| Mohammad Mosaddeq and the 1953 Coup in Iran Mohammad Mosaddeq is widely regarded as the leading champion of secular democracy and resistance to foreign domination in Iran's modern history. Mosaddeq became prime minister of Iran in May 1951 and promptly nationalized its British-controlled oil industry, initiating a bitter confrontation between Iraq and Britain that increasingly undermined Mossaddeq's position. He was finally overthrown in August 1953 in a coup d'etat that was organized and led by the United States Central Intelligence Agency. This coup initiated a twenty-five-year period of dictatorship in Iran, leaving many Iranians resentful of the U.S. legacies that still haunt relations between the two countries today. Mark J. Gasiorowski , a professor in the Department of Political Science at Louisiana State University, is the author of U.S. Foreign Policy and the Shah and coeditor of Neither East nor West: Iran, the Soviet Union, and the United States . |