Man with a mission | 3 March 2012

He was a Persian aristocrat who struggled to make his country a democracy. Given to mood swings and sulks worthy of Achilles, Mohammed Mossadegh was born in June 1882 just a month before Britain bombarded and occupied Egypt. His formidable mother, Najm al-Saltaneh, belonged to the family of Qajar Shahs who ruled Iran from 1794 to 1925 and instilled in him a strong noblesse oblige that matured into genuine dedication to democratic and constitutional government. During his childhood, the country barely governed itself, yielding important decisions to the Russian and British empires that held it in joint subjugation.

Mossadegh’s father, Mira Hedayatullah Vazir-Daftar, had been a minister of finance and was 40 years older than his wife. Five years after he died in the cholera epidemic of 1892, his widow used family connections to have 15-year-old Mohammed appointed chief revenue officer of Baluchistan and Khorasan provinces. Mohammed made enough money to buy land, which produced income for him to travel to France ten years later to study law. In the meantime, his mother arranged his marriage to a 19-year-old beauty named Zahra al-Saltaneh. Although less than passionate, the marriage lasted until Mossadegh’s death in 1967.

Mossadegh was involved on the periphery of demands for a constitution that in 1908 led to the establishment of Iran’s first elected majles or parliament. He continued his studies in law at Neuchatel in Switzerland, where his doctoral thesis posited Islamic laws as historical artefacts capable of evolution over time like other types of law. This displeased the clergy, despite his rejection of European laws being imposed on his eastern country. In 1914, the British government bought half of the private Anglo-Persian Oil Company that had rights to Iran’s oil. A secret understanding with easily bribed Iranian officials assured the Royal Navy of 20 years of cheap oil.