinds of technologies were used in the Green Revolution and aim at cultivation and breeding area respectively. The technologies in cultivation are targeted at providing excellent growing conditions, which included modern irrigation projects, pesticides, and synthetic nitrogen fertilizer. The breeding technologies aimed at improving crop varieties developed through the conventional, science-based methods available at the time. These technologies included hybrids, combining modern genetics with selections.


title: Green Revolution

text: The novel technological development of the Green Revolution was the production of novel wheat cultivars. Agronomists bred cultivars of maize, wheat, and rice that are the generally referred to as HYVs or "high-yielding varieties". HYVs have higher nitrogen-absorbing potential than other varieties. Since cereals that absorbed extra nitrogen would typically lodge, or fall over before harvest, semi-dwarfing genes were bred into their genomes. A Japanese dwarf wheat cultivar Norin 10 developed by Japanese agronomist Gonjiro Inazuka, which was sent to Orville Vogel at Washington State University by Cecil Salmon, was instrumental in developing Green Revolution wheat cultivars. IR8, the first widely implemented HYV rice to be developed by IRRI, was created through a cross between an Indonesian variety named "Peta" and a Chinese variety named "Dee-geo-woo-gen". In the 1960s, when a food crisis happened in Asia, the spread of HYV rice was aggravated intensely.


title: Green Revolution

text: Dr. Norman Borlaug, who is usually recognized as the "Father of the Green Revolution", bred rust-resistant cultivars which have strong and firm stems, preventing them from falling over under extreme weather at high levels of fertilization. CIMMYT(Centro Internacional de Mejoramiento de Maiz y TrigoInternational Center for Maize and Wheat Improvements) conducted these breeding programs and helped spread high-yielding varieties in Mexico and countries in Asia like India and Pakistan. These programs successfully led the harvest double in these countries.


title: Green Revolution

text: Plant scientists figured out several parameters related to the high yield and identified the related genes which control the plant height and tiller number. With advances in molecular genetics, the mutant genes responsible for "Arabidopsis thaliana" genes (GA 20-oxidase, "ga1", "ga1-3"), wheat reduced-height genes ("Rht") and a rice semidwarf gene ("sd1") were cloned. These were identified as gibberellin biosynthesis genes or cellular signaling component genes. Stem growth in the mutant background is significantly reduced leading to the dwarf phenotype. Photosynthetic investment in the stem is reduced dramatically as the shorter plants are inherently more stable mechanically. Assimilates become redirected to grain production, amplifying in particular the effect of chemical fertilizers on commercial yield.


title: Green Revolution

text: HYVs significantly outperform traditional varieties in the presence of adequate irrigation, pesticides, and fertilizers. In the absence of these inputs, traditional varieties may outperform HYVs. Therefore, several authors have challenged the apparent superiority of HYVs not only compared to the traditional varieties alone, but by contrasting the monocultural system associated with HYVs with the polycultural system associated with traditional ones.


title: Green Revolution

text: By one 2021 estimate, the Green Revolution increased yields by 44% between 1965 and 2010. Cereal production more than doubled in developing nations between the years 1961–1985. Yields of rice, maize, and wheat increased steadily during that period. The production increases can be attributed roughly equally to irrigation, fertilizer, and seed development, at least in the case of Asian rice.


title: Green Revolution

text: While agricultural output increased as a result of the Green Revolution, the energy input to produce a crop has increased faster, so that the ratio of crops produced to energy input has decreased over time. Green Revolution techniques also heavily rely on agricultural machinery and chemical fertilizers, pesticides, herbicides, and defoliants; which, as of 2014, rely on or are derived from crude oil, making agriculture increasingly reliant on crude oil extraction. Proponents of the Peak Oil theory fear that a future decline in oil and gas production would lead to a decline in food production or even a Malthusian catastrophe.


title: Green Revolution

text: The energy for the Green Revolution was provided by fossil fuels in the form of fertilizers (natural gas), pesticides (oil), and hydrocarbon fueled irrigation. The development of synthetic nitrogen fertilizer has significantly supported global population growth — it has been estimated that almost half the people on the Earth are currently fed as a result of synthetic nitrogen fertilizer use. According to ICIS Fertilizers managing editor Julia Meehan, "People don’t realise that 50% of the world’s food relies on fertilisers."


title: Green Revolution

text: The world population has grown by about five billion since the beginning of the Green Revolution and many believe that, without the Revolution, there would have been greater famine and malnutrition. India saw annual wheat production rise from 10 million tons in the 1960s to 73 million in 2006. The average person in the developing world consumes roughly 25% more calories per day now than before the Green Revolution. Between 1950 and 1984, as the Green Revolution transformed agriculture around the globe, world grain production increased by about 160%.


title: Green Revolution

text: The production increases fostered by the Green Revolution are often credited with having helped to avoid widespread famine, and for feeding billions of people.


