The nationalization of oil in Iran by MosaddeqThe world of foreign policy is like a game of chess with many sides. Movements are performed with varying degrees of calculation and skill, and nothing happens in a vacuum. Everything that happens affects the options and risk levels of other players. When analyzing historical events in international relations, it is the responsibility of the analyst to take into consideration the historical and regional context of what happened. At the time of the coup that overthrew Prime Minister Mosaddeq, several world events had just occurred: the main events were the Chinese conflict of 1949. Revolution and nationalization of the Iranian oil industry in 1951. The Korean War affected ended and Viet Minh guerrillas harassed the French colonial regime in Vietnam. Five days before the coup in Iran, the Soviet Union tested its first hydrogen bomb (Encyclopaedia Britannica). According to Daniel Ellsberg in his book Papers on the War (1972), after 1949, no American president could politically afford to be in power while another major country "was going communist" (by telling him to take steps to f...