When Kermit Roosevelt returned to Washington after his Iranian adventure, the
"best and brightest" met once again to analyze the outcome of the operation. Dulles
had obviously concluded that the CIA's success vindicated his faith in an offensive
American policy wherever Soviet-directed communism threatened. He radiated
self-congratulatory pleasure as he listened to Roosevelt's account of Ajax. "His eyes
were gleaming; he seemed to be purring like a giant cat," Roosevelt recalled.
"Clearly, he was not only enjoying what he was hearing, but . . . planning as well."
Fearful that Dulles might miss the point of his presentation, Roosevelt emphasized
the special circumstance that had favored Ajax. The CIA had correctly gauged
popular disenchantment with Mossadeq. "The people and the army came, over-
whelmingly, to the support of the Shah," Roosevelt observed, but then added to
make his point, "If our analysis had been wrong, we'd have fallen flat on our, er,
faces." ¹

Dulles chose not to heed Roosevelt's warning. The idea that other crises
involving leftist or nationalist discontent might not lend themselves to an Iranian-
style solution did not penetrate Dulles' thoughts. A few weeks later the secretary
asked Roosevelt if he would head a CIA operation in Guatemala, "already in
preparation." After a few inquiries had persuaded Roosevelt that Guatemala was not
another Iran, he declined the invitation. The operation went ahead anyway, as would
an even more ill-conceived CIA plan at the Bay of Pigs a few years later. Covert
operations had become an accepted part of the American cold war arsenal. ²

For Dulles, as for the Truman administration, Iran had served as a test case of
cold war assumptions and policies. In Iran, in Korea, in Vietnam, and in other third
world areas the Kremlin had revealed its plan "to accelerate Communist conquest
of every country where the Soviet government could make its influence felt." Dulles
made no attempt to appreciate Mossadeq's policy of "negative equilibrium," which
was as much anti-Soviet as anti-British. He may not even have realized that
Mossadeq had cancelled the Soviet Union's Caspian fishing concession shortly after
he nationalized AIOC. Nor did it matter that Mossadeq had a wide popular follow-

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