The History of the United States and Iran Relations Leading Up to the Current War
In the mainstream propaganda (especially on Fox News), all you hear is that Iran started a war with the United States forty-seven years ago by capturing diplomats, and the regime has been killing Americans ever since. This narrative, of course, ignores several key factors, and it does not address the cause of the hostage crisis or subsequent actions. Iran did not do any of these things randomly, and the United States’ policies and covert operations helped bring them about. However, Israel-firsters, such as Mark Levin or Ben Shapiro, leave the true historical events out in order to mislead their audiences and rally Americans around a crusade to hate and want to destroy the Persian civilization (typical warmongering).
During the Cold War era, British interests profited off of the Anglo-Iranian Oil Company (later British Petroleum, or BP), but when Iran’s elected prime minister, Mohammed Mossadegh, nationalized the oil in 1951, the United Kingdom (UK) appealed to the United States to devise a plan to overthrow Iran’s government and retain the oil for the West (part of that was suggesting that Iran may fall into the Soviet Union’s sphere of influence). The British Secret Intelligence Service (MI6) collaborated with the Central Intelligence Agency (CIA) in 1953 (under President Dwight D. Eisenhower) to generate dissent and unrest within Iran and destabilize the country, in conjunction with General Fazlollah Zahedi’s military units. The United States installed Shah Mohammad Reza Pahlavi into power (with Zahedi as prime minister), and the new leader of Iran quickly moved to consolidate power and arrest and kill anyone who opposed the new regime.
Not only did the United States support the new government with weapons and money, but it also helped start up Iran’s nuclear program in what was known as “Atoms for Peace” (ironically, Pakistan and Israel, which was an ally of Iran at the time, also received this technology from the United States). Suspicions were raised that the shah would develop nuclear weapons, but that never occurred, simply because the power dynamic in the country was about to change. Pahlavi became a brutal dictator and formed, with assistance from the CIA and the Israeli Institute for Intelligence and Special Operations (Mossad), the SAVAK secret police that terrorized the public and killed and tortured thousands of people. The government that the United States helped form was quickly becoming unpopular with the people, and after arsonists burned down a cinema in Abadan (400 people were killed), the people had had enough, to the point where leftists, secularists, moderates, and radical Islamists all joined forces in 1979 to bring down the shah under a movement led by Shia Muslim cleric Ayatollah Ruhollah Khomeini (Iranian, or Islamic, Revolution of 1979).
The hostage crisis, where 3,000 pro-Khomeini student protesters stormed the embassy in Tehran and captured sixty-three (or sixty-six) American diplomats, occurred for two main reasons. Iranians wanted the shah to stand trial for his crimes and brutality, but he escaped to the United States to receive medical treatment. The protesters were also afraid that the CIA would conduct a counterrevolution from the very same embassy that it had launched a coup just twenty-six years earlier against Mossadegh (also the same embassy where SAVAK had been trained, or at least that is how it was perceived). Although the Iran hostage crisis was horrifying, it was actually in response to the actions committed against Iran by the United States government, and the new Khomeini regime embraced the opportunity to protest the American manipulation of its country. President Jimmy Carter froze $12 billion in Iranian assets (Executive Order 12170 was the first among many later economic sanctions) and attempted a rescue mission (Operation Eagle Claw), but in the end, the hostages were not released until President Ronald Reagan was inaugurated in January 1981.
Relations never improved from there, and Khomeini continued with the shah’s nuclear ambitions (with help from Pakistan), though he claimed that the program was for civilian nuclear power. When Saddam Hussein needed to solidify his power internally in Iraq, he decided to revisit a land dispute with Iran over the Shaṭṭ Al-Arab River that was settled in 1975 but brought back into question with the new Khomeini regime (dictators often look to foreign invasions when facing issues at home). After Iraq’s invasion in 1980 (Iran-Iraq War), the United States covertly sent intelligence and weapons, largely through the CIA, to Hussein to support his efforts against Iran (while pretending to be neutral and only send warships to the region to ensure the free flow of oil). On the other hand, the Reagan administration, under the direction of Colonel Oliver North (denied by Ronald Reagan), sold weapons and missiles to Iran in exchange for pressuring Hezbollah to release hostages in Lebanon (the United States used the money to fund the rebel group, the Contras, in Nicaragua against the Sandinista government).
Ironically, the Iran-Contra Scandal occurred after the 1983 Hezbollah bombings against American and French troops in the Beirut barracks in Lebanon (during the civil war there). This is now one of the favorite talking points of the war hawks who support President Donald Trump’s war in Iran, but if Iran was so bad for supporting Hezbollah, why did the Reagan administration sell weapons to it? It appears that even at that time, there was a bunch of politicking and logical inconsistencies occurring, because maintaining power in the Middle East meant sometimes supporting suspicious characters and governments in order to achieve the end goal. Although 299 people (including 241 Americans) were killed during the barracks bombings, if the United States Marines (and other troops) were not stationed to manipulate the region and destabilize Iran, that would never have occurred (terrorist attacks are responses to American covert operations and occupations, and the CIA has coined this concept as “blowback”).
