Word: generality
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Dates: during 1970-1979
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This brittle calm was shattered on March 7, the following year. While attending a funeral at a mosque General Raumara was shot dead. His assassin was a member of a militant religious group called the Devotees of Islam. Eight days later the Iranian parliament passed a bill providing for the nationalization of the Anglo-Iranian Oil Company...
After arrival in Tehran Roosevelt set up headquarters in the basement of the U.S. military mission. He was visited there by General Fazhollah Zahedi, Mossadeq's disaffected Minister of the Interior once described by Soroya, the Shah's second wife, as "half swashbuckler and half Don Juan." Zahedi swashbuckled but was finally compelled to agree with Roosevelt that the prospects for a successful coup were poor. The Shah was depressed and dispirited, incapable of taking any decision, while the armed forces seemed increasingly behind Mossadeq...
Some members of the armed services did offer their services unasked when they heard of the projected coup. General Gilchenshah, head of the air force, did so on August 10. Roosevelt was cheered. Meanwhile CIA experts had examined the Iranian constitution and decided on the shape of the coup--Mossadeq was to be dismissed by Imperial decree and replaced by Zahedi while a force recruited for the CIA by General Schwarzkopf demonstrated in favor of the Shah's return...
...morning of the coup itself, August 19, the outcome was unclear. Roosevelt had made careful plans with Zahedi, General Arfa and other officers loyal to the Shah but the reaction of the rest of the army and of the inhabitants of Tehran was as yet a mystery...
...army was not yet won over although its loyalty to Mossadeq was feebler than Roosevelt and the generals had dared to hope. For when Zahedi arrived in a tank at Parliament Square a few tense moments passed and then the troops defending Foreign Minister Fatemi threw their caps in the air and declared for the Shah. By mid-afternoon Tehran was under the control of General Zahedi...