On this day in 1953, the U.S. and British governments initiated a coup d'état against the democratically elected Prime Minister of Iran, Mohammad Mosaddegh. Mosaddegh had been preparing to nationalize Iran's British-owned oil fields.
Mosaddegh had sought to audit the documents of the Anglo-Iranian Oil Company (AIOC), later re-named British Petroleum, and to limit the company's control over Iranian oil reserves. When the AIOC refused to cooperate with the Iranian government, the parliament voted to nationalize Iran's oil industry and to expel foreign corporate representatives from the country.
In response, the British began a worldwide boycott of Iranian oil to pressure Iran economically and engaged in subterfuge to undermine Mosaddegh's government.
Judging Mosaddegh to be unreliable and fearing a communist takeover, Winston Churchill and the Eisenhower administration overthrew Iran's government. The coup action was also supported by the Iranian clergy, who opposed Mosaddegh's secularism.
The Central Intelligence Agency (CIA) hired mobsters to stage pro-Shah riots and paid people to travel to Tehran and take over the streets of the city. Between 200 and 300 people were killed in the ensuing mayhem.
Mosaddegh was arrested, tried, and convicted of treason by the Shah's military court. Many of his supporters were imprisoned, several received the death penalty. Mosaddegh himself lived the rest of his life under house arrest, dying in 1967.
After the coup, the Shah ruled as a monarch for the next 26 years until he was overthrown in the Iranian Revolution in 1979.
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The Iranian coup, 1953 libcom
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The way Alex Nichols says fuck you is stuck in my head because of how singular and distinct the vibe is. It's pure, distilled "teenager who is angry but correct". Like the school cop is accusing one of the punk kids of something he didn't do, that's the kind of fuck you that would arise at about minute 3 or 4 of that conversation, and it just really resonates with me. It's a scornful fuck you, a fuck you that says "you presume to watch over and know better than me, but you can't even get shit right", a fuck you that draws hidden smirks and snickers from a crowd.
I think it's the intonation, the way he rises high on the fuck and then crashes down level with the you. It gives the impression that he is climbing up from beneath the level of your presumed authority to savage your credentials on equal footing