Overview
Operation Ajax — known in Britain as Operation Boot — was a covert operation jointly executed by the CIA and MI6 in August 1953. Its objective: remove Iran’s democratically elected Prime Minister Mohammad Mosaddegh from power and reinstall Shah Mohammad Reza Pahlavi as absolute monarch. The operation is one of the most thoroughly documented regime-change actions of the early Cold War.
Background
The immediate trigger was Mosaddegh’s nationalization of the Anglo-Iranian Oil Company (AIOC, later BP) in 1951. The British government responded with an international oil embargo that crippled Iran’s economy. Mosaddegh, a constitutional nationalist who had been elected Prime Minister by Iran’s parliament, appealed to the United States for economic and political support. The Eisenhower administration, persuaded by British intelligence assessments that portrayed Mosaddegh as unstable and vulnerable to Communist (Tudeh Party) influence, authorized the CIA to plan his removal.
The Operation
CIA officer Kermit Roosevelt Jr. (grandson of President Theodore Roosevelt) ran the operation from inside Tehran with a small team. The plan, codenamed TPAJAX by the CIA, combined political action, propaganda, and direct bribery:
- Large sums were paid to Iranian military officers, politicians, newspaper editors, and religious figures to shift their allegiance or remain neutral
- Hired crowds were used to stage pro-Shah demonstrations and violent riots in Tehran
- CIA-funded operatives posed as Mosaddegh supporters while committing arson and attacks on religious leaders, creating false-flag incidents to discredit the government
- Propaganda materials, including forged documents, were planted to suggest Mosaddegh was a Communist or was about to hand power to the Tudeh Party
- On the night of 15 August 1953, a first attempt to arrest Mosaddegh and install a military government failed when loyalist forces resisted; Roosevelt and his Iranian partners regrouped
On 19 August 1953, a second, larger effort succeeded. Military units seized key buildings, pro-Shah crowds (some paid, some genuinely mobilized) overwhelmed Mosaddegh’s supporters, and the Prime Minister was arrested after taking refuge in the Majlis (parliament). He was later tried for treason in a military court and sentenced to three years in prison followed by life under house arrest. The Shah, who had fled to Rome during the first attempt, returned to Tehran and consolidated absolute power with U.S. backing.
According to the CIA’s own internal history, the operation cost approximately $1 million in direct payments and other expenses — a modest sum that produced one of the most consequential regime changes of the Cold War. Kermit Roosevelt later wrote in his memoir that the success of Ajax convinced many in the Agency that covert political action could achieve results far beyond what conventional diplomacy or military force could deliver at comparable cost.
Aftermath and SAVAK
In the years following the coup, the Shah’s regime became increasingly repressive. With U.S. assistance, Iran established the National Intelligence and Security Organization (SAVAK) in 1957. SAVAK received training from the CIA and Israeli intelligence and became the Shah’s primary instrument for suppressing political opposition until the 1979 revolution.
Legacy
The 1979 Iranian Revolution and the subsequent U.S. embassy hostage crisis were fueled in significant part by long-standing Iranian resentment of the 1953 intervention. Many Iranians across the political spectrum continue to cite Operation Ajax as the foundational grievance in modern U.S.-Iran relations.
Status
Fully confirmed. In 2013 the CIA officially acknowledged its central role when the National Security Archive published the full declassified internal CIA history of TPAJAX (written in the 1970s). The document details planning, payments, and the two-stage execution. The British government has never issued a comparable formal acknowledgement of MI6 participation, though contemporaneous records and participant memoirs confirm the joint nature of the operation. The original 1953 coup documents and the later CIA history are available through the National Security Archive.