In 1988, after the USS Samuel B. Roberts, which was patrolling the Persian Gulf and escorting Kuwaiti oil tankers, almost sank after hitting a mine that Iran had laid to protect its interests and disrupt shipping (Americans were injured), the United States military retaliated with a bombing campaign that resulted in the destruction (or disabling) of six Iranian ships and two oil platforms (Operation Praying Mantis). Also the same year (the Iran-Iraq War was still going on), the USS Vincennes downed Iran Air Flight 655 (civilian flight), which ended the lives of 290 people (including sixty-six children). Though Iran claimed that it was intentional, the United States government admitted that the “mistake” was a tragedy, believing that the commercial aircraft was a fighter jet in an intense region and time.
After Ayatollah Ali Khamenei (the guy Trump recently killed) took power in 1989 (Khomeini died) and eventually Bill Clinton ascended to the presidency, there seemed to be more of an understanding and an attempt at smoothing tensions over, but by 1995, President Clinton enacted additional sanctions against Iran over its alleged support for terrorism and pursuit of “dangerous” weapons. This expanded to a complete embargo, where the United States cut off all trade with Iran and forced other governments to comply by prohibiting companies from doing business with the country (though, this was relaxed some after Europe protested).
In an effort to get the United States out of Saudi Arabia (and the region), Hezbollah committed another terrorist attack against the United States Air Force in 1996 at the Khobar Towers complex, and this resulted in nineteen American troop deaths (500 injuries). Although Iran denied involvement and no Iranians were ever directly tied to it, the United States claimed that Iran was responsible because of its support for Hezbollah (this is like blaming the United States because Israel kills people in Gaza or Lebanon). During this time, the United States supported the terrorist group Mujahedin-e Khalq (MEK) to try to destabilize Iran internally, and of course, that is fine to do. However, when Iran funds a proxy to combat the United States, it means war (double standard).
Even after Iran cooperated with and even assisted the George W. Bush administration in toppling the Taliban after the September 11, 2001 attacks (Iran was sympathetic at the loss of lives by alleged Sunni terrorists), the new president “rewarded” Iran by labelling it as part of the “axis of evil.” Even Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad attempted to reach out to the United States government in 2006 to reconcile their differences and move toward a better future, but President Bush refused and even tried to destabilize Iran by spending money on non-governmental organizations (NGOs) and human rights groups (this effort, of course, was dubbed as “promoting democracy,” as is usually the case when covert operations attempt to overthrow a government through dark money).
Furthermore, the CIA worked with a Pakistan-supported group, Jundallah, to conduct covert operations within Iran in the hopes that chaos would ensue and the regime would be toppled, and Bush also attempted to fund several dissidents who would agree to overthrow the Iranian government. Somehow when Iran funds Hezbollah, Hamas, the Houthis, or Shia groups in Iraq that target American bases, it is considered an act of war against the United States, but if the United States uses proxies to do its dirty work within Iran, it is just routine operations. Additionally Iran destroyed two American drones spying along its border (one in 2011 and one in 2019), showing that the United States has been actively engaging in operations within Iran’s territory for many years.
The Barack Obama administration attempted peace with Iranian President Hassan Rouhani (considered a moderate), and out of the relationship came the Joint Comprehensive Plan of Action (JCPOA) of 2015, where Iran agreed to end almost all of its highly-enriched uranium and have its nuclear research facilities monitored by the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) in exchange for sanctions relief. This was seen as a move in the right direction, but by 2018, after President Donald Trump assumed his first term, the deal was thrown out, with hostilities resuming between the two countries. Then, in 2020, Trump escalated further by assassinating General Qasem Soleimani, commander of the Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps’ (IRGC) Quds Force.
After the Joe Biden administration failed to revive the JCPOA, President Trump reentered office, and he engaged in Operation Midnight Hammer, where Iranian nuclear sites (such as Natanz and Fordo) were struck and supposedly “obliterated.” Since 1992, Benjamin Netanyahu has been attempting to get every president to bomb Iran by spreading falsehoods that the regime was weeks or months away from obtaining a nuclear weapon and destroying Israel’s existence. President Trump was the puppet that Netanyahu needed to achieve his lifelong dream of slaughtering Persians and eliminating Israel’s competition for the position of most powerful country in the Middle East. With Operation Epic Fury (the war in Iran) continuing at the time of this writing, it is anyone’s guess as to what will result.
Thank you for reading, and please check out my book, The Global Bully, and website, where you can find updates on the war.