A political analyst says the United States fomented the 1953 coup against Irans then democratically elected Prime Minister Mohammad Mosaddeq in an attempt to maintain its control over the Iranian oil.
William Beeman, professor at University of Minnesota, told Press TV on Tuesday that the main reason behind the US-engineered coup dtat against the Iranian administration was the nationalization of Iran's oil industry following a bill introduced to parliament by Mosaddeq in 1951.
The coup had to do with the nationalization of [Iran's] oil. The United States and Great Britain were going to lose millions of dollars plus access to oil when the National Iranian Oil Company was nationalized by Mosaddeq, the analyst said.
The US spy agency CIA published a document on Monday, which officially confirmed for the first time Washingtons role in the 1953 coup dtat against the Mosaddeq administration.
The document, published on the National Security Archive website, was initially released in 1981, but most of it was blacked out at the time, including an entire section on the coup.
Beeman further noted that the US has maintained the same approach vis--vis the Iranian oil market until now.
There is... no question that the United States would like very much to have some kind of control over the petroleum market in Iran, he said.