The Queen and the Coup

The Queen and the Coup Evaluation and Cuttings

14 June 2020 on Channel 4 Compiled by tpr media consultants +44 (0)20 8347 7020 | sophie@tpr-media.com www.tpr-media.com

Overview: The Queen and the Coup 14 June 2020 on Channel 4 THE TIMES, 15.6.20 Carol Midgley ★★★★ “The Queen and the Coup was the juicy tale of how a badly phrased message with a missing noun effectively helped to bring down the government in Iran….Professors Rory Cormac and Richard Aldrich provided terrific detail in a gimmick­free documentary that treated the viewers like grown­ups (so rare!)…”

RADIO TIMES, 14.6.20 David Butcher “This is one of those brilliantly detailed documentaries on recent history that uses declassified documents to explore a bizarre and little­known episode…It’s a fascinating.”

DAILY MIRROR, 13.6.20 “It sounds like an episode of The Crown, (but) this fascinating documentary…”

THE OBSERVER, 14.6.20 “An illuminating documentary…”

THE SUNDAY TELEGRAPH, 14.6.20 “This hugely compelling documentary…”

DAILY MAIL PREVIEW ★★★★

MAIL ON SUNDAY PREVIEW ★★★★

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The Queen and the Coup – Analytics

Total News Reach 09/07/2020 ­ 09/07/2020

Total News Volume 09/07/2020 ­ 09/07/2020

Total News Value 09/07/2020

41.10k

19.91m

115

Media Types – 09/07/2020

Internet UK Nationals UK Key Regionals Magazine, Consumer

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UK Additional Regionals

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Features and columns

US let Queen sail into Iranian coup Valentine Low

Papers kept secret until now have revealed how a diplomatic blunder by the Americans led to the Queen playing an unwitting role in the coup that overthrew the government of Iran in 1953.

Her name was used to persuade the shah not to flee the country as Britain and America plotted to depose Mohammad Mossadeq, the prime minister, and replace him with the shah.

But the Queen had nothing to do with the plot, which has soured British relations with Iran ever since.

A Channel 4 documentary has found that her name was used only because the Americans did not know the difference between Queen Elizabeth, the 26-year-old monarch who had been on the throne for only a year, and the RMS Queen Elizabeth, the ocean liner operated by Cunard Line that Anthony Eden, the foreign secretary, was travelling on at the time.

Within hours of persuading the shah to stay put, American diplomats realised their error. They failed to tell the British, however.

Richard Aldrich, one of the two historians who discovered the key documents, said that it was only now that the British government — and Buckingham Palace — had learnt how the Queen’s name was misused. Professor Aldrich, who found the damning telegram in the national archives in Washington, said: “In 40 years as a historian this is the most astonishing collection of documents I have ever seen.�

In 1953 Britain and America were scheming to depose Mossadeq and install Mohammad Reza, who had been shah since his father was forced out in 1941. The shah, however, was getting jittery. Britain, keen to prere serve its oil interests, and America were desperate to convince him to stay.

Eden, who was travelling on the Queen Elizabeth, sent a telegram to the Americans in February 1953, urging them to put pressure on the shah.

A US telegram on February 27 to h i b d i T h L

their ambassador in Tehran, Loy Henderson, who was also representing British interests, said: “Foreign Office this afternoon informed us of receipt message from Eden from Queen Elizabeth expressing concern at latest developments re Shah and strong hope we can find some means of dissuading him from leaving country.�

Henderson rushed off for a meeting with the shah’s entourage, while the leader was preparing to flee. He described in a telegram how he told the shah’s senior minister that “in the interest of the country� he should remain. “I also asked him to tell Shah that I had just received message indicating

solitary confinement. He remained under house arrest before dying in 1967.

The Queen and the Coup will be broadcast at 9pm on Sunday on Channel 4.

that [a] very important personage for whom Shah had most friendly feelings had also expressed sincere hope that Shah could be dissuaded from leaving country,� he said.

