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Maziar Bahari has felt the wrath of the Iranian security services. The journalist and filmmaker was detained in Iran last year while he was covering the post election demonstrations. He was held in Evin Prison for four months before being released. Bahari was in Boston over the weekend and anchor Jeb Sharp had a chance to talk with him.
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JEB SHARP: Maziar Bahari has felt the wrath of the Iranian security services. The London-based journalist and filmmaker was arrested while covering the post-election demonstrations in Iran last year. He was held for four months in the notorious Evin prison. While there, he says he was interrogated, beaten and accused of being a spy. He was finally released in October. Maziar Bahari was here in Boston over the weekend. I caught up with him at his hotel. I asked him how the ordeal had affected him.
MAZIAR BAHARI: The reason for my arrest was to break me and to change me as a person, and as a journalist and a filmmaker. And I think the best way for me to defy what my captors wanted to achieve is to carry on doing the same thing as I did before my arrest. So I will continue to be an objective observe of Iranian politics and Iranian history.
SHARP: And that’s just what Bahari has been doing. He was in town for the premier of his new documentary at the Boston Festival of Films from Iran at the Museum of Fine Arts. The film is called, “An Iranian Odyssey: Mossadegh, Oil and the 1953 CIA Coup.” Bahari says Americans should understand the story of how the United States and Britain backed a coup that toppled a popular Iranian Prime Minister back in 1953.
BAHARI: Many Americans when they see the irrational behavior of Ahmadinejad, and his laundry list of grievances against the United States and the rest of the world, they ask themselves why. Why is he so angry? Of course, Ahmadinejad is abusing those historical grievances to his own advantage, and to take advantage of the Iranian government. But there is some truth in that laundry list of grievances.
SHARP: Bahari says his film is not a comprehensive treatment of the Mossadegh story. It’s just his attempt to understand what happened. He says the basic outlines of the way Iranians perceive the story are right, that Mossadegh was a popular leader who nationalized Iran’s oil industry wresting it back from the British. And that the British and the Americans conspired to topple Mossadegh when they feared he would let Iran fall to the Soviets during the Cold War. But Bahari also punctures the notion of Mossadegh as some sort of perfect leader. He argues that Mossadegh’s popularity depended a great deal on the support of a powerful religious leader called Ayatollah Kashani who was also instrumental in the nationalization of Iran’s oil. And Bahari describes Mossadegh as naïve about Cold War politics and a populist rather than a man of pure principle.
BAHARI: Mossadegh was a great man. I mean, he was maybe as close as any Iranian politician had ever gotten to greatness. But at the same time, he was very populace. He basically gauged the public mode, and he adapted to that. And sometimes that meant that he was dishonest. The fact that, you know, he was in bed all the time. He pretended to be ill. He was resorting to histrionics in order to gain the support of people.
SHARP: The film is striking for the photographs and footage Bahari has tracked down. There are countless photographs of Mossadegh greeting dignitaries from his bed clad in pajamas. There are dramatic street scenes from the days of the coup, some provided by the daughter of an anonymous CIA officer. Bahari also makes effective use of old British cartoons that vilify and ridicule Mossadegh for nationalizing the oil industry. And there’s some classic American news reel.
NEWS REEL: Former Premier Mossadegh’s ruined house is a mute testimony to three days of blood rioting culminating in a military coup from which the one-time dictator of Iran fled for his life. The Shah who had fled to Rome comes home. Backed by General Zahedi, military strong man, who engineered his return to power. Iranian oil may again flow westward.
SHARP: Bahari tracks down a range of elderly players from the old days with fierce attachments to different versions of the story of the 1953 coup. His interviews with them formed the backbone of the film.
BAHARI: It was very difficult to find the people, but I found some really, really amazing people in the film, and everyone was convinced that they knew the truth and what they believed in was the right thing to do. And I thought that the best way to create the film was to juxtapose all these different realities next to each other, and allow the audiences to just come to the conclusion who is right.
SHARP: So in the film you hear from an Iranian Nationalist, former Communist, an aging hoodlum, former Mossadegh bodyguards and aides, and also an aging British diplomat called Sam Falle, who played a key role working with Iranian agents of the British to orchestrate Mossadegh’s ouster.
BAHARI: How would you describe someone who advocates British policies and receives money from the British Embassy for advocating those policies.
SAM FALL: Well, I’ve heard the Iranians would call them British stooge.
BAHARI: What do you call them?
FALL: I would call them sons who won’t cooperate.
BAHARI: Sam Falle is an amazing character. He was so honest and his honesty was so brutal that made him really into a fascinating character. And he put Mozidek and all those events in the context of Cold War, and the fact that the nationalization of oil happened six years after the end of the Second World War. The Soviet Union was expanding. Stalin and his successor Malenkov they had ambitions to take over as many countries as possible. Iran had a weak government, had a very strong Communist Party. So he thinks that overthrow of Mossadegh was the right thing to do. As an Iranian, as a patriotic Iranian, I don’t know. I think the manner in which the coup happened, the manner in which the American government interfered in Iranian internal affairs, that was not right. But whether the condemnation of Mozidek or whatever has also been a greater tragedy or not, that’s something that he should think about. I don’t think he should have a very simplistic view and just dismiss what Sam Falle says. I think it gives you food for thought.
SHARP: And the premise of the film is that unless you understand or begin to understand or at least acknowledge the layers of the Mossadegh story, the oil story and the coup story, you really can’t understand Iran and Iranian attitudes and world views. And in that sense, what is the message to people who don’t know this story?
BAHARI: I think there are two things that people have to understand by watching the film. First of all is that Iranians they have historical grievances against foreign integration in their country. And the other thing to understand is that Iranians are very religious, and religion has always played a very important role in the country. Interference of religion in Iranian politics did not start with Kohmeni, and it’s not going to finish with Kohmeni. It started even before Arabs invaded Iran and Islam was introduced to Iran. Even in the pre-Islamic period of Iranian history the religious men, they were always very powerful in the court of the ancient Persian kings. And I think religion will be very important even when the Islamic Republic will be changed or reformed or replaced by another government.
SHARP: Maziar Bahari, thank you very much.
BAHARI: Very nice to be here.
SHARP: Maziar Bahari’s latest documentary is “An Iranian Odyssey: Mossadegh, Oil and the 1953 CIA Coup.” And we should say that the film was financed by our broadcast partner the BBC. Bahari spent four months in an Iranian prison last year. You can read his account of that ordeal at The World dot org.
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