In the early 1950s, democratically elected Iranian Prime Minister Mohammed Mossadegh moved to nationalize the country's lucrative oil industry. The move sent shock waves to Britain, whose Anglo-Persian Oil Company, which later became British Petroleum, had operated for decades in the country. It also raised alarms in the United States, which was slowly becoming more involved in Middle Eastern politics following World War II, and was in the early stages of the Cold War.

So in 1953, the U.S. and Britain worked to lead a coup, installing a government led by Shah Mohammed Reza Pahlevi.

The U.S. role in the coup has been an open secret for decades, but the CIA and State department documents surrounding the event have been slow to trickle out. President Dwight Eisenhower wrote in his diary in 1953 that if knowledge of the coup became public, “We would not only be embarrassed in that region, but our chances to do anything of like nature in the future would almost totally disappear.”

This month, 1,007 pages of documents were released that have filled in the gaps of what we know about the U.S. role in the Iranian coup.

Malcolm Byrne, deputy director and director of research for the National Security Archive, based at George Washington University, has worked for years to get documents like these released. He discusses the significance of their release, and how the 1953 coup changed the course of both Iranian and world history. 

 This segment is hosted by Todd Zwillich.