Iran, Indonesia, and Remnants of US Cold War Regime Changes
The 1965 events in Indonesia represented an evolved form of Cold War interventionist strategies, later identified as the ‘Jakarta Method.’
The Cold War, as commonly understood, was between two parties: the United States and the Soviet Union. But its conflicts interfered greatly with statecraft in postcolonial states.
Recent scholarship, much like Vincent Bevins’ The Jakarta Method, has demanded that other regions forced into this conflict include Sri Lanka, Latin America, and Southeast Asia. Bevins calls for a broader lens in the study of the Cold War, encompassing the parties affected by this conflict and those enduring the ongoing effects of its legacy.
The ‘hot’ cold war context
When the Cold War broke out, new nation-states scrambled to find their foothold in the modern world. The countries that were caught in the crossfire of the East-West ideological conflict were members of the Global South, situated closer to the equator. Hence, the ‘Hot’ Cold War.
This struggle, coupled with the lingering fear of recolonisation, became a strong foundation for nation-building. In Indonesia, this birthed the “Bebas-Aktif” (Independent and Active) doctrine for foreign policy that attempted to navigate global affairs without aligning with either superpower bloc.
At the time, Capitalism was seen as an ideology forced upon new leaders by the colonial entities that had subjugated them for so long. Therefore, the partiality to Communism or Socialism newly independent states exhibited was perhaps not a complete embrace of the ideology but rather a rejection of anything related to the successors of Western imperialism.
Despite the force of both sides, there were attempts to establish a stance that sided neither with the United States nor the USSR, including the Non-Aligned Movement (NAM) or the Asia-Africa Conference.
NAM described the initial conference in Bandung in 1955 as occurring ‘out of a desire by the convening countries not to be involved in the East-West ideological confrontation of the Cold War, but rather to focus on national independence struggles and their economic development.’
The case of Iran
Mohammad Mossadegh was the first popularly elected leader in Iran and could have become a promising figure for other new nations. He was an anti-monarch, aristocrat who, much like the mission of NAM, aimed to protect national resources and national economic growth.
After the British’s long presence in the Iranian oil industry, Mossadegh fostered popular sentiment to evict them from Iranian resources. Mossadegh’s nationalisation of the Anglo-Iranian Oil Company (AIOC; now known as BP) resulted in the first of Washington’s covert diplomatic and intelligence operations.
Operation Ajax, as seen through declassified CIA documents in 2013, was the product of joint efforts by the CIA, the British MI6, and the US-backed Pahlavi Dynasty. The operation relied on propaganda to stage a coup against Mossadegh, who was then replaced by Shah Reza Pahlavi.
In 1954, the Shah reversed Mossadegh’s efforts and signed the Iran-Consortium Agreement, which allowed Western companies operational control of Iranian oil production, refining, and exports.
A telegram from the US Ambassador to the UK in 1954 stated that the market share was divided, with the AIOC receiving 40 percent, 5 US companies receiving 40 percent, and the remaining 20 percent was shared between Dutch and French companies.
The Shah attempted to cancel the Consortium Agreement in 1973, refusing a renewal. Western support for his regime quietly withdrew. Even Washington’s chosen leader in Tehran was expendable the moment he reached for Iran’s oil. The cancellation was finalised with the 1979 Islamic Revolution.
Historians of US foreign policy, including Mary Ann Heiss, later justified the 1953 coup by saying it was necessary ‘to save Iran from communist domination.’
Additionally, while former British spy Norman Darbyshire came forward in 2020 claiming that the British did believe Mossadegh would eventually be influenced by Soviet ideology, at the time, there was only one member of Mossadegh’s government who was from the communist Tudeh party.
The Indonesian reminder
The case at home regarding the 1965 coup is an important reminder for Indonesians. Sukarno, being openly anti-Western imperialism, nationalised plantations in an act of defiance against Dutch colonialism and, with Law no. 86 of 1958, successfully brought 90% of Dutch-owned companies under state governance.
The United States attempted to influence Indonesia through the International Monetary Fund and the World Bank. The fund toured Indonesia in 1962 and sought out aid agreements with conditions of austerity, easing of enterprise nationalisation, and government spending.
It was apparent, given the state of the economy, that Indonesia had needed them and was briefly willing to conform to the institutions’ policies.
However, Sukarno’s distaste for conditional aid that involved adherence to Western-favoured foreign policy led him to withdraw from the IMF and the World Bank in August 1965, and he called for the US to ‘go to hell’ with their aid in his independence speech.
Upon becoming acting president two years later, Suharto’s second law, Law no. 2/1967, stated that Indonesia would join the IMF and the World Bank once more to receive aid, undoing Sukarno’s efforts before his coup.
It should be noted also that, under Law no. 1/1967 on Foreign Capital Investment, Suharto opened Indonesian markets to foreign investment for the first time in years.
After Sukarno’s fall, his anti-imperialist effort, the Non-Aligned Movement, was weakened by coups, including the 1965–1966 removals of Ghana’s Kwame Nkrumah and Algeria’s Ahmed Ben Bella, effectively dismantling its leadership within a year.
Lessons for the present
The current conflict in Iran against the United States and Israel is not dissimilar to the cases of regime change in the past. While the current Iranian government is neither democratic nor popular