The April 1951 election of Mohammed Mossadegh as Prime Minister of Iran and the subsequent nationalization of oil sparked a prolonged crisis that involved both the British and U.S. governments. No agreement could be reached between the British and Iranians. The crisis culminated in the joint U.S. and British effort, called Operation AJAX, which overthrew Mossadegh in August 1953. The seeds of this coup were sewn before the summer of 1953, however, and this article documents American perceptions of Mossadegh and the situation in Iran during the crisis. It contends that American ideas concerning gender, communism, and peoples of the Middle East, formed an ideology which heightened the Soviet threat, justified Anglo-American intervention, and ultimately resulted in the Eisenhower administration’s greenlighting of Operation AJAX. The changes and continuities of this American mindset are reflected in magazines, newspapers, memoirs, and government documents that span from WWII to the overthrow of Mossadegh. These reflections reveal how cultural attitudes informed perceptions of Iran and its people, which in turn shaped American attitudes and policy towards Iran.