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To: SoCal Pubbie
Where do you get your history, AOC and Ilhan Omar?

Where do you get your propaganda?


Operation Ajax: The Coup of 1953

"The CIA, under Allen Dulles, and MI6 together devised a plan: Operation Ajax. Its aim was to depose Mosaddegh and strengthen the Shah. Kermit Roosevelt, a grandson of Theodore Roosevelt, was chosen to lead the covert operation in Tehran"

"In August 1953 the Shah, under pressure, signed decrees dismissing Mosaddegh and appointing General Fazlollah Zahedi as prime minister. Initially, the coup faltered: Mosaddegh’s supporters resisted, and the Shah fled to Rome in panic. But Roosevelt and his team regrouped. They mobilized paid demonstrators and allied military units. On August 19, violent clashes erupted in Tehran. Pro-coup forces, including elements of the army and street mobs, stormed Mosaddegh’s residence. After heavy fighting, Mosaddegh’s government collapsed. He was arrested, tried, and sentenced to house arrest until his death in 1967. Zahedi assumed power, and the Shah returned triumphantly. The Anglo-American operation had succeeded."

https://explaininghistory.org/2025/08/28/the-1953-coup-oil-mosaddegh-and-the-roots-of-iranian-resentment/

11 posted on 05/19/2026 5:17:36 PM PDT by T.B. Yoits
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To: T.B. Yoits

Yeah that’s the old story. Yes, the CIA supported the Shah. But you’re still wrong. The government of Iran had been ruled by a king, known as Shah, for about 1500 years before Mosaddegh came along. It had been ruled by the Qajar Dynasty since 1796. The last Qajar shah was forced to accept a constitution in 1906, and in 1925 the Pahlavi dynasty began when the legislature called the Majlis removed the sitting shah and replaced him with Reza Shah, who was in turn replaced by the last shah in 1941. Thus Shah Mohamed Reza Pahlavi was was the legitimate monarch of Iran in 1953.

These are facts, and you cannot argue otherwise. Now here are some other facts for you.

Mosaddegh was never popularly elected to the position of prime minister. His party was voted into power in Iran’s legislative body and he was appointed to the position by Pahlavi.

Mosaddegh was related to the ousted Qajar ruler and was actually the one trying to stage a coup. He illegally tried to stage an election to reduce the shah to a figurehead, and then tried to dissolve the Majlis. Did your linked source mention that?

I find it funny that you went to the effort of writing the fact that the shah left the country in bold letters. He certainly did that, but as I wrote, he never abdicated, nor was he removed from power.

If you want a little more balanced history of what actually happened, you might wanna watch this.

https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=3oIQD5bYqJM&ra=m


14 posted on 05/19/2026 5:45:12 PM PDT by SoCal Pubbie
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To: T.B. Yoits
LOL Kermit certainly took credit for overthrowing Mosaddegh. But Mossy had put himself in an impossible position. He had nationalized the decades old British oil concession, without compensation, but in the world of the 1950s, he could not sell oil from it. Deprived of its oil revenue, Iran was approaching bankruptcy. Neither could Mossy admit to his supporters that he had overplayed his hand, and that concessions had to be made.

So Mossy was on his way out, at the hands of his fellow Iranians, and soon. The only question was how he would be replaced: a more authoritarian Shah, a military Junta, or a Communist takeover. Everyone in Iran understood the choice, and the stakes. To the extent, if any, Kermit affected the choice of who replaced Mossy, he saved Iran from rule by a Persian Saddam Hussein, or joining the Communist Bloc.

15 posted on 05/19/2026 5:59:25 PM PDT by Pilsner
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