Furthermore the CIA reports that reached the president summarized a complex picture in bold strokes: Mossadeq was not himself a communist, but his regime was letting the communists in through the back door. If he stayed in power, the West would be forever barred from Iran, and the “loss of Iran” would be added to the rolls of ignominy alongside the loss of Czechoslovakia in 1948, the loss of China in 1949, and the invasion of South Korea in 1950.
