After days of street violence and organized unrest orchestrated with covert American and British support, pro-Shah forces and military units overthrew Prime Minister Mohammad Mossadegh, who had nationalized Iran's British-controlled oil industry two years earlier. Shah Mohammad Reza Pahlavi, who had briefly fled the country, returned to consolidate power, ushering in 26 years of autocratic rule that ended in the 1979 revolution.
Mossadegh's nationalization of the Anglo-Iranian Oil Company in 1951 had infuriated Britain and alarmed Washington, which feared Iran drifting toward Soviet influence during the Cold War. The CIA's Operation Ajax, planned with Britain's MI6, funneled money to organize mobs, bribe military officers, and orchestrate a propaganda campaign portraying Mossadegh as a communist sympathizer.
After an initial coup attempt faltered days earlier, forcing the Shah to flee to Rome, a second push on this day succeeded. Tanks surrounded Mossadegh's home; he was arrested and later sentenced to three years in prison, living the rest of his life under house arrest. The CIA's own internal history later called it 'a coup carried out under CIA direction.' The episode cast a long shadow over U.S.-Iran relations, cited by many as a root cause of the anti-American sentiment that exploded in the 1979 revolution.
Key people: Mohammad Mossadegh, Mohammad Reza Pahlavi, Kermit Roosevelt Jr.