1953 Iranian Coup: The Overthrow of Mohammad Mosaddegh

The 1953 Iranian coup, known in Iran as the 28 Mordad coup after its date in the Iranian calendar, overthrew the elected Prime Minister Mohammad Mosaddegh on 19 August 1953. Organised with the help of the American CIA and British intelligence, it followed Mosaddegh’s nationalisation of Iran’s oil industry. The coup restored the authority of Shah Mohammad Reza Pahlavi and cast a long shadow over relations between Iran and the West.

Background: oil and nationalism

Since the early 20th century Iran’s oil had been controlled by a British company, renamed the Anglo-Iranian Oil Company (AIOC) in 1935. The British government owned a majority of its shares. Its giant refinery at Abadan was one of the largest in the world, but Iran received a much smaller share of the profits than the company and the British treasury, and Iranian workers lived in poor conditions.

After the Anglo-Soviet invasion of Iran in 1941, which forced Reza Shah to abdicate in favour of his son, Iranian politics opened up. Nationalists, led by the veteran parliamentarian Mohammad Mosaddegh and his National Front, demanded control over the country’s oil. When talks with the AIOC on a better deal failed, the Majlis (parliament) voted in March 1951 to nationalise the oil industry.

Mosaddegh in power

Mosaddegh became prime minister at the end of April 1951 and put nationalisation into effect. Britain responded with a worldwide boycott of Iranian oil, withdrew its technicians and took the dispute to the United Nations and the International Court of Justice, which ruled in 1952 that it had no jurisdiction. Iran’s oil revenues collapsed.

In July 1952 Mosaddegh resigned in a dispute with the Shah over control of the war ministry. Mass protests in Tehran, known as the uprising of 30 Tir, forced the Shah to reappoint him within days. In October 1952 Iran broke off diplomatic relations with Britain, expelling British diplomats, including intelligence officers.

Mosaddegh’s coalition began to fragment under economic pressure. Some former allies, including the cleric Ayatollah Abol-Ghasem Kashani, turned against him. In early August 1953 he held a referendum to dissolve parliament, which produced an overwhelming yes vote but was criticised by opponents as irregular.

Planning the coup

Britain had sought to remove Mosaddegh since 1951 but, without an embassy in Tehran, needed American help. The Truman administration had preferred negotiation. After Dwight D. Eisenhower took office in January 1953, Washington agreed that Mosaddegh should go, arguing that Iran’s crisis could open the door to the communist Tudeh Party and the Soviet Union.

The CIA and the British Secret Intelligence Service (MI6) drew up a plan, called TPAJAX by the Americans and Operation Boot by the British. Kermit Roosevelt Jr., a CIA officer, directed it in Tehran. The plan relied on propaganda, bribes to politicians and newspapers, and the support of royalist army officers. The Shah, after hesitation, signed decrees dismissing Mosaddegh and appointing General Fazlollah Zahedi as prime minister.

What happened

The first attempt, on the night of 15 to 16 August 1953, failed. Colonel Nematollah Nassiri, sent to deliver the dismissal decree, was arrested by forces loyal to Mosaddegh, who had been warned. The Shah fled the country, first to Baghdad and then to Rome.

For three days Tehran was in turmoil. Supporters of Mosaddegh and the Tudeh Party demonstrated in the streets and pulled down statues of the Shah’s father. Fearing disorder, Mosaddegh ordered the police to clear the streets, which kept many of his own supporters at home.

On the morning of 19 August 1953 crowds, some of them organised and paid through the CIA’s Iranian networks, marched through central Tehran in support of the Shah. Army and police units joined them, seized the radio station and attacked Mosaddegh’s house, which was defended for several hours. Estimates of the dead range from around 200 to 300. Mosaddegh escaped over a garden wall and surrendered the next day. Zahedi took office, and the Shah returned on 22 August.

Key people

• Mohammad Mosaddegh (1882–1967) was a lawyer, aristocrat and long-serving member of parliament who became the symbol of Iranian nationalism. Popular with the urban middle class and many ordinary Iranians, he was named Time magazine’s Man of the Year for 1951.
• Mohammad Reza Shah Pahlavi (1919–1980) had succeeded his father in 1941. Cautious and often indecisive in 1953, he emerged from the coup far stronger and ruled until the revolution of 1979.
• Fazlollah Zahedi (born 1892 or 1897, died 1963), a retired general and former minister in Mosaddegh’s own first cabinet, was chosen by the plotters to replace him and served as prime minister until 1955.
• Kermit Roosevelt Jr. (1916–2000), a grandson of President Theodore Roosevelt, led the CIA’s operation on the ground in Tehran and later wrote a memoir about it.
• Ayatollah Abol-Ghasem Kashani (c. 1882–1962), an influential cleric and former ally of Mosaddegh, broke with him in 1953; his followers were among the prime minister’s opponents during the crisis.

Consequences

Mosaddegh was tried by a military court and sentenced to three years in solitary confinement, followed by house arrest at his village of Ahmadabad until his death in 1967. His foreign minister, Hossein Fatemi, was executed in 1954, and the Tudeh Party was harshly suppressed.

The oil dispute was settled in 1954 with a new arrangement. A consortium of Western companies, in which the AIOC (soon renamed British Petroleum) held 40 per cent and American companies another 40 per cent, ran Iran’s oil industry and split profits roughly evenly with Iran. Formal ownership remained with Iran’s National Iranian Oil Company.

The Shah, once a constitutional monarch with limited power, became increasingly autocratic, relying on American support and, from 1957, on the SAVAK secret police.

Legacy and debate

The coup became a defining memory in Iranian politics. Many Iranians came to see the United States as the power behind the Shah, a view that fed into the Iranian Revolution of 1979 and the hostage crisis that followed. The CIA treated the operation as a model, and a year later it organised the Guatemalan coup of 1954.

Historians still debate how decisive foreign intervention was. Some emphasise the CIA’s money and organisation; others stress that Mosaddegh had lost much domestic support and that the army, the clergy and the Shah’s supporters acted for their own reasons. Most agree that both foreign and domestic forces were essential. In 2000 Secretary of State Madeleine Albright acknowledged the US role, and in 2013 the CIA released documents confirming it.

Timeline

• 1951, 15 March: The Majlis votes to nationalise Iran’s oil industry.
• 1951, late April: Mosaddegh becomes prime minister.
• 1952, 21 July: The 30 Tir uprising returns Mosaddegh to office.
• 1952, October: Iran breaks off diplomatic relations with Britain.
• 1953, 15–16 August: The first coup attempt fails; the Shah flees abroad.
• 1953, 19 August: Royalist crowds and army units overthrow Mosaddegh.
• 1953, 22 August: The Shah returns to Tehran.
• 1954, autumn: A consortium agreement with Western oil companies settles the oil dispute.
• 1967, 5 March: Mosaddegh dies under house arrest at Ahmadabad.

Why it matters

The 1953 coup ended Iran’s experiment with a nationalist government that challenged foreign control of its oil. It entrenched the Shah’s rule for a quarter of a century, set a template for covert Cold War interventions, and left a deep mistrust of Western powers that still shapes Iranian politics.