The Plot That Failed

According to the plans, on Thursday, Nov. 12, at 10 a.m., the street mob was to take over Teheran, whereupon Mohammed Mossadegh was to take over the government. Meeting in secrecy, Mossadegh's lieutenants had worked out the grand plan. First they formed a secret National Resistance Movement, uniting, among others, discontented rich and powerful bazaar merchants, university hotheads and rebellious army officers of the secret Black Spider Committee. Then they got together with the outlawed Communist Tudeh party, setting up an all-powerful six-man committee to run the revolt.

This was the table of operations: call a general strike, muster the mob in the labyrinthine municipal bazaar, then fight through central Teheran to Majlis Square, where the leaders would emerge and take charge. If all went well, the Black Spiders would incite army units to defect, the Reds would break out hidden stores of rifles and bazookas, and the general strike would turn into a revolution.

Agents Inside. The plan was worthy of the Moscow-trained coup d'etat experts who prepared it, but for one fatal flaw: Major General Farhat Dadsetan, Teheran's smart military governor, knew all about it from his secret agents in the Resistance. He summoned his commanders, told them to avoid gunfire if possible, so as to deny the Reds martyrdom. But if they had to shoot, the troops were to shoot to kill.

At dawn, Nov. 12, one division of troops waited on Teheran's outskirts for orders, a mobile police reserve sat ready in trucks at central police headquarters, while in the expectant bazaar, blue-uniformed cops clustered thickly. As fast as troublemakers showed, the cops clubbed them, shoved them into cars, drove them off to jail. The police were indiscriminate but effective; the mob never got out of the bazaar. Casualties: two to five rioters dead, another 218 deported to bleak, boiling-hot Kharg Island in the Persian Gulf. General Dadsetan sat back at headquarters and smiled: "There's not much to it."

Razing the Roof. He still had one item of unfinished business: revenge on the bazaar merchants, 80% of whom had cooperated with the strike. (The merchants dislike Premier Zahedi's government because many of them are no longer able to connive in profitable import deals.) In reprisal, the cops had painted identifying marks on the closed shops. When the merchants arrived to unshutter their shops on the next business day, waiting troops stopped them: "You wanted to close, now stay closed." Overhead, gangs of Dadsetan's men, armed with crowbars and picks, ripped up nearly 500 feet of masonry covering shops and booths, exposing them to the elements and to thieves. This was too much for the bazaarites; they trooped to the office of the Premier, General Fazlollah Zahedi, and raised their hands in supplication while their leader cried: "We surrender. We will not do it again."

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