Professor Aldrich, professor of international security at Warwick University, who worked on the programme with Rory Cormac, professor of international relations at Nottingham University, said there was no doubt that the shah would have taken that to refer to the Queen.

He had met her as Princess Elizabeth when he stayed at Buckingham Palace in 1948. “This is critical because you can’t have a coup putting the shah into power if the shah has done a runner,�

Professor Aldrich said. “In our view, if the shah had done a runner this coup probably would not have happened.�

The next day the Americans realised that they had bungled. A US State Department telegram said: “Queen Elizabeth refers, of course to vessel and not (rpt not) monarch.�

Another telegram was sent to John Foster Dulles, secretary of state under President Eisenhower, saying that they “deeply regret� the lack of clarity in the message to Henderson and the possibility that the Queen could be “injuriously identified�. It said: “In view of Henderson’s guarded references to person involved, embassy does not propose [to] inform British of incident unless Department [of State] or embassy [in] Tehran deems it desirable.�

Mossadeq was overthrown in August 1953 and sentenced to three years in li fi H i d

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T

he 1953 coup was about two things: oil and communism (Valentine Low writes). In 1951 the populist prime minister Mohammad Mossadeq, who was at odds with the Shah — he wanted to temper his control over Iranian politics — succeeded in getting a bill passed nationalising the country’s oil industry, and with it the AngloIranian Oil Company (later BP). The move made him a national hero.

Britain fought hard against this, rejecting any compromise. It tried to persuade the President Truman of the US to help foment a coup, but he resisted, suspecting that Britain just wanted help to protect its oil assets.

By late 1952 Britain changed its sales

Rioters take to Tehran’s streets in August 1953, when the Mossadeq government was overthrown in a coup orchestrated by the CIA

pitch, suggesting that taking out Mossadeq was vital to combatting communism in Iran.

Truman remained unconvinced.

However, when Dwight Eisenhower came to power he needed little persuading that Iran was in danger of becoming a satellite

of the Soviet Union.

After several failed British attempts to encourage a coup, the CIA waded in. The swashbuckling figure of Kermit Roosevelt bribed Tehran gangsters to send thugs on to the streets.

The first coup attempt in August failed and the Shah fled to Rome. But Mossadeq dithered, the plotters reorganised and four days later the government had been overthrown.

p

T shah was given The advice that confused ad Q Queen Elizabeth with the liner used w

by Anthony Eden

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The online version carried a reference to The Queen and the Coup and details of how it could be watched.

A classical scholar’s very British coup Britain should follow the US and own up to the bizarre spying mission that toppled Iran’s ruler in 1953 Ben Macintyre 14 Jun 2020 12:47:35

The Queen has been dragged, unwittingly, into the story of a coup that overthrew the government of Iran in 1953: a US telegram referring to “Queen Elizabeth” (the ship) appeared to suggest that Queen Elizabeth (the monarch) was urging the Shah of Iran to stay in the country and replace the country’s elected leader.

The Queen knew nothing of the plot to overthrow the Iranian prime minister Mohammad Mossadeq, as a Channel 4 documentary, The Queen and the Coup, makes clear. But the British government, the foreign secretary Anthony Eden and MI6 most certainly did.

The US has candidly admitted that the CIA toppled Mossadeq, but Britain has never acknowledged its own part, refusing to release intelligence files and urging America to conceal the truth to avoid “embarrassment”.

Operation Boot, the MI6 codename for its plan to oust Mossadeq, might have come straight from the pages of a spy novel, a tale of skulduggery involving hired thugs, gun running, bribery and a huge, red-bearded spy by the name of Colonel Montague “Monty” Woodhouse, classical scholar, wartime resistance fighter and instigator of one of the most mysterious espionage operations of the Cold War. In 1951 Iran’s populist prime minister nationalised the country’s oil industry and with it the Anglo-Iranian Oil Company, later BP. At the highest levels of Whitehall, and in the secret bowels of MI6, it was decided that Mossadeq must be removed and replaced by the pro-British shah.

