The issue is precisely socialism.
The deal with socialism is this. It is for closet tyrants who wish to be a hero with other peoples money, taking other people's freedom to quickly fix what they think is unfair. It is short-term at the expense of the long-term. It is short-term at the expense of long-term. It is short-term at the expense of the long-term. This is not a typo. This is to emphasize the truth that escapes most AND we have witnessed it play out in case of Iran like it always will do in every society, past, present and future. A socialist will without an exception cause more harm in the long run than any good he achieves in the short-run. Mossadegh was a socialist. And he did prove to be a closet tyrant, by the way. Did he or did he not ask for emergency powers to subvert the constitution to do as he saw fit for six months? If he succeeded do you think that he would stop at six months. I don't think so. Did he or did he not illegally stop voting to ensure that he kept the majority in the parliament? He knew and believed that Iranians are just not ready to govern themselves and need a little help. And in what way is that different than the Shah? In fact those were Shah's exact words. How can you be so critical of the Shah and overlook Mossadegh's faults? I am not discrediting the service that Mossadegh provided to Iran and Iranians just like I would not do the same with Shah's. I am pointing out that he had faults and made mistakes.
Lets take land reform. A plan imposed instantly by the central government to restore what is fair under the guise of say modernism or whatever is faulty. It is short-term at the expense of the long-term. The short-term gain that Mossadegh was after and the Shah was after was to become a hero. Instead the question to ask is this, have these people, the arbab and ra'yats entered into a contract with each other on their own or not? They had. Even if it is unfair the right thing to do is to try to make fair in the next round of bargaining, not to rip out all existing contracts. Then slowly as the ra'yats, each at a different speed, become ready they will get a chance to choose a different route. For example, the government could have developed other farm land and offered it as competition to the arbab's contract so if a particular ra'yat did not wish to stay with the arbab could have taken up the land. And the land should not just be given to ra'yats. They would earn it after certain number of years. This takes time to restore fairness but it would not cause the social dislocations we witnessed.
