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Blowback Nation: How the CIA’s Iran Coup Forged a Theocracy with Nuclear Ambitions

Operation Ajax – the 1953 Anglo-American coup in Iran – overthrew the democratically elected Prime Minister Mohammad Mossadegh, ending Iran’s brief oil nationalization. U.S. and British intelligence orchestrated street riots and bribed officials to topple Mossadegh, largely to restore Western control of Iran’s oil and to prevent a feared tilt toward the Soviet bloc.

Source:

cia.gov/readingroom/do…

The motivations were explicit. Mossadegh had nationalized the Anglo-Iranian Oil Company (BP today), enraging Britain, and he championed Iranian sovereignty over foreign oil concessions. London lobbied Washington to intervene, framing Mossadegh as a potential gateway for communism in the Cold War climate . In reality, U.K. officials privately admitted Mossadegh’s government was broadly democratic and nationalist but London and the CIA resolved to remove him to protect oil interests and Western hegemony.

In August 1953, the CIA (led on the ground by Kermit Roosevelt Jr., Theodore Roosevelt’s grandson) and Britain’s MI6 executed the coup (code-named TPAJAX). After an initial failed attempt, royalist military units aided by CIA-funded mobs succeeded on August 19, 1953, in ousting Mossadegh . The Iranian prime minister’s house was shelled by tanks and crowds ransacked Tehran in coordinated chaos. Nearly 300 people died in street clashes as the coup unfolded.

Source:
archive.is/wTpuH

The coup d’état reinstalled Shah Mohammad Reza Pahlavi as uncontested monarch. The Shah had fled during the chaos but returned in triumph after Mossadegh’s overthrow, signing royal decrees (firmans) that cemented his power. U.S. Embassy and CIA personnel stood by as Iran’s last popular government was crushed. A CIA internal history, kept secret for decades, later openly admitted the agency “planned and helped implement the coup” in tandem with British intelligence.

With Mossadegh imprisoned and the Shah back on the Peacock Throne, Iran was transformed into a client regime of the West. The Shah’s autocracy deepened: he quickly became a major purchaser of American weaponry and welcomed foreign oil companies back in. Over the next 25 years, Washington provided massive support from weapons to finance propping up the Shah as an anti-Soviet “pillar” in the Middle East . US officials hailed Iran’s “stability,” while turning a blind eye to growing repression.

Source:

nsarchive2.gwu.edu/NSAEBB/NSAEBB4…

A new secret police, SAVAK, was created in 1957 with close guidance from the CIA and Israel’s Mossad . SAVAK’s agents were schooled in the dark arts of surveillance, interrogation, and torture, earning a fearsome reputation as the Shah’s iron fist. Thousands of political dissidents, from Islamists to leftist students, were rounded up, imprisoned, or worse. Iranians lived in terror of SAVAK, whose American and Israeli-trained operatives routinely tortured and killed regime opponents.

Source:

scholarworks.lib.csusb.edu/cgi/viewconten…

Authoritarian rule under the Shah intensified through the 1960s and ’70s. Despite initiating some modernizing reforms, the Shah brooked no dissent. He banned opposition parties, censored the press, and used oil revenue to enrich a small elite while many Iranians remained in poverty. U.S. officials publicly praised the Shah’s “progressive” leadership even as his prisons filled with journalists, clergy, and activists. This disconnect bred smoldering resentment – a sense that the Shah was a puppet of foreign powers who put Iran’s wealth and destiny in foreign hands.

Source:

rferl.org/a/iran-politic…

Decades of pent-up anger exploded in 1978–79. Strikes and demonstrations swept Iran’s cities, uniting Islamists, liberals, and leftists against the Shah’s regime. Protesters chanted “Death to the Shah” and denounced him as a U.S. puppet. Security forces responded with violence – including a notorious massacre on “Black Friday” in Sept 1978 – which only galvanized the opposition. By January 1979, the unrest had grown into a full revolution. The Shah fled into exile, never to return.

In February 1979, Ayatollah Ruhollah Khomeini returned from exile to a hero’s welcome, riding the revolutionary wave. The U.S.-backed monarchy collapsed and was replaced by Khomeini’s Islamic Republic. Almost overnight, Iran went from being a crucial American ally to a bitter adversary. Khomeini’s theocracy combined religious rule with fierce anti-Western rhetoric. The new regime wasted no time blaming Iran’s misery on American “imperialism” – starting with the 1953 coup that had “enslaved” Iran to foreign masters.

