Sixty years ago this Monday, on August 19, 1953, modern Iranian history took a critical turn when a U.S.- and British-backed coup overthrew the country’s prime minister, Mohammed Mossadegh. The event’s reverberations have haunted its orchestrators over the years, contributing to the anti-Americanism that accompanied the Shah’s ouster in early 1979, and even influencing the Iranians who seized the U.S. Embassy in Tehran later that year.
