'Operation Ajax' in Iran: The CIA's Original Sin
The Socialist Program with Brian Becker
The Socialist Program
4.7 • 587 Ratings
🗓️ 2 March 2026
⏱️ 53 minutes
🧾️ Download transcript
Summary
In 1953 the CIA secretly organized a coup to overthrow the democratically elected leader of Iran. This was the CIA's first regime change operation — code-named 'Operation Ajax' — becoming the playbook for later CIA operations. Its consequences are still reverberating around the world.
In this episode we take a deep dive into how Operation Ajax was planned and executed, it's motivations, the political context locally and globally, what happened in Iran after 1953, its impact on US-Iran relations up to today, and more.
We've added many archival audio clips, including first-hand accounts on both sides, sound effects, music, and more.
This is the first episode in our new series on The Socialist Program. In each episode we will unpack a different CIA/Pentagon operation, each which was given its own code-name as Operation Ajax was.
Join the The Socialist Program community at http://www.patreon.com/thesocialistprogram to get access to the next episodes in this series, more exclusive content, and help keep this show on the air.
Credits:
Brian Becker - writer, narrator
Layan Fuleihan - writer, narrator
John Prysner - audio engineer, producer
Emily Brease - archival producer
Transcript
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| 0:00.0 | It's actually been an open secret for decades, but for the first time now, the CIA has released documents that show its role in the 1953 coup. |
| 0:10.0 | Operation Ajax, the 1953 CIA MI6 coup that overthrew the democratically elected government of Iran. |
| 0:27.5 | Operation Ajax was the CIA's very first regime change operation. |
| 0:34.1 | The CIA had been founded in 1947, just a few years before that. |
| 0:39.0 | And this really becomes the experience on which the CIA cuts its teeth. |
| 0:43.4 | This becomes the playbook, the proof of concept for why the CIA should exist. |
| 0:53.5 | Everything that has come later, Guatemala in 1954, the Congo in 1960 and 61, the toppling of the Allende government in Chile in 1973. |
| 0:57.8 | It all starts here. |
| 0:59.4 | 1953, Operation Ajax. |
| 1:03.2 | This is what the historian Stephen Kinzer called the original sin of Western involvement in Iran. |
| 1:11.6 | Oil made Iran important to the West. |
| 1:14.6 | The Shah's Prime Minister, Muhammad Mossadegh, |
| 1:17.6 | sought to break foreign control of Iranian oil. |
| 1:21.6 | To get rid of Mossadegh, the British turned to the Americans. |
| 1:25.6 | In 1953, the CIA sent a small team to Iran |
| 1:29.1 | to organize a coup. |
| 1:31.4 | Its leader was briefed by John Foster Dulles, |
| 1:33.9 | the Secretary of State. |
| 1:35.8 | What he said is this is how we're going to get rid |
| 1:38.4 | of that madman Mossadegh. |
| 1:40.4 | This was actually more than just about Iran and its oil. He was a menace to American and British and Western interests generally. |
| 1:50.0 | One thing we got a lot of the oil. |
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