Mohammed Mossadegh of Iran (miss)

The CIA and the Muslim world got off on the wrong foot in 1953. In one of its first major global political actions, the CIA overthrew the popularly elected Iranian government and installed the corrupt and brutal Shah Mohammad Reza Pahlavi. Kermit Roosevelt, grandson of Theodore and then-Near East operations chief for the CIA, detailed the coup in a 1979 book, and Tim Weiner obtained two extensive classified histories of the coup for his award-winning history of the CIA, Legacy of Ashes. The CIA and the British government spent millions of dollars trying to oust Mohammed Mossadegh, a popular politician whose crime was vowing to nationalize Iranian oil exploration. Mossadegh survived several assassination attempts during his two years in power, but was eventually deposed and held under house arrest while the Shah's secret police terrorized the country for more than 25 years.