DECLASSIFIED DOCUMENTS SHED LIGHT ON U.S. ROLE IN 1953 IRAN COUP

The State Department released a ‘retrospective’ volume of declassified documents on Thursday on the 1953 coup in Iran that overthrew the elected government of Mohammad Mosaddegh and reinstated the rule of the Shah Reza Pahlavi, what constitutes one of the first true official acknowledgments of the clandestine American and British participation in the event.
‘For decades, neither the U. S. nor the British governments would acknowledge their part in Mosaddeq’s overthrow, even though a detailed account appeared as early as 1954 in the Saturday Evening Post, and since then CIA and MI6 veterans of the coup have published memoirs detailing their activities,’ read a National Security Archive press release.
In 1989, the State Department published an official record of the coup period, but failed to make a single reference to covert American and British involvement. This prompted the resignation of a chief adviser on the State Department’s Office of the Historian, the office responsible for cataloging official histories, as well as a legislative effort in Congress to mandate the production of ‘a thorough, accurate, and reliable documentary record’ of U. S. foreign policy. That legislation was formalized into law in 1991 (see p. 39).

This post was published at The Daily Sheeple on JUNE 16, 2017.