Episode 396: Operation Ajax: The CIA’s First Coup!

On this episode of the world famous Sofa King Podcast, we look at the first recorded incident of the CIA overthrowing a foreign government during peace time. I was called Operation Ajax (aka Operation Boot for the British side of the coup), and it helped to eliminate the rightfully elected government of Iran in the 1950s. It is said to be the single biggest factor in the ongoing instability of the Middle East, and it all points to two things—big oil and the cold war against the USSR.

The background here was that a British oil magnate William D’Arcy held the full rights to the massive oil reserves and refinery that he discovered and built in Iran. For decades, he treated the local workers like slaves, kept all the profits he promised to share, and refused to train local workers to drill for their own oil as promised. This group eventually became BP, and when politics got unstable after World War One, they tightened their grip and staged a pre-coup there to put their own man, Reza Shah Pahlavi, in control of the country.

A couple decades later, the financially poor Iranians were fed up with British control over their most precious resource. A man named Mohammad Mosaddegh became the prime minster and nationalized all of Iran’s oil, taking it out of British hands. There was a lot of sabre rattling and a huge embargo, but Iran held fast. However, a communist group was slowly gaining power under Mosaddegh’s rule, and the 1950s CIA said no to this, lest the Soviets would gain one of the richest oil areas in the world. So, they did their thing and flipped the government.

A man named Kermit Roosevelt Jr. (yes, the president’s grandson) was sent by the CIA to fix this and head up Operation Ajax. He was guerilla style spy from WWII using SOE style tactics. He took Iran by storm. He manipulated the national media, got the Shah to make formal royal decrees on his behalf, propped a new general in position to take the country, and then paid lots of thugs to run rampant in the street, killing, looting, and destroying. How did he pull it all off? What effect did the street mobs have on the national attitude? Why did Mosaddegh finally surrender? What happened when the CIA told Roosevelt the abort Operation Ajax? What did the CIA learn from this coup that they could use later on? Listen, laugh, learn.

Great Article: https://www.laphamsquarterly.org/roundtable/operation-ajax

Official Documents: https://nsarchive2.gwu.edu/NSAEBB/NSAEBB435/