Why America’s CIA coup in Iran haunts both countries | The Global Story

0:00 Where did the obsession of some US

0:01 presidents with Iranian regime change come from?

0:05 It may be older than you think.

0:06 Whether you believe him or not,

0:08 Donald Trump has said many times he's achieved it, or something like it.

0:13 Their first level leaders are dead, their second level leaders are dead,

0:17 some of their third level leaders are dead.

0:20 I call that regime change.

0:21 It wouldn't be the first time that the US has tried.

0:24 Back in 1953, the CIA led a coup to topple Iran's prime minister,

0:30 a moment in history that definitely hasn't been forgotten in Iran.

0:35 Why does the 1953 coup have such a long shadow?

0:39 And could it still be shaping US and Iranian policy many decades later?

0:45 From the BBC, I'm Tristan Redman, and this is the Global Story on YouTube.

0:56 I'm Scott Anderson.

0:57 I'm a non-fiction book writer and journalist.

1:02 I've written a series of non-fiction books,

1:03 mostly dealing with war, and mostly in the Middle East.

1:06 The British had a concession going back to 19

1:09 the early 1900s for the oil in Persia at the time.

1:13 And ever since they discovered oil in 1907,

1:17 the British had had a complete monopoly on on Persian and Iranian oil.

1:22 And this became increasingly a flashpoint with with Iranian

1:26 nationalists in the late 1940s early 1950s that the Iranians

1:31 were getting a pittance of the money that was

1:34 being brought in from from the oil industry.

1:37 When you say a pittance, what do you mean?

1:39 They were supposed to get 20 20 cents on the dollar

1:41 of of the of the proceeds of the oil,

1:44 and they were actually getting more like eight eight cents on the dollar.

1:46 The British were were pretty shameless in in in monopolizing

1:52 and and and kind of ripping off the the the Iranian government.

1:56 Part of the terms of the contract were the the Iranian

2:00 government was not allowed to look at the ledger books.

2:03 So, this was just a a license to steal by the British company that that ran it.

2:09 British the British company was also tied to the British government,

2:13 quasi private, quasi government institution.

2:17 In the early 1950s, a kind of a populist nationalist

2:21 politician named Mohammad Mosaddegh became prime minister of of Iran.

2:27 When you say a populist nationalist, is there anyone in the modern day pantheon

2:33 of politicians that you would compare Mosaddegh to?

2:37 I'd compare him to to say Hugo Chávez in Venezuela.

2:42 A very charismatic populist,

2:45 very popular among among the people, would give firebrand speeches.

2:51 And largely one of the secrets of his power

2:54 was to have was to have an external enemy.

2:56 And then that kind of reminds me of of Chávez also.

2:59 That you kind of ride this this whether it's

3:01 anti-Western or in the case of Mosaddegh anti-British sentiment,

3:05 this this constant um refrain of how we're

3:10 being taken advantage of by this imperial power.

3:13 And a huge issue at this time was especially among

3:18 the nationalists in in Iran was to get back the oil,

3:22 to to break this concession that had been

3:24 given to the British back in the early 1900s.

3:27 And Mosaddegh sort of he became the the chief spokesperson for that.

3:33 So, Mosaddegh he was usurping the the Shah's powers and then

3:37 gradually chipping away at at what had been the Shah's powers.

3:40 He nationalized the oil industry.

3:42 So, that put Britain and Iran on collision course.

3:47 Britain's imposed a blockade on Iran.

3:51 This continued for about a year and a half

3:53 and and meanwhile Mosaddegh was not falling,

3:56 which was what of course the British hoped.

3:58 So, the British devised a plan to overthrow Mosaddegh and restore the Shah,

4:04 who was far more pliant to his kingly powers.

4:08 Um, figuring that the Shah would would cancel the the nationalization,

4:12 give the oil back to the British.

4:14 So, but the British didn't want to have their hands seen

4:17 in this operation because they were already reviled by the Iranian people.

