The Global Story: Operation Ajax: The CIA’s Iran coup

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1:15The world order is shifting. Old alliances are fraying and new ones are emerging. Some of this turbulence can be traced to decisions made in the United States. But the U.S. isn't just a cause of the upheaval. Its politics are also a symptom of it. Every day we focus on one story, looking at how America and the world shape each other. So we hope you enjoy this episode. And to find more of our show, just search for The Global Story, wherever you get your BBC podcasts. We have really regime change. You know, this is a change in the regime. Donald Trump has said many times that he's achieved something like regime change in Iran.

1:59Their first level leaders are dead. Their second level leaders are dead. Some of their third level leaders are dead. I call that regime change. It's hard to make a watertight case for it, though. There was a Khamenei in charge before the war. There's still a Khamenei in charge now. But it wouldn't be the first time the U.S. has attempted regime change in Iran. Back in 1953, the CIA led a coup to topple Iran's democratically elected prime minister, a moment in history that's less well known in the United States, but definitely hasn't been forgotten in Iran. It may still be shaping the thinking of the new Iranian leaders the U.S.

2:47needs to negotiate with now. From the BBC, I'm Tristan Redmond, and today on The Global Story, the long shadow of the 1953 coup, and why it may have shaped Iran and U.S. thinking on regime change for decades.

3:10I'm Scott Anderson. I'm a nonfiction book writer and journalist. I've written a series of nonfiction books, mostly dealing with war and mostly in the Middle East. Now, friends, I've been wanting to get on the show the writer Scott Anderson for some time now. He's the author of a pretty incredible book that I've been reading called King of Kings, which is a history of US and Iranian relations over the last 75 years. And he's a great person to tell us the story of the 1953 coup, which in some ways is where it all started. So to set the scene, it's 1953 and the Shah of Iran, the king or emperor, depending on how you want to translate it, has been in power for 12 years.

3:53But he has to share power with a democratically elected prime minister and also with Parliament. Now, this story doesn't start with the United States. It actually starts with Britain, because at this particular moment in time, Britain has a lot of interests inside Iran. The British had a concession going back in the early 1900s for the oil in Persia at the time. And ever since they discovered oil in 1907, the British had had a complete monopoly on Persian and Iranian oil. In Avedan, at the head of the Persian Gulf, is the largest oil refinery in the world, firmly under British protection, a fact which locally they don't seem to resent at all.

4:33This became increasingly a flashpoint with Iranian nationalists in the late 1940s, early 1950s. From barren wastes, British enterprise and money won wealth, which Persia shared on a proper mutually agreed contract. The Iranians were getting a pittance of the money that was being brought in from the oil industry. When you say a pittance, what do you mean? Well, they were supposed to get 20 cents on the dollar of the proceeds of the oil, and they were actually getting more like 8 cents on the dollar. The British were pretty shameless in monopolizing and kind of ripping off the Iranian government.

5:08Part of the terms of the contract were that the Iranian government was not allowed to look at the ledger books. So this was just a license to steal by the British company that ran it. The British company was also tied to the British government. It was a quasi-private, quasi-government institution. So in the early 1950s, a kind of a populist nationalist politician named Mohamed Mossadegh became prime minister of Iran. When you say a populist nationalist, is there any one in the modern day pantheon of politicians that you would compare Mossadegh to? I might compare him to, say, Hugo Chavez in Venezuela.

5:49kind of a very charismatic, it would give firebrand speeches. One of the secrets of his powers was to have an external enemy, that you kind of ride this anti-British sentiment, this constant refrain of how we're being taken advantage of by this imperial power. So Mossadegh, he was usurping the Shah's powers and gradually chipping away at what had been the Shaw's powers. And a huge issue at this time was to get back the oil, to break this concession that had been given to the British back in the early 1900s. Let us hope that the Persians will not allow themselves to be intimidated by fanatics into a rash act which will lead to disaster for both countries.

6:34And Mossadegh sort of became the chief spokesperson for that. He nationalized the oil industry.

6:44That put Britain and Iran on a collision course.

6:55Britain imposed a blockade on Iran. This continued for about a year and a half. Meanwhile, Mossadegh was not falling, which was, of course, the British hope. So the British devised a plan to overthrow Mossadegh and restored the Shah, who was far more pliant to his kingly powers, figuring that the Shah would cancel the nationalization and give the oil back to the British. But the British didn't want to have their hands seen in this operation because they were already reviled by the Iranian people. So they looked to the Americans to take care of this operation for them. They first floated this idea to the Truman administration in the summer of 1952.

