ABSTRACT
This chapter examines the US policy toward Iran during the Muhammad Mussadiq era. It focuses on the strategic considerations that led US officials to change from a policy of supporting Mussadiq to one of opposing and eventually overthrowing him, thus engendering the malevolent image many Iranians still have of the United States. After Mussadiq assumed office the Harry S Truman administration publicly expressed strong support for him, recognizing that he was very popular and therefore could serve as an effective alternative to the Tudeh Party. As US officials grew increasingly concerned about Soviet expansionism, and after Truman replaced the more diplomatic Franklin D. Roosevelt as president, the United States began to pressure the Soviet Union to withdraw its forces from Iran. State Department officials told Woodhouse that Truman would not support a coup but that president-elect Dwight Eisenhower and his foreign policy advisers probably would.