title: Green Revolution

text: There are also claims that the Green Revolution has decreased food security for a large number of people. One claim involves the shift of subsistence-oriented cropland to cropland oriented towards production of grain for export or animal feed. For example, the Green Revolution replaced much of the land used for pulses that fed Indian peasants for wheat, which did not make up a large portion of the peasant diet.


title: Green Revolution

text: Some criticisms generally involve some variation of the Malthusian principle of population. Such concerns often revolve around the idea that the Green Revolution is unsustainable, and argue that humanity is now in a state of overpopulation or overshoot with regards to the sustainable carrying capacity and ecological demands on the Earth. A 2021 study found, contrary to the expectations of the Malthusian hypothesis, that the Green Revolution led to reduced population growth, rather than an increase in population growth.


title: Green Revolution

text: Although 36 million people die each year as a direct or indirect result of hunger and poor nutrition, Malthus's more extreme predictions have frequently failed to materialize. In 1798 Thomas Malthus made his prediction of impending famine. The world's population had doubled by 1923 and doubled again by 1973 without fulfilling Malthus's prediction. Malthusian Paul R. Ehrlich, in his 1968 book "The Population Bomb", said that "India couldn't possibly feed two hundred million more people by 1980" and "Hundreds of millions of people will starve to death in spite of any crash programs." Ehrlich's warnings failed to materialize when India became self-sustaining in cereal production in 1974 (six years later) as a result of the introduction of Norman Borlaug's dwarf wheat varieties.


title: Green Revolution

text: However, Borlaug was well aware of the implications of population growth. In his Nobel lecture he repeatedly presented improvements in food production within a sober understanding of the context of population. "The green revolution has won a temporary success in man's war against hunger and deprivation; it has given man a breathing space. If fully implemented, the revolution can provide sufficient food for sustenance during the next three decades. But the frightening power of human reproduction must also be curbed; otherwise the success of the green revolution will be ephemeral only. Most people still fail to comprehend the magnitude and menace of the "Population Monster"...Since man is potentially a rational being, however, I am confident that within the next two decades he will recognize the self-destructive course he steers along the road of irresponsible population growth..."


title: Green Revolution

text: To some modern Western sociologists and writers, increasing food production is not synonymous with increasing food security, and is only part of a larger equation. For example, Harvard professor Amartya Sen wrote that large historic famines were not caused by decreases in food supply, but by socioeconomic dynamics and a failure of public action. Economist Peter Bowbrick disputes Sen's theory, arguing that Sen relies on inconsistent arguments and contradicts available information, including sources that Sen himself cited. Bowbrick further argues that Sen's views coincide with that of the Bengal government at the time of the Bengal famine of 1943, and the policies Sen advocates failed to relieve the famine.


title: Green Revolution

text: Some have challenged the value of the increased food production of Green Revolution agriculture. Miguel A. Altieri, (a pioneer of agroecology and peasant-advocate), writes that the comparison between traditional systems of agriculture and Green Revolution agriculture has been unfair, because Green Revolution agriculture produces monocultures of cereal grains, while traditional agriculture usually incorporates polycultures.


title: Green Revolution

text: These monoculture crops are often used for export, feed for animals, or conversion into biofuel. According to Emile Frison of Bioversity International, the Green Revolution has also led to a change in dietary habits, as fewer people are affected by hunger and die from starvation, but many are affected by malnutrition such as iron or vitamin-A deficiencies. Frison further asserts that almost 60% of yearly deaths of children under age five in developing countries are related to malnutrition.


title: Green Revolution

text: The strategies developed by the Green Revolution focused on fending off starvation and was very successful in raising overall yields of cereal grains, but did not give sufficient relevance to nutritional quality. High yield-cereal crops have low quality proteins, with essential amino acid deficiencies, are high in carbohydrates, and lack balanced essential fatty acids, vitamins, minerals and other quality factors.


title: Green Revolution

text: High-yield rice (HYR), introduced since 1964 to poverty-ridden Asian countries, such as the Philippines, was found to have inferior flavor and be more glutinous and less savory than their native varieties. This caused its price to be lower than the average market value.


title: Green Revolution

text: In the Philippines the introduction of heavy pesticides to rice production, in the early part of the Green Revolution, poisoned and killed off fish and weedy green vegetables that traditionally coexisted in rice paddies. These were nutritious food sources for many poor Filipino farmers prior to the introduction of pesticides, further impacting the diets of locals.


title: Green Revolution

text: A critic of the Green Revolution, American journalist Mark Dowie argues that "the primary objective of the program was geopolitical: to provide food for the populace in undeveloped countries and so bring social stability and weaken the fomenting of communist insurgency." Citing internal Foundation documents, Dowie states that the Ford Foundation had a greater concern than Rockefeller in this area.


title: Green Revolution

text: The transition from traditional agriculture (in which inputs were generated on-farm) to Green Revolution agriculture (which required the purchase of inputs) led to the widespread establishment of rural credit institutions. Smaller farmers often went into debt, which in many cases resulted in a loss of their farmland. The increased level of mechanization on larger farms made possible by the Green Revolution removed a large source of employment from the rural economy.


