[andyfox]

The coup in 1953 was clearly a setback for Iran's political development. The CIA destabilized the elected government by bribina officials, planting false reports in newspapers and provoking street violence. This ushered in the era of the Shah (who had been widely viewed as an incompetent coward by Americans close to the action), who, as you correctly point out, had his distatorship propped up by successive U.S. regimes. Islamic extremism fed off of the coup and the repressive-U.S. supported regime in a way it never would have had we not overthrown Mossadegh.

"Now it seems that the Americans [the current Bush admnistration] are pushing towards the same direction again," says Ibrahim Yazdi, who served briefly as foreign minister after the Shah fell. "That shows they have not learned anything from history."

It is interesting that the first use of the word "blowback" was in the CIA-written analysis of the coup against Mossadegh in Iran.