Kermit's Game—Iran 1953 and the Template for Regime Change
- Jeff Kellick
- Mar 7
- 2 min read
Updated: Jul 28
$1 Million and One Month to Overthrow a Democracy
In August 1953, Kermit Roosevelt Jr. — grandson of the president who "took" Panama — sat in a Tehran basement and directed the overthrow of a democratically elected government. The operation cost less than a million dollars. It took less than a month. It installed a dictator who ruled for twenty-six years. And it set in motion a chain of consequences Americans are still paying for.
When Iranian students seized fifty-two American hostages in 1979, most Americans asked: why do they hate us? What did we do? The answer begins in that basement. This episode traces how the coup happened and who made it happen — the British oil monopoly that refused Iran a fair split, the Dulles brothers whose wartime compromises shaped their methods, and Operation Ajax itself: the manufactured chaos, the paid mobs, the first failed attempt, and Roosevelt's refusal to abort. Then it follows the blowback — SAVAK, the revolution, the hostage crisis — and turns to a harder lesson through the cases of Kim Philby and Aldrich Ames: the same secrecy that enables covert action also enables catastrophic betrayal.
This is Episode 9 of "Empire of Liberty: America's Foreign Entanglements from the Founders to the Forever Wars," a series tracing how a republic that warned against entangling alliances became a global military empire. It begins Part IV — The CIA and Covert Empire.
The question underneath all of it: did this leave Americans more free, or more governed?
⏱️ CHAPTERS
00:00 Introduction: Coinciding with Current Events
02:19 Welcome to the Consequential Actions Podcast
02:59 Operation Ajax: Kermit Roosevelt in Tehran
07:59 Book Recommendations: The Prize & The Devil's Chessboard
09:48 The 1901 D'Arcy Concession and British Petroleum
14:39 Mohammad Mossadegh and the Nationalization of Oil
16:20 Britain's Response: Economic Warfare and Boycott
18:22 Truman's Refusal vs. Eisenhower's Approval
19:49 The Dulles Brothers: Wall Street and Covert Action
22:47 Recruiting Former Nazis and Operation Sunrise
25:19 The Cold War Frame: Reframing Oil as a Communist Threat
27:48 Executing the Coup: Bribery, Chaos, and Manufactured Mobs
30:41 The CIA Template for Regime Change Established
33:28 The Return of the Shah and the Creation of SAVAK
36:40 The Blowback: The 1979 Revolution and Hostage Crisis
39:23 Covert Betrayal: Kim Philby, Aldrich Ames, and Intelligence Failures
45:08 The Lessons and Legacy of Iran 1953
47:06 Conclusion and Preview of the Next Episode
📚 Companion article — "Kermit's Game — Iran 1953 and the Template for Regime Change," citing the CIA's own declassified 1954 clandestine service history "Overthrow of Premier Mossadeq," Kermit Roosevelt's memoir Countercoup, and the State Department's Foreign Relations of the United States, 1952–1954: Iran:
https://www.consequentialactions.com/post/kermit-s-game-iran-1953-and-the-template-for-regime-change
🎙️ Empire of Liberty — Episode 9: "Kermit's Game — Iran 1953 and the Template for Regime Change"
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Consequential Actions is a libertarian, non-interventionist analysis of American constitutional and foreign policy. New episodes weekly.
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