The Contemporary Middle East. A Documentary History

to flee his home, suppressed the Tudeh Party and the National Front, and restored the
shah to the throne. Mosaddeq was held under house arrest until his death in 1967.
The extent of CIA involvement in this coup has been the subject of much spec-
ulation but remains shrouded in some mystery. Washington refused to acknowledge
any role in the coup until May 2000, when Secretary of State Madeleine Albright told
a group of Iranian-Americans that “the United States played a significant role in
orchestrating the overthrow” of Mosaddeq for “strategic reasons”—a reference to the
Dwight D. Eisenhower administration’s concern that the Iranian prime minister was
falling under the sway of communists (Albright Remarks before the American-Iranian
Council, p. 401).
After Mosaddeq’s ouster, the shah’s government negotiated a new oil contract, and
the United States advanced a large loan to Tehran to restore the economy. The shah
ruled with an autocratic hand for another quarter-century, until his overthrow in the
1978–1979 revolution that created the first theocratic state in modern times. Wash-
ington’s role in ousting Mosaddeq and restoring the shah has not been forgotten in
Iran, where leaders frequently cite it as an example of U.S. interference in the coun-
try’s internal affairs (The Iranian Revolution, p. 379).

New Role in Region

Nearly three decades after the revolution, Iran’s position in the region is in some ways
stronger but in other ways weaker than it had been at the outset of the Islamic repub-

IRAN 377

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