Most studies of the coup d’état in Iran in August 1953—a coup backed by U.S. and British intelligence agencies—attribute it at least partly to U.S. concerns about the threat of a Communist takeover in Iran. This article examines the evidence available to U.S. officials about the nature of the Communist threat in Iran prior to the coup, in the form of reports, analyses, and policy papers written on this subject at the time by U.S. officials. The documentation reveals that U.S. policymakers did not have compelling evidence that the threat of a Communist takeover was increasing substantially in the months before the coup. Rather, the Eisenhower administration interpreted the available evidence in a more alarming manner than the Truman administration had. The coup the administration undertook in response was therefore premature, at best.

This article gives an overview of TPBEDAMN, a large covert operation the U.S. Central Intelligence Agency (CIA) carried out in Iran for several years in the early 1950s. TPBEDAMN was a psychological warfare operation intended to undermine the influence of the Soviet Union and its Iranian ally, the Communist Tudeh Party, through covert propaganda and political action activities. When U.S. officials decided in early 1953 to overthrow Iran's prime minister, Mohammad Mosaddeq, they relied heavily on TPBEDAMN's large network of Iranian agents and subagents to plan and implement a coup d'état. The overview of TPBEDAMN presented here helps to clarify both the nature of the organizational apparatus the CIA used against Mosaddeq and the broader context within which the coup occurred, especially the intense Cold War climate that prevailed and the prevalence of psychological warfare in this era.