Mohammad Mosaddegh

Mohammad Mosaddegh (16 June 1882 – 5 March 1967) was an Iranian politician, author and lawyer who served as the prime minister of Iran from 1951 to 1953, elected by the 16th Majlis. He was elected to the Iranian parliament in 1923 and served through a contentious 1952 election into the 17th Iranian Majlis, until his government was overthrown in the 1953 Iranian coup d'état aided by the intelligence agencies of the United Kingdom (MI6) and the United States (CIA), led by Kermit Roosevelt Jr. As prime minister, he implemented policies that came to be known as Mosaddeghism. Before its removal from power, his administration introduced a range of social and political measures such as social security, land reforms and higher taxes including the introduction of taxation on the rent of land. His time as prime minister was marked by the clash with the British government, known as the Abadan Crisis, following the nationalisation of the Iranian oil industry, which had been built by the British on Persian lands since 1913 through the Anglo-Persian Oil Company (APOC/AIOC), later known as British Petroleum (BP). In the aftermath of the overthrow, Mohammad Reza Pahlavi consolidated power and negotiated the Consortium Agreement of 1954 with the British, which gave split ownership of Iranian oil production between Iran and Western companies until 1979. Mosaddegh's National Front was accordingly suppressed in the undemocratically manipulated 1954 general election and he was subsequently charged with treason, imprisoned for three years, then put under house arrest until his death and was buried in his own home in order to prevent a political furor. In 2013, during the presidency of Barack Obama, the United States government formally acknowledged its role in the coup as being a part of its foreign policy initiatives, including paying protesters and bribing officials.