Operation Ajax (TPAJAX): the overthrow of Mosaddegh, 1953

Background: oil and the dispute with Britain

In March 1951 Iran decided to nationalise the assets of the Anglo-Iranian Oil Company (AIOC), which led to a dispute with the United Kingdom. FRUS records Mohammad Mosaddegh as Prime Minister and Minister of Defence from 22 July 1952 to 15 August 1953.^1,4

On 1 March 1953 the Director of Central Intelligence, Allen Dulles, wrote to President Eisenhower that the Iranian situation had been “slowly disintegrating” and that the risk of a Communist takeover was growing; he judged that significant elements of the army would remain loyal to the Shah, but that Mosaddegh controlled the chain of command.⁵

The TPAJAX plan

The chapter of the State Department’s official documentary series (FRUS) covering March to August 1953 is titled “Planning and Implementation of Operation TPAJAX”. Its documents include a “Summary of Operational Plan” dated Nicosia, 1 June 1953; eight of its pages are still not declassified.^6,7

According to a FRUS editorial note, on 1 July 1953 Kermit Roosevelt, head of the Near East and Africa Division of the CIA’s Directorate of Plans, received word that the British Prime Minister had approved the plan.^2,4

According to Mark Gasiorowski, the CIA used in the operation its Iranian propaganda network TPBEDAMN, built earlier against the Communist Tudeh Party. The CIA consultant Donald Wilber worked on the plan with British intelligence, and the SIS officer Norman Darbyshire told him about the main British covert political network in Iran, headed by the Rashidian brothers.^3,8

15–16 August: the first attempt fails

On the morning of 16 August 1953 Colonel Nematollah Nasiri went with soldiers to the Prime Minister’s home to deliver the Shah’s decree dismissing him (dated 13 August); the Prime Minister’s guards arrested him.^4,9

The same day the CIA station in Tehran reported the failure to headquarters, writing that the Shah had been “tricked out of country” by Mosaddegh; it saw a remaining chance in, among other things, a firm stand by General Fazlollah Zahedi and strong pressure from Baghdad radio.¹⁰

According to Gasiorowski, from the morning of 16 August Roosevelt’s team improvised a new strategy, using the same networks to circulate the Shah’s decrees and organise demonstrations.⁸

19 August 1953

On 19 August the CIA station cabled: “Overthrow of Mossadeq appears on verge of success. Zahedi now at radio station.” In the same cable Ambassador Loy Henderson and the station chief asked that five million dollars be held immediately available for the new government.¹¹

The Acting Director of Central Intelligence, Charles Cabell, wrote to Eisenhower of an unexpected strong upsurge of popular and military reaction against Mosaddegh’s government and of huge crowds in the streets of Tehran calling for the Shah’s return. John Waller, head of the Iran Branch in the CIA’s Directorate of Plans, judged that the royalist movement of 19 August “contained a large element of spontaneity”.^12,13

Zahedi became Prime Minister; FRUS dates his premiership from 15 August 1953, that is, from the Shah’s decree. On 26 August he exchanged letters with President Eisenhower.^4,6

The long road to the documents

The 1989 FRUS volume on Iran contained no documentation on the role of the CIA. It is supplemented by the retrospective volume Iran, 1951–1954, released in June 2017 (second edition 2018), which documents the covert operations of the Truman and Eisenhower administrations.^1,14,15

The original TPAJAX cables were most likely destroyed in the 1960s, and the microfilm copies later, under a schedule approved by the US National Archives. Some of the cables in FRUS come from transcripts made by CIA historians in the late 1970s.¹⁶

In 2013 the CIA released part of its internal history The Battle for Iran (from the mid-1970s), in which it explicitly acknowledges that it planned and helped carry out the coup; the document states that the coup “was carried out under CIA direction as an act of U.S. foreign policy”.^3,17

The version of this history released in 2014 contains the CIA’s most explicit references to date to British participation, which neither government has formally acknowledged.¹⁷

According to media and secondary accounts · not confirmed by official sourcesSecondary accounts sometimes refer to the British part of the undertaking as Operation Boot (according to Dan Lomas, the SIS codename).¹⁸