The Fate of Mossadegh in Contemporary Nationalism: Revisiting a Contest over Memory

One of the most significant intellectual and political developments in Iran over the past decade has been the renewed and widespread appeal of nationalist discourses among the public. Today, from reformist media outlets and social media platforms to Persian-language opposition networks abroad, and from various opposition groups to intellectual circles within the country, the concept of the “Iranian nation” has acquired a new dynamism and become a central axis of political debate. At first glance, one might have expected this resurgence to lead to a revival of the standing of Mohammad Mossadegh—a figure who, in the collective unconscious of Iranians, embodies attachment to the homeland more than perhaps any other modern political leader. His name remains closely associated with such notions as national sovereignty, political independence, the nationalization of the oil industry, and resistance to foreign domination.

Yet events unfolded along a different trajectory. Paradoxically, at the very moment when Iranian nationalism was regaining vitality, theoretical, political, and media attacks on Mossadegh also intensified at an unprecedented pace. In many contemporary narratives, he is no longer portrayed as the celebrated champion of national independence. Instead, a variety of discourses depict him as a romantic, ineffective, stubborn politician and even as a principal contributor to some of Iran’s major historical failures. Indeed, after decades in which Islamist currents were the primary critics of Mossadegh, this role has increasingly been assumed in recent years by broad segments of the secular right. Under these circumstances, a fundamental question emerges: how is it possible for nationalist sentiments to gain strength within society while the most prominent symbol of modern Iranian nationalism is simultaneously pushed to the margins?

The central argument of this essay lies in the fundamental difference between this new nationalist wave and the tradition associated with Mossadegh. In recent years, a particular form of nationalism—centered on ancient Persian heritage, a favorable reassessment of the Pahlavi era, and the ideal of development—has gained considerable traction in both the media sphere and popular discourse. This emerging nationalism seeks to consolidate itself through the reconstruction of the nation’s historical memory. Within this revised historical narrative, Mohammad Mossadegh is no longer regarded as a symbolic asset of Iranian nationalism; rather, he appears as an obstacle and a formidable rival to a new project of nation-building.

By examining three articles published in Issue No. 98 of Andisheh Pouya (October 2025)[1], this essay demonstrates how a current within Iran’s liberal and right-leaning intellectual milieu has constructed a transformed image of Mossadegh—one that places him far from the role of a champion of national independence and instead portrays him as an ineffectual statesman. Needless to say, these formulations are not merely concerned with the past. They are animated by aspirations rooted in the present. The paradox outlined above emerges from an intense struggle between two distinct “memory regimes.” These competing narratives offer incompatible understandings of what the Iranian nation is and ought to be. Each selectively organizes the past to serve its own purposes, creates its own heroes, advances its own interpretation of historical failures, and ultimately projects a different vision of Iran’s future.

From this perspective, the conflict over Mossadegh is not a historical dispute confined to the past. It is a living struggle over the contemporary meaning of the Iranian nation itself.

Memory Regimes

In his pioneering studies of collective memory, Maurice Halbwachs demonstrated that collective memory is not a static record of past events. What a society remembers about its past is always shaped by the needs and concerns of the present. The past does not reside in the dark corridors of archives; rather, it remains alive within the social frameworks through which memory is organized and sustained. Research in the field has consistently shown that collective memory is a contested terrain, a battleground of competing discourses. Different social groups continuously strive to consolidate their own interpretations of history, for control over the past is a crucial means of shaping both the present and the future.[2]

From this perspective, the central question concerning Mossadegh is not whether his actions in 1953 were politically prudent or misguided. Rather, we must ask why, more than seven decades later, his name continues to provoke such intense and polarized confrontations. The answer lies in his symbolic significance. Mossadegh is not merely a historical figure recorded in textbooks; he constitutes one of the principal pillars of Iranian national memory. Consequently, any political current seeking to redefine Iranian national identity must inevitably determine its relationship to this powerful symbol.

