Latest news with #Mossadegh
Indian Express
a day ago
- Politics
- Indian Express
How the US helped oust Iran's government in 1953 and reinstate the Shah
When US missiles struck Iran's key nuclear facilities on June 22, history seemed to repeat itself. Seventy-two years ago, a covert CIA operation toppled Iran's democratically elected government. Now, as American rhetoric drifts once more toward regime change, the ghosts of 1953 are stirring again. The coordinated US air and missile strike, codenamed Operation Midnight Hammer, targeted three of Iran's principal nuclear sites: Fordow, Natanz, and the Isfahan Nuclear Technology Center. The attack immediately reignited fears of a broader war in the Middle East. In the hours that followed, US President Donald Trump posted on Truth Social: 'It's not politically correct to use the term 'Regime Change. But if the current Iranian Regime is unable to MAKE IRAN GREAT AGAIN, why wouldn't there be a Regime change??? MIGA!!!' Though officials in Washington, including Vice President JD Vance, rushed to clarify that regime change was not formal policy, many in Iran heard echoes from 1953, when the US and UK orchestrated the overthrow of Iran's democratically elected prime minister, Mohammad Mossadegh. After being appointed as the prime minister of Iran in 1951, Mossadegh moved to nationalise the Anglo-Iranian Oil Company, then controlled by the British, who had long funneled Iranian oil profits to London. 'He ended a long period of British hegemony in Iran… and set the stage for several decades of rapid economic growth fueled by oil revenues,' wrote Mark Gasiorowski, a historian at Tulane University, in an essay for the volume The Middle East and the United States: History, Politics, and Ideologies (2018). 'He also tried to democratise Iran's political system by reducing the powers of the shah and the traditional upper class.' Mossadegh argued that Iran, like any sovereign state, deserved control over its resources. Appearing before the International Court of Justice in 1952, he laid out Iran's case: 'The decision to nationalise the oil industry is the result of the political will of an independent and free nation,' he said. 'For us Iranians, the uneasiness of stopping any kind of action which is seen as interference in our national affairs is more intense than for other nations.' Britain saw the nationalisation as both a strategic and economic threat. It imposed a blockade and led a global oil boycott, while pressuring Washington to intervene. The British adopted a three-track strategy: a failed negotiation effort, a global boycott of Iranian oil and covert efforts to undermine and overthrow Mossadegh, writes Gasiorowski . British intelligence operatives had built ties with 'politicians, businessmen, military officers and clerical leaders' in anticipation of a coup. Initially, the Truman administration resisted intervention. But President Dwight D Eisenhower's election ushered in a more aggressive Cold War posture. 'Under the Truman administration, these boundaries [of acceptable Iranian politics] were drawn rather broadly,' Gasiorowski wrote. 'But when Eisenhower entered office, the more stridently anti-Communist views of his foreign policy advisers led the US to drop its support for Mossadegh and take steps to overthrow him.' Fear of communism's spread, particularly via Iran's Tudeh Party, believed to be the first organised Communist party in the Middle East. 'Although they did not regard Mossadegh as a Communist,' Gasiorowski wrote, 'they believed conditions in Iran would probably continue to deteriorate… strengthening the Tudeh Party and perhaps enabling it to seize power.' While Britain lobbied for a coup, Mossadegh appealed directly to Eisenhower. Eisenhower, in a letter in June 1953, offered sympathy but warned that aid was unlikely so long as Iran withheld oil: 'There is a strong feeling… that it would not be fair to the American taxpayers for the United States Government to extend any considerable amount of economic aid to Iran so long as Iran could have access to funds derived from the sale of its oil.' Mossadegh's response was blunt. He accused Britain of sabotaging Iran's economy through 'propaganda and diplomacy,' and warned that inaction could carry lasting consequences: 'If prompt and effective aid is not given to this country now, any steps that might be taken tomorrow… might well be too late,' he wrote. Weeks later, in August 1953, the CIA and Britain's MI6 launched a covert operation to oust Mossadegh and restore the Shah, Mohammad Reza Pahlavi, to power. 'A decision was made to develop and carry out a plan to overthrow Mussadiq and install Zahedi as prime minister,' Gasiorowski wrote. 'The operation was to be led by Kermit Roosevelt, who headed the CIA's Middle East operations division.' The mission, code-named Operation Ajax, used anti-Mossadegh propaganda, bribes, and orchestrated street unrest. After an initial failure and the Shah's brief exile, loyalist military units staged a successful coup on August 19. Mossadegh was arrested, tried, and placed under house arrest until his death in 1967. In 2013, the CIA officially acknowledged its role, releasing declassified documents that described the coup as 'an act of U.S. foreign policy, conceived and approved at the highest levels of government.' In Iran, schoolchildren learn about the 1953 coup in classrooms. State media airs annual retrospectives on Mossadegh's downfall. His name recurs in graffiti, political speeches, and university lectures. In his book The Coup: 1953, the CIA, and the Roots of Modern U.S.-Iranian Relations, the historian Ervand Abrahamian called the operation 'a defining fault line not only for Iranian history but also in the country's relations with both Britain and the United States.' It 'carved in public memory a clear dividing line — 'before' and 'after' — that still shapes the country's political culture,' he wrote. While Cold War defenders portrayed the coup as a check on communism, Abrahamian sees oil and empire as the true motivators. 'The main concern was not so much about communism as about the dangerous repercussions that oil nationalisation could have throughout the world,' he argues. Following the coup, the Shah ruled with increasing autocracy, supported by the US and bolstered by SAVAK (Sazeman-e Ettela'at va Amniyat-e Keshvar), a secret police trained by the CIA. Decades of repression, inequality, and corruption gave way to the 1979 Islamic Revolution, which toppled the monarchy and established the Islamic Republic. 'The strategic considerations that led US policymakers to undertake the 1953 coup helped set in motion a chain of events that later destroyed the Shah's regime and created severe problems for US interests,' wrote Gasiorowski. On November 4, 1979, the US Embassy in Tehran was seized. Fifty-two Americans were held hostage for 444 days. Revolutionaries repeatedly cited 1953 as the origin of their mistrust. Though Washington denied involvement for decades, few Iranians ever doubted the CIA's role in Mossadegh's fall. 'The coup revealed how the United States began almost instinctively to follow in the footsteps of British imperialism,' write David W Lesch and Mark L Haas editors of The Middle East and the United States: History, Politics, and Ideologies . 