According to Christopher de Bellaigue, Mossadeq’s biographer, the plan originated with Nancy Lambton, then Britain’s foremost authority on Iran, and Robin Zaehner, the scholarly, Persian-speaking operations officer at the British embassy in Tehran. Zaehner began distributing bribes to anti-Mossadeq elements, notably the flamboyant Rashidian brothers, who paid hooligans to stir up anti-government dissent in the bazaar.

But Zaehner, with his taste for opium, gin and mysticism, was considered too temperamental for the job. He returned to Oxford, where he became professor of eastern religions at All Souls, and famously burnt down his own rooms.

MI6 sent in Monty. A classicist with a double first from Oxford and a flaming red beard, Woodhouse had enrolled in Churchill’s wartime Special Operations Executive (SOE) and served behind the lines in Greece, organising anti-Nazi resistance in Crete and then parachuting into mainland Greece to blow up the Gorgopotamos bridge.

Installed at the British embassy in Tehran, ostensibly as “information officer”, Woodhouse took up where Zaehner had left off. He described how he “bought Iranian rials for sovereigns and — at a secret rendezvous in the Tehran suburbs — handed the cash to one of two mysterious Iranian brothers to help finance plans for the overthrow of Mohammad Mossadegh.”

The US was initially unwilling to take part in an operation seen by some as the last violent spasm of a dying

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empire. Woodhouse flew to Washington to convince the doubters. “Not wishing to be accused of trying to use the Americans to pull British chestnuts out of the fire,” he wrote, “I decided to emphasise the Communist threat to Iran rather than the need to recover control of the oil industry.”

The resulting operation was codenamed Ajax by the CIA. MI6 called it Boot, a typical Woodhouse flourish that may have obliquely referred to giving Mossadeq the boot.

Colonel Woodhouse, meanwhile, was ordered to supply arms to tribesmen in northern Iran to enable them to resist any Soviet incursion. He flew a consignment of Sten guns and rifles from Iraq with an RAF plane and then transported them by truck over the Zagros Mountains before burying the cache at a secret location to be picked up by a resistance movement that did not, as yet, exist. “For all I know, they are still hidden somewhere in northern Iran,” he later said.

Woodhouse also met the shah’s sister in Switzerland to encourage her to persuade her brother to remain on the throne. When Mossadeq closed down the British embassy, Woodhouse turned over control of the Rashidian brothers to the CIA, hoping they would agree to work for the Americans. According to an internal CIA report, “the Rashidians did display such a willingness”.

Mossadeq was overthrown in August 1953, the first time the CIA had deposed a foreign leader. Kermit Roosevelt, a CIA officer, son of the former president Theodore and a man whose name was almost as quintessentially American as Monty’s was unmistakably English, described the coup to Eisenhower, complete with bribed gangsters, faked press reports and staged riots. The president described it as “more like a dime novel than historical facts”. Mossadeq was sentenced to three years’ solitary confinement, and died under house arrest in 1967.

Monty Woodhouse went on to write books about modern Greece and Dostoevsky. He became the visiting professor of Greek at King’s College London, briefly editor of Penguin Books, MP for Oxford and 5th Baron Terrington. He died in 2001, still wondering about his place in history: “I’ve sometimes been told that I was responsible for opening the doors to the Ayatollah.”

Despite pressure from Britain to keep the episode under wraps, the US has declassified state department documents revealing its role in Operation Ajax. Britain should do the same. In Iran, Britain is seen as cunning and unreliable, and often referred to as “Volpone”, or the fox. At a time when Britain’s imperial legacy is facing widespread condemnation, coming clean about Operation Boot would reset Anglo-Iranian relations at a stroke.

But this is not a story MI6 wants to be told: a covert Cold War operation, a brutal act of power politics, and a very British coup.

Related Images

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The Queen and the Duke of Edinburgh visited the Shah and Queen of Iran in 1961 Daily Sketch/REX/Shutterstock

Montague Woodhouse of MI6

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BORZOU DARAGAHI ! !

