With the U.S. bombing of three nuclear websites in Iran, relations between the 2 international locations have arguably reached one of many lowest factors in trendy instances. However the unhealthy blood between the 2 international locations isn’t new: The U.S. and Iran have been in battle for many years – at the least because the U.S. helped overthrow a democracy-minded prime minister, Mohammed Mossadegh, in August 1953. The U.S. then supported the lengthy, repressive reign of the Shah of Iran, whose safety companies brutalized Iranian residents for many years.
The 2 international locations have been significantly hostile to one another since Iranian college students took over the U.S. Embassy in Tehran in November 1979, leading to financial sanctions and the severing of formal diplomatic relations between the nations.
Since 1984, the U.S. State Division has listed Iran as a “state sponsor of terrorism,” alleging the Iranian authorities offers terrorists with coaching, cash and weapons.
A number of the main occasions in U.S.-Iran relations spotlight the variations between the nations’ views, however others arguably introduced actual alternatives for reconciliation.
1953: U.S. overthrows Mossadegh
In 1951, the Iranian Parliament selected a brand new prime minister, Mossadegh, who then led lawmakers to vote in favor of taking on the Anglo-Iranian Oil Firm, expelling the corporate’s British homeowners and saying they wished to show oil income into investments within the Iranian individuals. The U.S. feared disruption within the world oil provide and anxious about Iran falling prey to Soviet affect. The British feared the lack of low cost Iranian oil.
President Dwight Eisenhower determined it was greatest for the U.S. and the U.Ok. to do away with Mossadegh. Operation Ajax, a joint CIA-British operation, satisfied the Shah of Iran, the nation’s monarch, to dismiss Mossadegh and drive him from workplace by power. Mossadegh was changed by a way more Western-friendly prime minister, handpicked by the CIA.
1979: Revolutionaries oust the shah, take hostages
After greater than 25 years of relative stability in U.S.-Iran relations, the Iranian public had grown sad with the social and financial situations that developed below the dictatorial rule of Shah Mohammad Reza Pahlavi.
Pahlavi enriched himself and used American help to fund the army whereas many Iranians lived in poverty. Dissent was usually violently quashed by SAVAK, the shah’s safety service. In January 1979, the shah left Iran, ostensibly to hunt most cancers therapy. Two weeks later, Ayatollah Ruhollah Khomeini returned from exile in Iraq and led a drive to abolish the monarchy and proclaim an Islamic authorities.
In October 1979, President Jimmy Carter agreed to permit the shah to return to the U.S. to hunt superior medical therapy. Outraged Iranian college students stormed the U.S. Embassy in Tehran on Nov. 4, taking 52 People hostage. That satisfied Carter to sever U.S. diplomatic relations with Iran on April 7, 1980.
Two weeks later, the U.S. army launched a mission to rescue the hostages, nevertheless it failed, with plane crashes killing eight U.S. servicemembers.
The shah died in Egypt in July 1980, however the hostages weren’t launched till Jan. 20, 1981, after 444 days of captivity.
1980-1988: U.S. tacitly sides with Iraq
In September 1980, Iraq invaded Iran, an escalation of the 2 international locations’ regional rivalry and spiritual variations: Iraq was ruled by Sunni Muslims however had a Shia Muslim majority inhabitants; Iran was led and populated largely by Shiites.
The U.S. was involved that the battle would restrict the movement of Center Jap oil and wished to make sure the battle didn’t have an effect on its shut ally, Saudi Arabia.
The U.S. supported Iraqi chief Saddam Hussein in his battle towards the anti-American Iranian regime. In consequence, the U.S. largely turned a blind eye towards Iraq’s use of chemical weapons towards Iran.
U.S. officers moderated their regular opposition to these unlawful and inhumane weapons as a result of the U.S. State Division didn’t “want to play into Iran’s fingers by fueling its propaganda towards Iraq.” In 1988, the struggle led to a stalemate. Greater than 500,000 army and 100,000 civilians died.
1981-1986: U.S. secretly sells weapons to Iran
The U.S. imposed an arms embargo after Iran was designated a state sponsor of terrorism in 1984. That left the Iranian army, in the midst of its struggle with Iraq, determined for weapons and plane and automobile elements to maintain preventing.
The Reagan administration determined that the embargo would probably push Iran to hunt assist from the Soviet Union, the U.S.’s Chilly Warfare rival. Moderately than formally finish the embargo, U.S. officers agreed to secretly promote weapons to Iran beginning in 1981.
The final cargo, of anti-tank missiles, was in October 1986. In November 1986, a Lebanese journal uncovered the deal. That revelation sparked the Iran-Contra scandal within the U.S., with Reagan’s officers discovered to have collected cash from Iran for the weapons and illegally despatched these funds to anti-socialist rebels – the Contras – in Nicaragua.
1988: U.S. Navy shoots down Iran Air flight 655
On the morning of July 8, 1988, the usVincennes, a guided missile cruiser patrolling within the worldwide waters of the Persian Gulf, entered Iranian territorial waters whereas in a skirmish with Iranian gunboats.
Both throughout or simply after that change 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 individuals aboard.
The U.S. known as it a “tragic and regrettable accident,” however Iran believed the aircraft’s downing was intentional. In 1996, the U.S. agreed to pay $131.8 million in compensation to Iran.
