At the end of last month, the U.S. State Department quietly published a trove of hundreds of documents detailing the American role in Iran’s 1953 coup.
07.11.2017 – Washington Post – In that year, a combined CIA and British plot deposed democratically elected Prime Minister Mohammed Mossadegh, an act fueled by Cold War geopolitics as well as Western indignation at Mossadegh’s nationalization of Iran’s oil assets. The coup may feel distant to Americans, but it lives long in the imagination of many in the Middle East. “This is still such an important, emotional benchmark for Iranians,” said Malcolm Byrne, the director of research of the nongovernmental National Security Archive at George Washington University, to the Associated Press. “Many people see it as the day that Iranian politics turned away from any hope of democracy.”
