Focusing on the turbulent twenty-eight months between April 1951 and August 1953, this book, based on recently declassified CIA and US State Department documents from the Mossadeq administration tell the story of the Iranian oil crisis, which would culminate in the coup of August 1953. Throwing fresh light on US involvement in Iran, Ervand Abrahamian reveals exactly how immersed the US was in internal Iranian politics long before the 1953 coup, in parliamentary politics and even in saving the monarchy in 1952. By weighing rival explanations for the coup, from internal discontent, a fear of communism and oil nationalization, Abrahamian shows how the Truman and Eisenhower administrations did not differ significantly in their policies towards Mossadeq, and how the surprising main obstacle to an earlier coup was the shah himself. In tracing the key involvement of the US and CIA in Iran, this study shows how the 1953 coup would eventually pave the way to the 1979 Iranian revolution, two of the most significant and widely studied episodes of modern Iranian history.

‘Ervand Abrahamian’s new research puts an end to the myth that the American-British offer in 1951–1953 was a generous one that Mossadeq should have accepted. It clearly shows that, among other issues, the offer was designed to buy time in order to resolve the crisis by dealing with a more ‘friendly’ post-Mossadeq government.’

Maziar Behrooz - San Francisco State University

‘More than a gripping account of the years leading up to the American-British inspired 1953 coup that overthrew Iran's constitutional government and installed an autocratic regime under the Shah, Oil Crisis in Iran offers the first serious reading of long-withheld American government documents. The extensive intervention of American officials in Iran’s internal politics, long denied, is fully laid bare. Ervand Abrahamian has done historians and policy-makers an inestimable service by transforming our view of these momentous events whose impact has reverberated down to the present day.’

Rashid Khalidi - Columbia University

‘Ervand Abrahamian, the eminent American historian of Iran, takes a deep dive into newly released documentation about the American role in the countercoup of August 1953 that ousted Prime Minister Mossadeq and restored the Shah to the throne. Understanding of those events remains hotly contested. Abrahamian takes on all the key issues: was it about oil or communism? How large a role did the Americans play? Do these events have any effect on current American relations with Iran? Anyone with an interest in those and other questions will find authoritative and persuasive answers in this deceptively conversational account of a turning point in contemporary Middle East history.’

Gary Sick - Columbia University