Ghosts of Coups Past Haunt Trump CIA's Venezuela Ops

From Iran to Chile to Iraq, even the most 'successful' regime change ops came with huge risks, unexpected consequences and downsides. Venezuela is no different.

NOW THAT WE’RE ON THE CUSP OF A REGIME CHANGE EFFORT in Venezuela, someone at the CIA ought to dig into the agency’s archives and dust off the file on Operation Ajax, the 1953 plot that toppled Iran’s leftist prime minister.

The agency considered Alax a huge success at the time and for many decades to follow. The coup returned Iran’s pro-American monarch to his throne, its oil to its British and American claimants, and its standing in Washington as a Cold War bastion against the Soviets next door. Its legend dimmed, of course, after Islamic revolutionaries overthrew the shah and made life miserable over the next 46 years for a succession of American presidents, including the present one.

It certainly wouldn’t hurt to take a second look. There are some relevant takeaways to be found in its history—and in the official accounts of many other CIA-quarterbacked coups—on what can go wrong, as well as what must go right as covert CIA operatives in Venezuela work beneath President Trump’s ostentatious military campaign to rattle the country’s leftist authoritarian President Nicolas Maduro.