1997-1998: The U.S. seeks contact
In August 1997, a average reformer, Mohammad Khatami, gained Iran’s presidential election.
U.S. President Invoice Clinton sensed a chance. He despatched a message to Tehran via the Swiss ambassador there, proposing direct government-to-government talks.
Shortly thereafter, in early January 1998, Khatami gave an interview to CNN through which he expressed “respect for the nice American individuals,” denounced terrorism and really useful an “change of professors, writers, students, artists, journalists and vacationers” between the USA and Iran.
Nonetheless, Supreme Chief Ayatollah Ali Khamenei didn’t agree, so not a lot got here of the mutual overtures as Clinton’s time in workplace got here to an finish.
In his 2002 State of the Union deal with, President George W. Bush characterised Iran, Iraq and North Korea as constituting an “Axis of Evil” supporting terrorism and pursuing weapons of mass destruction, straining relations even additional.
2002: Iran’s nuclear program raises alarm
In August 2002, an exiled insurgent group introduced that Iran had been secretly engaged on nuclear weapons at two installations that had not beforehand been publicly revealed.
That was a violation of the phrases of the Nuclear Nonproliferation Treaty, which Iran had signed, requiring international locations to reveal their nuclear-related services to worldwide inspectors.
A kind of previously secret places, Natanz, housed centrifuges for enriching uranium, which could possibly be utilized in civilian nuclear reactors or enriched additional for weapons.
Beginning in roughly 2005, U.S. and Israeli authorities cyberattackers collectively reportedly focused the Natanz centrifuges with a custom-made piece of malicious software program that turned often called Stuxnet.
That effort, which slowed down Iran’s nuclear program was one among many U.S. and worldwide makes an attempt – largely unsuccessful – to curtail Iran’s progress towards constructing a nuclear bomb.
2003: Iran writes to Bush administration
In Might 2003, senior Iranian officers quietly contacted the State Division via the Swiss embassy in Iran, looking for “a dialogue ‘in mutual respect,’” addressing 4 huge points: nuclear weapons, terrorism, Palestinian resistance and stability in Iraq.
Hardliners within the Bush administration weren’t focused on any main reconciliation, although Secretary of State Colin Powell favored dialogue and different officers had met with Iran about al-Qaida.
When Iranian hardliner Mahmoud Ahmadinejad was elected president of Iran in 2005, the chance died. The next 12 months, Ahmadinejad made his personal overture to Washington in an 18-page letter to President Bush. The letter was broadly dismissed; a senior State Division official instructed me in profane phrases that it amounted to nothing.
2015: Iran nuclear deal signed
After a decade of unsuccessful makes an attempt to rein in Iran’s nuclear ambitions, the Obama administration undertook a direct diplomatic method starting in 2013.
Two years of secret, direct negotiations initially bilaterally between the U.S. and Iran and later with different nuclear powers culminated within the Joint Complete Plan of Motion, usually known as the Iran nuclear deal.
Iran, the U.S., China, France, Germany, Russia and the UK signed the deal in 2015. It severely restricted Iran’s capability to complement uranium and mandated that worldwide inspectors monitor and implement Iran’s compliance with the settlement.
In return, Iran was granted reduction from worldwide and U.S. financial sanctions. Although the inspectors usually licensed that Iran was abiding by the settlement’s phrases, President Donald Trump withdrew from the settlement in Might 2018.
2020: U.S. drones kill Iranian Maj. Gen. Qassem Soleimani
On Jan. 3, 2020, an American drone fired a missile that killed Maj. Gen. Qassem Soleimani, the chief of Iran’s elite Quds Power. Analysts thought-about Soleimani the second strongest man in Iran, after Supreme Chief Ayatollah Khamenei.
On the time, the Trump administration asserted that Soleimani was directing an imminent assault towards U.S. belongings within the area, however officers haven’t offered clear proof to assist that declare.
Iran responded by launching ballistic missiles that hit two American bases in Iraq.
2023: The Oct. 7 assaults on Israel
Hamas’ brazen assault on Israel on Oct. 7, 2023, provoked a fearsome militarized response from Israel that continues right this moment and served to severely weaken Iran’s proxies within the area, particularly Hamas – the perpetrator of the assaults – and Hezbollah in Lebanon.
2025: Trump 2.0 and Iran
Trump noticed a chance to forge a brand new nuclear take care of Iran and to pursue different enterprise offers with Tehran. As soon as inaugurated for his second time period, Trump appointed Steve Witkoff, an actual property investor who’s the president’s pal, to function particular envoy for the Center East and to steer negotiations.
Negotiations for a nuclear deal between Washington and Tehran started in April, however the international locations didn’t attain a deal. They have been planning a brand new spherical of talks when Israel struck Iran with a collection of airstrikes on June 13, forcing the White Home to rethink is place.
On June 22, within the early morning hours, the U.S. selected to behave decisively in an try to cripple Iran’s nuclear capability, bombing three nuclear websites and inflicting what Pentagon officers known as “extreme harm.” Iran vowed to retaliate.
This story has been up to date to mirror the U.S. bombing of Iranian nuclear websites on June 22, 2025.
Jeffrey Fields, Professor of the Apply of Worldwide Relations, USC Dornsife Faculty of Letters, Arts and Sciences
This text is republished from The Dialog below a Inventive Commons license. Learn the unique article.
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