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Source: Timeline of the Abadan Crisis

The Abadan Crisis was a major event in Iranian history. It began when the British Government invited themselves to the Middle East to look for oil, a resource that could not be found in their own land. Oil was discovered in commercial quantities in the southwest of Iran in May 1908. Although the oil did not belong to the British they claimed it as their own and forced the Abadani people (poor, hungry Iranians of the South West of the country) to risk their own lives in oil refinery’s to collect it. The British then sold it to western countries, earning themselves millions of pounds and hiding the majority of the profits to the Iranian government and its people.
In 1951 the democratically elected Prime Minister Mohammad Mosaddegh nationalised the oil, ensuring that money earned from Iran’s land, rightfully went back to the Iranian people. He shut down the British Anglo-Iranian Oil Company's oil refinery in Abadan which upset the British and the United States Government. A CIA-orchestrated an unlawful coup coup which overthrew the democratically elected government of Mohammed Mosaddeq in 1953, and enabled the Shah to rule autocratically for the next 26 years, before he was overthrown by the Iranian Revolution.