INTERNATIONAL CORRESPONDENT !

It is widely regarded as the original sin of the west’s post-war Middle East policy; a coup that squelched a ! people’s ! democratic aspirations and ultimately led to the calamitous rise of the militaristic nationalism and ! extremism that shape the region today.

Islamic !

Nearly ! 67 years ago, the popular nationalist government of Iranian prime minister Mohammad Mossadegh was toppled with the aid of British and American spies seeking to reinstall the Shah Mohammed Reza !

Pahlavi ! as absolute ruler of Iran. A quarter century later, in 1979, his rule too would be ended, by Islamist clerics! and activists who inspired movements across the region. !

Over !the decades the event has taken on a mythical quality, the conspiracy that launched all other conspiracy theories. Of course, say people across the Middle East, western intelligence is behind everything ! from the ! rise of al-Qaeda and Isis to valuations of local currencies. Just look at how they toppled the ! government in Iran when it sought to nationalise its oil industry in the early 1950s in defiance of British ! power. imperial !

But in! recent years, historians around the world poring over documents released from official archives have repeatedly revised assessment of what transpired. Some have argued that Mossadegh was on his way out ! ! and that a local alliance of pro-Shah goons, business interests and conservative clerics opposed to already, ! his left-leaning policies was already on the verge of taking him out. Yet another set of reassessments ! concluded that, rather than a case of derring-do by slick spies, the coup was a badly planned and nearly ! botched accident that was more John Cleese than John le Carre. !

The assessment of the two historians behind the Channel 4 documentary airing tonight, The Queen and the !

Coup,! falls in the latter category, that the ultimate success of the coup which was hatched in 1951 by British spies !seeking to keep control of Iran’s oil was more a comedy of errors than a smooth operation. !

Never-before-seen documents unearthed by historians Rory Cormac and Richard Aldrich show how the ! name!of the young Queen Elizabeth was abused at a key moment to “help destroy Iran’s democracy”, as the documentary says. !

Cover-up: how a message from ‘Queen Elizabeth’ bolstered Iran’s 1953 coup Newly unearthed documents reveal how the monarch’s name was abused by America to ‘help destroy Iran’s democracy’

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In the months-long crisis and period of scheming preceding the August 1953 coup, the young Shah, who ! ! had been a western protege of London and Washington and their global plans for countering the Soviet Union, !was planning on leaving the country and heading into exile fearing the unrest brewing in the ! country. !

Aldrich! and Cormac found documents showing that at a key moment the US received a note to the Shah from then-British foreign secretary Anthony Eden that seemed to suggest that Queen Elizabeth herself was ! making! a rare intervention into foreign policy to urge him to stay put. Knowing how much the Shah had sought !a formal alliance with the British monarchy, the US ambassador in Tehran passed on the note to the ! royal court. !

But later ! it emerged that the note was garbled, and that it was Eden himself aboard the RMS Queen Elizabeth ! ocean liner that was urging the Shah to stay in Iran. !

The Americans realised they had made a mistake but decided to cover it up from both the Brits and the !

Iranians. ! “They don’t want the Shah to realise that essentially he’s been misinformed, perhaps even unintentionally duped,” Aldrich, professor of International Security at the University of Warwick, says in ! the documentary. ! !

The Shah’s decision not to go into exile gave western intelligence operatives of the MI6 and the CIA’s !

Kermit !Roosevelt time to plan and scheme. The UK plan to overthrow Mossadegh and replace him with an authoritarian regime led by the Shah was called Operation Boots. The Americans called their scheme !

Operation ! Ajax. !

Six months later Mossadegh was ousted as pro-Shah mobs took over the streets and a crisis caused by a US ! and UK! blockade strangled the economy.

“I think! what we found is an important revelation that brings the Queen into the picture,” Cormac, a ! of International Relations at the University of Nottingham, said in a telephone interview. “Had professor ! fled at the time, the MI6 coup planning wouldn’t have taken place.” the Shah !

