The 19 August 1953 toppling of Muhammad Musaddiq's government in Iran was animportant historical event from various perspectives, many of which are being discussed byMiddle East observers to this date. First, it was the first covert post-World War II operation bythe U.S. government, in cooperation with Britain, to topple the constitutional government of asovereign nation. Operation AJAX, as the coup d'état came to be called by theCIA, was implemented at the height of the Cold War, and as such was accompanied by manyfamiliar justifications. The most important of these were the improbability of any resolution to theoil-nationalization crisis between Iran and Britain as long as Musaddiq remained in power and thecommunist threat posed by the Tudeh Party of Iran and its Soviet sponsor.1 Thelong-term consequence of this intervention can partially explain the 1979 revolution in Iran andthe ongoing crisis in Iran–U.S. relations.