7:35It was like, hey, you know, we have this all set up to overthrow Mossadegh. Will you do this for us? And Truman said, no. Why should we overthrow a democratically elected government for you, for your oil? Truman leaves office in January of 1953. The Eisenhower administration comes in. As president, he has a rabid anti-communist secretary of state named John Foster Dulles. The British come back to the Americans right after the inauguration of Eisenhower and repitch the story. And this time, the idea of overthrowing Mosaddegh has taken on a new shade, which is that waiting in the wings, standing behind Mosaddegh, are the communists.

8:15So this becomes a classic Cold War dynamic almost. That's right. And the Reds, of course, will take Iran into the Soviet sphere, Iran having a very large border with the Soviet Union. So this sufficiently spooks John Foster Dulles and Eisenhower. So they sign on to the idea of carrying out the coup for the behest of the British. And that operation becomes known as Operation Ajax. And what is Operation Ajax? What's the plan? So the plan is they have a few operatives inside Tehran in the city. Basically, the Shah has the power to revoke Mossadegh's prime ministership. And he had tried to do this once before, and it led to massive riots in Tehran.

9:01So basically the plan is, is that they're going to have the military on alert and people loyal to the Shah on standby. They're going to inform us today that he's been dismissed from the prime ministership. And if there's any problems, people loyal to the Shah will take control of the streets. So the man in charge of Operation Ajax is Kermit Roosevelt, who is a CIA officer, cousin of Theodore Roosevelt, the president. And Kermit Roosevelt goes to the Shah and tells him of this plan, that they're going to unseat Mossadegh. The Shah is a famously passive figure. He's a man who has always wanted other people to do his dirty work for him.

9:43And he vacillates. For months, actually, he goes back and forth of whether he's going to approve or cancel Operation Ajax. He finally says, yes, we're going forward. And then on the very eve, in about August 12th, 1953, he tries to back out again. The Shah says, no, we're not going to do it. Kermit Roosevelt sneaks into the royal palace. He hides in the footwell of a car. He gets into the palace. He confronts the Shah and says, look, it's too late. This coup is going forward either with you or without you. But it's too late to cancel it now. So the Shah kind of agrees. But then the Shah takes his own action.

10:24The Shah was a pilot. He loved to fly planes. So that night, he and his second wife get on a small plane that the Shah is piloting, and they fly up to a royal palace, a small royal palace on the Caspian Sea. They get out of Tehran. There was likely to be some unpleasantness. So he wanted to be kind of in a safe spot. What happens is the next day the coup starts. Attention is focused once again on the Middle East, where events in Iran have taken a dramatic double twist. Mossadegh has been tipped off its coming. He has his own loyalists respond to the Shah's loyalist troops. Death to the Shah. Statues of the ruler and his father are pelted and desecrated by the fanatic followers of the aged premier Mohammed Mossadegh.

11:07And there's pitched battles in the streets of Tehran. And this goes on for two days. And during those two days, the Shah first flies his plane to Iraq and then flies on to Rome. Forced to flee his palace in Tehran, The Shah and his queen arrive in Rome after an alleged attempt by the Imperial Guard to arrest Dr. Mossadik. So on day three, what happens is it looks like the coup has failed. In Tehran, it looked as if Mossadik would soon be named president. And on his orders, troops occupied the Shah's palaces and surrounded parliament. The CIA actually was moving to shut down the operation. Most of the CIA's operatives have fled Tehran.

11:47And Kermit Roosevelt locks himself in a CIA safe house. drinking gin and listening to Broadway show tunes. That's extraordinary. What's going on there? Tell us more about that. Apparently he had a passion for Broadway show tunes. But I guess it inspires him because as a kind of a last ditch effort, he decides he's going to rent a mob. And this is actually something of a tradition in Iran, that you can rent street toughs to attack your rival company or a rival politician. So Kermit Roosevelt hires a group of thugs. Royalists are punched, mauled and kicked. To masquerade as Mossadegh loyalists. Streets are no man's land as Mossadegh seizes control of the oil rich country.

12:32And to go through downtown Tehran, smashing windows, roughing people up and just being hooligans. But hooligans supposedly in support of Mossadegh. Just to clarify, the role of the renter mob is to essentially paint Mossadegh's supporters in a negative light. That's right. And hoping that that will turn the tide of support against Mossadegh. That's right. So it's a false flag operation, basically. Absolutely. And it was 11th hour, last ditch idea to try to turn the tide. After nine bloody hours, they are in control and are overwhelmed in a startling shift in affection. And against all odds, it worked.

