Operation Ajax
The 1953 CIA and SIS operation that overthrew Iranian Prime Minister Mosaddegh
Overview
Operation Ajax, jointly run with the British SIS under the codename TPAJAX, toppled Mohammad Mosaddegh after he nationalized the Anglo-Iranian Oil Company. Agents funded street demonstrations and leveraged a royal decree to install General Fazlollah Zahedi, restoring the Shah to political primacy. The CIA formally acknowledged its role in documents released in 2013. Historians treat the coup as a formative case study in covert action and its long term consequences, which rippled through the Iranian revolution of 1979. Declassified accounts detail payments to street crowds and press manipulation that tipped a political crisis.
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