Iran and America: Then and Now
June 26th, 2009 by erikaIt has been a fascinating week in the world of media, as election protests in Iran have shown us a new face of reporting. Iranian citizens, rather than Western journalists, are the main sources of information, sending their stories through youtube videos, twitter updates, and blogs among a bevy of other global communications outlets. While the United States is watching the events unfold from afar at least for now, our relations with Iran are historically complex.
In the aftermath of World War II, the United States began to see Iran as a potentially strong ally in the Cold War against the Soviet Union. In the early 1950s, the American government became concerned over the democratically-elected Prime Minister Mohammed Mossadeq’s nationalization of the petroleum industry. The United States and Britain attempted to assist a coup d’état that would replace Mossadeq’s government with the pro-western Shah Mohammad Reza Pahlavi. While this coup was initially unsuccessful, the CIA helped foment protests in Iran that became a movement to install the Shah as dictator. This 1973 documentary outlines CIA involvement in the overthrow:
In the years that followed, the United States and Iran maintained close relations, despite human rights violations by the Shah’s regime. The Shah made frequent visits to the White House and the American government praised his agenda of Westernization. However, this began to incite conflict among more conservative Iranian citizens, and by the mid-1970s the country was increasingly polarized.
President Jimmy Carter was the first to openly criticize the Iranian government’s human rights record, which angered many political critics who stressed the importance of maintaining relations with a pro-Western Iranian leader. In a progression of events that came as a shock to the United States, a nationalist revolution in Iran toppled the regime and replaced the Shah with the anti-American Supreme Leader Ayatollah Khomeini. Shortly after the Islamic revolutionaries gained control, the American government was directly engaged by the new administration, when a revolutionary group that was infuriated that the United States had allowed the Shah into our borders for cancer treatment occupied the American embassy in Tehran and held 52 diplomats hostage. This clip helps to explain how the crisis unfolded:
The hostage situation only exacerbated United States-Iranian relations, and the Reagan administration significantly hardened policies against the Middle Eastern nation. Today, Iranians in the streets are protesting alleged election fraud in the 2009 Presidential elections, which declared the victory of incumbent President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad. Most of the protests that we have seen covered are by supporters of the primary opposition candidate, Mir-Hossein Mousavi. In an address on Tuesday, President Obama said he was “appalled and outraged by the threats, beatings and imprisonments of the last few days,” and condemned any unjust actions of the Iranian government in stifling citizens’ rights to protest. Check out this clip from the White House press conference:
UPDATED: if you are interested in reading the original CIA history briefing on the United States’ involvement in 1953, along with more background on Iranian revolutions, check out this article
Here’s the link for the CIA documents
(via Finding Dulcinea and NYtimes)


