SEE! the vicious, ignorant, breathtakingly ironic editorial calling Mossadegh
“A man who deserves no pity”

September 24, 1953 — The Lethbridge Herald


Arash Norouzi
The Mossadegh Project | February 18, 2015                    


No Pity For Mossadegh | The Lethbridge Herald, September 24, 1953

The week of Wednesday, September 23, 1953, international media jumped the gun and picked up on a fabricated British report that Dr. Mohammad Mossadegh, the deposed Iranian Premier, had been sentenced to death by public hanging.

By Thursday, one newspaper out of Alberta, Canada was weighing in on the news with a peculiar display of introspective bloodlust. Mossadegh, they reasoned, deserved nothing less.

Their callous indictment, of course, was based upon a misreading of not only Mossadegh (that ruthless, power-mad tyrant) but of the nature of the coup which did him in.

dead Iranians In their lead editorial, The Lethbridge Herald condemned Dr. Mossadegh for an alleged blind ambition so reckless that he knowingly spurred mob violence that could easily waste the lives of “hundreds of innocent people.” What they obviously didn’t factor in was that the coup itself was largely a foreign plot calculated to unleash chaos and violence in Tehran, utilizing thugs, rent-a-mobs, and other instigators, with absolutely no concern for those civilians whose blood might be shed in the process.

Indeed, around 300 Iranians were said to have died in the streets as a result of the CIA/White House/State Dept.-hatched intervention, a visible expression of their prejudice, adventurism and quest for domination. And so, according to the Herald’s own ethical code, coup-conspirators like the the Dulles brothers, Loy Henderson, Kermit Roosevelt, Jr. and President Eisenhower ought to have been strung up by their necks, too.

But then, even if the full story had been known, we needn’t imagine the leniency and apologism that would have quickly followed...for there’s a completely separate standard of justice for us and them

SENTENCED TO HANG: Mossadegh’s Media-Contrived Death Verdict
SENTENCED TO HANG: Mossadegh’s Media-Contrived Death Verdict




No Pity for Mossadegh

Some people undoubtedly were shocked when they read that the new Iranian government is planning to have former premier Mohammed Mossadegh convicted of enough charges to make his death by public hanging mandatory. They pity the poor old man, and they think it a shame that one so old and frail should be treated in so rough a manner.

From a merciful standpoint, Mossadegh deserves consideration. That he is old and frail, we have no doubt. And no one can help but shudder at the thought of an elderly person being treated in a cruel and callous manner. It is to our credit that we respect the elderly and their right to live the remaining years of their lives in peace and quiet.

Mossadegh, however, does not deserve respect, nor does he deserve peace and quiet. At an age when most men are travelling along in second gear at best, Mossadegh has been hitting top speed. Boundless ambition made him a cruel old man, a semi-dictator who ruled by mob violence. He and his equally reprehensible cohorts thought nothing of encouraging riots which they knew might probably snuff out the lives of hundreds of innocent people. Nor did it matter to them if their selfish aims resulted in starvation for the masses. What they liked to call patriotism or nationalism was actually nothing more nor less than an unusually predatory power-complex.

We haven’t much use for the Shah of Iran, but he is certainly a better man than Mossadegh. And if he can provide the good people of his country with a better life, all the more power to him. Unfortunately for Mossadegh, a man who deserves no pity, the Shah may first of all have to make an example of all those wilful men who attempted to make Iran their own private domain at the expense of the masses. A public hanging of Mossadegh might just be the example that is needed to keep other Mossadeghs from making a shambles out of Iran.


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Richard Stokes' Letter to Clement Attlee, Aga Khan Concurs (1951)

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Related links:

Mossadegh Will LiveThe Times Record, December 26, 1953

The FBI Campaign To Destroy “Evil” Rev. Martin Luther King, Jr. (1964)

Mossadegh Funeral Is IgnoredAssociated Press, March 6, 1967



MOSSADEGH t-shirts — “If I sit silently, I have sinned”

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