All the Shah's Men
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All the Shah's Men : An American Coup and the Roots of Middle East Terror (ISBN 0-471-67878-3 ) is a book, written by journalist Stephen Kinzer, about the 1953 CIA-engineered coup in which Mohammed Mossadegh, Iran's first democratically elected prime minister, was overthrown by American and British agents (chief among them Kermit Roosevelt) and royalists loyal to Shah Mohammad Reza Pahlavi.
A short summary:
Great Britain had returned the Shah in 1931. The Shah signed a deal selling Iranian oil to the Anglo Persian Oil Company, which today is called British Petroleum. When the first democratically elected parliament and prime minister in Iran took power in 1950 they planned to nationalize Iran's oil assets validating the still running oil contract with British Petroleum. The British Government followed to court in Belgium's International Court and lost the case against Iran's new socialistic government. Great Britain reacted by blockading the Persian Gulf, the staight of Hormuz, halting Iran's trade and economy. The US concerned about Mossadegh now seeking help from local superpower, the Soviet Union, regarding the case against Great Britain agreed in restoring the pro-western Shah to power. In the summer of 1953, the CIA and Britain's MI6 arranged a coup in Tehran. The Iranian prime minister, Mohammad Mossadegh was overthrow successfully. Mossadegh spent the rest of his life on his country estate and Iran remained a strong Cold War ally of the West.
It was published by John Wiley & Sons, Inc. on July 18, 2003.
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