Iranian coup d'état of 1953: Operation Ajax

This article has been split due to the large amount of material:

• Iranian coup d'état of 1953: Background
• Iranian coup d'état of 1953: US motive for CIA Operation Ajax
• Iranian coup d'état of 1953
• Iranian coup d'état of 1953: Operation Ajax
• Iranian coup d'état of 1953: Aftermath and international reaction

Execution of Operation Ajax

Having obtained the Shah's concurrence, the CIA team headed by Roosevelt executed the coup. Firmans (royal decrees) dismissing Mosaddegh and appointing Zahedi were drawn up by the coup plotters and signed by the Shah. On Saturday August 15, Colonel Nematollah Nassiri, the commander of the Imperial Guard, delivered to Mosaddegh a firman from the shah dismissing him. Mosaddegh, who had been warned of the plot (probably by the Tudeh party) rejected the firman as a forgery and had Nassiri arrested. Mosaddegh argued at his trial after the coup that under the Iranian constitutional monarchy, the Shah had no constitutional right to issue an order for the elected Prime Minster's dismissal without Parliament's consent. The action was publicized and the Shah, fearing a popular backlash, fled to Rome, Italy. After a short exile in Italy, the CIA completed the coup against Mossadegh, and returned the Shah to Iran. Alan Dulles, the director of the CIA, flew back with the Shah from Rome to Teheran. Gen. Zahedi replaced the deposed Prime Minister Mosaddegh, who was arrested, tried, and originally sentenced to death. Mosaddegh's sentence was commuted to three years' solitary confinement in a military prison, followed by house arrest until his death.

As a condition for restoring the Anglo-Iranian Oil Company, the U.S. required removal of the AIOC's monopoly; five American petroleum companies, Royal Dutch Shell, and the Compagnie Française des Pétroles, were to draw Iran's petroleum after the successful coup d'état—Operation Ajax.

As part of that, the CIA organized anti-Communist guerrillas to fight the Tudeh Party if they seized power in the chaos of Operation Ajax. Per released National Security Archive documents, Undersecretary of State Walter Bedell Smith reported that the CIA had agreed with Qashqai tribal leaders, in south Iran, to establish a clandestine safe haven from which U.S.-funded guerrillas and spies could operate.

Operation Ajax's formal leader was senior CIA officer Kermit Roosevelt, Jr., while career agent Donald Wilber was the operational leader, planner, and executor of the deposition of PM Mosaddegh. The coup d'état depended on the impotent Shah's dismissing the popular and powerful Prime Minister and replacing him with Gen. Fazlollah Zahedi, with help from Col. Abbas Farzanegan—a man agreed by the British and Americans after determining his anti-Soviet politics.

The CIA sent Major general Norman Schwarzkopf, Sr. to persuade the exiled Shah to return to rule Iran. Schwarzkopf trained the security forces that would become known as SAVAK (Persian: ساواک, short for سازمان اطلاعات و امنیت کشور Sazeman-e Ettela'at va Amniyat-e Keshvar, National Intelligence and Security Organization) to secure the shah's hold on power.

See Also

• Abadan Crisis
• Abadan Crisis timeline
• Iran crisis of 1946
• Asadollah Rashidian
• CIA sponsored regime change
• Divide and rule
• False flag operations
• Geneva Accords of 1954
• Geneva Convention of 1954
• Guatemalan coup d'état of 1954
• Hossein Fatemi
• United States and state terrorism
• Iran and state terrorism
• Special Activities Division

References

See Iranian coup d'état of 1953