Extract from ABC News
The US is still haunted by its orchestration of an Iranian coup in 1953. (Wikimedia Commons: Dr William Arthur Cram)
On a bright winter afternoon, protesters marched down the leafy streets of a college neighbourhood in the west of Los Angeles.
Green, white and red flashed among the hundreds-strong crowd, the colours of Iran's flag.
On this day, however, the flags bore the Lion and Sun, a symbol used until the 1979 revolution, when the last shah was ousted.
The group had gathered to call for a regime change in Iran, supporting the ongoing protests occurring within the country itself.
Images of Reza Pahlavi — the exiled son of Iran's last shah — and of US President Donald Trump, who promised to "get involved" if the Iranian government killed protesters, were held up among the flags.
Many among the Los Angeles crowd urged the president to do just that.
Within a moment, the scene turned to chaos.
As the group walked down Veteran Avenue in Westwood, a moving truck barrelled down the road, sending marchers scrambling to the footpaths.
As the truck came to a stop in the middle of an intersection, protesters battered the vehicle's sides with flag poles while others climbed atop the vehicle.
Videos recorded from every angle captured messages on the side of the truck, revealing the driver's intention:
"NO SHAH. NO REGIME. USA: DON'T REPEAT 1953. NO MULLAH."
A truck driven through a crowd of protesters in Los Angeles carried signs opposing a US intervention. (Reuters: KABC)
The debate over oil
For decades, Iran was defined by the words of British diplomat George Curzon in 1892: one of many "pieces on a chessboard upon which is being played out a game for the dominion of the world".
It spent the first half of the 20th century riding waves of upheaval at the hands of the world's advancing superpowers.
Iran's vast oil reserves had attracted the attention of the British government, which bought a controlling share in Persia's oil in 1908.
In 1921, a coup backed by Britain brought Reza Shah Pahlavi to power.
Reza Shah Pahlavi while he was the minister of war in the 1920s. (The Smithsonian Institution: Antoin Sevruguin)
Years later, during World War II, Reza Shah fell out of favour with the Allies.
He had declared Iran neutral, fearing British and Soviet ambitions in the country while opposing Germany's race-based ideologies.
But as Germany advanced into the USSR in 1941, Soviet and British forces occupied Iran, citing the shah's refusal to expel German nationals.
On September 11, Britain began working to have Reza Shah deposed in favour of his pro-British son, Mohammad Reza Pahlavi.
Five days later, Reza Shah abdicated and went into exile.
But even after British troops pulled out in 1946, Iran was uneasy.
Debate brewed over control of the oil fields — should the British be allowed to continue extracting oil? Should the Soviet Union get a slice? Or should the country move to end foreign influence altogether?
Elected prime minister in March 1951, Mohammed Mossadegh immediately set about wresting back control of Iran's oil fields.
Iranian prime minister Mohammed Mossadegh nationalised his country's oil market in 1951. (Getty Images: Bettmann Collection )
The shah, who had regularly intervened in parliamentary activity to appease his British allies, was concerned that blocking the Nationalisation Act would be viewed as unpatriotic.
Thus began the Abadan Crisis.
Britain bites back
As the United Kingdom's single biggest overseas asset, the government-owned Anglo-Iranian Oil Company (AIOC) in Abadan, in Iran's south-west, was a source of national pride.
Now known as the British Petroleum Company (BP), the Anglo-Iranian Oil Company was Britain's largest overseas asset in the 1950s. (File)
So, when Iran tore up its contract with the AIOC and took control of its assets, the move was strongly opposed.
Aside from the enormous economic loss the UK would experience, British emissaries in the US argued that it "would be widely regarded as a victory for the Russians".
The UK imposed a series of economic sanctions on Iran and cut off the export of key British commodities such as sugar and tea.
British warships blockaded Abadan, and all British personnel were withdrawn from the oil fields.
Iran's economy suffered massive losses.
With few Iranians trained to run the oil wells, and other countries refusing to make their technicians available, oil production plummeted.
By 1952, Iran was producing just 20,000 barrels per day — a fraction of the 664,000-barrel average in 1950.
What little was produced sold poorly on the international market due to a devastatingly effective British embargo.
An estimated 80,000 Iranians were put out of work and the Iranian government faced bankruptcy.
All the while, support for Mossadegh was waning both among the public and his own cabinet.
The leader became increasingly autocratic, relying on emergency powers to rule.
A coup d'etat goes awry
The US initially turned down calls by the UK to directly intervene, except for a few even-handed efforts to resolve the dispute.
President Harry Truman had initially been sympathetic to Iran's nationalist aspirations.
But against the backdrop of the Cold War, the US became increasingly concerned that the unrest might expose Iran to the influence of the Soviet Union and risk a communist takeover.