'Demonstrating a preference for the status quo rather than the forces of change.' Even President Barack Obama, in a 2009 speech in Cairo, acknowledged the long shadow of 1953, noting that the coup had created 'years of mistrust.' No US president has ever issued a formal apology. Dr Omair Anas, director of research at the Centre for Studies of Plural Societies, a non-profit, non-partisan, independent institution dedicated to democratising knowledge, sees the 1953 events as not just a turning point but a template for today's impasse. 'The 1953 coup was staged in the backdrop of the Cold War which resulted in Iran's inclusion into the CENTO alliance along with Pakistan and Turkiye,' he said. He is sharply critical of current regime change rhetoric, describing it as detached from Iran's internal political conditions. 'The most important player is Iran's domestic politics,' he said. 'At this stage, it is not willing and prepared for a regime change.' Anas points out that the government has already absorbed considerable dissent: 'Previous anti-hijab protests have already accommodated many anti-regime voices and sentiments.' But absorbing discontent, he suggests, is not the same as welcoming systemic change. 'Any regime change at this stage would immediately lead the country to chaos and possible civil war, as the new regime won't be able to de-Islamise the state in the near future.' Trump's rhetoric, therefore, landed with particular resonance. While senior officials have attempted to distance the administration from talk of regime change, many in Iran and beyond see a familiar playbook: pressure, provocation, and the threat of externally imposed political outcomes. Dr Anas contends that many of the so-called alternatives to the Islamic Republic are politically inert. 'Anti-regime forces since 1979 have lost much ground and haven't been able to stage a major threat to the revolution,' he said. 'The West is fully aware that the Pahlavi dynasty or the Mujahidin-e-Khalq (MEK) have the least popularity and organisational presence to replace the Khamenei-led regime of Islamic revolution.' As he sees it, the system's survival is not merely a matter of repression but of strategic logic. 'Khamenei can only be replaced by someone like him,' he said. 'The continuity of the Islamic revolution of Iran remains more preferable than any other disruptive replacement.' He also warns that a forced collapse of the current order could have serious regional implications. 'In the case of violent suppression of Islamist forces, the new Iranian state might seek the revival of the Cold War collaboration with Pakistan and Turkiye and a strong push against Russia.' For India, a country that has generally maintained a policy of non-intervention, such a development could be deeply destabilising. 'Any abrupt change would complicate India's West Asia and South Asia strategic calculus,' he said, 'and more fundamentally India's Pakistan strategy.' Dr Anas also sees Western credibility as severely eroded across the region. 'The West has left no credibility whatsoever about human rights, freedom, and democracy after the Israeli-Gaza war,' he said. 'The Middle Eastern public opinion, including that of Kurds, Druze and Afghans, have lost hope in Western promises. They prefer any autocratic regime to West-backed regimes.' India, he said, risks being caught flat-footed if political transitions come suddenly. 'India generally stays away from the normative politics of the Middle East,' he said. 'While this shows India's principled stand on no intervention in internal politics, it also puts India in a weak position once the regime changes, as happened in Syria.' His recommendation? 'India needs to engage more actively with West Asian civil society to have more balanced relations beyond states.' Aishwarya Khosla is a journalist currently serving as Deputy Copy Editor at The Indian Express. Her writings examine the interplay of culture, identity, and politics. She began her career at the Hindustan Times, where she covered books, theatre, culture, and the Punjabi diaspora. Her editorial expertise spans the Jammu and Kashmir, Himachal Pradesh, Chandigarh, Punjab and Online desks. She was the recipient of the The Nehru Fellowship in Politics and Elections, where she studied political campaigns, policy research, political strategy and communications for a year. She pens The Indian Express newsletter, Meanwhile, Back Home. Write to her at or You can follow her on Instagram: @ink_and_ideology, and X: @KhoslaAishwarya. ... Read More
Indian Express
a day ago
- Politics
- Indian Express
How the US helped oust the Iranian government in 1953 and reinstate the Shah
When US missiles struck Iran's key nuclear facilities on June 22, history seemed to repeat itself. Seventy-two years ago, a covert CIA operation toppled Iran's democratically elected government. Now, as American rhetoric drifts once more toward regime change, the ghosts of 1953 are stirring again. The coordinated US air and missile strike, codenamed Operation Midnight Hammer, targeted three of Iran's principal nuclear sites: Fordow, Natanz, and the Isfahan Nuclear Technology Center. The attack immediately reignited fears of a broader war in the Middle East. In the hours that followed, US President Donald Trump posted on Truth Social: 'It's not politically correct to use the term 'Regime Change. But if the current Iranian Regime is unable to MAKE IRAN GREAT AGAIN, why wouldn't there be a Regime change??? MIGA!!!' Though officials in Washington, including Vice President JD Vance, rushed to clarify that regime change was not formal policy, many in Iran heard echoes from 1953, when the US and UK orchestrated the overthrow of Iran's democratically elected prime minister, Mohammad Mossadegh. After being appointed as the prime minister of Iran in 1951, Mossadegh moved to nationalise the Anglo-Iranian Oil Company, then controlled by the British, who had long funneled Iranian oil profits to London. 'He ended a long period of British hegemony in Iran… and set the stage for several decades of rapid economic growth fueled by oil revenues,' wrote Mark Gasiorowski, a historian at Tulane University, in an essay for the volume The Middle East and the United States: History, Politics, and Ideologies (2018). 'He also tried to democratise Iran's political system by reducing the powers of the shah and the traditional upper class.' Mossadegh argued that Iran, like any sovereign state, deserved control over its resources. Appearing before the International Court of Justice in 1952, he laid out Iran's case: 'The decision to nationalise the oil industry is the result of the political will of an independent and free nation,' he said. 'For us Iranians, the uneasiness of stopping any kind of action which is seen as interference in our national affairs is more intense than for other nations.' Britain saw the nationalisation as both a strategic and economic threat. It imposed a blockade and led a global oil boycott, while pressuring Washington to intervene. The British adopted a three-track strategy: a failed negotiation effort, a global boycott of Iranian oil and covert efforts to undermine and overthrow Mossadegh, writes Gasiorowski . British intelligence operatives had built ties with 'politicians, businessmen, military officers and clerical leaders' in anticipation of a coup. Initially, the Truman administration resisted intervention. But President Dwight D Eisenhower's election ushered in a more aggressive Cold War posture. 