I just read the print version of "Operation Ajax", about the CIA's 50s overthrow of a democratic Iranian government to reinstall the Shah, using the red scare as a front to restore American and British oil interests. The machinations are stunning. We really were the biggest assholes imaginable. (The book explores how part of the problem was an overfunded CIA stuffed to the rafters with Ivy League recruits with too little to do - a hammer desperately looking for a nail it could call communist.) There's a direct line from that to the 70s Iranian revolution, and it probably would not have been a Theocracy without our interference. A strong Iranian democracy would have given us a very different world now.
Turns out you can freely read the comic online, with music and animations -
operationajax.com (I just looked at the beginning but it seems like the same content as the print version)
It's an event worth knowing about, and a pretty good read besides.
