The Iran War: The Long Shadow of the 1953 CIA-MI6 Coup
War Did Not Begin in 2026
The Iran War did not begin on February 28, 2026. Wars rarely begin when the first aircraft crosses a border or the first missile is launched. They begin much earlier, in decisions that alter the political development of nations, in grievances that governments fail to resolve, in opportunities deliberately destroyed, and in memories transmitted from one generation to another. The present war has immediate causes and contemporary authors, and the leaders of Iran, Israel and the United States must be held responsible for their own decisions. But anyone attempting to understand how Iran and the United States arrived at this extraordinary moment must travel backward through the Iranian Revolution, the American hostage crisis, decades of clerical repression, repeated popular uprisings, and ultimately the Anglo-American overthrow of Mohammad Mossadegh in 1953. And even that story begins earlier-- with oil.
Oil was discovered commercially at Masjed Soleiman in southwestern Iran in 1908, following the concession granted to British entrepreneur William Knox D'Arcy. The discovery led to the creation of the Anglo-Persian Oil Company in 1909. In 1914, as petroleum became increasingly important to modern naval warfare, the British government acquired a controlling interest in the company. What had begun as a commercial concession thereby became intimately connected with the strategic interests of the British Empire. The company, renamed the Anglo-Iranian Oil Company after Persia formally adopted Iran as its international name, developed one of the world's great petroleum enterprises, centered on the enormous refinery at Abadan. Between 1912 and 1951, according to Encyclopaedia Iranica, the company exported approximately 338 million tons of Iranian oil. The relationship generated enormous profits and tax revenues for Britain while becoming, for generations of Iranian nationalists, a symbol of foreign exploitation and political humiliation.
The conflict therefore involved far more than the price of petroleum. It concerned sovereignty. Who controlled Iran's principal natural resource-- the Iranian people or a company closely tied to the British government? Mohammad Mossadegh emerged as the great political representative of the nationalist answer to that question. He was not a Soviet agent or a communist revolutionary. He was an aristocratic Iranian nationalist and constitutional politician who believed both in Iranian sovereignty and in limiting royal power through constitutional government. In 1951, the Iranian parliament nationalized the Anglo-Iranian Oil Company and created the National Iranian Oil Company. Encyclopaedia Iranica describes the objectives explicitly: Iranian ownership and control of the petroleum industry, removal of British political and economic influence, and the use of oil revenues for Iranian development.
Britain responded with intense economic and political pressure. The confrontation crippled Iranian oil exports and contributed to severe economic difficulties. London wanted Mossadegh removed, but President Harry Truman's administration was unwilling to support a British plan to overthrow him. That distinction is historically important because it demonstrates that the 1953 coup was not an inevitable American response to events in Iran. It was a policy choice made by a new administration.
Eisenhower, the Dulles Brothers and the Coup That Changed Iran
Dwight D. Eisenhower entered the White House in January 1953. Richard Nixon became vice president, John Foster Dulles became secretary of state, and John Foster's brother Allen Dulles became director of the CIA. These men represented the center of the new Republican national-security establishment, and they viewed international politics through the intensely anti-communist assumptions of the early Cold War. Iran shared a long border with the Soviet Union and possessed an active communist Tudeh Party. Britain, unable to persuade Truman to support regime change, found a much more receptive audience in Eisenhower's Washington. Encyclopaedia Iranica records that British intelligence sought American support for overthrowing Mossadegh, that the Truman administration would not agree, and that within weeks of Eisenhower's inauguration senior officials began planning a coup.
The CIA and Britain's MI6 subsequently cooperated in the operation, known on the American side as TPAJAX or Ajax. CIA officer Kermit Roosevelt Jr., a grandson of Theodore Roosevelt, became the principal American operative in Iran. Money, propaganda, political contacts, street organizers and sympathetic military officers became instruments in an operation whose purpose was straightforward: remove Mossadegh and replace his government with one considered more favorable to Western interests.
This history should not be simplified into a fairy tale in which a handful of foreign agents manipulated an otherwise unified country. Iran was politically divided. Mossadegh had powerful Iranian enemies among military officers, politicians, businessmen and clerics. His political coalition had deteriorated, the oil confrontation had damaged the economy, and some of his decisions had alienated former supporters. Iranian actors were indispensable to the coup. But Iranian participation does not erase Anglo-American intervention. The CIA and MI6 deliberately entered an internal Iranian political struggle with the intention of determining its outcome.
The first attempt to remove Mossadegh failed. Colonel Nematollah Nassiri attempted to deliver the Shah's decree dismissing the prime minister but was arrested. Mohammad Reza Shah fled Iran, first to Baghdad and then to Rome. For a moment, the coup appeared dead. Roosevelt and his Iranian allies persisted. On August 19, 1953, pro-Shah crowds appeared in Tehran, military units moved against Mossadegh, strategic facilities and the radio station were seized, and Mossadegh's residence was attacked. His government collapsed. General Fazlollah Zahedi became prime minister. Mossadegh was arrested and later confined. The Shah returned triumphantly.
There is no longer any need to speculate about whether Washington was involved. The most incriminating witness is President Eisenhower himself. In his private diary on October 8, 1953, Eisenhower wrote that the restoration of the Shah and elimination of Mossadegh was something "we helped bring about." He acknowledged that American actions had been covert and that disclosure would have embarrassed the United States. He then praised the CIA operative whose persistence helped reverse the initial failure of the coup. These are not accusations made decades later by Iranian propagandists; they are the words of the American president whose administration authorized the operation.
Washington had won. Mossadegh was gone, the Shah had returned, Soviet influence appeared contained, and a new oil arrangement eventually reopened Iranian petroleum to international markets. Viewed from the White House in 1953, the operation could easily be celebrated as a triumph of covert power. The problem was that history did not end when the CIA filed its report.
From the Shah to Khomeini: The Political Consequences of 1953
After 1953, Mohammad Reza Shah progressively concentrated on political authority. Iran simultaneously underwent genuine modernization. Universities expanded, literacy increased, industries and infrastructure developed, women obtained important new rights, land reform changed rural society, oil revenues increased dramatically, and a substantial professional middle class emerged. Any academically serious assessment of the Shah's period must acknowledge these achievements. Yet Iran developed an increasingly dangerous contradiction: economic and social modernization proceeded far faster than political modernization.
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