71 years ago today, the CIA and MI6 orchestrated the overthrow of Iran's democratically-elected Prime Minister Mohammed Mosaddegh.
Mosaddegh had nationalized Iran's oil industry to end British control of the country's resources. Winston Churchill viewed Iranian oil as British property.
Washington and London backed Shah Mohammad Reza Pahlavi to depose Mosaddegh and restore authoritarian rule with a leader who would follow Western orders.
After the coup, Iran's oil was privatized again through a 1954 consortium. BP took 40% of shares. Five American oil companies secured major stakes.
The Shah's dictatorship—enforced by the brutal SAVAK secret police—and the handover of oil wealth to Western companies fueled widespread anger. That rage eventually exploded in the 1979 revolution that created the Islamic Republic of Iran.
The 1953 coup remains a defining moment in US-Iran relations and a textbook case of Cold War intervention backfiring decades later.
Mosaddegh had nationalized Iran's oil industry to end British control of the country's resources. Winston Churchill viewed Iranian oil as British property.
Washington and London backed Shah Mohammad Reza Pahlavi to depose Mosaddegh and restore authoritarian rule with a leader who would follow Western orders.
After the coup, Iran's oil was privatized again through a 1954 consortium. BP took 40% of shares. Five American oil companies secured major stakes.
The Shah's dictatorship—enforced by the brutal SAVAK secret police—and the handover of oil wealth to Western companies fueled widespread anger. That rage eventually exploded in the 1979 revolution that created the Islamic Republic of Iran.
The 1953 coup remains a defining moment in US-Iran relations and a textbook case of Cold War intervention backfiring decades later.