including the chief of station in Tehran—held little brief for this intrusion into Iranian politics. Agency and State analysts did not believe that Mossadegh was a Communist or a stooge of the Communists. Nor did they place much credence in the argument that the Tudeh party was poised to take control of Iran.20 (It wouldn’t be the last time that CIA officers who were country or regional experts were directed by political appointees to undertake a covert action that they deemed unwise or foolish.) The American ambassador in Tehran, Loy Henderson (a long-time Soviet expert), was convinced that Mossadegh was simply naive about communism, even as he grew increasingly more reliant on the Tudeh party.21
Late in 1952, outgoing secretary of state Dean Acheson briefed the new Eisenhower administration on Iran, highlighting three salient points: negotiations with Mossadegh had failed, with blame falling equally on the Iranians and the British; U.S. policy now included options for unilateral intervention (presumably to replace the Mossadegh regime); and the problems festering in Iran would probably confront Eisenhower sooner rather than later.22 Sure enough, in early January 1953, even before Ike’s inauguration, Mossadegh sent a three-page letter to the president-elect asking for assistance for his country. Eisenhower had been hearing derogatory reports about Mossadegh not only from Truman’s people but also from British prime minister Winston Churchill, and so was not an uninformed bystander in the matter. His reply to Mossadegh was noncommittal, expressing hope that “our future relations will be completely free from suspicion.”23 In late January and February 1953 the new U.S. administration watched as the turmoil in Iran increased. A failed attempt in the Majlis (Iran’s legislature) to replace Mossadegh through constitutional processes was followed by Mossadegh’s move against the leaders of a half-baked plot hatched by retired military officers to establish a separate “Free South in Iran.” Finally there came rioting in the streets.24 The cowed Majlis extended Mossadegh’s near dictatorial powers, and soon thereafter, on 28 February, the shah announced that he would abdicate the throne. Rioting broke out anew almost immediately, and the shah retracted his abdication within hours.
The British SIS met with Eisenhower’s people and the CIA in February, just two weeks after Ike’s inauguration. Kermit “Kim” Roosevelt, chief of the Near East Division of the CIA’s Clandestine Service (known at the time as the Directorate of Plans), was named program manager for the coup operation. Operation Boot then became TPAjax. Preparations began in earnest in March, with DCI Allen Dulles authorizing a $1 million budget for the coup (this figure was subsequently augmented by $11,000 for the purpose of bribing members of the Majlis).25
Any initial misgivings on the part of the United States eroded through the spring of 1953 as the political and security situation in Iran worsened and Mossadegh became increasingly dependent on the Tudeh party (although he was also popular with many of the middle class, including bazaaris [the merchant class], junior military officers, and clerics).26 Street demonstrations for and against Mossadegh, which had become common in the opening months of 1953, escalated in violence, with some of the disturbances instigated by the Tudeh party. The Majlis was as chaotic as the country in general and eventually was dissolved by Mossadegh. The Eisenhower team deemed the burgeoning instability in Iran unacceptable, and Ike commented at one point to Republican senator Robert Taft of Ohio that Iran “must in no circumstances fall to communism.”27
Eisenhower’s secretary of state, John Foster Dulles, expressed fears that civil unrest or worse combined with covert Tudeh influence might present the Soviets with the opportunity to gain control of Iran.28 Thus, as State officials had earlier predicted, the Eisenhower administration was open to the idea of a coup. In fact, top Eisenhower advisers Foster Dulles and his brother Allen had already discussed the idea of a covert reversal of the Mossadegh regime.29 It was, the two agreed, an opportunity to “turn back the communist tide before it reached the beach . . . please an ally . . . and keep the oil flowing.”30 Eisenhower expressed confidence that the shah would be an effective leader when he resumed full control of the government.31 On receiving a second letter from Mossadegh pleading for financial assistance, Eisenhower remarked to his advisers that he would not “pour more money” into a country causing its own distress by refusing to negotiate with the British.32 Intelligence that Mossadegh was soon to receive $20 million from the USSR consolidated, in Ike’s mind, the need for a new government in Iran.33
In late July, just three weeks before the coup was to occur, the Tudeh party came out openly in support of Mossadegh.34 The Majlis held new elections in early August, with Mossadegh blatantly rigging the results. In a politically riven country, Mossadegh managed to garner an astonishing 99.4 percent of the popular vote (some two million “voted” for Mossadegh and only a few hundred “voted” against him).35 Eisenhower was appalled, comparing the electoral manipulation with communist tactics already witnessed in Eastern Europe (and possibly in Ike’s mind adding a communist taint to Mossadegh). (This act also undermines later criticism that Mossadegh’s government was democratic and legitimately elected.) And if all that wasn’t sufficient to convince the Eisenhower administration that Mossadegh had to go, on 8 August Soviet foreign minister Georgy Malenkov announced in Moscow that the Soviet Union had initiated negotiations with Iran to resolve border problems and financial claims.36 Thus, throughout that spring and summer Eisenhower was certain that Iran was on a steady course toward a “communist-supported dictatorship.”37
What transpired next was the first successful reversal of a foreign government by the United States in the Cold War. It was an act that would return to confront and confound a future administration in a manner no one could have foreseen.38 Motivated by a strong determination to contain the spread of Soviet influence, and sincere in their belief that Iran was about to fall under the control of forces inimical to the interests of the free world, the most senior policymakers in the United States ordered the ouster of the government of a sovereign nation. Almost certainly no one in the U.S. government believed that the people of Iran would suffer more under a pro-American government than they probably would have under a Soviet-controlled one.39
While it became fashionable in the post-1970 years to assert that the United States prevented Iran from becoming a stable democracy by overthrowing Mossadegh’s government, there is little evidence to support this position. It is perhaps true that Iran had been making some small progress toward this end in the half century preceding the coup. It is also true that, under the shah’s rule, Iran paid a steep price for twenty-five years of political stability. Authoritarian conditions became increasingly harsh until they finally reached the point at which Iranian citizens were willing to risk death in the street rather than live under them any longer. In the end, the Iranians inherited a dismal legacy: yet another foreign intervention in their nation, yet another lost opportunity to determine their own future for better or worse, and yet more of their oil wealth siphoned off by others, leaving most of them destitute while a privileged elite lived in unimaginable opulence.
Observers of the coup differ on the nature of its long-term outcome, but all agree that it was one of the most important events of the Cold War and perhaps of the twentieth century. Eisenhower believed the results justified the means; he had no second thoughts about the coup and later said that he would use such tactics again to “fight the communists where prudent and possible, with every weapon possible.”40 Kim Roosevelt believed that if the coup had failed, Iran would have fallen to the Soviet Union with disastrous results for the Middle East.41
Mark Gasiorowski labels the 1953 coup a “critical event in postwar world history” and a “decisive turning point in Iranian history.”42 He asserts that if the coup had not occurred, the revolution of 1978 might not have followed.43 James Bill calls the coup a “momentous event” in the relationship between the United States and Iran, a “running wound which bled for twenty-five years.”44 That said, Bill further maintains that while the coup affected Iranians’ perception of the U.S. government, it did not make the 1978–79 revolution inevitable, as the United States had ample chances during that quarter-century to “rethink and revise” its
