As the negotiations to settle the dispute dragged on, the Eisenhower administration swung its support firmly behind the British. The intelligence organisations of the UK and the USA suspected Mussadiq of communist sympathies and these suspicions were further strengthened by the primeminsister's attempts to remove the Shah as head of the armed forces. Taking advantage of the domestic discontent caused by the successful British boycott of Iranian oil exports, the CIA and British Intelligence prompted two coups in August 1953. The first attempt failed and the Shah, fearing a backlash from Dr Mussadiq's supporters, fled the country. The second attempt, however, which followed a week later and left three hundred dead on the streets of Tehran, was successful and the Shah was reinstated at the head of a military government with pronounced Western sympathies.
American intervention in Iran ensured a pro-western government and removed the possibility of Iran coming under the influence of the Soviet Union. However, it also deeply alienated Iranian patriots of all social classes and weakened the moderate liberal nationalists, ".thereby paving the way for the incubation of both leftist and rightist extremism. This extremism, already in its embryonic stages, became unalterably anti-American" (Bill:p.74) The exclusion from the political process radicalised both the secular and religious opposition groups, whose perception of the Shah as an American puppet was strenghtened by the use of American money and expertise to mould the Shah's formidable security apparatus, the SAVAK. Furthermore, the military occupation of WW II and the near loss of control to Mussadiq, had taught the Shah two lessons that shaped his attitudes and behaviour in the decades to follow. The first was the vital importance of a strong, well-equipped military force to deter foreign, especially Soviet, intervention. The other was the political danger of permitting an independent, or charismatic, rival close to the seat of real power.