Embassy staff, who had been working with Roosevelt, agreed that it was time to give up. But Roosevelt ignored the message. It was a decision that shaped the future of Iran and its later relations with the U. Instead of abandoning the plan, he doubled down on efforts to put Zahedi in office by filling the streets of Tehran with paid protesters. The army, which had been ordered by Zahedi not to obey the Mossadegh government, took to the streets to demand that Mossadegh step down.
Around noon, Roosevelt went to the safehouse where Zahedi was hiding, directing him to wait there until he received word of success. Mossadegh then went into hiding, and the shah announced he was returning.
Over the course of nine hours, the seemingly failed coup was revived and Mossadegh was forced from office. Mossadegh turned himself in the next day. His later trial put him under house arrest for the rest of his life.
In the meantime, as prime minister, Zahedi quickly oversaw the purging of former Mossadegh loyalists and the arrest of the leaders of the National Front and Tudeh Parties, effectively chilling opposition.
The shah went on to spend the next twenty-five years consolidating power and ruling through his secret police, SAVAK, which had been established with the help of the CIA. He worked for the CIA until , when he became a lobbyist in Washington.
Among his clients was the Iranian government he had helped put in place. Events followed one another so swiftly that it was almost impossible to determine the sequence. When students stormed the U. It was all stranger than fiction, and it was all completely true.
It has also not been forgotten, and it casts a long shadow. Never again. Bridey Heing. The Shah became a U. This was the colonial regime the revolution in overthrew. In , the U. More such actions followed in the region and elsewhere, stoking backlash against a hidden American hand continuing where the British and French had left off. The interventions were covert to evade the check of both American and global public opinion. The Department. The approximately 1, pages of documents also reveal for the first time the details of how the CIA attempted to call off the failing coup — only to be salvaged at the last minute by an insubordinate spy on the ground.
A fuming United Kingdom began conspiring with U. Though some in the U. State Department, the newly released cables show, blamed British intransigence for the tensions and sought to work with Mossadegh. The coup attempt began on August 15 but was swiftly thwarted. Mossadegh made dozens of arrests. Fazlollah Zahedi, a top conspirator, went into hiding, and the shah fled the country. The CIA, believing the coup to have failed, called it off. But the cable itself and its contents were not previously published.
The consequences of his decision were momentous. Operation Ajax has long been a bogeyman for conservatives in Iran — but also for liberals. The coup fanned the flames of anti-Western sentiment, which reached a crescendo in with the U. The coup alienated liberals in Iran as well.
Mossadegh is widely considered to be the closest thing Iran has ever had to a democratic leader. He openly championed democratic values and hoped to establish a democracy in Iran. Intransigence on the part of the Anglo-Iranian Oil company led the nationalist government to escalate its demands, requiring an equal share in the oil revenues. The final crisis was precipitated when the Anglo-Iranian oil company ceased operations rather than accepting the nationalists' demands.
The newly state-owned oil companies saw a dramatic drop in productivity and, consequently, exports; this resulted in the Abadan Crisis, a situation that was further aggravated by its export markets being closed. Even so royalties to the Iranian government were significantly higher than before nationalization.
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