A newspaper kiosk is burned by demonstrators in Tehran, Iran, on Aug. 19, 1953, during the coup against Prime Minister Mohammed Mosaddeq. | AP Photo Eisenhower approves coup in Iran, Aug. 19, 1953

Reversing earlier U.S. policy, President Dwight D. Eisenhower authorized the CIA to instigate a coup d'état in Tehran that led to the overthrow of Iranian Prime Minister Mohammed Mosaddeq and his government on this day in 1953. The political, economic and social consequences of Mosaddeq's removal from power has had a profound impact on Iran-U.S. relations — one which manifests itself in the region to this day.

A previously excised section of an internal CIA history titled “The Battle for Iran“ released in 2013, reads: “The military coup that overthrew Mosaddeq and his National Front cabinet was carried out under CIA direction as an act of U.S. foreign policy, conceived and approved at the highest levels of government.”


The documents, published on the agency’s archival website under freedom of information protocols, describe in detail how the United States — with British help — engineered the coup, codenamed TPAJAX by the CIA and Operation Boot by Britain’s MI6.

Anthony Eden, the British foreign secretary, regarded Mosaddeq as a threat to Western strategic and economic interests after the Iranian leader nationalized the British Anglo-Iranian Oil Co., known today as BP.

CIA supporters maintain that the coup was strategically necessary. Critics have asserted that the scheme was illegal, paranoid and immoral. In 2000, Madeleine Albright, the secretary of state, noted that the “Eisenhower administration believed its actions were justified for strategic reasons.” But, she added, “the coup was clearly a setback for Iran’s political development and it is easy to see now why many Iranians continue to resent this intervention by America.”

Mosaddeq's overthrow consolidated the rule of Mohammad Reza Pahlavi, the shah of Iran, for the next 26 years until he in turn was toppled by the 1979 Iranian Islamic revolution. Strategically, it was aimed at making sure the Iranian monarchy would safeguard the West's oil interests in the country.

After the coup, some of Mosaddeq’s former associates and supporters were tried, imprisoned and tortured. On Oct. 29, 1953, Hossein Fatemi, Mosaddeq’s minister of foreign affairs, was executed by a firing squad under the orders of the shah’s military court.

On Dec. 21, 1953, Mosaddeq was sentenced to three years’ solitary confinement in a military prison. On hearing of his sentence, Mosaddeq said: “The verdict of this court has increased my historical glories. I am extremely grateful you convicted me. Truly tonight the Iranian nation understood the meaning of constitutionalism.” He remained under house arrest at his residence in Ahmadabad until his death on March 5, 1967 at the age of 84.

The American-inspired overthrow of Mosaddeq served as a rallying point for anti-U.S. protests during the revolutionary tumult in 1979; to this day, he remains one of the most popular figures in Iranian history. Iran’s theocratic regime often compares the tension over the country’s current nuclear program to that of the abortive oil nationalization scheme promulgated under Mosaddeq.

SOURCE: “THIS DAY IN PRESIDENTAL HISTORY,” BY PAUL BRANDUS

