7 notable US-backed regime changes since WWII
1. Mohammad Mosaddegh (Iran) — 1953
A member of Iran’s parliament who briefly served as prime minister, Mohammad Mosaddegh led a successful effort in 1951 to nationalize the country’s vast oil reserves.
The democratically elected Mosaddegh and his nationalist supporters gradually sidelined the power of the nation’s monarch, Mohammad Reza Shah Pahlavi.
Due to the threat posed to their economic interests, the United States and the United Kingdom helped stage a coup in 1953 known as Operation Ajax that backed a return to power for the Shah and the deposing of Mosaddegh.
The shah remained in power until 1979, when a revolution established the modern Islamic Republic, with many linking the 1953 coup to contemporary anti-U.S. sentiment.
“Iran's hard-line state television spent hours discussing the coup that toppled Prime Minister Mohammad Mosaddegh on its anniversary in June. In their telling, a straight line leads from the coup to the 1979 Islamic Revolution that ultimately toppled the fatally ill shah,” noted The Associated Press in 2023.
“It still fuels the anti-Americanism that colors decisions made by the theocracy, whether in arming Russia in its war on Ukraine or alleging without evidence that Washington fomented the recent nationwide mass protests targeting it.”
