Iran–United States relations
Based on Wikipedia: Iran–United States relations
In 1909, an American schoolteacher named Howard Baskerville died in the streets of Tabriz, fighting alongside Iranian revolutionaries against royalist forces. He had taken up arms to help ordinary Iranians win their constitutional rights. Half a century later, the Central Intelligence Agency would orchestrate a coup to overthrow Iran's democratically elected prime minister. These two moments—one of sacrifice for Iranian freedom, the other of its suppression—capture the tragic arc of a relationship that began with genuine friendship and curdled into one of the world's most intractable rivalries.
The United States and Iran have had no formal diplomatic relations since April 7, 1980. Think about what that means: for over four decades, two nations with deeply intertwined histories have communicated through intermediaries. Pakistan represents Iranian interests in Washington. Switzerland represents American interests in Tehran. It's the geopolitical equivalent of divorcing spouses who refuse to speak directly, passing messages through mutual friends.
When America Was the Good Guy
To understand how we got here, you need to understand what Iran looked like to Americans in the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries—and what America looked like to Iranians.
American newspapers in the 1720s were uniformly pro-Iranian. This might seem surprising until you consider the context. Iran, then known as Persia, was locked in what historians call the Great Game—a deadly chess match between the British and Russian empires for control of Central Asia. The British wanted to protect their crown jewel, India. The Russians wanted warm-water ports and regional dominance. Caught between these two imperial powers, Persia was being squeezed from both sides.
The United States, by contrast, had no colonial ambitions in the region. Americans weren't trying to extract Persian oil or carve up Persian territory. This made the distant republic across the Atlantic seem refreshingly trustworthy.
The Persians put this trust to practical use. In 1911, Iran's parliament appointed an American financier named Morgan Shuster as Treasurer General—essentially handing control of the national finances to a foreigner because they believed an American would be more honest than anyone with ties to Britain or Russia. Shuster threw himself into the job, becoming an active supporter of Iran's constitutional revolution. When gunmen thought to be affiliated with Russian or British interests killed an American in Tehran, Shuster only became more committed to the cause.
Another American, Arthur Millspaugh, was sent to Persia in 1923 to help reform its inefficient administration. The Persians welcomed him as a counterweight to European influence and a potential magnet for foreign investment. His mission lasted five years before he fell out of favor with the shah.
Americans even founded Iran's first modern medical school in the 1870s. A Presbyterian missionary named Joseph Plumb Cochran is credited with this achievement. The American College of Tehran was later chartered by the State University of New York. These weren't colonial impositions—they were genuine attempts at educational and medical advancement that many Iranians welcomed.
The Rise of the Pahlavis
The modern story begins with a military coup in 1921. Reza Khan, an officer in Persia's Cossack Brigade, overthrew the Qajar Dynasty with British backing. He later declared himself shah and took the name Reza Pahlavi, founding a dynasty that would rule Iran until 1979.
Reza Shah was a modernizer in the authoritarian mold. He built a national railway and introduced secular education. He also censored the press, suppressed unions and political parties, and—in a move that still resonates today—banned the hijab in favor of Western dress. This wasn't religious reform; it was forced westernization imposed from above.
The relationship with America had its bumps. In 1936, Iran withdrew its ambassador from Washington for nearly a year after a New York newspaper published an article criticizing Reza Shah. The thin skin of autocrats, it seems, is universal.
World War Two changed everything. In 1941, Britain and the Soviet Union—both American allies—invaded Iran. They were worried about German influence and needed supply routes to keep the Soviet war effort alive. Reza Shah was forced to abdicate in favor of his son, Mohammad Reza Pahlavi, who would become the last Shah of Iran.
During the war, Iran became a crucial corridor. Over 120,000 Polish refugees and soldiers fled through Iran to escape the Nazi advance. At the 1943 Tehran Conference, Franklin Roosevelt, Winston Churchill, and Joseph Stalin met in the Iranian capital and issued the Tehran Declaration, guaranteeing Iran's post-war independence and borders.
The declaration would prove to be worth less than the paper it was printed on.
The Coup That Changed Everything
After the war, the Cold War began, and American attention suddenly focused on Iran with laser intensity. The Soviet Union tried to set up separatist states in Iranian Azerbaijan and Kurdistan. American policymakers, already alarmed by the "loss" of China to communism and the discovery of Soviet spy rings, saw creeping communist influence everywhere.
Then came oil.
In 1951, Iran nationalized its oil industry. This meant seizing the assets of the Anglo-Iranian Oil Company—the predecessor to British Petroleum, or BP. The British had been extracting Iranian oil on terms enormously favorable to themselves for decades. The Iranian parliament decided enough was enough.
On April 28, 1951, Mohammad Mosaddegh was elected Prime Minister. He became the face of the nationalization movement and, briefly, a hero to Iranians who wanted to control their own natural resources.
The British wanted to invade. President Harry Truman pressed them to negotiate instead. For a moment, it seemed like the United States might side with Iranian self-determination over British imperial interests. Mosaddegh visited Washington. American officials made "frequent statements expressing support for him."
