The_Info_Web/30 - PROGRAMS & PROJECTS/INTELLIGENCE_OPERATIONS/Operation AJAX.md

created	updated	title	aliases	tags	category	summary	start	location
2026-05-15	2026-10-14	Operation AJAX	Operation Ajax Operation Boot 1953 Iranian coup 28 Mordad coup	Program CoupDetat CIA Iran ColdWar 1950s	Intelligence Operation	Operation AJAX was the CIA code name for the August 1953 covert operation, run with British MI6 (Operation Boot), that overthrew Iranian Prime Minister Mohammad Mosaddegh and restored the Shah to power.	1953-08-19	Tehran, Iran

Operation AJAX was the Central Intelligence Agency's operational code name for the August 1953 covert action that overthrew the elected government of Iranian Prime Minister Mohammed Mossadegh and restored Mohammad Reza Pahlavi (the Shah) to full autocratic power. The British MI6 designated the same operation Operation Boot. The coup took place on August 19, 1953, known in the Iranian calendar as 28 Mordad 1332. The CIA's internal history of the operation, written in March 1954, became public in 2000. In August 2013 the National Security Archive posted a mid-1970s CIA history, The Battle for Iran, with its references to TPAJAX restored, and described it as believed to be the CIA's first formal acknowledgement that the agency helped to plan and execute the coup.¹²

Background: The Oil Nationalization Crisis

The immediate cause of Operation AJAX was the Anglo-Iranian Oil Company (AIOC) crisis. The AIOC, a British company (now BP), had held monopoly rights to Iranian oil since 1913. In 1951, Mosaddegh's National Front government nationalized the AIOC, asserting Iranian sovereign control over its primary natural resource. The British government, which held majority interest in the AIOC, responded with an economic blockade of Iranian oil exports and sought to pressure or remove Mosaddegh.

The Harry Truman administration initially declined British requests for CIA assistance in removing Mosaddegh, viewing the situation as primarily a colonial dispute. When Dwight D. Eisenhower took office in January 1953, the CIA's assessment changed: the Eisenhower administration and CIA Director Allen Dulles accepted British arguments that Mosaddegh's coalition could be exploited by the Tudeh (Iranian communist) Party and that Iran could fall into the Soviet sphere. This provided the Cold War justification for intervention.¹

Operational Planning

The operation was planned primarily by two CIA officers and their British counterparts. Kermit Roosevelt, grandson of President Theodore Roosevelt and a Middle East specialist at the CIA's clandestine service, was the operational commander on the ground in Tehran. The British side was led initially by Christopher Montague Woodhouse (MI6 Tehran station chief), who had approached the CIA for assistance after British intelligence officers were expelled from Iran in 1952.

The operational plan involved multiple coordinated elements:

• A black propaganda campaign using CIA-funded Iranian newspapers to portray Mosaddegh as communist-aligned and anti-Islamic
• Bribery of Iranian military officers, parliamentarians, and religious figures
• Hiring of provocateurs and street mobs to create chaos, including paying demonstrators to claim affiliation with the Tudeh Party while carrying out violent acts designed to discredit Mosaddegh
• Coordination with Iranian military officers loyal to the Shah

Before the first attempt the Shah had signed the royal decrees (firmans) that the operation required. The CIA history records that on August 10 he said that while he approved of the plan for action he would sign no papers, and that after pressure from Princess Ashraf Pahlavi and H. Norman Schwarzkopf and several meetings with Kermit Roosevelt he signed the firmans dismissing Mosaddegh and appointing Fazlollah Zahedi. A British memorandum in the Foreign Relations volume dates the firman to August 13, 1953, says it was carried from Ramsar to Tehran by Colonel Nasiri, commander of the Imperial Guard, and says Nasiri was arrested after delivering a copy late on August 15 to the officer in charge of the troops at Mosaddegh's house.³⁴

The first coup attempt on the night of August 15-16, 1953, failed when Mosaddegh was warned. The Shah flew to Baghdad when the plan misfired and reached Rome from Baghdad on August 18. He left Rome for Baghdad around midnight on August 20 and returned to Tehran on August 22.¹⁵ Roosevelt remained in Tehran and reorganized for a second attempt.¹

The August 19 Coup

On August 19, 1953, coordinated operations produced the successful coup. CIA-organized street mobs (paid through an Iranian intermediary) attacked pro-Mosaddegh newspapers and political organizations. Iranian military units loyal to the Shah seized key installations in Tehran. Mosaddegh's residence was attacked; he surrendered the following day.

Mosaddegh was arrested, tried for treason by a military court, and sentenced to three years in prison. After his release he was confined to house arrest at his estate in Ahmad Abad, where he lived until his death in 1967. The Shah returned from exile and assumed direct control of the government.¹

General Norman Schwarzkopf Sr. (father of the Gulf War commander) played a supporting role; he had trained the Iranian gendarmerie in the late 1940s and used his contacts with Iranian military officers in the coup preparations.⁶

Consequences

The immediate consequence of Operation AJAX was the consolidation of the Shah's autocratic rule. The Shah established SAVAK, the Iranian secret police, with CIA and Mossad assistance in 1957. SAVAK became notorious for systematic torture and political repression and was the primary mechanism of regime control until the 1979 revolution.

