مصدق و ملی شدن نفت ایران — دزدیده شدن ثروت ملی
Mohammad Mosaddegh (1882–1967) served as Prime Minister of Iran from 1951 to 1953 and is remembered as Iran's most beloved democratic leader. He nationalized the Anglo-Iranian Oil Company (AIOC, now BP) in 1951, ending decades of British exploitation that gave Iran a meager royalty while the UK collected the vast majority of profits from Iranian oil.
The nationalization made Mosaddegh a hero to Iranians and the wider developing world — the first leader to successfully reclaim a colonized nation's natural resources. Britain responded with an international oil embargo and persuaded the US Eisenhower administration that Mosaddegh was vulnerable to Communist influence.
In August 1953, the CIA and MI6 executed Operation Ajax/Boot — orchestrating riots, hiring thugs, and bribing military officers to overthrow the elected Mosaddegh government and restore the Shah. The coup is acknowledged as a defining trauma in Iranian political consciousness and a primary reason for Iranian distrust of the US and UK.
Iran nationalized oil in 1951 because the Anglo-Iranian Oil Company gave Iran only 16% of profits while taking the vast majority. Mosaddegh argued that Iran's natural resources belonged to Iranians.
Operation Ajax (also called Operation Boot in the UK) was the 1953 CIA-MI6 covert operation that overthrew Iran's elected Prime Minister Mossadegh and reinstated the Shah, planting seeds of the 1979 revolution.