'Under the Truman administration, these boundaries [of acceptable Iranian politics] were drawn rather broadly,' Gasiorowski wrote. 'But when Eisenhower entered office, the more stridently anti-Communist views of his foreign policy advisers led the US to drop its support for Mossadegh and take steps to overthrow him.' Fear of communism's spread, particularly via Iran's Tudeh Party, believed to be the first organised Communist party in the Middle East. 'Although they did not regard Mossadegh as a Communist,' Gasiorowski wrote, 'they believed conditions in Iran would probably continue to deteriorate… strengthening the Tudeh Party and perhaps enabling it to seize power.' While Britain lobbied for a coup, Mossadegh appealed directly to Eisenhower. Eisenhower, in a letter in June 1953, offered sympathy but warned that aid was unlikely so long as Iran withheld oil: 'There is a strong feeling… that it would not be fair to the American taxpayers for the United States Government to extend any considerable amount of economic aid to Iran so long as Iran could have access to funds derived from the sale of its oil.' Mossadegh's response was blunt. He accused Britain of sabotaging Iran's economy through 'propaganda and diplomacy,' and warned that inaction could carry lasting consequences: 'If prompt and effective aid is not given to this country now, any steps that might be taken tomorrow… might well be too late,' he wrote. Weeks later, in August 1953, the CIA and Britain's MI6 launched a covert operation to oust Mossadegh and restore the Shah, Mohammad Reza Pahlavi, to power. 'A decision was made to develop and carry out a plan to overthrow Mussadiq and install Zahedi as prime minister,' Gasiorowski wrote. 'The operation was to be led by Kermit Roosevelt, who headed the CIA's Middle East operations division.' The mission, code-named Operation Ajax, used anti-Mossadegh propaganda, bribes, and orchestrated street unrest. After an initial failure and the Shah's brief exile, loyalist military units staged a successful coup on August 19. Mossadegh was arrested, tried, and placed under house arrest until his death in 1967. In 2013, the CIA officially acknowledged its role, releasing declassified documents that described the coup as 'an act of U.S. foreign policy, conceived and approved at the highest levels of government.' In Iran, schoolchildren learn about the 1953 coup in classrooms. State media airs annual retrospectives on Mossadegh's downfall. His name recurs in graffiti, political speeches, and university lectures. In his book The Coup: 1953, the CIA, and the Roots of Modern U.S.-Iranian Relations, the historian Ervand Abrahamian called the operation 'a defining fault line not only for Iranian history but also in the country's relations with both Britain and the United States.' It 'carved in public memory a clear dividing line — 'before' and 'after' — that still shapes the country's political culture,' he wrote. While Cold War defenders portrayed the coup as a check on communism, Abrahamian sees oil and empire as the true motivators. 'The main concern was not so much about communism as about the dangerous repercussions that oil nationalisation could have throughout the world,' he argues. Following the coup, the Shah ruled with increasing autocracy, supported by the US and bolstered by SAVAK (Sazeman-e Ettela'at va Amniyat-e Keshvar), a secret police trained by the CIA. Decades of repression, inequality, and corruption gave way to the 1979 Islamic Revolution, which toppled the monarchy and established the Islamic Republic. 'The strategic considerations that led US policymakers to undertake the 1953 coup helped set in motion a chain of events that later destroyed the Shah's regime and created severe problems for US interests,' wrote Gasiorowski. On November 4, 1979, the US Embassy in Tehran was seized. Fifty-two Americans were held hostage for 444 days. Revolutionaries repeatedly cited 1953 as the origin of their mistrust. Though Washington denied involvement for decades, few Iranians ever doubted the CIA's role in Mossadegh's fall. 'The coup revealed how the United States began almost instinctively to follow in the footsteps of British imperialism,' write David W Lesch and Mark L Haas editors of The Middle East and the United States: History, Politics, and Ideologies . 'Demonstrating a preference for the status quo rather than the forces of change.' Even President Barack Obama, in a 2009 speech in Cairo, acknowledged the long shadow of 1953, noting that the coup had created 'years of mistrust.' No US president has ever issued a formal apology. Dr Omair Anas, director of research at the Centre for Studies of Plural Societies, a non-profit, non-partisan, independent institution dedicated to democratising knowledge, sees the 1953 events as not just a turning point but a template for today's impasse. 'The 1953 coup was staged in the backdrop of the Cold War which resulted in Iran's inclusion into the CENTO alliance along with Pakistan and Turkiye,' he said. He is sharply critical of current regime change rhetoric, describing it as detached from Iran's internal political conditions. 'The most important player is Iran's domestic politics,' he said. 'At this stage, it is not willing and prepared for a regime change.' Anas points out that the government has already absorbed considerable dissent: 'Previous anti-hijab protests have already accommodated many anti-regime voices and sentiments.' But absorbing discontent, he suggests, is not the same as welcoming systemic change. 'Any regime change at this stage would immediately lead the country to chaos and possible civil war, as the new regime won't be able to de-Islamise the state in the near future.' Trump's rhetoric, therefore, landed with particular resonance. While senior officials have attempted to distance the administration from talk of regime change, many in Iran and beyond see a familiar playbook: pressure, provocation, and the threat of externally imposed political outcomes. Dr Anas contends that many of the so-called alternatives to the Islamic Republic are politically inert. 'Anti-regime forces since 1979 have lost much ground and haven't been able to stage a major threat to the revolution,' he said. 'The West is fully aware that the Pahlavi dynasty or the Mujahidin-e-Khalq (MEK) have the least popularity and organisational presence to replace the Khamenei-led regime of Islamic revolution.' As he sees it, the system's survival is not merely a matter of repression but of strategic logic. 'Khamenei can only be replaced by someone like him,' he said. 'The continuity of the Islamic revolution of Iran remains more preferable than any other disruptive replacement.' He also warns that a forced collapse of the current order could have serious regional implications. 