Once back ! in power, the newly emboldened Shah launched a 25-year reign of terror. Leftists, liberals and Islamists ! alike were thrown for years into torture chambers as the increasingly grandiose monarch ! squandered the nation’s oil wealth on pricey American weapons systems. His regime ultimately ended in ! most cataclysmic revolutions in world history, giving birth to the most avowedly anti-western one of the regime !on the planet. !

It’s important to put the events surrounding the coup and its aftermath into perspective. Iran in 1953 was a ! ! flawed constitutional democracy; Mossadegh, the country’s most popular politician, had been nominated by ! and elected by a democratically elected parliament in 1951, and the country might have beat an the Shah ! path to democracy regardless of whether Mossadegh had been ousted. unsteady !

Islamic! fundamentalism did not take root in the Middle East because of Iran’s revolution; it had antecedents throughout the region, and the 1967 defeats of Arab nationalist leaders at the hands of Israel arguably played ! a greater ! role in the rise of religious extremism. !

What the revelations that have emerged do show is the extraordinary luck of the British and Americans.

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! !

Sweeping the crucial facts behind their accidental success in Iran under the rug gave them license to ! continue attempting to destabilise countries for decades afterwards. !

In the! years after the coup, and drunk on extremely flawed stories of its own successes in Iran, the MI6 used ! subterfuge and treachery to attempt to topple regimes in Syria, Egypt, Saudi Arabia and Yemen. !

“The !Foreign Office at the time was not really pro-covert operations; they were trying to rein MI6 in,” said Cormac, ! who specialises in the history of intelligence services. “When this operation happened, they brought ! Kermit Roosevelt back to London on a victory tour. His tales convinced the foreign office to let ! more.”

MI6 do !

‘The Queen and the Coup’ is on Channel 4 tonight at 9pm ! !

Sweeping the crucial facts behind their accidental success in Iran under the rug gave them license to ! continue attempting to destabilise countries for decades afterwards !

The Shah’s decision not to go into exile gave western intelligence operatives of the MI6 and the CIA’s !

Kermit ! Roosevelt time to plan and scheme ! ! ! ! ! ! ! ! ! ! ! ! ! ! !

Pro-Shah troops occupying Tehran during the Shah ! of Iran Mohammad Reza Pahlavi at his coup (AP) nation’s first senate in Tehran, 16 February !

1950 ! (AP) ! ! ! ! ! ! ! ! ! ! ! ! ! ! ! ! ! ! ! ! ! ! ! ! ! ! ! ! ! ! !

Prime! minister Mohammad Mosaddegh in Tehran’s Majlis Square, September 1951 (AP)

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Date !"#$%&'#()() Page (*

DIPLOMACY

US insisted Queen gave approval to oust Iran PM

By Jon Gambrell IN DUBAI

The US ambassador to Iran mistakenly told the Iranian shah in 1953 that Britain’s recently enthroned Queen Elizabeth II backed a CIA-orchestrated plan to overthrow the country’s prime minister, and the US maintained the fiction even after realising the error, according to historians.

The coup ended up successfully empowering the shah, even after he fled to Baghdad when it looked as though it might fail.

The shah, who had been fearful of Prime Minister Mohammad Mosaddegh’s growing power, had prepared to flee Iran in February 1953, months before the coup.

However, US Ambassador Loy W Henderson rushed to the palace to try to dissuade him and told him the Queen had expressed concern that he stay.

Previously, secret diplomatic cables revealed Low had been told by the US embassy in London of the Queen’s concern. However, subsequent cables revealed the embassy had confused the Queen with the Cunard liner that bears her name and on which Foreign Secretary Anthony Eden was travelling to Canada.

Despite the error, the US embassy in London said they “did not (repeat not) propose to inform British of incident”.

It is believed Ambassador Low’s intervention helped to persuade the shah to stay in Iran for several more months – until the CIA launched the coup.