To better understand the contemporary debate, one can identify two competing memory regimes organized around the concept of the nation: the “Mossadeghist memory regime” and the “Pahlavist memory regime.” Within the Mossadeghist framework, modern Iranian history derives its meaning from milestones such as the Constitutional Revolution, the struggle against autocracy, the rule of law, the nationalization of oil, resistance to colonial domination, and the coup of August 1953. In this intellectual constellation, the Iranian nation is understood first and foremost as a political agent—a community of citizens endowed with the right to determine its own destiny. Independence, in this view, is not merely a matter of geopolitical balance; it is an inseparable component of popular sovereignty itself. The central hero of this narrative is Mohammad Mossadegh, who is seen as the embodiment of three fundamental values: democracy, national independence, and constitutional legality. For this reason, the collapse of his government on 19 August 1953 is remembered not simply as the fall of a cabinet, but as the defeat of a national ideal.

In contrast, a different memory regime has gained prominence in recent years[3]—one that may be described as the Pahlavist memory regime. Within this framework, the central axis of modern Iranian history is neither the Constitutional Revolution nor the national movement led by Mossadegh. Instead, the primary focus is the state-building project of the Pahlavi era. The key concepts structuring this discourse are a strong state, authoritarian modernization, development, ancient Persian glory, national power, and stability. In this narrative, popular sovereignty occupies a secondary position, while the principal criterion is the state’s capacity to build a powerful and prosperous nation. The principal heroes of this historical imagination are Reza Shah and, to a lesser extent, Mohammad Reza Shah.

Within this framework, the standards by which political actors are judged undergo a significant transformation. Rather than being assessed primarily in terms of their commitment to freedom, democracy, or national independence, political leaders are increasingly evaluated according to their perceived effectiveness, developmental achievements, and capacity to consolidate state authority. While this evaluative framework is by no means unique to Iran, in the Iranian case it is articulated through a historical imaginary shaped by memories of the Pahlavi state's developmental and modernizing ambitions. It is precisely at this point that the fundamental tension between the two memory regimes emerges.

The competing political imaginaries do not organize the past as neutral historical sequences. Rather, they retrospectively attach the idea of the nation to different clusters of meanings. These recurring symbolic associations may be summarized as follows: 

The Mossadeghist imaginary:

Nation → Independence → National Sovereignty → Anti-Colonialism → Democracy

The Pahlavist imaginary:

Nation → Ancient Iran → State Authority → Order → Westernization → Development 

Thus, these two narratives do not merely offer different interpretations of the past. They produce competing political uses of the past: one frames the nation through the memory of anti-colonial sovereignty and democratic struggle, while the other frames it through civilizational continuity, centralized authority, and developmental modernization. 

Borrowing from Ernesto Laclau’s discourse theory, the nation can be understood as a floating signifier whose meaning is never fixed but is instead articulated within different chains of equivalence[4]. Both memory regimes invoke the language of the nation, yet the nation they imagine differs profoundly. Consequently, the contemporary resurgence of nationalism has tended to reinforce the Pahlavist imaginary rather than the Mossadeghist imaginary. This is because contemporary nationalist discourse has increasingly privileged themes such as ancient Iran, civilizational continuity, and state-centered modernization, while the anti-colonial and democratic elements central to the Mossadeghist imaginary have become comparatively less prominent. If nationalism is articulated through the Pahlavist memory regime, Mossadegh ceases to function as a national hero and instead emerges as a rival figure whose symbolic legacy must be challenged.

Deconstructing the Mossadeghist Memory Regime

There is little doubt that figures such as Mohammad Mossadegh possess immense symbolic capital—a form of legitimacy that derives from their very name and historical stature. Whenever a new memory regime seeks to redefine the meaning of the nation, it cannot simply ignore such a powerful symbolic resource. It must therefore either weaken, displace, or transform its significance. Put differently, the opposition to Mossadegh is not fundamentally rooted in personal hostility toward the man himself. Rather, Mossadegh represents the most significant symbolic obstacle to a Pahlavi-centered narrative of Iranian national identity[5]. As long as he remains the dominant symbol of Iranian nationalism, the idea of the nation will continue to be associated with independence, resistance to foreign domination, and popular sovereignty. The weakening of that symbol, by contrast, creates space for the reconstruction of nationalism around an alternative set of values and historical references.

To understand this politics of memory, the three articles published in Andisheh Pouya provide a revealing case study[6]. These texts do not engage in a direct denunciation of Mossadegh. Instead, they adopt a subtler and more sophisticated strategy, one built upon a number of distinct narrative techniques.