'In the case of violent suppression of Islamist forces, the new Iranian state might seek the revival of the Cold War collaboration with Pakistan and Turkiye and a strong push against Russia.' For India, a country that has generally maintained a policy of non-intervention, such a development could be deeply destabilising. 'Any abrupt change would complicate India's West Asia and South Asia strategic calculus,' he said, 'and more fundamentally India's Pakistan strategy.' Dr Anas also sees Western credibility as severely eroded across the region. 'The West has left no credibility whatsoever about human rights, freedom, and democracy after the Israeli-Gaza war,' he said. 'The Middle Eastern public opinion, including that of Kurds, Druze and Afghans, have lost hope in Western promises. They prefer any autocratic regime to West-backed regimes.' India, he said, risks being caught flat-footed if political transitions come suddenly. 'India generally stays away from the normative politics of the Middle East,' he said. 'While this shows India's principled stand on no intervention in internal politics, it also puts India in a weak position once the regime changes, as happened in Syria.' His recommendation? 'India needs to engage more actively with West Asian civil society to have more balanced relations beyond states.' Aishwarya Khosla is a journalist currently serving as Deputy Copy Editor at The Indian Express. Her writings examine the interplay of culture, identity, and politics. She began her career at the Hindustan Times, where she covered books, theatre, culture, and the Punjabi diaspora. Her editorial expertise spans the Jammu and Kashmir, Himachal Pradesh, Chandigarh, Punjab and Online desks. She was the recipient of the The Nehru Fellowship in Politics and Elections, where she studied political campaigns, policy research, political strategy and communications for a year. She pens The Indian Express newsletter, Meanwhile, Back Home. Write to her at or You can follow her on Instagram: @ink_and_ideology, and X: @KhoslaAishwarya. ... Read More
Boston Globe
3 days ago
- Politics
- Boston Globe
The most pro-American Muslims in the Middle East
Advertisement From another: 'What righteous rage would Americans feel if a Muslim nation overthrew our own elected government and supported a police state for decades?' It's an allegation that critics have been making for years. Barack Obama voiced it in a widely touted speech in Cairo early in his presidency. 'In the middle of the Cold War,' he declared, 'the United States played a role in the overthrow of a democratically elected Iranian government.' Other prominent Democrats, including former presidential candidate Advertisement But the historical record isn't nearly so cut-and-dried, as Peter Theroux, a longtime US intelligence officer, 'First, the CIA did not mount or execute a coup. Second, Mossadegh was not democratically elected. Third, the shah was not yet corrupt. Fourth, he was not brought back to power, because he had never left it.' For those whose instinct is always to find fault with US policy, the narrative that the CIA ran roughshod over Iranian democracy to overthrow Mossadegh — who had incurred Western displeasure by nationalizing the country's oil industry — may be irresistible. But it rests on myths. As Ray Takeyh, a leading scholar of Iran and a former senior adviser in the Obama State Department, Mossadegh's fall was driven mostly by deep domestic opposition from Shia clergy, middle class professionals, and the military, which resented the growing authoritarianism of the prime minister. When the shah, acting within his constitutional authority, dismissed Mossadegh, the prime minister reacted by arresting the man who brought him the news. It's true that the American and British governments assisted the anti-Mossadegh forces, but they didn't conjure them into existence. Mossadegh's downfall in 1953 was chiefly the result of his own mismanagement and the mobilization of powerful Iranian factions — not a nefarious CIA-engineered plot. Advertisement But even if you disregard all that, even if you regard Mossadegh as a liberal Iranian hero undermined by Anglo-American perfidy, there is a much bigger problem with the 'But Mossadegh!' argument. It's illogical. The goal of Ayatollah Khomeini's revolution of 1979 was to transform Iran into a nation governed by strict sharia law under a Supreme Leader — himself — and to impose a radical Islamist dictatorship throughout society. The new regime suppressed liberal nationalists, including many who had admired Mossadegh, and dismantled the country's remaining democratic institutions. Khomeini's theocracy didn't come to vindicate Mossadegh; it came to crush every liberal value he embraced. Moreover, the new Islamic republic's hatred for America had nothing to do with 1953 and everything to do with its own revolutionary ideology. The mullahs who seized power saw American liberalism, secularism, and friendship toward Israel as a cultural and religious threat. That is why it encouraged throngs to chant 'Death to America!' and why it has repeatedly facilitated deadly attacks on Americans. But the most compelling refutation of the claim that the Tehran government's implacable anti-Americanism is rooted in the 1953 ouster of Mossadegh is that Iranian grassroots public opinion is If 1953 had sown the deep cultural resentment that leftist critics imagine, the Iranian street ought to be a hotbed of hatred for Americans. Instead, numerous indicators of public opinion within Iran, formal and informal, show the opposite: Ordinary Iranians admire American society and people, even if they sometimes resent US policy. 'A 2009 World Public Opinion poll found that 51 percent of Iranians hold a favorable opinion of Americans, a number consistent with other polls, meaning that Americans are more widely liked in Iran than anywhere else in the Middle East,' Advertisement Two years later, Iranians active on social media have made a point of expressing warmth toward Americans, especially in recent years. A notable example occurred in 2017, when protests against the travel ban imposed during the first Trump administration prompted Iranian users to launch an online There is no shortage of anecdotal evidence — including videotaped scenes in which Advertisement For more than 40 years, the Iranian government has denounced the United States as 'the Great Satan' and Israel as 'the little Satan' and vowed to ' The toppling of Mossadegh in 1953 may have been a significant chapter in modern Iranian history, but it has little do with how ordinary Iranians today regard the nation that its Islamist oppressors have been cursing for more than four decades. Like the people of Eastern Europe during the Cold War, the people of Iran see America — If the current US-Israeli strikes on Iran succeed in destroying the mullahs' nuclear weapons infrastructure that will be a good thing. But it will be a great thing if the attacks pave the way to ending the evil regime that has ruled Iran since 1979, and at long last open the door to a brighter, freer, happier future for the long-suffering people of Iran. Advertisement This is adapted from the current , Jeff Jacoby's weekly newsletter. To subscribe to Arguable, visit . Jeff Jacoby can be reached at
