Mohammad Mosaddegh was the democratically elected prime minister of Iran who nationalized the country’s oil industry — taking it back from the British-controlled Anglo-Iranian Oil Company. Britain and the United States responded by overthrowing him in a CIA-orchestrated coup in 1953, installing the Shah in his place, and setting in motion the chain of events that led directly to the 1979 Islamic Revolution twenty-six years later.

This episode traces Mosaddegh from his aristocratic Iranian childhood through the oil nationalization crisis, the CIA coup codenamed Operation Ajax, and the long shadow the overthrow cast over Iranian-American relations for the next seven decades.

• Mosaddegh’s aristocratic origins and his rise as Iran’s most popular democratic politician
• The oil nationalization — taking back Iran’s resources from British corporate control
• Operation Ajax — the CIA coup that overthrew a democracy to protect oil interests
• The Shah’s installation, the 1979 revolution, and the blowback that is still playing out today