Keywords
covert operation
intelligence
Iran
Middle East
Abstract
The August 19, 1953 coup in Tehran was a joint British-American secret intelligence operation, planned and executed with the assistance of a group of Iranian royalists. The main objective of the British and US governments was to maintain political influence in Iran without revealing their involvement. These events, regarded as a manifestation of external interference in state policy, occupy an extremely important place in contemporary Iranian historical and political consciousness, determining Iran's relations with the United States, and thus affecting the security of the entire Middle East region.
The author focuses on presenting the three main determinants of the 1953 coup. It includes the British-Iranian conflict over the nationalisation of the oil sector, the threat of the country falling into the communist sphere of influence, and internal factors, involvinf disputes within the ruling coalition. The paper seeks to answer the questions: how British policy towards Iran was shaped in relation to the problem of oil exploitation, what were the reasons for American involvement in the clandestine operations of the SIS in Tehran in 1952-1953, and whether the coup could have been the result of the actions of purely internal opposition to Mohammad Mosaddegh.
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