318 ChaPter^6
lar place and gain powerful and control that way, through the continued
growth of the Open Door. But when a foreign leader stood in the way of
such corporate interests, the U.S. could take more severe action.
In Iran, a man who had won a fair election to lead his country, Mohammed
Mossadegh, also found himself on America’s enemies list, targeted for a take-
down. Mossadegh’s “error” was challenging foreign oil companies who had
control of and got wealthy from Iranian oil. After World War II, U.S. compa-
nies produced about 50 percent of Middle Eastern oil, which provided Europe
with almost 90 percent of its petroleum. In Iran, the largest oil firm was the
Anglo-Iranian Oil Company [AIOC], which was owned by the British. To
nationalist Iranians, the AIOC was a symbol of western imperialism and
political groups on the right and left saw it as their largest barrier to sover-
eignty and prosperity. In 1949 Mossadegh, a member of the majlis, the Iranian
legislature, at the time, led the fight against the AIOC. In 1950, the British
company earned profits in the range of 200 million British Pounds [or about
560 million American dollars] but Iran received only about 8 percent of that
total in royalties. Indeed, the company’s profits in that year alone exceededFIGuRE 6-7 Mohammed Mossadegh and President Harry S. Truman, 1951