title: Green Revolution

text: The new economic difficulties of smallholder farmers and landless farm workers led to increased rural-urban migration. The increase in food production led to cheaper food for urban dwellers.


title: Green Revolution

text: According to a 2021 study, the Green Revolution substantially increased income. A delay in the Green Revolution by ten years would have cost 17% of GDP per capita, whereas if the Green Revolution had never happened, it could have reduced GDP per capita in the developing world by half.


title: Green Revolution

text: The spread of Green Revolution agriculture affected both agricultural biodiversity (or agrodiversity) and wild biodiversity. There is little disagreement that the Green Revolution acted to reduce agricultural biodiversity, as it relied on just a few high-yield varieties of each crop.


title: Green Revolution

text: This has led to concerns about the susceptibility of a food supply to pathogens that cannot be controlled by agrochemicals, as well as the permanent loss of many valuable genetic traits bred into traditional varieties over thousands of years. To address these concerns, massive seed banks such as Consultative Group on International Agricultural Research’s (CGIAR) International Plant Genetic Resources Institute (now Bioversity International) have been established (see Svalbard Global Seed Vault).


title: Green Revolution

text: There are varying opinions about the effect of the Green Revolution on wild biodiversity. One hypothesis speculates that by increasing production per unit of land area, agriculture will not need to expand into new, uncultivated areas to feed a growing human population. However, land degradation and soil nutrients depletion have forced farmers to clear forested areas in order to maintain production. A counter-hypothesis speculates that biodiversity was sacrificed because traditional systems of agriculture that were displaced sometimes incorporated practices to preserve wild biodiversity, and because the Green Revolution expanded agricultural development into new areas where it was once unprofitable or too arid. For example, the development of wheat varieties tolerant to acid soil conditions with high aluminium content permitted the introduction of agriculture in sensitive Brazilian ecosystems such as Cerrado semi-humid tropical savanna and Amazon rainforest in the geoeconomic macroregions of Centro-Sul and Amazônia. Before the Green Revolution, other Brazilian ecosystems were also significantly damaged by human activity, such as the once 1st or 2nd main contributor to Brazilian megadiversity Atlantic Rainforest (above 85% of deforestation in the 1980s, about 95% after the 2010s) and the important xeric shrublands called Caatinga mainly in Northeastern Brazil (about 40% in the 1980s, about 50% after the 2010s – deforestation of the Caatinga biome is generally associated with greater risks of desertification). This also caused many animal species to suffer due to their damaged habitats.


title: Green Revolution

text: Nevertheless, the world community has clearly acknowledged the negative aspects of agricultural expansion as the 1992 Rio Treaty, signed by 189 nations, has generated numerous national Biodiversity Action Plans which assign significant biodiversity loss to agriculture's expansion into new domains.


title: Green Revolution

text: The Green Revolution has been criticized for an agricultural model which relied on a few staple and market profitable crops, and pursuing a model which limited the biodiversity of Mexico. One of the critics against these techniques and the Green Revolution as a whole was Carl O. Sauer, a geography professor at the University of California, Berkeley. According to Sauer these techniques of plant breeding would result in negative effects on the country's resources, and the culture:


title: Green Revolution

text: "A good aggressive bunch of American agronomists and plant breeders could ruin the native resources for good and all by pushing their American commercial stocks... And Mexican agriculture cannot be pointed toward standardization on a few commercial types without upsetting native economy and culture hopelessly... Unless the Americans understand that, they'd better keep out of this country entirely. That must be approached from an appreciation of native economies as being basically sound".


title: Green Revolution

text: Studies indicate that the Green Revolution has substantially reduced emissions of the greenhouse gas . According to a study published in 2013 in PNAS, in the absence of the crop germplasm improvement associated with the Green Revolution, greenhouse gas emissions would have been 5.2–7.4 Gt higher than observed in 1965–2004. High yield agriculture has dramatic effects on the amount of carbon cycling in the atmosphere. The way in which farms are grown, in tandem with the seasonal carbon cycling of various crops, could alter the impact carbon in the atmosphere has on global warming. Wheat, rice, and soybean crops account for a significant amount of the increase in carbon in the atmosphere over the last 50 years.


title: Green Revolution

text: Poorly regulated applications of nitrogen fertilizer that exceed the amount used by plants, such as broadcast applications of urea, results in emissions of nitrous oxide, a potent greenhouse gas, and in water pollution.


title: Green Revolution

text: Most high intensity agricultural production is highly reliant on agricultural machinery and transport, as well as the production of pesticides and nitrates that all require energy. Nitrogen fertilizer is a direct fossil fuel product processed primarily from natural gas. It is estimated that no more than 3.7 billion people of the current world population could be fed without this single fossil fuel agricultural input. Moreover, the essential mineral nutrient phosphorus is often a limiting factor in crop cultivation, while phosphorus mines are rapidly being depleted worldwide.