‘Operation Ajax’ in Iran: The CIA’s original sin [Socialist History: S1 Episode 1]

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, its motivations, the political context locally and globally, what happened in Iran after 1953, its impact on US-Iran relations up to today, and more.

This is part of the first season of Socialist History, our new series on The Socialist Program. In each episode we unpack a different CIA or Pentagon operation, each of which was given its own code-name as Operation Ajax was.