TEHRAN — Seventy-three years ago, on August 19, 1953, the government of Iranian Prime Minister Mohammad Mosaddegh was overthrown in a coup engineered with the involvement of the United States and Britain — an intervention whose consequences still shape relations between Iran and the West today.
Mosaddegh had become prime minister in 1951 after being nominated by Iran's parliament, the Majlis, and appointed under Iran's constitutional system. He was a popular nationalist politician whose defining political battle was control over Iran's oil.
For decades, Britain's Anglo-Iranian Oil Company had dominated Iranian petroleum production under concession agreements that gave Britain enormous economic influence over one of Iran's most valuable natural resources.
In 1951, Iran's parliament nationalized the oil industry. Mosaddegh became the international face of the effort, arguing that Iran — not a foreign corporation — should control the wealth beneath its own soil.
Britain responded with intense economic and diplomatic pressure. The British government challenged Iran before the International Court of Justice on behalf of the Anglo-Iranian Oil Company. But on July 22, 1952, the court ruled that it lacked jurisdiction over the dispute.
The confrontation quickly became something larger than a dispute over compensation.
Britain wanted its oil interests protected. Washington, meanwhile, increasingly viewed Iran through the lens of the Cold War, fearing political instability might expand Soviet influence.
Eventually, London and Washington turned to covert action.
Operation Ajax
The CIA operation became known as TPAJAX, or Operation Ajax.
American and British intelligence worked to undermine Mosaddegh, cultivate political opposition, influence Iranian politicians and security officials, spread propaganda and encourage demonstrations against his government.
The first attempt to remove Mosaddegh faltered. Shah Mohammad Reza Pahlavi fled Iran.
Then, on August 19, 1953, the balance shifted dramatically.
Pro-Shah demonstrators and military units seized strategic locations in Tehran. Mosaddegh's government collapsed, General Fazlollah Zahedi emerged as prime minister, and the Shah returned to Iran.
The coup did not originally put the Shah on the throne — Mohammad Reza Pahlavi had been monarch since 1941 — but it transformed his position. His rule became substantially stronger and increasingly authoritarian after Mosaddegh's removal.
The human cost of the fighting was significant. Historical estimates vary, but hundreds were killed during the turmoil surrounding the overthrow.
For decades, Washington avoided formally acknowledging the full extent of its responsibility.
Then the documentary record became impossible to ignore.
In 2013, on the coup's 60th anniversary, the National Security Archive published newly declassified CIA material containing what historians described as the agency's first formal acknowledgment of its role in planning and executing the operation.
One passage from the CIA's internal history was devastatingly clear:
“The military coup that overthrew Mosadeq ... was carried out under CIA direction as an act of U.S. foreign policy.”
The documents said the operation had been conceived and approved at the highest levels of the U.S. government.
Declassified records also confirm substantial CIA financing of the operation and its aftermath. A CIA accounting later placed expenditures associated with the operation at approximately $5.33 million, while an August 19 telegram urgently requested another $5 million be made available to support the incoming government and meet its payroll.
The documentary record describes propaganda campaigns, efforts to influence politicians, organization of anti-Mosaddegh demonstrations and cooperation with Iranian military and political figures.
What Came After
The overthrow fundamentally altered Iran's political development.
Instead of allowing Iran's constitutional struggle to play itself out internally, foreign intelligence services helped determine the outcome.
The Shah subsequently became one of Washington's most important Middle Eastern allies.
His government modernized portions of Iran's economy and expanded education and infrastructure, but political opposition was also severely restricted.
In 1957, the Shah established SAVAK, Iran's feared intelligence and internal-security organization. SAVAK became notorious among the Shah's opponents for surveillance, imprisonment, torture and repression.
That repression contributed to the explosive resentment that ultimately helped produce Iran's 1979 Islamic Revolution.
For many Iranians, therefore, 1953 is not ancient history.
It remains a central part of how U.S. intentions are understood.
The coup does not explain every subsequent action taken by the Islamic Republic, nor does it excuse repression or abuses committed by Iran's current government. But any serious account of modern U.S.-Iranian hostility that begins in 1979 leaves out one of the most consequential chapters of the story.
Washington intervened in Iran's political system more than two decades earlier.
Oil, Power and Sovereignty
The argument that the coup was purely an anti-communist operation has also become increasingly difficult to sustain as the documentary record has expanded.
Cold War fears were unquestionably important.
But oil was central to the crisis.
The CIA's own historical material acknowledged Britain's concern with maintaining access to inexpensive Iranian oil and protecting the profitability of the Anglo-Iranian Oil Company.
Iran had asserted one of the most basic principles of national sovereignty: that the Iranian people should determine what happened to Iranian natural resources.
Western governments decided that the political and economic consequences of that decision were unacceptable.
And they intervened.
Seventy-Three Years Later
The anniversary carries extraordinary weight in 2026 because the United States and Iran are once again engaged in direct confrontation.
The current conflict between the United States and Iran has lasted for months, ceasefire efforts have repeatedly faltered, sanctions remain in place and tensions surrounding the Strait of Hormuz continue to threaten global energy supplies. As of August 20, U.S.-Iran diplomatic efforts remain stalled while Washington is threatening additional economic pressure against countries assisting Tehran.
That does not mean the geopolitical circumstances of 1953 and 2026 are identical. They are not.
Iran today is a major regional military power with its own record of repression, military operations and confrontation with neighboring states. Israel, Gulf governments and the United States cite Iran's nuclear activities and regional military actions as serious security threats.
But history matters.
When Iranian leaders and ordinary Iranians speak about Western interference, they do not have to invent an example.
The CIA's own documents provide one.
The United States helped overthrow an Iranian prime minister. Britain participated. Money was secretly distributed. Political forces were manipulated. Propaganda was deployed. A government more favorable to Western strategic interests emerged.
Those facts are no longer conspiracy theory or speculation.
They are part of the declassified historical record.
And that is precisely why August 19, 1953 should still matter.
A country that wants peace with another country must be willing to confront the history between them — especially the parts that are uncomfortable.
Seventy-three years after Operation Ajax, the lesson should not be another demand for domination, another covert intervention or another generation of war.
It should be respect for sovereignty, diplomacy and the right of nations to determine their own future.
Hands off Iran.
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