Iranian Coup d'Etat: Internal and External Factors

In many countries of the world in the modern era multiple internalized domestic conflicts have intensified and become further aggravated. There are numerous on-going discussions in the academic community and in broader political discourse on the acute problem of accelerated interference by the West in the internal affairs of sovereign states for the purpose on either saving a regime or removing it from power. There is much to be learned from an examination of the role and consequences of the involvement of external Western actors in the internal political processes of then ‘Third World’ countries during the Cold War. The main interest of academics is in the role of special services and their clandestine operations. The example explored herein is the successful coup d’etat in Iran where the United States and Great Britain conspired together to remove the democratically elected Prime Minister Mossaddeq from political power. Though involvement of Washington and London today is an indisputable reality which is officially recognized in Washington (in contrast with London), correlation of domestic and external aspects of the process of the radical change of the Iranian political situation still remains one of the most debatable questions. The author of the article utilizes recently declassified American documents to bring new proof of the decisive role of external forces and illuminates further how they went about it.