In 1953, the CIA toppled Mohammed Mossadegh, who had been democratically elected to power in Iran in 1951. Mossadegh's crime was nationalizing the oil industry. He was replaced by Reza Pahlavi, the Shah, who ruled with an iron fist, murdered and tortured tens of thousands of political dissenters, and abolished all political parties but his own.

Deepa Kumar, Islamophobia and the Politi…, loc. 209