I'm doing some work on a TL idea that I've had batting around in my head for a while. The idea is that Tehran police chief Mahmoud Afshartous isn't assassinated and in the aftermath of the failed coup attempt against the PM he is in charge of regulating the rioting Tudeh forces. In OTL the man in charge subduing the protesters was an avowed monarchist who used the opportunity to brutalize the Communists and Pro-Mossadegh forces. Mahmoud Afshartous was far more wary of the Americans than Mossadegh, who had called on the crackdown against Tudeh rioters because of the Americans complaining about them, so the Tudeh forces aren't demobilized. Kermit Roosevelt and his cohorts manage to kill Afshartous when they launch their next coup attempt, but with the 8,000 Tudeh supporter in Tehran and the TPMO still mobilized and ready to fight causing the second coup attempt to be far more chaotic. With the situation even more chaotic than OTL as a result of the melee, the TPMO launches their own coup attempt, secretly arrests Mossadegh claiming that he was injured in the pro-Shah coup attempt and arrests many of the pro-America/pro-monarchist coup leaders.
With Iran's fall into the hands of communists how might this apparent failure of the West to prevent another country from falling to communism effect McCarthy and his crusade?
With Iran's fall into the hands of communists how might this apparent failure of the West to prevent another country from falling to communism effect McCarthy and his crusade?