Or, as other historians have argued, the US was enticed by the opportunity to gain access Iran's oil fields.
On February 3, 1953, only two weeks after Dwight D Eisenhower was sworn in as US president, top American and British officials met in Washington to wargame.
They agreed to a "quasi legal" plan that would overthrow Mossadegh and install a preferred leader, retired-general-turned-politician Fazl-Allah Zahedi, as prime minister.
It was dubbed Operation Ajax.
"The aim was to bring to power a government which would reach an equitable oil settlement, enabling Iran to become economically sound and financially solvent, and which would vigorously prosecute the dangerously strong Communist Party," a CIA official wrote months later.
The US set out to install a pro-Western government in Iran under a CIA-led operation. (National Security Archive)
The mission would be carried out by the CIA under the direction of agency operative Kermit Roosevelt Jr — former President Theodore Roosevelt's grandson — though British intelligence agents made up part of the team.
Persian media was flooded with propaganda, from planted articles in existing outlets to the sudden appearance of six new anti-Mossadegh newspapers in Tehran.
Leaders of some political parties were paid to stage protests and stir public disorder.
Roosevelt's team and Zahedi's allies lobbied high-ranking military officers and other high-profile Iranians to participate in, or otherwise support, a coup.
The shah initially resisted the coup plans but was ultimately convinced when the CIA threatened that he, too, would be deposed.
CIA officers drafted two royal decrees that dismissed Mossadegh and appointed Zahedi.
The shah signed them both on August 16 and fled to northern Iran, and later, to Baghdad and then Italy.
Mohammad Reza and his wife Soraya arriving in Rome. (AFP: Intercontinentale)
But Mossadegh caught wind, arresting the commander of the Imperial Guard when he came to deliver the decrees.
Mossadegh ordered the capture of dozens of coup plotters and, believing the threat to have ended, ordered his supporters to return home.
While Zahedi had declared himself as the rightful prime minister, he was forced on the run between safe houses to avoid arrest.
The CIA ordered its officers to leave Iran, assuming the effort defeated.
The return of the shah
On August 19, the situation turned once more.
Crowds took to the streets, chanting slogans in favour of the shah — a movement Mossadegh believed was orchestrated by the CIA, though there is little evidence to suggest this.
Rioters run through the streets of Tehran in August 1953. (AFP: Intercontinentale)
Zahedi came out of hiding and, by 2.30 in the afternoon, claimed to be the only legitimate prime minister, and went on to officially replace Mosaddegh.
He immediately sent a telegram to Mohammad Reza, inviting him back to the country, and soon after, sent a second to Eisenhower, asking for financial aid.
The US answered the call.
US President Richard Nixon with Mohammad Reza during a visit to Iran in May 1972. (AP)
Pushed 'off the path of democracy'
The coup left a permanent and profound mark on Iran.
Several historians agree that, as American historian Stephen Kinzer writes, the events resulted in "violently pushing Iran off the path to democracy".
"It wasn't a perfect democracy, but there was an open system. That ended after 1953," Ervand Abrahamian, emeritus professor of history and middle eastern studies at CUNY Graduate University in New York, told the ABC in June.
Mohammad Reza, never able to fully shake his reputation as the "American Shah", grew deeply unpopular and relied on American support to stay in power for two and a half decades.
"[He] was seen as now a puppet of foreign powers, but I think even more seriously, he undermined the constitution," Dr Abrahamian said.
The monarchy eventually collapsed under the anti-West Iranian Revolution in 1979, which transformed the country into an Islamic theocracy.
Historians say the 1953 coup led to the Islamic Revolution in 1979, which replaced the monarchy with a theocratic government. (Reuters)
The coup also made way for a consortium of foreign companies to take control of Iran's oil fields — a move that did increase the country's revenue beyond pre-nationalisation levels but ended its sovereign control of its own resources.
For the US, Operation Ajax was the first time it overthrew a foreign government — something the Eisenhower administration considered a roaring success.
But history has not remembered it so fondly.
In 2000, then-Secretary of State Madeleine Albright said the US involvement contributed a "setback for Iran's political development" and for democracy.
"Although it did much to develop the country economically, the Shah's government also brutally repressed political dissent," she said.
A group of Islamist students burn US and Israeli flags in front of the former US embassy in Tehran on August 19, 2002 — the anniversary of the 1953 coup. (Reuters: Morteza Nikoubazl)
President Barack Obama made a similar admission in 2013, noting that the reputation of the US in the Middle East had been markedly damaged as a result of the affair.
"This mistrust has deep roots," he told the United Nations.
"Iranians have long complained of a history of US interference in their affairs, and America's role in overthrowing an Iranian government during the Cold War."
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