Comment by Aloisius

> So did Britain argue this was to fight commmunism? Yes. Was it really? No. It was about Britain's oil interests and colonial ambition. It was no more about fighting communism than invading Iraq in 2003 was about spreading democracy.

More than one party was involved. They had different reasons for their involvement.

The United States' reason was to fight against communism (read: the Soviet Union). As quite a few internal memos make clear, the US did not particularly care about Britain's oil issues and wished to stay out of it. Rather, the US was almost single minded about it's fight against the Soviets. Britain used that to manipulate the US into getting involved.

> As for any election abnormalities, nobody cares about that.

If no one cared about it, people would stop stressing he was "democratically elected."

> It's undeniable that Mossadeq was immensely popular in the early 1950s for his stance that Iranian oil should benefit Iranians

And he was incredibly unpopular by 1953 as he was blamed for the deterioration of the economy caused by the British refusal to ship Iranian oil and he went full autocrat.

Indeed, had Mosaddegh remained popular, the Shah never would have agreed to go through with the coup. After all, he had seen what had happened after Mosaddegh resigned in 1952.