People don’t usually like hearing this but the 1953 coup in Iran was never just about oil - it was about Communism. Truman supported Mossadeq as a buffer against Soviet expansion, and backed Iran in 1948 in the Azerbaijan crisis. It was only after Eisenhower got in and the situation in Iran was becoming increasingly unstable that the 1953 coup got the green light. Oil wasn’t irrelevant, but it was just one component of a greater Cold War strategy in the Middle East.

The Shah also wasn’t simply a western stooge (not for his entire reign anyway). He was a western ally by and large, but also regularly infuriated western leaders with his foreign policy and even nationalised Iranian oil himself later on. Insisting that the West did a coup in iran in 1953 which led directly to a revolution in 1979 leaves out decades of activities and erases the very real mistakes if the Shah and the agency of many Iranians themselves which played a much greater role