16 August With spectacular results – 1 million votes for, 67 votes against the dissolution of the Majlis (the parliament) – the government sent a note to the shah asking him to dissolve it. But the Shah dismissed Mosaddeq and sent his bodyguard, Col Nematollah Nasiri (now a general), to deliver a letter to Mosaddeq. Nasiri was taken prisoner by the prime minister’s bodyguards and the government announced early the next morning that a coup d’état by the royalists was now frustrated. In the letter, the shah had appointed Gen Fazlollah Zahedi prime minister