4:22 So, they looked to the Americans to to take

4:26 to take care of this operation for them.

4:28 They first floated this idea to the Truman

4:31 administration in 1950 in in the summer of 1952.

4:35 It's like, "Hey, you know, we we have this all set up to to overthrow Mosaddegh.

4:40 Um, will you do this for us?" And Truman said, "No.

4:44 Why should we overthrow a democratically elected

4:46 government for you and for your oil?" Um,

4:49 Truman leaves office in January of 1953.

4:52 The Eisenhower administration comes in.

4:54 He has a kind of a rabid

4:55 anti-communist Secretary of State named John Foster Dulles.

5:00 Uh, the British come back to the Americans right

5:02 after the inauguration of of Eisenhower and re-pitch the story.

5:07 And and this time the the the idea

5:09 of overthrowing Mosaddegh has taken on a new shade,

5:12 which is that waiting in the wings

5:15 and standing behind Mosaddegh are the communists,

5:18 are the reds and they are going to becomes a classic Cold War dynamic almost.

5:22 That's right.

5:23 That's right.

5:23 And the reds of course will take Iran into the Soviet sphere.

5:28 Um, Iran having a very large border with the Soviet Union.

5:32 So, this this sufficiently spooks John Foster Dulles and Eisenhower.

5:38 So, they sign on to the say they sign on to the idea

5:41 of of carrying out the coup in for the behest of the British.

5:46 And that operation is becomes known as Operation Ajax.

5:50 Mhm.

5:51 And what is Operation Ajax?

5:52 What's the plan?

5:53 So, the plan is to the initially they there's they

5:56 have a few operatives in inside Tehran in the city.

6:01 The plan is to basically the Shah

6:05 has the power to revoke Mosaddegh's prime ministership.

6:12 And he had tried to do this once before

6:14 and it had led to massive riots in Tehran.

6:17 So, basically what the plan is is that they're going to have

6:21 the military on alert and people loyal to the Shah on standby.

6:26 They're going to inform Mosaddegh that he's

6:28 been he's been dismissed from the prime ministership

6:30 and if there's any problems the people loyal

6:34 to the Shah will take control of the streets.

6:37 Um so, that's the that's the basic plan.

6:40 So, the man in charge of the of Operation

6:43 Ajax is Kermit Roosevelt who is a CIA officer,

6:47 cousin of Theodore Roosevelt, the president.

6:49 So, Kermit Roosevelt goes to the Shah and tells him

6:53 of this plan that that that they're going to to unseat Mosaddegh.

7:00 The Shah is famously passive figure.

7:03 He's he's a man who has always wanted other people to do his dirty work for him.

7:08 Um and he vacillates for for months actually.

7:12 He goes back and forth of whether he's

7:14 going to approve or or cancel the Operation Ajax.

7:18 Uh he finally says yes, we're we're going forward.

7:21 And then on the very eve and and about August 12th,

7:25 1953, he tries to back out again.

7:28 The Shah says no, let's we're not going to do it.

7:31 Kermit Roosevelt sneaks into the royal palace.

7:33 He he hides in the footwell of a car and with a blanket over him.

7:37 He he gets into the palace.

7:39 He confronts to and says, "Look, it's too late.

7:42 This coup is going forward either with you or without you.

7:46 So, but it's too late to cancel it now." So,

7:49 the Shah kind of agrees, but then the the Shah takes his his own action.

7:54 The Shah was a pilot.

7:55 He loved to He loved to fly planes.

7:56 So, that night he and his second wife get on a a small

8:01 plane that the the Shah's piloting and they fly up to a royal palace,

8:07 a small royal palace on the Caspian Sea.

8:08 They get out of Tehran.

8:10 It was likely to be some unpleasantness.

8:12 So, he wanted to be kind of in a in a safe spot.

8:15 What happens is the next day the the coup starts.

8:18 Mosaddegh has been tipped off it's coming.

8:20 He has his own loyalists respond to the the Shah's

8:24 loyalist troops and there's pitch battles in the streets of Tehran.