Historian Professor Richard Aldrich at Warwick University, whose research features in a Channel 4 documentary The

Queen and the Coup, to be shown on Sunday, said: “I don’t think the coup would have happened if the shah had fled then. At this point, there is no doubt that he’d packed his bags and was pretty much going to the airport when this intervention happened.” AP

The US embassy had confused the Queen with the ocean liner AFP

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Agencies and US coverage Jon Gambrell, AP’s Gulf and Iran News Director, wrote a story that was picked up by dozens of publications in the US, including the Washington Post, Chicago Tribune, Voice of America, The National

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Listings magazines

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New The Queen and the Coup

9.00pm C4

Shocking doc about a 1953 MI6/CIA plot that misused the Queen’s name to help topple Iran’s democratic leader.

New Macbeth: Royal Shakespeare Company 9.30pm BBC4

The 2018 RSC production starring Christopher Eccleston and Niamh Cusack is accessible, playful and full of clever tricks: well worth a look.

SUNDAY starts p50 왘

SUNDAY 14 JUNE

SUNDAY Choices

The Queen and the Coup The pick of today’s TV

9.00pm C4 DOCUMENTARY This is one of those

SUNDAY Main Channels SUNDAY 14 JUNE

brilliantly detailed documentaries on recent history that uses declassified documents to explore a bizarre and little-known episode.

Professors Rory Cormac and Richard Aldrich have unearthed a paper-trail in national archives showing how the 1953 coup d’état to unseat Iran’s elected leader (Mohammad Mossadegh, whose crime had been to nationalise British oil assets) relied at a crucial moment on using the young Queen Elizabeth’s name — unbeknownst to her.

It’s a fascinating, at times farcical yarn of MI6 and CIA intrigue, and the events had a huge effect on global politics: relations between Iran and the West never recovered. DAVID BUTCHER

9.00 The Queen and the Coup

February 1953, the first anniversary of aIt’s Queen Elizabeth’s reign, but the monarch is

unaware that she is about to be deployed in a US plot to topple Iran’s democratic leader in favour of an all-powerful shah. Planned by MI6 and executed by the CIA, the coup destroyed Iran’s democracy and damaged relations between Iran and the West for many decades. Using newly declassified documents, this documentary reveals how the truth about the Queen’s role was hidden, even from her. See page 51.

Director/Producer Paul Elston Repeated 11.05pm 4seven (S) (AD) (HD)

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Previews and Reviews

! ! ! ! ! ! ! ! ! ! ! ! ! ! ! ! !

The Salisbury Poiso The Salisbury Poisonings !

BBC One ! {{{{( !

The Queen and the Coup !

Channel 4 ! {{{{( ! ow many people can ! recall the name of the ! woman who died in the ! Salisbury poisonings? ! (Spoiler ahead.) The novichok attack by Russian agents is ! synonymous with the Skripals, Sergei and his! daughter, Yulia, both of whom ! I bet that before last night’s survived. opening ! episode of a tense new threepart depiction of the crisis most ! wouldn’t have known the name of !

Dawn Sturgess. The 44-year-old was, as we’ll! see, exposed to huge amounts ! of the nerve agent after spraying it on ! thinking it was perfume. her wrists The !Salisbury Poisonings corrects that, making human and complex the ! alcoholic whose tragedy, according ! to the actress MyAnna Buring, was ! underplayed by the media. Last night showed! her letting her daughter down because ! of the booze, but also how wretched ! she was about it in the grip of addiction. The Skripals barely ! save for that opening scene featured, ! they sat on a bench, vomiting in which as the novichok began to work. !

Turning a toxic tragedy into a human drama

Carol Midgley TV review

H

The writing here was nicely

understated, the human stories well crafted and the unfolding crisis detailed without sensationalism. What struck me was the low-key nature of this public health nightmare, people in lanyards in meetings trying to fight one of the most deadly substances on earth without even knowing where it was. Given that we are now living through a lockdown, fighting an invisible enemy with contact tracing, it could prove either a brilliant move timing-wise or a turn-off.