13:14Meanwhile, the mob flopped the streets, demanding the return of the Shah. Fueled by gin. Fueled by gin in Broadway shows, yeah. What did the CIA make of this operation? Was this according to the CIA handbook? The CIA had never really done something quite like this before. It was almost as pure adventurism. It wasn't going to cost much money. The risk level was low. And it was kind of, let's just see what happens. The backside to this, prior to the Iranian coup, for the previous six, seven years, the Americans had been trying to foment anti-communist revolts behind the Iron Curtain in the Warsaw Pact countries.

13:56And they had airdropped anti-communist partisans behind enemy lines. Every one of these operations, it was Ukraine, Albania, Romania, Poland, they were all disasters. So by 1953, you now had a very static battle line in Europe, the Iron Curtain. I think Eisenhower and John Foster Doles were thinking, well, okay, this idea comes to us from the British. Let's try it out. Let's see what happens. I don't think it was very much more complicated than that. When it succeeded and the royalists took over, the Shah was having lunch at the Excelsior Hotel in Rome, and he learns that the coup has succeeded.

14:35So he kind of comes back two days later, a little bit shamefaced that, you know, I mean, who runs away from their own coup? And then takes over and finds Mosaday guilty of treason, sentences him to internal exile. Mosaday goes back to his home village and is quarantined there for the next seven or eight years until he dies. And now the Shah has absolute powers. And now he's on his way. But all of this started because of oil. What happens to the oil at this point? So I think the Americans kind of pulled a fast one on the Brits a bit. So what happens is because the Anglo-Iranian oil company is so hated, the Americans with the Shah's collaboration, obviously, they create this consortium where most of the oil now goes under the control of American oil companies.

15:26And a very small part stays with the British. But essentially, the Americans take control of the Iranian oil. On the economic level, this is really the beginning of the American alliance in Iran, but not politically. And this is the thing that's quite fascinating about the 53 coup, is that because of the Shah's behavior during Operation Ajax, the Americans are actually quite askance of him. I mean, again, who runs away from their own coup? So the American government continues to keep the Shah, if anything, at even more of an arm's length for the next 10, 12 years. They think he's a coward. Obviously, he's very passive.

16:07So there's not this huge political investment in the Shah right after Operation Ajax. Yes, you're starting to see the beginning of the economic alliance, but not so much of the political. And that really comes about 10 years later. Nevertheless, the Shah and the United States are yoked together at this point, right? Very much so in the eyes of the Iranian people and in the Shah's eyes. So he was seen as a creation now of the Americans, even though the Americans didn't want to assume that role and did not assume that role for a long time to come. But of course, this would come back to haunt the Shah during the revolution because anything he did, even when he instituted reforms or promised change, he was still seen as the American Shah.

16:51Is any part of this story contested? I'll say in two ways. It's quite contested. I mean, I think Mossadegh has been kind of knighted as the martyr to democracy. And he really wasn't that. He was constantly usurping not only the Shah's authority, but also Parliament's. If things had gone on, there's a very good chance he would have been a dictator. So I think there's been this kind of whitewashing of Mossadegh in history. The second aspect to this is, ironically enough, really, the American role in the coup was quite exaggerated. And it was exaggerated by Kermit Roosevelt. I'm shocked. I know.

17:35Well, it was not difficult at all because the hard core of the Iranian element was there and ready to move. Kermit Roosevelt, after the coup, comes back to Washington. He's led into the Oval Office, and he's there with Eisenhower and John Foster Dulles, Secretary of State. And it's like this group of boys sitting around and in a clubhouse. And they say, tell us what happened. And Kermit spins this tale that has him in this heroic role and his people being absolutely instrumental in the coup. And they really weren't. But Eisenhower eats this up. He says, this reads like a dime novel. You know, this is fantastic.

18:19And famously, Kermit Roosevelt remembers looking at John Foster Dulles while he's telling the story of Operation Ajax. And John Foster Dulles has a Cheshire Cat smile on his face. And already, Kermit Roosevelt can tell his brain is whirling with other possibilities. If we did this in Iran, where can we go next?

19:15We'll be right back. America's Social Casino

19:53I'm Kai Wright. I'm Carter Sherman. Welcome to Stateside with Kai and Carter. We're a new show from The Guardian. We're talking to big thinkers and the best journalists, just trying to understand the world through smart conversation and honest reporting. We don't have billionaires telling us what to say. Stateside with Kai and Carter will come out three times a week, Monday, Wednesday, and Friday, starting May 13th. Subscribe on YouTube or wherever you get your podcasts.

