TEHRAN, August 23 (Mehr News Agency) -- Late Tuesday was the fiftieth anniversary of the U.S.-orchestrated coup d'état of 1953 which toppled the popular government of Mohammad Mosaddeq and reinstated the shah, beginning half a century of animosity between the United States and the Iranian nation.

Mossaddeq, the popular nationalist leader, led a campaign for nationalization of the oil industry which succeeded in 1951 after he took office as prime minister.

On August 19, 1953, the U.S. government with the cooperation of the British government and their internal agents toppled Mossdadeq and retuned Mohammad-Reza Pahlavi to power.

In the early 1950's, Mossadegh, with the assistance of Ayatollah Seyed Abolqassem Kashani, the undisputed leader of the Shia, decided to nationalize the oil industry in order to end the foreign domination over the oil resources of Iran.

When they began the oil industry nationalization movement, all Iranian refineries and oil wells were run by British companies, with Iranians playing no role in their management.

The oil resources of many neighboring countries were dominated by U.S. companies, which only encouraged the U.S. government to try to take control of Iran's oil resources as well.

With the assistance of Kashani, Mosaddeq and the other leaders of the oil industry nationalization movement were able to gain the support of the people. At the time, no one knew Mosaddeq and no one knew what nationalization of the oil industry would mean.

Despite the U.S.-British campaign against the movement, the late Ayatollah Kashani, as a Majlis deputy representing Tehran and later as Majlis speaker, spoke in the National Consultative Assembly, as it was called then, in favor of the bill on nationalization of the oil industry. Finally, the bill gained popular support and was approved by the assembly.

Then the people tried to implement the law, which triggered the U.S. plan for a coup d'état in November 1952 in order to suppress Iranians' aspirations for freedom and independence.

Finally, the U.S. staged a coup on Mordad 28, 1332 (August 19, 1953).

The coup was more evidence that occupants of the White House are always opposed to liberation and independence movements, unless they can manipulate those movements.

Over the years, the U.S. has done everything in its power to suppress independence movements, killing many innocent people in the process.

To this day the U.S. has not changed its strategy of suppressing democracy and violating human rights, it has only changed its tactics and methods.

In 2001, the U.S. attacked Afghanistan using the campaign against terrorism as a pretext. Over 8000 innocent Afghans were killed as a result.

This year it occupied Iraq on the pretext of locating and destroying weapons of mass destruction (WMD).

But the U.S. has neither campaigned against terrorism in Afghanistan nor found any proof of WMD in Iraq. Controlling the energy resources of the region was one of the only goals of the U.S. coups, its instigation of the 1980-1988 Iran-Iraq War and support of former Iraqi dictator Saddam Hussein during the war, and its wars against Afghanistan and Iraq.

The 1953 coup was just one of many anti-democratic U.S. interventions around the world.

According to Professor James Bill, the U.S. interference in Iran in 1953 made the CIA notorious in the eyes of the Iranian nation and the other peoples of the region.