“…In 1953, Iranian monarch Mohammad-Reza Shah Pahlavi emerged victorious from a power struggle with his prime minister, Mohammad Mosaddeq, thanks to a coup masterminded by Britain and the United States. …”

“…Negative portrayals of the West in Iran are often centred around the CIA-engineered coup of 1953, which overthrew Prime Minister Mohammad Mosaddeq, or the hostage-taking crisis in 1979 following the attack on the US embassy in Tehran. …”

“…This is refreshing, but it is perhaps also closer to the angle from which many contemporaries would have considered the Suez canal crisis of 1956 or the coup that removed Mohammad Mosaddeq in 1953, for example. This book is therefore not just an excellent, lively account of salient events in this period in the history of the Middle East; it also opens up some new ways to think about them.' -- Michael Axworthy, author of A History of Iran: Empire of the Mind 'With its oil and its waterways, the Middle East was and remains a first step for any rising world power, and also the final trap for empires on the decline. …”