Thread by @karolcummins

📌The 1953 Iranian coup d'état, orchestrated by the United States (under the name TPAJAX Project or "Operation Ajax")

📌It was the first covert action conducted by the US to overthrow a foreign government during peacetime.
#Dulles #CIA #OpAJAX

iran.sa.utoronto.ca/coup/web_files…

📌”The CIA's covert intervention—codenamed TPAJAX—preserved the Shah's power and protected Western control of a hugely lucrative oil infrastructure.”

📌It’s always about the oil.

cia.gov/library/center…

“In Iran's case, with diplomacy having failed and a military incursion infeasible (the Korean War was underway), they decided to take care of "that madman Mossadeq" through a covert action under the supervision of the SOS's brother, (DCI) Allen Dulles.”

cia.gov/library/center…

🐙Oddly, considering the current scholarly consensus that Eisenhower was in masterful control of his adm, Kinzer depicts him as beguiled by a moralistic John Foster and a cynical Dulles.

cia.gov/library/center…

📌Directing the operation was the CIA's Kermit Roosevelt (grandson of Theodore), an OSS veteran, Arabist, chief of Middle East operations.

cia.gov/library/center…

The C.I.A. & S.I.S., the British intel service, handpicked Gen. Fazlollah Zahedi to succeed Prime Minister Mohammed Mossadegh (thought to be a Soviet sympathizer) and covertly funneled $5 M to General Zahedi's regime two days after the coup prevailed.

archive.nytimes.com/www.nytimes.co…

📌”The plan comprised propaganda, provocations, demonstrations, and bribery, and employed agents of influence, "false flag" operatives, dissident military leaders, and paid protestors.”

📌Sound familiar?

cia.gov/library/center…

“Iranians working for the C.I.A. and posing as Communists harassed religious leaders and staged the bombing of one cleric's home in a campaign to turn the country's Islamic religious community against Mossadegh's government.”
#StrategyOfTension

archive.nytimes.com/www.nytimes.co…

“The Shah—who reluctantly signed the decrees removing Mossadeq from office and installing Zahedi, thereby giving the coup a constitutional patina—had fled Iran during the crucial latter days of the operation.”

cia.gov/library/center…

📌”That takeover, according to Kinzer, links the 51-year-old coup with recent and current terrorism.”

cia.gov/library/center…

📌”With their devotion to radical Islam and their eagerness to embrace even the most horrific kinds of violence, Iran's revolutionary leaders became heroes to fanatics in many countries.”

cia.gov/library/center…

📌”Among those who were inspired by their example were Afghans who founded the Taliban, led it to power in Kabul, and gave Osama bin-Laden the base from which he launched devastating terror attacks.

cia.gov/library/center…

“It is not far-fetched to draw a line from Operation Ajax through the Shah's repressive regime and the Islamic Revolution to the fireballs that engulfed the World Trade Center in New York.” #91101

cia.gov/library/center…

“Most of the CIA's acknowledged efforts of this sort have shown that “Washington” has been more interested in strongman rule in the Middle East and elsewhere than in encouraging democracy.”🐙

cia.gov/library/center…

@threadreaderapp unroll please and thank you.

#Dulles #CIA #OpAJAX