That historical memory fueled one of the revolution’s most dramatic events: the 1979 hostage crisis. When the deposed Shah was admitted to the U.S. for medical treatment in November 1979, Iranian students suspected a repeat of 1953, another American plot to restore the Shah. In response, militant students seized the U.S. Embassy in Tehran and took 52 Americans hostage. Their explicit rationale was that the embassy had been the CIA’s headquarters for the 1953 coup, and they aimed to prevent history from repeating. The hostages were held for 444 days, paraded blindfolded before crowds – a traumatic episode that seared anti-Iran sentiment into the American psyche.

Source:

pbs.org/wgbh/americane…

Khomeini’s Iran swiftly pivoted ideologically. The Islamic Republic denounced both the “Great Satan” (the United States) and the “Little Satan” (Israel) as enemies of Islam. This was a stark reversal – under the Shah, Iran had quietly cooperated with Israel and even recognized it diplomatically . But the new regime cast itself as champion of the oppressed, especially the Palestinians. Tehran cut all ties with Israel, turned the former Israeli embassy in Tehran over to the PLO, and inaugurated an annual “Quds Day” of pro-Palestinian rallies . Anti-Western murals and slogans became ubiquitous in Tehran, reflecting a regime narrative of resisting imperialism.

Source:

aljazeera.com/news/2023/11/6…

From 1979 onward, Washington and Tehran treated each other as implacable foes. The U.S. isolated Iran, cutting off diplomatic relations and imposing sanctions that strangled Iran’s economy. In 1980, Saddam Hussein’s Iraq invaded Iran, a bloody war that would last eight years and the U.S. tilted in favor of Iraq, seeing Iran’s new Islamist regime as the greater threat. American intelligence and aid flowed to Saddam, even as he launched chemical attacks that killed thousands of Iranian soldiers and civilians. One U.S. State Department official later acknowledged it was “folly” to support Saddam’s aggression, but at the time Iran’s pleas for help fell on deaf ears.

The Iran-Iraq War (1980–88) was catastrophic for Iran. Hundreds of thousands of Iranians perished in trench warfare and from mustard gas and nerve agents that Saddam unleashed with tacit Western approval. The drawn-out slaughter cemented a siege mentality in Tehran. Traumatized by the war and convinced that the U.S. and its allies would prefer Iran’s destruction, the Islamic Republic’s hardliners gained the upper hand. Revolutionary leaders like Khamenei (now Supreme Leader) doubled down on developing deterrents both conventional and unconventional to prevent Iran from ever being so vulnerable again.

Source:

armscontrol.org/act/2004-12/ir…

n the war’s wake, Iran began cultivating regional proxies as a forward defense. During the 1980s, Iran helped form and arm Hezbollah in Lebanon (especially once Israel invaded Lebanon in 1982). Tehran also supported groups opposing Israel and pro-U.S. regimes, from Palestinian militants to later the Houthis in Yemen. The goal was clear: extend Iran’s strategic depth and counter Israel’s and America’s regional influence. “Wherever Israel looks, it sees Iran on its border,” an analyst noted – not because Iran seeks war, but because it wants to deter the U.S. or Israel from attacking by raising the costs. In effect, Iran built a network of militias as its insurance policy against regime change.

Source:

washingtonpost.com/world/2024/04/…

While buttressing proxy forces abroad, Iran also pursued a more controversial insurance policy at home: a nuclear program. Ironically, this effort had begun under the Shah with U.S. encouragement – the American government in the 1970s actively aided the Shah’s plan to build nuclear reactors . After the revolution, those plans were stalled and Iran’s nuclear work was modest. But by the mid-1990s, facing U.S. sanctions and open talk of overthrowing the Islamic Republic, Tehran quietly accelerated nuclear research. Iranian leaders saw what happened to countries without a deterrent – Iraq under Saddam, Libya’s Gaddafi – and drew a lesson that a nuclear capability might ward off foreign attack.

Source:
archive.globalpolicy.org/empire/interve…

U.S. officials, for their part, often painted Iran’s nuclear ambitions as irrational aggression. But internal analyses acknowledged Iran’s logic: Tehran had legitimate security fears. The U.S. had a “dual containment” policy to weaken Iran (and Iraq) and openly funded Iranian exile groups seeking regime change . President George W. Bush’s 2002 “Axis of Evil” speech pointedly included Iran – right after the U.S. had invaded two countries next door (Afghanistan in 2001 and Iraq in 2003). American forces now ringed Iran on nearly every side . Facing this encirclement, even some Western observers admitted Iran had “objective basis” for feeling threatened . In this light, Iran’s interest in nuclear deterrence was a bid to ensure its survival, however dangerous the proliferation risk.

