Encyclopedia of Cold War Espionage, Spies, and Secret Operations by Richard C.S. Trahair

Author:Richard C.S. Trahair
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Enigma Books
Published: 2011-05-16T16:00:00+00:00

OPERATION AJAX (1953). Operation AJAX (Richelson, 1995) or TAPJAX/ BOOT (Deacon 1988) was a secret SIS/Central Intelligence Agency (CIA) operation that secured power for the Shah of Iran during the country’s popular nationalist government of Prime Minister Mohammed Mossadegh (1880–1967).

Mohammed Mossadegh, born in Tehran, held a law degree from Lausanne University, and held several posts in Iranian government ministries in the 1920s. In 1925 he retired, but returned to politics in 1944. He was a devoted nationalist who directed his attacks at the Anglo-Iranian Oil Company (AIOC), which he believed had exploited the Iranian economy for 50 years.

When he became prime minister of Iran, Mossadegh nationalized the oil industry, a monopoly largely owned by British Petroleum (BP), and prepared a plan to compensate the previous owners with funds from the profits of the oil sales. Both the Conservative and Labour governments in Great Britain wanted BP, one of seven oil companies that controlled the world’s oil industry (at that time known as the “Seven Sisters”), to maintain its monopoly and feared the loss would cripple British prestige in the Middle East at a time when Arab nationalism ran high. The British took their case to the United Nations and the International Court of Justice, and lost. Russia hailed Mossadegh’s success and urged the Iranian Tudeh party (Communist) to support him.

The British Foreign Secretary, the Minister of Defense, and the BP chairman proposed military intervention. Britain’s prime minister, Clement Attlee (1883– 1967), would not agree; instead, an embargo was placed on Iranian oil and Iranian funds in British banks were frozen.

At first the United States wanted little to do with the problem in Iran, experiencing problems itself at the time with oil industry cartels. President Dwight D. Eisenhower (1890–1969) supported Mossadegh’s attempt to make his country independent politically and economically in 1953. In time the British embargo crippled the Iranian economy, and the Americans feared the Soviets would seek further influence in Iran.

The CIA, with support from the British SIS, planned to support the Shah and undermine Mossadegh’s weakening control of the Iranian government. On August 8, 1953, Eisenhower gave the CIA permission to bring about the downfall of Mossadegh. With help from the U.S. embassy in Tehran, nonpartisans were brought to the city and encouraged to riot by liberally distributing $100,000 in cash among them, and the Shah’s loyal general, Fazlollah Zahedi, was on hand to manage the coup, arrested Mossadegh—who appeared to have escaped—and had him jailed.

The most important U.S. actors in the coup were Allen Dulles (1893–1969), CIA head; Kermit Roosevelt (1916–2000), chief of the CIA Plans Directorate’s Near East and Africa Division; the American ambassador in Tehran; and the former chief of the New Jersey State Police, H. Norman Schwarzkopf (1896–1958), a CIA military specialist attached to the American embassy, who from 1942 to 1948 served the internal security needs of the Shah.

Under Kermit Roosevelt’s direction the CIA arranged for Iran’s newspapers to publish pro-Shah and anti-Mossadegh articles; to print “true” stories that had been fabricated, with

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