8:28 And this goes on for 2 days.

8:29 And during those 2 days the Shah first flies his plane

8:32 to Iraq and then flies on to Rome in in Italy.

8:37 So, on day three, what happens is it looks like the coup has failed.

8:41 Most of the CIA's operatives have fled Tehran.

8:44 And Kermit Roosevelt locks himself in a CIA safe

8:47 house and drinking gin and listening to Broadway show tunes.

8:53 And and and I I love I apparently had a passion for Broadway show tunes.

9:00 But I I guess it inspires him because as a kind of a last ditch uh effort,

9:06 he decides he's going to rent a mob.

9:08 And this is a this is actually something of a tradition

9:10 in Iran that you can rent street toughs to you know,

9:14 to attack your your your rival company or or a rival politician.

9:20 So, Kermit Roosevelt hires a group of thugs to masquerade

9:25 as Mosaddegh loyalists and to go through downtown Tehran smashing windows,

9:31 roughing people up and and kind of yeah,

9:33 just being hooligans, but hooligans supposedly in support of Mosaddegh.

9:38 Just to clarify, the role the role of the rent-a-mob is to, essentially,

9:45 paint Mosaddegh's supporters in a negative light.

9:50 And hopefully that that will turn the tide of support against Mosaddegh.

9:53 That's right.

9:54 That's right.

9:55 And you know, they're they're chanting pro-communist slogans,

9:59 they're smashing windows, they're roughing up passersby, they're tearing

10:03 It's a false basically.

10:04 Yeah, absolutely.

10:05 It's a Yeah.

10:06 Yeah, and it was 11th hour you know, last-ditch idea to try to turn the tide.

10:11 And against all odds, it

10:13 Fueled by gin, possibly.

10:15 Fueled by gin and Broadway shows, yeah.

10:20 What did the CIA make of this operation?

10:23 Was this, according to the CIA handbook?

10:27 They didn't The CIA had never really done something quite like this before.

10:32 You know, it was almost just pure adventurism.

10:34 It was you know, it wasn't going to cost much money.

10:37 It didn't require you know, the risk level was low.

10:41 It was kind of see you know, let's just see what happens.

10:43 You know, the the the backside to this of prior

10:47 to the Iranian coup for the previous 6-7 years,

10:51 the Americans had been trying to foment anti-communist revolts behind the Iron

10:57 Curtain in the in the in the in the Warsaw Pact countries.

11:00 And they had they'd air-dropped anti-communist partisans behind enemy lines.

11:04 Every Every one of these operations, it was Ukraine,

11:07 Albania, Romania, Poland, they were all disasters.

11:10 So, so by 1953, you'd have you'd now had a very

11:15 static battle line in in in Europe, the Iron Curtain.

11:20 And so, now I think Eisenhower and John Foster Dulles were thinking,

11:25 "Well, okay, this idea comes to us from the British.

11:27 Let's try it out.

11:28 Let's see what happens." I don't think it was you know,

11:30 very much more complicated than that.

11:32 When it succeeded and the the royalists took over,

11:37 the Shah was having lunch at the Excelsior Hotel in Rome.

11:41 And he learns that the coup has succeeded.

11:44 So, he kind of comes back 2 days later

11:48 a kind of a little bit shamefaced that you know,

11:52 I mean, who runs away from their own coup?

11:55 Um and then and reinstates and takes over

11:58 and sentences finds most of them guilty of treason.

12:02 Sentences him to internal exile.

12:05 Most of them goes back to his home village and is

12:09 quarantined there for the next 7 or 8 years until he dies.

12:12 And now the Shah has absolute powers and now he's on his way.

12:15 What happens to the oil at this point?

12:17 I think the Americans kind of pulled a fast one on them on the Brits a bit.

12:21 So, what happens is because the the the Anglo-Iranian Oil Company is

12:27 so hated that the Americans with the with the Shah's collaboration obviously,

12:34 they create this consortium where most of the oil

12:36 now goes under the control of American oil companies.

