During this time the rest of the international communist movement was also thriving. The communist world expanded dramatically in the decade following World War II with Eastern Europe, China, North Korea, and Vietnam all becoming states dominated by their respective communist parties, usually via military victory. In the United States, Iran was seen as the holder of reserves of petroleum with "vital strategic" value to western countries, and as part of "a Northern Tier" of countries (along with Greece and Turkey) that constituted a geopolitical "first line of defense" for the Mediterranean and for Asia, To counter the activities of the USSR, the CIA established Operation TPBEDAMN in the late 1940s, funded at $1 million a year. It prepared both "disguised (`gray` propaganda) or deliberately misrepresented black propaganda" in the form of "newspaper articles, cartoons, leaflets, and books" which it translated into Persian, most of which "portrayed the Soviet Union and the Tudeh as anti-Iranian or anti-Islamic, described the harsh reality of life in the Soviet Union, or explained the Tudeh's close relationship with the Soviets and its popular-front strategy." In addition it paid "right-wing nationalist organizations" and some Shia religious figures. Its agents provoked "violent acts" and blamed them on the communists, and hired "thugs to break up Tudeh rallies." Nonetheless the party was able to fill the streets of Tehran and Abadan "with tens of thousands of enthusiastic demonstrators" for May Day in 1946.