The Soviet Union gained country converts to its side partly by providing economic and technological aid. Russian scientists and professionals lived and taught abroad, bringing so-called third world nations into the USSR’s fold. President Harry Truman countered with a similar program of his own — his Point Four program, the fourth foreign policy objective he outlined in his speech.

On this day, October 19, in 1950 Iran and the U.S. announced they had signed a deal under the Point 4 Program for technical aid to Iran. Congress allocated $500,000 for Iran, one of the largest sums for any country.

One of the professionals who volunteered abroad to Iran was a young Navy lieutenant commander named Helen Jeffreys Bakhtiar. He was brought in as a nurse to help educate remote Iranian villages on public health. Bakhtiar, married to an Iranian expatriate herself, travelled around teaching prenatal health to women, and her work was recognized in the villages by a mountain named after her.