12:40 And a very small part goes stays with the British,

12:43 but essentially the Americans take control of the Iranian oil.

12:47 And this is in on this level, on the economic level,

12:51 this is really the beginning of American alliance in Iran.

12:55 But not politically.

12:56 This and this is the thing that's quite

12:58 fascinating about the 53 coup is that because

13:01 of the Shah's behavior during the during Operation

13:04 Ajax the Americans are actually quite askance of him.

13:07 They I mean, again, who runs away from their own coup?

13:10 So, the American government continues to keep the Shah if anything

13:15 even more of an arm's length for the next 10 12 years.

13:19 Um they they they think he's a coward.

13:22 Obviously, he's very passive.

13:24 So, they they they there's not this huge

13:26 political investment in the Shah right after Operation Ajax.

13:30 Yes, you you're starting to see the beginning of the economic alliance,

13:33 but not so much of the political and that really comes about 10 years later.

13:38 Nevertheless, the Shah and the United States

13:40 are yoked together at this point, right?

13:44 Very much so in the eyes of the Iranian people and in the Shah's eyes.

13:47 So, he was seen as a creation now of the Americans.

13:51 Even though the Americans didn't didn't want to assume that role

13:54 and and did not assume that role for a long time to come.

13:57 But of course, this would come back to haunt

13:59 the Shah during the revolution because anything he did,

14:03 even when he instituted reforms or promised change,

14:07 he was still seen as the American Shah.

14:09 Is any part of this story contested?

14:13 I'll say in two ways it's quite contested.

14:15 I mean, Mosaddegh has been, you know,

14:17 kind of knighted as this the martyr to democracy and he really wasn't that.

14:22 He He was constantly asserting not only the Shah's authority,

14:27 but also Parliament's.

14:28 Um, if if things had gone on, there's

14:30 a very good chance he would have been a dictator.

14:33 Uh, so I think there's been this kind

14:34 of whitewashing of Mosaddegh in in history.

14:37 The second aspect to this is, ironically enough,

14:39 really the American role in the coup was

14:43 quite exaggerated and it was exaggerated by Kermit Roosevelt.

14:47 Kermit Roosevelt after the coup I yeah, I I know.

14:51 Kermit Roosevelt after the coup comes back to Washington.

14:54 He's He's led into the Oval Office

14:57 and he's there with Eisenhower and John Foster Dulles

15:00 and it's like this group of boys sitting around in in a clubhouse and they say,

15:05 "Tell us what happened." And Kermit spins this tale that has him, you know,

15:11 in this heroic role and his people like,

15:14 you know, being absolutely instrumental in in the coup.

15:18 And they really weren't, but Eisenhower eats this up.

15:21 He says, "This is This is this is reads like a dime novel.

15:24 This is you know, this is

15:25 fantastic." And famously Kermit Roosevelt remembers looking

15:30 at um John Foster Dulles while he's telling the story of Operation Ajax.

15:36 And John Foster Dulles has a Cheshire cat smile on his face.

15:40 And already Kermit Roosevelt can tell his you know,

15:43 his brain is is whirling with other possibilities.

15:47 If we did this in Iran, where can we go next?

15:51 Well, I have to say I I find

15:52 this so fascinating partly because it's so of its time.

15:55 The story you're telling is of uh the world emerging from World War II.

16:00 Britain um essentially still believing itself to be a player.

16:04 Very very quickly finding out that the United States

16:08 is the um is the the big player in town.

16:11 Um entering the operation, stealing all the glory and the oil,

16:15 returning back to Washington, and and a back slap all round.

16:21 What has the United Yeah,

16:23 and what's the United States learned from this experience?

16:27 Well, it it becomes kind of the CIA's new playbook.

16:30 They've learned well, let's you know,

16:32 it worked so well in Iran, let's do it again.

16:35 So, a year later they decide they're going to overthrow

16:39 the the democratically elected government of of Jacobo Guzmán in Guatemala,

16:44 who um wants to give uh do agrarian reform.

