In 1953, Iran's democratically elected prime minister Mohammed Mossadegh was dismissed from office with a decree from the Shah Mohammad Reza Pahlavi, carried out by the Iranian Imperial Guard. The military coup was the culmination of many months of secret planning and activity by the American Central Intelligence Agency (CIA) and the British Secret Intelligence Service (MI6) as part of a plot to overthrow the Iranian government-- a plan known as Operation Ajax.
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