Operation Ajax: The CIA’s Iran coup
The Global Story
BBC
3.8 • 666 Ratings
🗓️ 11 May 2026
⏱️ 28 minutes
🧾️ Download transcript
Summary
At the outset of the war in Iran, US President Donald Trump suggested that regime change was one of its goals. He later said it had been had achieved, a claim that is disputed by critics who point out that the same repressive forces in Iran still hold power.
American attempts at regime change in Iran have a long history. In 1953 the CIA, assisted by British intelligence, led a deadly coup that toppled Iran’s last democratically elected leader. It’s a moment in history that poisoned US-Iranian relations, and helped launch the theocratic revolution to come. But the immediate success of ‘Operation Ajax’ would convince the CIA to carry out a wave of similar plots around the world.
We get the full story from Scott Anderson, author of King of Kings: The Fall of the Shah and the Revolution That Forged Modern Iran.
Producers: Viv Jones and Valerio Esposito Executive producer: James Shield Mix: Travis Evans Senior news editor: China Collins Photo: Supporters of the Shah of Iran in Tehran, 1953. Credit (Getty/Bettmann)
Transcript
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| 0:00.0 | BBC Sounds, Music, radio, podcasts. |
| 0:05.0 | We have really regime change. |
| 0:09.0 | You know, this is a change in the regime. |
| 0:12.0 | Donald Trump has said many times that he's achieved something like regime change in Iran. |
| 0:19.0 | Their first level leaders are dead. Their first level leaders are dead. |
| 0:21.1 | Their second level leaders are dead. |
| 0:23.3 | Some of their third level leaders are dead. |
| 0:25.8 | I call that regime change. |
| 0:27.6 | It's hard to make a watertight case for it, though. |
| 0:30.7 | There was a Hamanae in charge before the war. |
| 0:33.7 | There's still a Haminae in charge now. |
| 0:36.7 | But it wouldn't be the first time the US has attempted regime change in Iran. |
| 0:44.0 | Back in 1953, the CIA led a coup to topple Iran's democratically elected prime minister. |
| 0:53.2 | A moment in history that's less well known in the United States, |
| 0:57.6 | but definitely hasn't been forgotten in Iran. |
| 1:01.8 | It may still be shaping the thinking of the new Iranian leaders |
| 1:05.8 | the US needs to negotiate with now. |
| 1:10.6 | From the BBC, I'm Tristan Redmond, and today on the global story, the long shadow of the |
| 1:17.1 | 1953 coup, and why it may have shaped Iran and U.S. thinking on regime change for decades. |
| 1:29.8 | I'm Scott Anderson. I'm Scott Anderson. |
| 1:31.2 | I'm a nonfiction book writer and journalist. |
| 1:34.7 | I've written a series of nonfiction books, |
... |
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