16:48 Most of the land of uh in Guatemala is in the hands

16:51 of of a handful of oligarchic families and the Standard Fruit Company.

16:55 Uh so, he's telling profile to Mosaddegh in Iran.

16:58 That's right.

16:59 Very similar.

16:59 Um a very similar profile.

17:01 So, they the CIA um finds this disgruntled ex-Guatemalan

17:07 colonel to get together a ragtag army of about 40,

17:12 50, maybe 60 mercenary uh soldiers.

17:15 The idea is they're going to march on Guatemala City.

17:18 They all bogged down Um within miles of the border.

17:21 That this this assault doesn't go anywhere.

17:24 But meanwhile, the CIA has a radio transmitter set

17:26 up and there's they're casting these broadcasts into Guatemala saying,

17:30 you know, the liberation army is on the march.

17:33 And just as what happens in what happened in Iran,

17:38 the the the loyalist army around Arbenz folds.

17:42 They collapse.

17:43 It's it's another massive bluff.

17:45 And it works again.

17:47 Arbenz is overthrown.

17:49 Guatemala becomes a right-wing dictatorship,

17:52 very pro-American, very anti-communist,

17:54 and stays that way for you know, for for the next 40 40 years.

17:59 So now now two CIA has achieved two bizarre successes back to back.

18:08 Mhm.

18:07 At at very little expenditure.

18:10 Mhm.

18:10 Nothing compared to what had been spent

18:12 in terms of blood and treasure in Eastern Europe.

18:15 Now this really becomes the playbook.

18:17 And so over the next 6 years of the Eisenhower administration,

18:21 the CIA tries to replicate this all throughout the world.

18:26 Like where?

18:25 Uh Congo.

18:27 They they're in in Southeast Asia.

18:30 They try to step in when the French are flailing in in Indochina.

18:36 They they're in the in the Middle East in Yemen.

18:40 And so and none of those work.

18:42 But they have the effect of you know,

18:44 essentially alienating people in every region or subregion of the of the world.

18:49 And the most then the final kind of kind of carry-on

18:53 from this era of CIA adventurism is the Bay of Pigs.

18:57 And that's all planned under Eisenhower and John Foster Dulles.

19:02 As Fidel Castro, who's overthrown the dictatorship in in Cuba,

19:06 he becomes more and more of a leftist.

19:09 There's a CIA plot to overthrow Castro.

19:12 That becomes the Bay of Pigs under Kennedy and that's of course a fiasco.

19:16 That's in 1961, right?

19:19 1961.

19:19 And if you look at what Look at that it was

19:21 an exact replica of what say would have happened in Guatemala.

19:26 You know, you throw 1,200 anti-communist Cubans on a shore with you know,

19:31 on the shore on the beach of Cuba,

19:33 tell them to march on Havana and that's supposed to overthrow Fidel.

19:36 And I said of course it was a total fiasco.

19:39 Okay, so I mean I have to say we do have

19:41 a soft spot for the Bay of Pigs story on the global story.

19:46 It's It's one that crops up an unexpected number of times.

19:50 So I feel like you could play a game of global story bingo where

19:54 every time every time the Bay of Pigs comes up you get a prize.

19:59 So thank you for raising it again today for those playing global story bingo.

20:05 Okay.

20:04 So Scott, you've told us about how the 1953

20:09 coup in Iran shaped things from the US perspective.

20:13 Now last week on The Global Story we

20:16 spoke with a woman called Ambassador Wendy Sherman.

20:20 She was appointed by President Barack Obama to be

20:24 the US lead negotiator for the Iran nuclear deal.

20:28 And when we were talking to her she told

20:31 us that in her direct negotiations with Iranians she

20:34 was aware that the shadow of 1953 was still

20:39 present for those Iranian negotiators she was talking to.

20:44 How does anti-American sentiment begin to ferment

20:49 and ferment inside Iran after 1953?

