Tag
#iran
2 articles
Iran 1953 — Operation Ajax
In the summer of 1953, the CIA was six years old. It had never overthrown a government. By August 19 of that year, working with British MI6, it had — and the country it had overthrown was Iran, the prime minister was Mohammad Mosaddegh, and the cause was, almost entirely, oil. The operation was codenamed Ajax. It was authorized by President Eisenhower against the recommendation of his Secretary of State, executed on the ground by a 36-year-old grandson of Theodore Roosevelt, and very nearly failed. The CIA officially acknowledged its role only in August 2013.
Iran-Contra
Between August 1985 and October 1986, the Reagan administration secretly sold anti-tank and anti-aircraft missiles to the Islamic Republic of Iran — an officially designated state sponsor of terrorism, in the middle of a war with Iraq. The cash went into Swiss bank accounts. From there a portion was diverted, in defiance of two congressional bans, to the Contra rebels fighting the Sandinista government in Nicaragua. The scheme was exposed by a Lebanese magazine, dismantled by a special commission, and partly prosecuted before President George H. W. Bush issued the pardons that ended the cases.
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