Indian Express
3 days ago
- Politics
- Indian Express
From Korea to Iran: A history of US conflicts — overt and covert — since World War II
The Second World War ended in 1945 after the United States dropped two atomic bombs on Hiroshima and Nagasaki, killing an estimated 2,00,000 people. The bombings led to Japan's unconditional surrender on August 14, marking the end of World War II. US soldiers finally returned home to cheers, parades, and promises of peace. Yet in the 80 years since, the United States has seldom been without a military footprint on foreign soil. While the US Congress has declared war only 11 times, American forces have continuously been engaged in conflicts around the globe. After World War II, the United States set itself as a bulwark against the spread of communism and entered several conflicts to contain Soviet and Chinese influence. By mid-1945, the Korean Peninsula had become a Cold War flashpoint. The Soviet Union supported the northern half, and the United States backed the southern half. On June 25, 1950, North Korean People's Army troops crossed the 38th parallel southward, intent on unifying the peninsula under communist rule. President Harry S Truman, wary of Soviet expansionism, invoked a United Nations Security Council mandate for what he termed a 'police action.' Over 15 nations joined the United States under the United Nations banner, leading to a three-year conflict known as the Korean War. By the time the fighting ceased with an armistice in July 1953, nearly 5 million people were killed, as per the American Legion, a US veterans organisation. 'More than half of the casualties were civilians, about 10 per cent of the population. This rate of casualties was higher than World War II and the Vietnam War.' In 1951, Iran's democratically elected Prime Minister, Mohammad Mossadegh, nationalised the British-controlled Anglo-Iranian Oil Company. The UK vehemently objected, and the US feared Soviet influence might fill the vacuum in Iran's oil-rich landscape. Under the presidency of Dwight D Eisenhower, the Central Intelligence Agency (CIA), in collaboration with the United Kingdom's Secret Intelligence Service (commonly known as MI6), launched Operation Ajax, a covert operation aimed at deposing Prime Minister Mossadegh, installing a compliant monarch, and securing Western access to Iranian oil. On August 19, 1953, after weeks of orchestrated propaganda, demonstrations, and clandestine bribery of clerics and officials, Prime Minister Mossadegh was forced from power and arrested. A declassified internal memo from the CIA stated: 'The military coup that overthrew Mosaddeq and his National Front cabinet was carried out under CIA direction as an act of US foreign policy, conceived and approved at the highest levels of government.' The Shah, Mohammad Reza Pahlavi, was reinstated, but the long-term costs proved high. The operation planted deep seeds of anti-Americanism, which ultimately found crescendo in the Islamic Revolution of 1979. Vietnam, emerging from French colonial rule, became a Cold War epicentre. In 1954, the Geneva Conference resulted in dividing Vietnam at the 17th parallel: Ho Chi Minh's Democratic Republic of Vietnam in the north, and the Republic of Vietnam in the south, backed by Western nations. To contain communism, the United States began sending military advisers in the mid-1950s. However, following the Gulf of Tonkin naval incident in August 1964, when the destroyer USS Maddox reported being attacked by North Vietnamese boats, the United States Congress passed the Gulf of Tonkin Resolution. This allowed for full-scale military escalation under President Lyndon B Johnson. By 1969, half a million American servicemen and women were deployed (Scorched Atmospheres: The Violent Geographies of the Vietnam War and the Rise of Drone Warfare, Ian G R Shaw, 2016) amid intense jungle warfare, strategic bombing campaigns, and the deployment of chemical defoliants such as Agent Orange. The war began to unravel on the home front, as public protests surged and American casualties escalated. President Richard Milhous Nixon initiated 'Vietnamisation,' withdrawing combat troops while increasing support for South Vietnamese forces. Ultimately, Saigon fell to communist forces in April 1975. The war ended with reunification under the Socialist Republic of Vietnam and cast long shadows over US foreign policy and public trust. After it intervened in Iran, the US continued to use intelligence agencies to reshape governments in Chile, Laos, Cambodia, and Africa. Between 1964 and 1973, American B-52 bombers dropped over two million tonnes of ordnance on the Kingdom of Laos, making it 'per person, the most heavily bombed country in history.' (Remarks of President Obama to the People of Laos, 2016). The bombing campaign was conducted under the codename Operation Barrel Roll (later supplemented by Operation Steel Tiger). In the Kingdom of Cambodia, Operation Menu involved covert airstrikes aimed at destabilising communist supply routes in violation of Cambodian neutrality. The chaos these bombings engendered helped pave the way for the rise of the Khmer Rouge regime, which directly led to the Cambodian Genocide that claimed the lives of around 1.5-3 million people over four years, as per the University of Minnesota, Holocaust and Genocide Studies records. In South America, the Cold War paranoia extended to elected socialist democracies. Chile's democratically elected President, Salvador Allende, who took office in November 1970, alarmed United States officials. Henry Alfred Kissinger, then National Security Advisor, regarded Allende as a threat, and President Richard Nixon feared a repeat of Cuba. Declassified CIA documents revealed secret funding of opposition media, support for labour strikes, and covert efforts to destabilise the Allende government. On September 11, 1973, General Augusto José Ramón Pinochet's military junta bombed La Moneda Palace, resulting in President Allende's death. A brutal dictatorship ensued, with thousands tortured and disappeared over the next 17 years. In Central America, after the Sandinista National Liberation Front successfully overthrew the Somoza (a political family that ruled Nicaragua for 43 years) dictatorship in 1979, the United States responded by backing the Contrarrevolucionarios, commonly known as the Contras. President Ronald Wilson Reagan's administration directed covert assistance to the Contras, despite the passage of the Boland Amendment by the United States Congress, which banned such funding. When the operation was exposed in November 1986, it became known as the Iran–Contra scandal, which involved American covert dealings involving the sale of weapons to Iran, in exchange for funds funneled to the Contras. In Southern Africa, Angola descended into civil war upon Portuguese decolonisation in 1975. Competing factions — the Soviet- and Cuban-backed Popular Movement for the Liberation of Angola, and the American- and South African–supported National Union for the Total Independence of Angola (UNITA) and the National Liberation Front of Angola (FNLA) — clashed in a conflict lasting until 