Source:
cato.org/sites/cato.org…

By the early 2000s, the Iran-Israel standoff centered on Iran’s nuclear advances. Israel, which had secretly built its own nuclear arsenal, vowed it would never allow Iran to obtain the bomb. The standoff saw a shadow war intensify. Iranian nuclear scientists began dying in mysterious explosions and shootings – at least four were assassinated between 2010 and 2012, operations widely attributed to Israel’s Mossad.

A joint U.S.-Israeli cyberattack in 2010, known as Stuxnet, sabotaged Iranian centrifuges and temporarily set back the enrichment program . In 2011, an unexplained blast killed the architect of Iran’s missile program; in 2020, a top nuclear scientist (Mohsen Fakhrizadeh) was ambushed and killed in broad daylight . These covert attacks aimed to delay Iran’s progress without sparking full-scale war.

Source:
wired.com/2014/11/countd…

Amid this pressure, Iran and global powers signed the JCPOA (nuclear deal) in 2015. Tehran agreed to strict limits on enrichment and intrusive inspections, dramatically rolling back its nuclear capacities . In return, it received sanctions relief. The deal was working – Iran’s compliance was verified repeatedly by UN inspectors.

But hardliners in Washington and Tel Aviv railed against the accord. In 2018, President Trump unilaterally quit the JCPOA and reimposed sanctions, despite Iran’s adherence . This U.S. withdrawal – cheered by Iran hawks – blew up a rare diplomatic success. Iran began rebuilding its nuclear stockpile in response, and tensions soared again.

Source:
archive.is/4Lro2

Since then, Israel has escalated its sabotage campaign. Mysterious explosions rocked Iran’s Natanz enrichment site in 2020 and 2021, knocking out critical equipment . Israeli leaders openly boast of acting to prevent “another Holocaust,” while clandestinely hitting Iranian targets. The United States, meanwhile, has kept piling on sanctions and military pressure. In January 2020, a U.S. drone strike assassinated Iranian General Qassem Soleimani – the architect of Iran’s regional strategy – as he visited Iraq, nearly triggering direct war.

Iran retaliated with missile strikes on a U.S. base in Iraq, but the cycle of provocation continues. Today, hardliners on all sides cite these attacks to justify further aggression, trapping both nations in a dangerous impasse.

Source:

washingtonpost.com/national-secur…

Through proxy wars and brinksmanship, Iran and Israel now confront each other across the Middle East. In Syria, Israeli jets have bombed Iranian advisors and arms convoys to Hezbollah. In Yemen and Iraq, Iran’s allied militias occasionally target U.S. and Israeli interests. Israel, with backing from Washington (over $3 billion in annual U.S. military aid), has insisted it will preemptively strike Iran rather than let it obtain nuclear weapons.

Source:

bbc.co.uk/news/live/worl…

This week they’ve kept their promise. While Iranian leaders, for their part, vow “resistance” until U.S. and Israeli dominance recedes. Each side portrays the other as an existential threat, leaving little space for dialogue. Now we stand at the precipice of an escalation that could spell disaster for all of those involved unless cooler heads can prevail. However judging from past events, that seems highly unlikely.

Source:

reuters.com/world/middle-e…

Seven decades after the 1953 coup, the legacy of Western interference still poisons Iran’s relations with the world. The CIA’s toppling of Mossadegh – motivated by oil and geostrategy – set in motion a cascade: an authoritarian Shah, a repressive backlash in the form of an Islamic Revolution, and an enduring climate of mistrust and hostility. Iranians have never forgotten that foreign powers robbed them of self-determination, and hardliners exploit that history to shore up their rule. Likewise, Americans and Israelis scarred by 1979 and security threats see Iran as implacably aggressive.

The result is a dangerous standoff – one rooted not in age-old hatred, but in blowback from covert ops and tyranny. A 2017 declassified review by the U.S. government itself concluded that the 1953 coup “poisoned” Iran’s feelings toward the West and fueled the Islamist surge of 1979.

Source:

consortiumnews.com/2015/04/02/the…

Today’s nuclear crisis and regional tensions are a direct consequence of this troubled history. The lesson is stark: meddling in other nations’ affairs, propping up dictators or sabotaging agreements, can create a blowback that lasts generations. Ending the cycle will require honesty about that past and a break with the “might makes right” mindset that started it all.

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