The Cairo-Tehran Connection in Anglo-American Rivalry in the Middle East,1951–1953

Abstract

1989, the United States celebrates its tenth anniversary as Iran's official Great Satan. American actions during the past decade, notably Washington's de facto alliance with Iraq in the latter part of the Gulf war and the destruction of an Iranian airliner in 1988, have done much to stoke the fires of Iranian hatred and distrust; but Great Satans do not grow their horns overnight, and in this case Iran's complaints go back more than a generation, at least to the summer of 1953, when the American Central Intelligence Agency helped overthrow the Iranian government led by Muhammad Mossadegh. The existence of a US role in Mossadegh's fall was a rather open secret almost from the first; and in the past several years, participants in the coup and scholars have gone far towards elucidating the nature of that role. Iran specialists such as James Bill have set Operation Ajax in the context of a long history of US intervention in Iran, in the process explaining the origins and at least the partial legitimacy of Iranian grievances against the United States. Historians of US covert operations, particularly John Prados and Gregory Treverton, have placed the anti-Mossadegh coup near the beginning of a long and checkered history of US paramilitary warfare, assassination attempts, economic sabotage, and political subversion throughout the third world.1