First, the psychologization of the political. Throughout these writings, Mossadegh is repeatedly portrayed as a leader excessively driven by nationalist passions. Rather than appearing as a rational strategist guided by careful political calculation, he is depicted as someone whose decisions were shaped by anti-British emotions. This psychologizing tendency appears even more explicitly in Ahmad Bani-Jamali’s interview, where Mossadegh’s political conduct is interpreted through a psychiatric framework. As Bani-Jamali states, “From the very beginning of this research, I consulted a psychologist and came to the conclusion that Mossadegh exhibited symptoms of hypochondriasis (illness anxiety disorder).” Elsewhere, he argues that “Mossadegh’s pathological behaviors represented an intensified attempt to evade responsibility through illness.” Such formulations relocate the explanation of political decision-making from the realm of political strategy to that of individual psychology.

In this interpretation, the oil question was not primarily an economic or legal issue for Mossadegh; it became an identity-laden cause that prevented him from recognizing the harsh realities of international politics.

This interpretation serves a delegitimizing political function. Once a national leader is recast not as a strategist but as an individual captive to his emotions, his political credibility is fundamentally diminished. The oil nationalization movement, in turn, ceases to appear as the product of prudent political judgment and is instead reframed as the outcome of ideological rigidity and emotional attachment. In this way, a political project that has long occupied a central place in Iranian national memory is subtly redefined as an exercise in sentiment rather than statesmanship. By opposing emotion to strategic political judgment, these articles (and the memory regime they exemplify) portray Mossadegh’s leadership as driven by personal affect rather than rational political calculation.

Second, the relocation of responsibility for failure. Another recurring theme in these texts is the emphasis placed on Mossadegh’s alleged mistakes. In this reinterpretation, the oil dispute becomes a story of missed opportunities. A workable compromise, it is argued, was readily available, yet Mossadegh’s political inflexibility and unwillingness to compromise drove the crisis into a dead end and pushed the country toward economic turmoil. Through this narrative shift, the focus of analysis moves away from the coup and foreign intervention and toward Mossadegh’s own decisions. Within this framework, the fall of his government and the coup of August 1953 appear not primarily as the outcome of external conspiracies but as the almost inevitable consequence of his personal dispositions and political shortcomings. This interpretive shift is clearly reflected in Reza Khojasteh Rahimi’s argument that “the leader of the oil nationalization movement failed to establish a balance between the movement’s demands and the power actually available to him, and therefore failed to reach an agreement that could have guided the movement toward safety instead of a coup.” Here, responsibility gradually shifts away from foreign intervention and toward Mossadegh’s own political choices.

The coup itself is not denied, but its causal significance is substantially diminished. This corresponds to what memory studies describe as a process of reframing memory: altering the interpretive framework through which a historical event is understood without disputing the event’s occurrence[7].

Third, the erosion of Mossadegh’s democratic credentials. In the three essays considerable attention is devoted to Mossadegh’s dissolution of parliament and his decision to hold a referendum. Such emphasis is not merely a neutral historical critique. Rather, its broader discursive function is to weaken Mossadegh’s distinctive claim to democratic legitimacy by portraying his political project as driven by sentiment rather than statesmanship. The more he is portrayed as a political figure whose commitment to democratic principles was limited or inconsistent, the less distinct he appears from those who stood against him. Rather than functioning as a neutral historical critique, this emphasis foregrounds a limited number of controversial episodes as the principal evidence through which the authors reinterpret Mossadegh’s political legacy. This strategy is especially visible in Mousa Ghaninejad’s contribution. Rejecting the long-established image of Mossadegh as a defender of constitutionalism, he argues that “Mossadegh did not continue the constitutionalist tradition; rather, the political movement he initiated dealt a fatal blow to the principles of constitutional government and the rule of law.” Elsewhere he writes that “he had no proper understanding of democracy or the rule of law, and consequently his political conduct itself violated genuine democracy, constitutional legality, and the Constitutional Order.” Such formulations do not simply criticize particular political decisions; they undermine the very foundation upon which Mossadegh’s democratic legitimacy has long rested.

By treating these episodes as indicative of authoritarian tendencies, the essays gradually weaken his established image as a symbol of national sovereignty and democratic legitimacy, recasting a figure who for decades represented political freedom as a statesman with authoritarian inclinations.