Rafe Spall was terrific as Nick Bailey, the detective who first entered the Skripals’ contaminated house. We saw him adjust his goggles, touching his face, probably where the novichok attacked him. Then in true bloke style he simply shrugged off his terrible symptoms, until he finally collapsed.

Aldrich provided terrific detail in a gimmick-free documentary that treated the viewers like grown-ups (so rare!) and from which the US and Britain did not emerge well. Relations with Iran never recovered.

Anne-Marie Duff had the hardest part to play as a convincing Tracey Daszkiewicz, the director of public health at Wiltshire council, who wore on her face the immense strain of responsibility. This is the toxic aftermath of a Russian hit job seen through the eyes of ordinary citizens.

Any chance Putin is watching?

The Queen and the Coup was the juicy tale of how a badly phrased message with a missing noun effectively helped to bring down a government in Iran. In 1953 the US secretary of state received a top-secret cable from the American embassy in London. It told of a telegram “from [Anthony] Eden from Queen Elizabeth” asking the Shah of Iran not to leave the country. What it should have said is that Eden sent the message from the Queen Elizabeth ship, not from the monarch herself.

However, the Shah assumed that the Queen had appealed to him and, flattered, remained. The Americans never corrected the mistake, happy to exploit it — and had he not stayed in place the subsequent coup would probably not have happened.

Professors Rory Cormac and Richard

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! ! ! ! ! ! ! ! ! !

Television

By Ammar Kalia Films by Jonathan Romney

The week’s highlights

!

The Queen and the Coup !

Channel 4, 9pm !

An illuminating documentary about the 1953 !

Iran coup, planned by the MI6 and the CIA to oust! the country’s democratic leader in favour! of an all-powerful Shah. Historians Rory Cormac and Richard Aldrich use newly ! declassified documents to show how the Queen was unwittingly i i l involved. i l d AK

SUNDAY JUNE 14 The Queen And The Coup 9pm, C4

There’s always something new to learn about Her Maj, don’t you find? Like, who knew that in 1953 the young Queen was used by the US State Department in an MI6 and CIA coup to bring down Iran’s quest for democracy? Well, no one, because this astonishing info has been hidden for 67 years. Don’t know about you, but we feel a movie coming on.

THE QUEEN AND THE COUP

TELEVISION SUNDAY 14 JUNE

WHAT TO WATCH

The Queen and the Coup: Mohammed Reza Pahlevi

Channel 4, 9.00pm This hugely compelling documentary explores documents recently unearthed – by British academics Richard Aldrich and Rory Cormac – that reveal how in 1953 attempts were made to draw the new Queen into a plot, by MI6 and the CIA, to destroy Iranian democracy that has blighted relations between Tehran and the West ever since. tpr media consultants – June 2020

WHAT NOT TO MISS OUT ON THIS W WEEK EE E EK

THE QUEEN AND THE COUP P Sun 9pm C4

It sounds like an episode of The Crown,, but this fascinating documentary claims to reveal how Queen Elizabeth II was used in a secret plot to destroy Iran’s democracy..

It features the findings of historians Rory Cormac and Richard Aldrich, who’ve uncovered newly declassified documents, hidden for 70 years. They The young show how in February 1953, the queen ‘was an young Queen was an unwitting pawn unwitting pawn’ in an elaborate conspiracy planned by MI6 and executed by the CIA, believed to be motivated by Iran’s oil riches.

A message apparently from the Queen was sent to the US ambassador in Tehran urging the Shah of Iran to stay put – paving the way for a bloody coup d’état toppling Iran’s democratic Prime Minister. ‘This is remarkable,’ says Professor Rory. ‘It would be the covert meddling of our Queen in the internal affairs of another country.’