2002. While the United States did not deploy combat forces, the CIA provided millions of dollars worth of arms and logistical support, as per a 1975 New York Times report. Jonas Savimbi's UNITA became the primary beneficiary of US covert involvement. The war resulted in hundreds of thousands of deaths, widespread displacement, and disruption of regional stability. The United States maintained an official stance of neutrality during the Iran-Iraq War but in practice pursued a contradictory policy pursuant of its strategic interests in the Middle East. Initially, US policymakers saw Iraq, under Saddam Hussein, as a potential counterbalance to revolutionary Iran, especially after the 1979 US Embassy hostage crisis and the fall of the pro-American Shah. While the US did not directly initiate the war, reports and declassified records suggest it tacitly approved Iraq's invasion of Iran, believing it might weaken Iran's Islamic regime. Throughout the war, the US provided intelligence, satellite imagery, and material support to Iraq. At the same time, the US covertly sold arms to Iran in what became known as the Iran-Contra Affair. This dual-track 'tilt' policy aimed to prevent either side from winning, thereby preserving regional balance and securing American strategic interests, particularly oil access and Israel's security. Ultimately, US involvement prolonged the conflict and intensified regional instability. With the Cold War over, the United States turned to precision warfare to assert its global dominance. In August 1990, Iraqi President Saddam Hussein, reeling from the financial wreckage of the Iran-Iraq War and $37 billion in Gulf debts, ordered an invasion of Kuwait. Initially, sanctions were imposed after an international backlash. Under the leadership of President George HW Bush, the United States assembled a coalition of 34 nations under the United Nations Security Council resolutions to liberate Kuwait. Operation Desert Shield transitioned to Operation Desert Storm on January 17, 1991. A six-week air campaign devastated Iraqi military infrastructure, followed by a 100-hour ground offensive in February 1991 that liberated Kuwait. However, Saddam remained in power, internal rebellions were suppressed, and economic sanctions remained in place. After September 11, 2001, the US launched an open-ended war on terror, stretching from Afghanistan and Iraq to Yemen and Somalia. In a strong statement after the attack, President George W Bush said, 'We're going to meet and deliberate and discuss – but there's no question about it, this act will not stand; we will find those who did it; we will smoke them out of their holes; we will get them running and we'll bring them to justice. We will not only deal with those who dare attack America, we will deal with those who harbor them and feed them and house them.' The September 11, 2001 terrorist attacks by al-Qaeda triggered an immediate American response. President Bush authorised Operation Enduring Freedom in October, targeting al-Qaeda training camps and Taliban regime infrastructure in Afghanistan. With rapid initial success, the Taliban were deposed. Over time, however, the mission shifted toward counterinsurgency, governance challenges, and infrastructure development, as directed by NATO and United States Central Command. After nearly two decades and a cost of close to two trillion dollars, the United States formally withdrew military forces in August 2021, marking the return of the Taliban. In March 2003, the United States, under President George W Bush, launched Operation Iraqi Freedom, asserting that Iraqi President Saddam Hussein possessed weapons of mass destruction and harboured ties to terrorist networks. Baghdad fell swiftly, but the resulting power vacuum spawned an extended insurgency. Sectarian violence escalated, large-scale reconstruction efforts faltered, and humanitarian crises mounted amid allegations of torture and human rights abuses. No weapons of mass destruction were ever recovered, prompting global scrutiny and American skepticism. The Chilcot Report confirmed that the UK went to war in Iraq based on flawed intelligence that claimed Saddam Hussein possessed weapons of mass destruction (WMDs). In response, former Prime Minister Tony Blair offered a limited apology but defended the decision to remove Saddam Hussein. In a 2015 CNN interview ahead of the report's release, Blair admitted: 'I apologise for the fact that the intelligence we received was wrong. I also apologise for some of the mistakes in planning and, certainly, our mistake in our understanding of what would happen once you removed the regime.' The United States completed its military withdrawal in December 2011, but instability persisted. Despite its support for the withdrawal from Iraq, the Obama administration in 2014 returned American military forces to Iraq to wage war on ISIS and then extended the war into Syria. In February 2011, the State of Libya saw widespread unrest as part of the Arab Spring, a series of pro-democracy protests, uprisings, and armed rebellions. Libyan leader Muammar Muhammad Abu Minyar al-Gaddafi responded with brutal force, prompting the United Nations Security Council to pass Resolution 1973, authorising 'all necessary measures' to protect civilians. The North Atlantic Treaty Organization (NATO), with limited direct American involvement, enforced a no-fly zone and launched air strikes. Gaddafi was killed in October, but the leadership vacuum spawned competing militias and rival governments. The Syrian Arab Republic descended into civil war in March 2011, when the Bashar Hafez al-Assad regime violently suppressed civilian protests. Over time, multiple groups entered the conflict, including the Islamic State of Iraq and Syria (ISIS), Kurdish-led Kurdish forces, the Syrian Arab Army, and intervening foreign powers, including Russia, Iran, and the United States. American involvement remained deliberately limited: both covert and overt support for moderate rebel groups, NATO-led airstrikes targeting ISIS, and paramilitary assistance to Kurdish allies via the United States Special Operations Command. As of 2025, Ahmed al-Sharaa, who led a campaign that toppled Bashar al-Assad, is President. In the aftermath of the September 11 attacks, the United States started using unmanned aerial vehicles (drones) to neutralise threats. President Bush authorised covert strikes against terrorist leaders in 'ungoverned spaces.' Under President Barack Obama, drone use intensified, both for 'targeted strikes,' aimed at identified terrorist members, and more controversial 'signature strikes,' which were finally based on behavioral patterns rather than confirmed identity. Operating largely out of air bases in Pakistan and Yemen, and coordinated via the United States Africa Command in East Africa, these drone programmes allegedly killed hundreds of al-Qaeda, Taliban, and Islamic State fighters. Osama bin Laden was killed during a US military raid in Abbottabad, Pakistan, on May 2, 2011. During the 2010s, the United States pivoted to Africa's Sahel region, deploying 1,100 troops to the Republic of Niger (The Guardian, March 2024), equipping and training local militaries, operating drone surveillance and strike platforms from a newly constructed airfield near Agadez, and supporting both anti-terror operations and humanitarian missions. In July 2023, a military coup ousted democratically elected President Mohamed Bazoum and suspended existing security agreements with the United States. However, the relations between Niger and the US deteriorated after the military junta claimed power in July 2023, in what the US called a coup (CNN, March 16, 2024). Since then, the US has withdrawn many of its 1,100 troops who were stationed in Niger. Since the Iran-Iraq war, US presidents have avoided hitting Iran directly. The risks of regional war, soaring oil prices, and global instability were too high. It changed this year in June after President Donald Trump ordered direct military strikes on Iran's nuclear facilities. Trump called the strikes 'a spectacular military success.' In a televised adress he said Iran's key nuclear enrichment facilities had been 'completely and totally obliterated.' 