The oil consortium outcome was a compromise: Iran retained nominal ownership of the nationalized oil industry through the National Iranian Oil Company, but a new international consortium gave 40 percent of production rights to American companies (five companies, at 8 percent each) and 40 percent to the British (AIOC, renamed British Petroleum), with the remainder divided among Dutch and French interests.⁷ American companies received an equal share to the British - the commercial benefit that aligned U.S. corporate interests with the British political objective.

The long-term consequence was the Islamic Revolution of 1979. Ayatollah Ruhollah Khomeini and the clerical opposition had opposed the Shah since the early 1960s; the 1953 coup's restoration of foreign-backed autocracy became foundational to the revolutionary narrative. When CIA station files were seized during the November 1979 Embassy takeover in Tehran, they documented the CIA-SAVAK relationship and confirmed for the revolutionary government the extent of American intelligence penetration of Iran under the Shah.¹

The 1953 coup established Operation AJAX as the template for CIA-backed regime change operations that followed through the Cold War, including the 1954 overthrow of Jacobo Arbenz in Guatemala (Operation PBSUCCESS), the 1961 Bay of Pigs invasion, and support for coups in Chile, Brazil, Indonesia, and elsewhere.¹

CIA Acknowledgment

The CIA maintained official silence about its role in Operation AJAX for sixty years. The Wilber history of the 1953 coup, written in March 1954, was first disclosed by James Risen in The New York Times on April 16 and June 18, 2000, and posted by the National Security Archive on November 29, 2000. On August 19, 2013, the National Security Archive posted newly declassified CIA material, including the mid-1970s internal history The Battle for Iran, which the agency had released in 1981 with every reference to TPAJAX blacked out and which now showed those references, together with Kermit Roosevelt's working files; the Archive described it as believed to be the CIA's first formal acknowledgement that the agency helped to plan and execute the coup.² The State Department's official historical record, Foreign Relations of the United States, included Operation AJAX documentation in its 1989 volume on Iran 1951-1954.

Secretary of State Madeleine Albright acknowledged in 2000 that the 1953 coup was a "setback for democratic governance" in Iran without explicitly admitting CIA direction.

Footnotes

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1. Kinzer, Stephen. All the Shah's Men: An American Coup and the Roots of Middle East Terror. Wiley, 2003. CIA. "Clandestine Service History: Overthrow of Premier Mossadeq of Iran, November 1952-August 1953." Written by Donald Wilber, March 1954; first disclosed by James Risen in The New York Times on April 16 and June 18, 2000, and posted by the National Security Archive as Iran Coup Briefing Book 28 on November 29, 2000, https://nsarchive2.gwu.edu/NSAEBB/NSAEBB28/ ; text copy at https://archive.org/details/CIA-Mossadeq-Iran-1953. ↩︎

2. National Security Archive, "CIA Confirms Role in 1953 Iran Coup," Electronic Briefing Book 435, August 19, 2013. https://nsarchive2.gwu.edu/NSAEBB/NSAEBB435/ ↩︎

3. Donald Wilber, Clandestine Service History: Overthrow of Premier Mossadeq of Iran, November 1952-August 1953, written March 1954. Text copy: https://archive.org/details/CIA-Mossadeq-Iran-1953 ; National Security Archive, Iran Coup Briefing Book 28: https://nsarchive2.gwu.edu/NSAEBB/NSAEBB28/ ↩︎

4. FRUS 1952-1954, Volume X, Iran, 1951-1954, document 362, British Memorandum (undated), paragraphs 12-15. https://history.state.gov/historicaldocuments/frus1952-54v10/d362 ↩︎

5. FRUS 1952-1954, Volume X, document 348, editorial note citing telegram 571 from Rome, August 18, 1953 (the Shah arrived in Rome from Baghdad in the early afternoon of August 18), and document 350, editorial note citing telegram 613 from Rome, August 20, and telegram 454, August 22 (the Shah to depart Rome for Baghdad around midnight, arriving about noon August 21; Henderson and other chiefs of mission met the Shah at the Tehran airport). https://history.state.gov/historicaldocuments/frus1952-54v10/d348 ; https://history.state.gov/historicaldocuments/frus1952-54v10/d350 ↩︎

6. Gasiorowski, Mark J., and Malcolm Byrne, eds. Mohammad Mosaddegh and the 1953 Coup in Iran. Syracuse University Press, 2004. ↩︎

7. Foreign Relations of the United States, 1952-1954, Volume X, Iran, 1951-1954, Document 449, April 1, 1954 (Anglo-Iranian 40 per cent; Royal Dutch Shell 14; Compagnie Francaise des Petroles 6; Standard Oil of New Jersey, Socony-Vacuum, Standard Oil of California, Gulf and the Texas Company 8 per cent each). https://history.state.gov/historicaldocuments/frus1952-54v10/d449 ↩︎