20:53 Miss Sherman's exactly absolutely right.

20:55 So in a in a way what happened in 1953 is the Americans took

21:00 took away the role of the British as as kind of the great Satan.

21:05 And it had been the British prior to that.

21:09 And now it was now it was the Americans.

21:11 And I you know I I think that when you go to say

21:15 the Iranian Revolution of '79 it was '53 that really gave it

21:20 this this sort of this the catalyst because along with it being

21:25 this religious counter-revolution was a very

21:28 strong element of kind of anti-colonial rebellion.

21:31 The Shah was the American Shah.

21:34 So he was a tool I mean again this is in the eyes of the opposition.

21:37 He was seen as a tool of the Americans

21:39 and of the continued domination of of Iran by the West.

21:46 And that was something he could not get out from under with his own people.

21:51 What are the practical lessons that Iran

21:55 learned uh through that experience in 1953

21:59 about how to conduct themselves particularly

22:02 in their dealings with the United States?

22:03 What I think the certainly the Islamic regime was been very adept

22:09 at was playing that anti-American card to rally to rally the people.

22:14 In June 2025.

22:16 2025, right.

22:17 Uh so I was talking to people in the Iranian opposition

22:21 and there had been a growing groundswell of dissent against the regime.

22:26 And what they were saying to me is you know if we come out and support if we

22:29 come out and protest now against the regime we're

22:32 we're tarred as American lackeys and and Israeli lackeys.

22:37 So it turns out that in general uh people don't like being bombed

22:42 by foreign countries and and so there is this rally around the flag effect.

22:47 And you know I think that the regime

22:49 has been very adept at constantly going back

22:53 to the the beginning of American meddling

22:56 in in internal Iranian affairs going back to 1953.

23:01 Interestingly the the Iranian the the current regime has never known quite what

23:05 to do with Mohammad Mosaddegh because he was not he was he was liberal,

23:11 he was quasi-socialist.

23:14 He was not he was not you know Ayatollah Khomeini in Khomeini's camp.

23:20 But so they've kind of presented him

23:22 as this martyr but not too much of a martyr.

23:25 You know, he he's he's kind of this he was kind of the first victim

23:28 of you know the the the American you know collusion in in with the Shah.

23:34 Scott, I have to ask you and I didn't realize I

23:36 was going to be so taken with a character called Kermit Roosevelt.

23:41 There's a there's a lot of conversation in the in the modern age

23:45 about whether the world is shaped by inexorable global forces or by individuals.

23:54 Is it possible to say that without a gin swilling show

24:01 tunes listening intelligence operative called Kermit Roosevelt we may not see

24:11 we may not be seeing US and Iranian relations such

24:15 as they are today and that he changed the course of history.

24:18 I think absolutely.

24:19 I'm I'm very much ascribe very much to the to the latter

24:23 notion that kind of the so-called great man theory of history.

24:26 You know, that this idea that that just flukish events you know,

24:32 the right people are the wrong people and the wrong

24:34 place at the wrong time can affect history.

24:37 I think you saw it with Kermit Roosevelt in '53.

24:40 I sort of think you're seeing with Donald Trump today.

24:43 And and in the case of Kermit throwing the dice on a wing

24:47 and a prayer with one last chance to try and make the coup work, right?

24:52 Yeah.

24:52 Yeah.

24:53 No, and then and all of history changes on that that last roll of the dice.

24:57 Amazing stuff.

24:58 Thank you so much, Scott.

24:59 It's been wonderful to talk this through with you.

25:01 Thank you for taking the time.

25:03 thank you.

25:04 No, my my pleasure anytime.

25:06 Thank you, Tristan.

25:07 That was Scott Anderson, author of King of Kings,

25:10 The Iranian Revolution, a story of hubris,

25:13 delusion, and catastrophic miscalculation.

25:17 That's the end of this episode.

25:18 Thanks for tuning in.

25:19 The Global Story is also an audio podcast.

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25:29 Cheerio.