The Failure Of Operation Ajax

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Iran has both historic and current legitimate reasons to distrust the United States. In 1953, Muhammad Mossadegh, the democratically elected leader of Iran, was overthrown in a coup d’etat, codenamed Operation Ajax by the CIA. Although Operation Ajax was at first a failure, American spy Kermit Roosevelt ignored a telegram from the CIA to call off the coup. Bethany Allen-Ebrahimian analyzes the result of his decision, “the next day, on August 19, 1953, with the aid of “rented” crowds widely believed to have to have been arranged with CIA assistance, the coup succeeded. Iran’s nationalist hero was jailed, [and] the monarchy [was] restored under the Western-friendly shah”. Although relations between the Iranian government and the United States

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