Iran
Mohammad Mosaddegh was a socially progressive reformer democratically elected as Iran’s prime minister in 1951. However when his government nationalised the country’s oil industry the CIA and its British allies, along with the Shah, engineered a coup that saw him and his government overthrown. Twenty-five years later Mohammad Reza Pahlavi was himself overthrown in the Islamic Revolution.
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| Mohammad Mosaddegh |
Congo
In one of the many twisted morality tales to emerge from the Cold War the CIA supported a coup against Patrice Lumumba, the first democratically-elected prime minister of the Republic of the Congo (now DRC), because he sought to retain the territorial integrity of a mineral-rich province. The US, Belgium and Britain were all accused of being complicit in his execution by firing squad. The CIA later went on to support his successor, the authoritarian Mobutu Sese Seko, who has been described as the “archetypal African dictator” due to rampant levels of corruption and extravagance under his 30-year rule.
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| Patrice Lumumba |
Cuba
The CIA has a long and muddled relationship with Cuba. The US had supported dictator Fulgencio Batista and, after his overthrow in the Cuban Revolution, was proactive in its support for counterrevolutionaries. The failed Bay of Pigs invasion, where CIA gunmen were beaten by revolutionaries led by Fidel Castro himself, actively strengthened Cuba’s ties with the Soviet Union. The CIA would go on to engineer eight failed assassination attempts against Castro, including via an exploding cigar, according to the 1975 Church Committee.