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FROM THE MESAZONA ARCHIVES: "Operation Ajax"
Monday, August 21, 2023
"OPERATION AJAX" . . .NO STATE SECRET NOW: Kermit Roosevelt was The CIA's Man in Iran August 1953
Operation Ajax
has long been a bogeyman for conservatives in Iran — but also for
liberals. The coup fanned the flames of anti-Western sentiment, which
reached a crescendo in 1979 with the U.S. hostage crisis, the final
overthrow of the shah, and the creation of the Islamic Republic to
counter the “Great Satan.”
The coup alienated liberals in Iran as well.
- Mossadegh is widely considered to be the closest thing Iran has ever had to a democratic leader.
- He openly championed democratic values and hoped to establish a democracy in Iran.
- The elected parliament selected him as prime minister, a position he used to reduce the power of the shah, thus bringing Iran closer in line with the political traditions that had developed in Europe.
- But any further democratic development was stymied on Aug. 19.
64 Years Later, CIA Finally Releases Details of Iranian Coup
New documents reveal how the CIA attempted to call off the failing coup — only to be salvaged at the last minute by an insubordinate spy.
Listen to this article
Declassified documents released last
week shed light on the Central Intelligence Agency’s central role in
the 1953 coup that brought down Iranian Prime Minister Muhammad
Mossadegh, fueling a surge of nationalism which culminated in the 1979
Iranian Revolution and poisoning U.S.-Iran relations into the 21st
century.
The approximately 1,000 pages of documents also reveal for the first time the details of how the CIA attempted to call off the failing coup — only to be salvaged at the last minute by an insubordinate spy on the ground.
Known as Operation Ajax, the CIA plot was ultimately about oil. Western firms had for decades controlled the region’s oil wealth, whether Arabian-American Oil Company in Saudi Arabia, or the Anglo-Iranian Oil Company in Iran. When the U.S. firm in Saudi Arabia bowed to pressure in late 1950 and agreed to share oil revenues evenly with Riyadh, the British concession in Iran came under intense pressure to follow suit. But London adamantly refused.
The CIA, believing the coup to have failed, called it off...
The approximately 1,000 pages of documents also reveal for the first time the details of how the CIA attempted to call off the failing coup — only to be salvaged at the last minute by an insubordinate spy on the ground.
Known as Operation Ajax, the CIA plot was ultimately about oil. Western firms had for decades controlled the region’s oil wealth, whether Arabian-American Oil Company in Saudi Arabia, or the Anglo-Iranian Oil Company in Iran. When the U.S. firm in Saudi Arabia bowed to pressure in late 1950 and agreed to share oil revenues evenly with Riyadh, the British concession in Iran came under intense pressure to follow suit. But London adamantly refused.
- So in early 1951, amid great popular acclaim, Mossadegh nationalized Iran’s oil industry. A fuming United Kingdom began conspiring with U.S. intelligence services to overthrow Mossadegh and restore the monarchy under the shah. (Though some in the U.S. State Department, the newly released cables show, blamed British intransigence for the tensions and sought to work with Mossadegh.)
The CIA, believing the coup to have failed, called it off...
“Operation
has been tried and failed and we should not participate in any
operation against Mossadegh which could be traced back to US,” CIA
headquarters wrote to its station chief in Iran in a newly declassified cable sent on Aug. 18, 1953. “Operations against Mossadegh should be discontinued.”
“Operations against Mossadegh should be discontinued.”
That is the cable which Kermit Roosevelt, top CIA officer in Iran,
purportedly and famously ignored, according to Malcolm Byrne, who
directs the U.S.-Iran Relations Project at the National Security Archive
at George Washington University.
“[Roosevelt] said no — we’re not done here.”
It was already known that
Roosevelt had not carried out an order from Langley to cease and desist.
But the cable itself and its contents were not previously published.
The consequences of his decision were momentous. The next day, on August 19, 1953, with the aid of “rented” crowds widely believed to have been arranged with CIA assistance, the coup succeeded. Iran’s nationalist hero was jailed, the monarchy restored under the Western-friendly shah, and Anglo-Iranian oil — renamed British Petroleum — tried to get its fields back.
. . .The U.S government long denied involvement in the coup. . . . . . . . . . .
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