After Iran’s monarchy fell in February 1979, most of the radical Islamists and radical leftists who had led the revolution believed the United States was trying to overthrow the nascent Islamic regime. Much of their concern focused on the CIA, which had acquired a villainous reputation in Iran after overthrowing Prime Minister Mohammad Mosaddeq in 1953 and then propping up the monarchy by creating and nurturing its brutal intelligence agency, SAVAK. In 1979, many Iranians believed the CIA had a vast network of covert intelligence officers and Iranian collaborators inside Iran and was trying to destabilize the new regime and restore the monarchy – as it had in 1953. These concerns helped fuel the radicalization that occurred in this period and were one of the principal reasons radical Islamist students seized the US embassy in Tehran in November 1979. This paper seeks to evaluate whether these concerns were justified by examining the various covert operations the CIA was carrying out in Iran between February and November 1979. It is based mainly on a large trove of CIA cables and other documents published by the students who seized the US embassy and interviews with some of the key people involved. The paper begins with a discussion of the general goals of US policy toward Iran during this period and the limitations under which CIA officers and other US government personnel operated in Iran. It then examines the contacts CIA officers and other US personnel established with Iranian government officials, moderates, radical leftists, radical Islamists, ethnically based guerrilla groups, and the exile opposition groups that were beginning to emerge in this period. The main conclusion is that the CIA’s covert operations in Iran in this period were aimed at gathering intelligence, encouraging moderation in Iran, and forging better bilateral relations, rather than undermining or overthrowing the Islamic regime. Indeed, CIA officers and other US personnel frequently encouraged their Iranian contacts to work with Iran’s new leaders and rejected requests for assistance from opponents of the new regime.