Overthrowing Iran’s legitimate administration on August 19, 1953, cost the Iranian nation dearly and those behind this incident must be answerable for the heavy price that Iranians have paid for it, Alavi said on Wednesday.

“Today, they (the US and Britain) have owned up to their involvement in overthrowing a legitimate administration,” added the Iranian minister.

In 1953, Britain’s secret service, MI6, and the CIA organized a coup to remove the then Iranian Prime Minister Mohammad Mosaddeq, reinstalling and supporting the increasingly brutal regime of Mohammad Reza Pahlavi until its collapse in 1979.

Last month, the CIA published a document for the first time after six decades confirming Washington’s role in the British- and American-backed military overthrow of the Mosaddeq administration.

“The military coup that overthrew Mosaddeq and his National Front Cabinet was carried out under CIA direction as an act of US foreign policy,” read a brief segment from an internal report by an in-house CIA historian in the mid-1970s.

On September 1, Iran Majlis approved the provisions of a bill that obliges the Iranian administration to assess and follow up ways of suing the US for its role in the 1953 coup d’état in the country.

Alavi concluded by saying that President Hassan Rouhani has recently ordered the formation of an ad hoc committee to politically and legally look into this matter.

HH/HH