Thursday marks the anniversary of one of the most mythologized events in history, the 1953 coup in Iran that ousted Prime Minister Muhammad Mossadeq. CIA complicity in that event has long provoked apologies from American politicians and denunciations from the theocratic regime. The problem with the prevailing narrative? The CIA’s role in Mossadeq’s demise was largely inconsequential. The institution most responsible for aborting Iran’s democratic interlude was the clerical estate, and the Islamic Republic should not be able to whitewash the clerics’ culpability. >>>