Fourth, privileging failure over achievement. In these texts, the symbolic and historical significance of oil nationalization is systematically downplayed. Instead, the event is portrayed primarily as the starting point of declining oil exports, economic disruption, and a succession of national crises. Through this shift in emphasis, the standard by which national independence is evaluated also changes. Rather than being judged according to political principles or normative ideals, independence comes to be assessed through the criterion of state effectiveness and economic performance. Rahimi makes this evaluative criterion entirely explicit: “No politician is regarded as successful merely because he fulfilled his duty; rather, political ability is judged by observable results and achievements.” He therefore concludes that “although the coup immortalized Mossadegh’s name, its other side was the defeat of the oil nationalization movement and the loss of its achievements.” In this framework, effectiveness rather than principle becomes the primary measure of political judgment.

What matters is no longer whether a nation successfully asserted its sovereignty, but whether that assertion produced measurable developmental outcomes. The crucial point is that these reinterpretations do not emerge in a vacuum. The more firmly Mossadegh is portrayed as a failed statesman, the more attractive narratives centered on the effectiveness and achievements of the Pahlavi state become. Within this binary framework, Reza Shah and his son appear as the architects of order, modernization, and state-building, while Mossadegh comes to symbolize disorder, emotional excess, and political failure. It is within such an atmosphere that society’s historical sensitivity toward foreign intervention—and even toward the coup of August 1953 itself—gradually weakens. In some political circles, this has gone so far as to foster a degree of psychological acceptance of external pressure and even military options, a tendency that found its most explicit expression in slogans such as “Trump, strike” (Trump bezan).

The deconstruction of Mossadegh’s public image, therefore, is not merely an act of hostility toward a historical figure. It forms part of a broader project aimed at legitimizing a different variety of nationalism. We are witnessing the emergence of a distinct memory regime.

Within the Mossadeghist memory regime, national independence constitutes an inviolable principle of political action. In much of the emerging nationalist discourse, by contrast, the pursuit of power takes precedence over other political principles. To the extent that alignment with a foreign power may help defeat a domestic adversary, such alignment can come to be regarded as legitimate or even desirable. It is precisely for this reason that these newer Pahlavist and nationalist formulations have opened the door to political positions that would have been virtually inconceivable within the Mossadeghist tradition—positions such as support for economic sanctions against Iran or the tacit endorsement of foreign military intervention.

From this perspective, the struggle over Mossadegh is not ultimately about the historical record of a single political leader. It is about competing visions of the nation, conflicting understandings of political legitimacy, and rival conceptions of how Iran should relate to both its own past and the wider world.

Conclusion

The past decade in Iran has witnessed a remarkable resurgence of nationalist sentiment, a development that parallels broader global trends in the revival of nationalism and memory politics. Given Mossadegh’s long-standing position as one of the principal symbols of modern Iranian nationalism, one might reasonably expect that the recent resurgence of nationalist sentiment would strengthen rather than weaken his symbolic standing. Yet developments have unfolded differently. Rather than contributing to the rehabilitation of Mohammad Mossadegh’s public standing, this nationalist revival has coincided with a growing effort to reinterpret his historical legacy. Alongside the rise of a Pahlavist and ancient-oriented nationalism, a broad intellectual and political current has emerged that portrays Mossadegh not as a champion of freedom and national independence, but as an emotional, ineffective, stubborn politician whose actions were largely responsible for historical failure. This mode of representation is best understood within the framework of a struggle over collective memory—a struggle whose objective is to shift the center of Iranian nationalism from the Mossadeghist memory regime to the Pahlavist one.

What is unfolding before us is a contest between two rival memory regimes, each seeking to define and appropriate the meaning of the Iranian nation. The Mossadeghist memory regime understands the nation through the interconnected values of independence, freedom, and popular sovereignty. The Pahlavist memory regime, by contrast, reconstructs the nation by foregrounding state authority, economic development, and the grandeur of ancient Iran as the defining features of the national imaginary. Within this struggle, Mossadegh is more than a historical figure. He serves as a symbol, a site of contestation, and a defensive stronghold in a broader political battle over the ownership of Iranian collective memory.

The apparent paradox between the rise of nationalism and the decline of Mossadegh’s symbolic standing is, in reality, a reflection of the emergence of two incompatible nationalisms: two competing understandings of the nation, two irreconcilable narratives of the past, and ultimately two profoundly different visions of Iran’s future. The conflict surrounding Mohammad Mossadegh should not be reduced to a historical controversy buried in the past.