20:23Well, I have to say, I find this so fascinating, partly because it's so of its time. The story you're telling is of the world emerging from World War II, Britain essentially still believing itself to be a player, very quickly finding out that the United States is the big player in town, entering the operation, stealing all the glory and the oil, returning back to Washington and backslaps all around. That's right. What's the United States learned from this experience? Well, it becomes kind of the CIA's new playbook.

21:02You know, it worked so well in Iran, let's do it again. So a year later, they decide they're going to overthrow the democratically elected government of Jacobo Arbenz in Guatemala, who wants to do agrarian reform. Most of the land in Guatemala is in the hands of a handful of oligarchic families and the Standard Fruit Company. So it's a similar profile to Mossadeh in Iran. That's right. Very similar. So the CIA finds this disgruntled ex-Guatemalan colonel to get together a ragtag army of about 40, 50, maybe 60 mercenary soldiers. The idea is they're going to march on Guatemala City. They all bogged down within miles of the border.

21:49This assault doesn't go anywhere. But meanwhile, the CIA has a radio transmitter set up, and they're casting these broadcasts into Guatemala. The Liberation Army is on the march. And just as what happens in Iran, the loyalist army around Arbenz folds. They collapse. It's another massive bluff. and it works again. Arbenz is overthrown. Guatemala becomes a right-wing dictatorship, very pro-American, very anti-communist, and it stays that way for the next 40 years.

22:27So now the CIA has achieved two bizarre successes back-to-back at very little expenditure, nothing compared to what had been spent in terms of blood and treasure in Eastern Europe. Now this really becomes the playbook. And so over the next six years of the Eisenhower administration, the CIA tries to replicate this all throughout the world. Like where? Congo in Southeast Asia. They try to step in when the French are flailing in Indochina, in Yemen, and none of those work. But they have the effect of essentially alienating people in every region or sub-region of the world. Then the final kind of carry-on from this era of CIA adventurism is the Bay of Pigs.

23:15And that's all planned under Eisenhower and John Foster Dulles. As Fidel Castro, who's overthrown the dictatorship in Cuba, he becomes more and more of a leftist. There's a CIA plot to overthrow Castro. That becomes the Bay of Pigs under Kennedy. That's in 1961, right? In 1961. And if you look at that, it was an exact replica of what, say, what had happened in Guatemala. You know, you throw 1 ,200 anti-economist Cubans on the beach of Cuba, tell them to march on Havana, and that's supposed to overthrow Fidel. And instead, of course, it was a total fiasco. I mean, I have to say, we do have a soft spot for the Bay of Pigs story on the global story.

23:57It's one that crops up an unexpected number of times. So I feel like you could play a game of Global Story Bingo, where every time the Bay of Pigs comes up, you get a prize. So thank you for raising it again today for those playing Global Story Bingo. So, Scott, you've told us, therefore, about how the 1953 coup in Iran shaped things from the U.S. perspective. But recently on the Global Story, we spoke with a woman called Ambassador Wendy Sherman. She was appointed by President Barack Obama to be the U.S. lead negotiator for the Iran nuclear deal. And when we were talking to her, she told us that in her direct negotiations with Iranians, she was aware that the shadow of 1953 was still present for those Iranian negotiators she was talking to.

24:53how does anti-American sentiment begin to foment inside Iran after 1953? Mr. Sherman's absolutely right. So in a way, what happened in 1953 is the Americans took away the role of the British as kind of the great Satan. It had been the British prior to that. Now it was the Americans. And I think that when you go to, say, the Iranian Revolution of 79, it was 53 that really gave it this sort of the catalyst, because along with it being this religious counter-revolution was a very strong element of kind of anti-colonial rebellion. The Shah was the American Shah. They're applying to the bullets with Molotov cocktails.

25:43It's about the only use they've got now for American Coca-Cola bottles. He was seen as a tool of the Americans and of the continued domination of Iran by the West. And that was something he could not get out from under with his own people. What are the practical lessons that Iran learned through that experience in 1953 about how to conduct themselves, particularly in their dealings with the United States. What I think the, certainly the Islamic regime has been very adept at, was playing that anti-American card to rally the people. So, you know, when Khomeini takes over, when you set up the Islamic regime, a lot of Iranians don't want, you know, a theocracy.

26:28But the opposition to Khomeini and to the far-right theocracy could always be tarred as pro-American. And I saw this in June, during the first round of American and Israeli bombings of Iran. In June 2025? June of 2025, right. So I was talking to people in the Iranian opposition, and there had been a growing groundswell of dissent against the regime. And what they were saying to me is, you know, if we come out and protest now against the regime, we're tarred as American lackeys and Israeli lackeys. So, you know, it turns out that in general, People don't like being bombed by foreign countries. And so there is this rallying around the flag effect.