Operation Ajax

Iran, 1953: a coup denied for six decades, then declassified with an apology-shaped shrug.

The 1953 CIA/MI6 coup against Iran's elected PM Mossadegh after oil nationalization: crowds rented, press bought, generals cued — denied for decades, then documented by the agency's own history (leaked to the NYT in 2000; formally declassified with admission in 2013, including the sentence 'the coup was carried out under CIA direction'). Kermit Roosevelt's memoir had already told the story with satisfaction. Its structural importance: the first full demonstration that a democracy could be ended by catalog methods for resource reasons, deniably, and admitted two generations later when admission cost nothing. The template file for Guatemala, Chile, and the archive's standing prior.