of Iranian history that began with the 1951 nationalization of the British Anglo-Iranian Oil Company (AIOC), and ended with the 1953 overthrow of Mohammad Mosaddegh by a CIA-led coup d'état. The party's policy "fluctuated", first attacking Mosaddeq as 'an agent of American imperialism', then giving him some support during and after the July 1952 uprising. On 15 August a coup attempt against Mosaddeq was thwarted thanks in part to information uncovered by the Tudeh TPMO military network, but two days later party militants inadvertently helped destabilized the government by staging demonstrations to pressure Mosaddeq to declare Iran a democratic republic. As this would have overturned Iran's constitutional monarchy, Mosaddeq reacted by calling out troops to suppress the demonstrators. The party then demobilized late the next day making it unavailable to fight the coup the day after. By 1957 the TPMO was crushed and thousands of party members had been arrested. Oil nationalization Following World War II, Iranian public support was growing for the nationalization of the British Anglo-Iranian Oil Company (AIOC) whose profits had greatly exceeded its royalty payments to the Iranian government. In 1951, Mohammad Mosaddeq, head of the nationalist movement known as the National Front of Iran, led parliament in the nationalization of AIOC, and shortly after was appointed prime minister by the Shah. Mosaddeq oversaw the takeover of British oil facilities and rising economic difficulty and polarization in Iran as the AIOC withdrew its employees and retaliated with a boycott of Iranian oil. In early April 1951, the Tudeh revealed its "true strength" by launching strikes and riots protesting low wages and poor housing and delays in the nationalization of the oil industry. There were "street demonstrations and sympathy strikes in Tehran, Isfahan, and the northern cities." Police opened fire on demonstrators. A result was "panic" in Iran's parliament at the power of Marxist forces in Iran. With this, it became apparent that Mossadeq was not a communist and that the Tudeh did not control the government, nor did the party want to overthrow him even as it was establishing a broad public base. During this period the Tudeh followed a "leftist" rather than "popular front" strategy, refusing to ally with Mosaddeq. Despite the fact that Mosaddeq had introduced a new policy of tolerance toward the party, that both the Tudeh and Mosaddeq had worked for nationalization of the AIOC, and that expropriation of capitalist Western-owned resource