'If peace does not come quickly, we will go after those other targets with precision, speed and skill,' he said. Aishwarya Khosla is a journalist currently serving as Deputy Copy Editor at The Indian Express. Her writings examine the interplay of culture, identity, and politics. She began her career at the Hindustan Times, where she covered books, theatre, culture, and the Punjabi diaspora. Her editorial expertise spans the Jammu and Kashmir, Himachal Pradesh, Chandigarh, Punjab and Online desks. She was the recipient of the The Nehru Fellowship in Politics and Elections, where she studied political campaigns, policy research, political strategy and communications for a year. She pens The Indian Express newsletter, Meanwhile, Back Home. Write to her at or You can follow her on Instagram: @ink_and_ideology, and X: @KhoslaAishwarya. ... Read More
Black America Web
5 days ago
- Politics
- Black America Web
Understanding The US And Iran's Long And Complicated History
People observe fire and smoke from an Israeli airstrike on an oil depot in Tehran, Iran, on June 15, 2025. Stringer/Getty Images With the U.S. bombing of three nuclear sites in Iran, relations between the two countries have arguably reached one of the lowest points in modern times. But the bad blood between the two countries isn't new: The U.S. and Iran have been in conflict for decades – at least since the U.S. helped overthrow a democracy-minded prime minister, Mohammed Mossadegh, in August 1953. The U.S. then supported the long, repressive reign of the Shah of Iran, whose security services brutalized Iranian citizens for decades. The two countries have been particularly hostile to each other since Iranian students took over the U.S. Embassy in Tehran in November 1979, resulting in economic sanctions and the severing of formal diplomatic relations between the nations. Since 1984, the U.S. State Department has listed Iran as a 'state sponsor of terrorism,' alleging the Iranian government provides terrorists with training, money and weapons. Some of the major events in U.S.-Iran relations highlight the differences between the nations' views, but others arguably presented real opportunities for reconciliation. Mohammed Mossadegh. Wikimedia Commons In 1951, the Iranian Parliament chose a new prime minister, Mossadegh, who then led lawmakers to vote in favor of taking over the Anglo-Iranian Oil Company, expelling the company's British owners and saying they wanted to turn oil profits into investments in the Iranian people. The U.S. feared disruption in the global oil supply and worried about Iran falling prey to Soviet influence. The British feared the loss of cheap Iranian oil. President Dwight Eisenhower decided it was best for the U.S. and the U.K. to get rid of Mossadegh. Operation Ajax, a joint CIA-British operation, convinced the Shah of Iran, the country's monarch, to dismiss Mossadegh and drive him from office by force. Mossadegh was replaced by a much more Western-friendly prime minister, handpicked by the CIA. Demonstrators in Tehran demand the establishment of an Islamic republic. AP Photo/Saris After more than 25 years of relative stability in U.S.-Iran relations, the Iranian public had grown unhappy with the social and economic conditions that developed under the dictatorial rule of Shah Mohammad Reza Pahlavi. Pahlavi enriched himself and used American aid to fund the military while many Iranians lived in poverty. Dissent was often violently quashed by SAVAK, the shah's security service. In January 1979, the shah left Iran, ostensibly to seek cancer treatment. Two weeks later, Ayatollah Ruhollah Khomeini returned from exile in Iraq and led a drive to abolish the monarchy and proclaim an Islamic government. Iranian students at the U.S. Embassy in Tehran show a blindfolded American hostage to the crowd in November 1979. AP Photo In October 1979, President Jimmy Carter agreed to allow the shah to come to the U.S. to seek advanced medical treatment. Outraged Iranian students stormed the U.S. Embassy in Tehran on Nov. 4, taking 52 Americans hostage. That convinced Carter to sever U.S. diplomatic relations with Iran on April 7, 1980. Two weeks later, the U.S. military launched a mission to rescue the hostages, but it failed, with aircraft crashes killing eight U.S. servicemembers. The shah died in Egypt in July 1980, but the hostages weren't released until Jan. 20, 1981, after 444 days of captivity. An Iranian cleric, left, and an Iranian soldier wear gas masks to protect themselves against Iraqi chemical-weapons attacks in May September 1980, Iraq invaded Iran, an escalation of the two countries' regional rivalry and religious differences: Iraq was governed by Sunni Muslims but had a Shia Muslim majority population; Iran was led and populated mostly by Shiites. The U.S. was concerned that the conflict would limit the flow of Middle Eastern oil and wanted to ensure the conflict didn't affect its close ally, Saudi Arabia. The U.S. supported Iraqi leader Saddam Hussein in his fight against the anti-American Iranian regime. As a result, the U.S. mostly turned a blind eye toward Iraq's use of chemical weapons against Iran. U.S. officials moderated their usual opposition to those illegal and inhumane weapons because the U.S. State Department did not 'wish to play into Iran's hands by fueling its propaganda against Iraq.' In 1988, the war ended in a stalemate. More than 500,000 military and 100,000 civilians died. The U.S. imposed an arms embargo after Iran was designated a state sponsor of terrorism in 1984. That left the Iranian military, in the middle of its war with Iraq, desperate for weapons and aircraft and vehicle parts to keep fighting. The Reagan administration decided that the embargo would likely push Iran to seek support from the Soviet Union, the U.S.'s Cold War rival. Rather than formally end the embargo, U.S. officials agreed to secretly sell weapons to Iran starting in 1981. The last shipment, of anti-tank missiles, was in October 1986. In November 1986, a Lebanese magazine exposed the deal. That revelation sparked the Iran-Contra scandal in the U.S., with Reagan's officials found to have collected money from Iran for the weapons and