Prime Minister Mohammad Mossadegh rides on the shoulders of cheering crowds in Tehran’s Majlis Square, outside the parliament building, after reiterating his oil nationalization views to his supporters on September 27, 1951.
A royalist tank moves into the courtyard of Tehran Radio a few minutes after pro-shah troops occupied the area during the coup which ousted Mohammad Mossadegh and his government on August 19, 1953. Demonstrators tear down the Iran Party’s sign from the front of the headquarters in Tehran on August 19, 1953, during the coup that ousted Prime Minister Mohammad Mossadegh and his government.IN response to questions from the AP, Iran’s mission to the United Nations described the 1953 coup as marking “the inception of relentless American meddling in Iran’s internal affairs” and dismissed the US acknowledgments.
The caper, retold in the 2012 Academy Award-winning film Argo directed by and starring Ben Affleck, offered a dramatized version of the operation, with Affleck playing the late CIA officer Antonio “Tony” Mendez. The podcast for the first time identified the second CIA officer who accompanied Mendez, naming him as agency linguist and exfiltration specialist Ed Johnson. He previously only had been known publicly by the pseudonym “Julio.
Seven decades later, the 1953 coup remains as hotly debated as ever by Iran, its theocratic government, historians and others. That’s led to an American political reappraisal of the 1953 CIA action in Iran. Then-Secretary of State Madeleine Albright acknowledged the US’ “significant role” in the coup in 2000. President Barack Obama, speaking in Cairo in 2009, described the CIA’s work as leading to the “overthrow of a democratically elected Iranian government.”