The 1953 coup d'etat in Iran ushered in a period of exploitation and oppression that has continued – despite a subsequent revolution that led to huge changes – for 70 years. Each year on August 19, the anniversary of the coup, millions of Iranians ask themselves what would have happened if the US and UK had not conspired all those years ago to overthrow Iran’s democratically elected leader.
Iran, the Middle East and, arguably, the whole world may well have been profoundly different. Apart from rewriting the destiny of Iran and its neighbours, the coup paved the way for a series of imperialist interventions and the toppling of democratically elected governments across the global south. Perhaps Washington might have thought twice before plotting coups in Guatemala in 1954, Congo in 1961 or Chile in 1973, if they’d been unable to overthrow Iran’s prime minister, Mohammad Mosaddegh, so easily and profitably.
As the democratically elected leader of Iran from 1951 to 1953, Mosaddegh championed nationalisation of Iran’s oil industry. This had previously been in the hands of the Anglo-Persian Oil Company – a British company, founded in 1909 after the discovery of a large oil field in Iran, which would later become BP.