illegally sent those funds to anti-socialist rebels – the Contras – in Nicaragua. At a mass funeral for 76 of the 290 people killed in the shootdown of Iran Air 655, mourners hold up a sign depicting the incident. AP Photo/CP/Mohammad Sayyad On the morning of July 8, 1988, the USS Vincennes, a guided missile cruiser patrolling in the international waters of the Persian Gulf, entered Iranian territorial waters while in a skirmish with Iranian gunboats. Either during or just after that exchange of gunfire, the Vincennes crew mistook a passing civilian Airbus passenger jet for an Iranian F-14 fighter. They shot it down, killing all 290 people aboard. The U.S. called it a 'tragic and regrettable accident,' but Iran believed the plane's downing was intentional. In 1996, the U.S. agreed to pay $131.8 million in compensation to Iran. In August 1997, a moderate reformer, Mohammad Khatami, won Iran's presidential election. U.S. President Bill Clinton sensed an opportunity. He sent a message to Tehran through the Swiss ambassador there, proposing direct government-to-government talks. Shortly thereafter, in early January 1998, Khatami gave an interview to CNN in which he expressed 'respect for the great American people,' denounced terrorism and recommended an 'exchange of professors, writers, scholars, artists, journalists and tourists' between the United States and Iran. However, Supreme Leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei didn't agree, so not much came of the mutual overtures as Clinton's time in office came to an end. In his 2002 State of the Union address, President George W. Bush characterized Iran, Iraq and North Korea as constituting an 'Axis of Evil' supporting terrorism and pursuing weapons of mass destruction, straining relations even further. Inside these buildings at the Natanz nuclear facility in Iran, technicians enrich uranium. AP Photo/Vahid Salemi In August 2002, an exiled rebel group announced that Iran had been secretly working on nuclear weapons at two installations that had not previously been publicly revealed. That was a violation of the terms of the Nuclear Nonproliferation Treaty, which Iran had signed, requiring countries to disclose their nuclear-related facilities to international inspectors. One of those formerly secret locations, Natanz, housed centrifuges for enriching uranium, which could be used in civilian nuclear reactors or enriched further for weapons. Starting in roughly 2005, U.S. and Israeli government cyberattackers together reportedly targeted the Natanz centrifuges with a custom-made piece of malicious software that became known as Stuxnet. That effort, which slowed down Iran's nuclear program was one of many U.S. and international attempts – mostly unsuccessful – to curtail Iran's progress toward building a nuclear bomb. An excerpt of the document sent from Iran, via the Swiss government, to the U.S. State Department in 2003, appears to seek talks between the U.S. and Iran. Washington Post via Scribd In May 2003, senior Iranian officials quietly contacted the State Department through the Swiss embassy in Iran, seeking 'a dialogue 'in mutual respect,'' addressing four big issues: nuclear weapons, terrorism, Palestinian resistance and stability in Iraq. Hardliners in the Bush administration weren't interested in any major reconciliation, though Secretary of State Colin Powell favored dialogue and other officials had met with Iran about al-Qaida. When Iranian hardliner Mahmoud Ahmadinejad was elected president of Iran in 2005, the opportunity died. The following year, Ahmadinejad made his own overture to Washington in an 18-page letter to President Bush. The letter was widely dismissed; a senior State Department official told me in profane terms that it amounted to nothing. Representatives of several nations met in Vienna in July 2015 to finalize the Iran nuclear deal. Austrian Federal Ministry for Europe, Integration and Foreign Affairs/Flickr After a decade of unsuccessful attempts to rein in Iran's nuclear ambitions, the Obama administration undertook a direct diplomatic approach beginning in 2013. Two years of secret, direct negotiations initially bilaterally between the U.S. and Iran and later with other nuclear powers culminated in the Joint Comprehensive Plan of Action, often called the Iran nuclear deal. Iran, the U.S., China, France, Germany, Russia and the United Kingdom signed the deal in 2015. It severely limited Iran's capacity to enrich uranium and mandated that international inspectors monitor and enforce Iran's compliance with the agreement. In return, Iran was granted relief from international and U.S. economic sanctions. Though the inspectors regularly certified that Iran was abiding by the agreement's terms, President Donald Trump withdrew from the agreement in May 2018. An official photo from the Iranian government shows Maj. Gen. Qassem Soleimani, who was killed in a Jan. 3 drone strike ordered by President Donald Trump. Iranian Supreme Leader Press Office/Anadolu Agency via Getty Images On Jan. 3, 2020, an American drone fired a missile that killed Maj. Gen. Qassem Soleimani, the leader of Iran's elite Quds Force. Analysts considered Soleimani the second most powerful man in Iran, after Supreme Leader Ayatollah Khamenei. At the time, the Trump administration asserted that Soleimani was directing an imminent attack against U.S. assets in the region, but officials have not provided clear evidence to support that claim. Iran responded by launching ballistic missiles that hit two American bases in Iraq. Hamas' brazen attack on Israel on Oct. 7, 2023, provoked a fearsome militarized response from Israel that continues today and served to severely weaken Iran's proxies in the region, especially Hamas – the perpetrator of the attacks – and Hezbollah in Lebanon. Trump saw an opportunity to forge a new nuclear deal with Iran and to pursue other business deals with Tehran. Once inaugurated for his second term, Trump appointed Steve Witkoff, a real estate investor who is the president's friend, to serve as special envoy for the Middle East and to lead negotiations. Negotiations for a nuclear deal between Washington and Tehran began in April, but the countries did not reach a deal. They were planning a new round of talks when Israel struck Iran with a series of airstrikes on June 13, forcing the White House to reconsider is position. On June 22, in the early morning hours, the U.S. chose to act decisively in an attempt to cripple Iran's nuclear capacity, bombing three nuclear sites and causing what Pentagon officials called 'severe damage.' Iran vowed to retaliate. This story has been updated to reflect the U.S. bombing of Iranian nuclear sites on June 22, 2025. Jeffrey Fields, Professor of the Practice of International Relations, USC Dornsife College of Letters, Arts and Sciences This article is republished from The Conversation under a Creative Commons license. Read the original article. SEE ALSO: Appeals Court Allows Trump To Keep Control Of National Guard In LA The Disrespect: Trump Disregards Juneteenth, Says US Has 'Too Many Non-Working Holidays' SEE ALSO Understanding The US And Iran's Long And Complicated History was originally published on