DON’T MISS

TODAY’S BEST… ROYAL VIEWING

NEW THE QUEEN AND THE COUP 9PM C4 Just when you thought you knew everything about the Queen (above), here comes an extraordinary tale that could almost come from a Bond film. In February 1953, a year after the 26-yearold monarch was coronated, she was caught up in a scheme by the CIA and MI6 to overthrow Iran’s democratically elected government. Poor Elizabeth didn’t know a thing about it. This is a shocking account of international politics and agencies at work.

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The Queen And The Coup (C4, 9pm) The 1953 coup in Iran (when the US and UK replaced democracy with the Shahâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s autocratic rule to control its oil industry) has had lasting repercussions and merits extended documentary treatment. Despite the title, though, a cable seemingly indicating royal approval is really just a footnote to the story and so occupies only a fraction of this film. (JD)

HISTORY

The Queen And The Coup Channel 4, 9pm ! ! ! ! ! !

SUNDAY JUNE 14

In 1953, a year into her reign, the Queen played a part in an extraordinary attempt to overthrow Iranâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s elected leader and replace him with an all-powerful Shah â&#x20AC;&#x201C; without even knowing it.

Here, researchers discuss documents, unseen for almost 70 years, which reveal how the CIA and MI6 worked together to form the plan, and explore its impact on future relations between the West and Iran. ))))) l tpr media consultants â&#x20AC;&#x201C; June 2020

The Queen and the Coup CHANNEL 4, 9.00PM

This hugely compelling documentary explores documents recently unearthed – by British academics Richard Aldrich and Rory Cormac – that reveal how in 1953 attempts were made to draw the new Queen into a plot, by MI6 and the CIA, to destroy Iranian democracy that has blighted relations between Tehran and the West ever since. GO The Queen and the Coup: the Shah

! ! ! ! ! ! ! ! ! ! ! !

SUNDAY MIRROR 33

SM1

SUNDAY 14.06.2020

janine.yaqoob@trinitymirror.com

TALK TV with Janine Yaqoob

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It’s! February 1953 and Queen Elizabeth, only a year ! into her reign, is about to be unwittingly used in a US plot to topple Iran’s leader. The !

Queen and the Coup, Channel 4, tonight, 9pm ! !

Watch it

tpr media consultants – June 2020

tpr media consultants â&#x20AC;&#x201C; June 2020

Tuesday 30 | Viewing guide Catch up The Queen and the Coup All4, to July 14 This is the juicy tale of how Britain and the US helped to organise a coup d’état in Iran in 1953, with consequences that still resonate. This much we know. What’s new in this retelling is the evidence that the historians Richard Aldrich and Rory Cormac have unearthed in the National Archives in

Washington DC to suggest that the Americans used the Queen’s name to try to prompt the unelected Shah to remain in Iran. Did a badly phrased message with a missing noun effectively help to bring down a government in Iran? Cormac and Aldrich provide terrific detail in a gimmick-free documentary that treats the viewers like grown-ups (so rare) and from which the US and Britain did not emerge well. Relations with Iran never recovered.

Carol Midgley

tpr media consultants – June 2020

Regionals We had previews in over 30 regional papers and 29 previews online - from the Aberdeen Evening Express to the Dorset Echo - please see small sample below.

tpr media consultants â&#x20AC;&#x201C; June 2020

Arts

TELEVISION

PICK OF THE WEEK The Queen and the Coup (C4, 9pm) Fans of the Netflix drama The Crown may have seen the title of this documentary and wondered if it referred to the rumoured plot to overthrow Prime Minister Harold Wilson in the 1960s. However, it instead focuses on the events of 1953, when Queen Elizabeth, just a year into her reign, was deployed in a US plot to topple Iran’s democratic leader in favour of an all-powerful shah. Planned by MI6 and carried out by the CIA, it would have a huge impact on relations between Iran and the West, which continue to be problematic. However, as the documentary discovers, even the Queen herself didn’t know the truth about her role.

Drawing on newly declassified secret documents, this programme reveals what really happened for the first time.

tpr media consultants – June 2020

tpr media consultants â&#x20AC;&#x201C; June 2020