Behind the scenes, however, something darker was happening. Without Truman's knowledge, the CIA station in Tehran had been "carrying out covert activities" against Mosaddegh since at least the summer of 1952.
In 1953, the CIA and MI6—Britain's foreign intelligence service—orchestrated a coup to overthrow Mosaddegh. The stated fears were communist influence and economic instability, but the real issue was oil. The first attempt failed. The second succeeded.
Mohammad Reza Pahlavi, the young shah who had spent the war years as a figurehead, was reinstalled with real power. The United States poured in financial and military support. American officials helped establish SAVAK, the Shah's secret police, which would become notorious for torture and political repression.
The coup's aftermath reshaped Iran's oil industry. Under American pressure, BP joined a consortium of Western companies to resume Iranian oil exports. On paper, the state-owned National Iranian Oil Company retained ownership of the oil and infrastructure. In practice, the consortium maintained operational control. It barred Iranian oversight of its financial records and excluded Iranians from its board. Iran received 50 percent of the profits, while American companies collectively secured 40 percent of the remaining share.
Many liberal Iranians believe this coup and the subsequent American support for the Shah enabled decades of arbitrary rule. When the revolution came in 1979, its "deeply anti-American character" was not an accident. It was payback.
The Pillar Strategy
After the coup, Iran became what American strategists called a "pillar" of U.S. foreign policy in the Middle East. Its long border with the Soviet Union and its position as the largest, most powerful country in the oil-rich Persian Gulf made it strategically invaluable.
In 1960, Iran joined four other countries to form the Organization of the Petroleum Exporting Countries, known as OPEC. The cartel's explicit goal was to challenge Western oil company dominance and reclaim control over national oil resources. By the 1970s, surging OPEC profits gave member nations substantial leverage over Western economies.
This created a paradox that Iranian scholar Homa Katouzian has described precisely: the United States was "regarded by the Iranian public as the chief architect and instructor of the regime," while "its real influence in domestic Iranian politics and policies declined considerably." The more oil money the Shah had, the less he needed American approval for anything.
Some historians argue that President Richard Nixon actively recruited the Shah as an American puppet and proxy between 1969 and 1974. Others suggest it worked the other way around—that the Shah cleverly manipulated Nixon into supporting Iranian ambitions. Nixon, who had first met the Shah in 1953, saw him as a westernizing anticommunist statesman who deserved American backing, especially as British influence in the region waned.
The relationship had practical dimensions. The Shah agreed to buy large quantities of American military hardware. He took responsibility for ensuring political stability and fighting Soviet subversion throughout the region. In return, the United States permitted Iran to purchase advanced American weapons—a policy that served Cold War objectives while benefiting American defense contractors.
The 1973 Arab-Israeli War complicated matters. Arab oil producers embargoed the United States in retaliation for its support of Israel. Oil prices skyrocketed. This windfall enabled the Shah to buy far more advanced weaponry than American officials had expected or intended. By the mid-1970s, approximately 25,000 American technicians were deployed to Iran just to maintain equipment like F-14 fighter jets that had been sold to the Shah's government.
The Atom and the Shah
Here's an irony that often gets lost in discussions of Iran's nuclear program: the United States started it.
In 1953, President Dwight Eisenhower announced the Atoms for Peace program, designed to spread nuclear technology for peaceful purposes as a counterweight to nuclear weapons proliferation. Iran was an early participant. In 1957, the United States helped Iran create its nuclear program by providing the country's first nuclear reactor and nuclear fuel. After 1967, America provided Iran with weapons-grade enriched uranium.
Iran signed the Treaty on the Non-Proliferation of Nuclear Weapons—the NPT—on July 1, 1968, as one of the original 51 signatories. Its parliament ratified the treaty in February 1970. American and Western European governments continued supporting Iran's nuclear development until the 1979 revolution.
The program that would later be cited as evidence of Iranian perfidy and a justification for sanctions, sabotage, and threats of war was an American gift.
The Revolution
In 1979, everything the United States had built in Iran collapsed in a matter of months.
The Iranian Revolution overthrew the Shah and established an Islamic Republic under Ayatollah Ruhollah Khomeini. The revolution drew on many grievances: SAVAK's torture chambers, the Shah's corruption, the forced westernization that had alienated religious conservatives, the sense that Iran's wealth was being siphoned off by foreigners while ordinary Iranians remained poor.
And then came the hostage crisis.
On November 4, 1979, Iranian students stormed the American embassy in Tehran and took 52 American diplomats and citizens hostage. They would be held for 444 days. The crisis dominated American news coverage, humiliated President Jimmy Carter, and contributed to his defeat by Ronald Reagan in 1980.
The United States broke diplomatic relations on April 7, 1980. They have never been restored.
Competing Explanations
Why do Iran and America hate each other? The answer depends on who you ask.
Iranian officials describe the conflict as "the natural and unavoidable conflict between the Islamic system" and "such an oppressive power as the United States, which is trying to establish a global dictatorship and further its own interests by dominating other nations and trampling on their rights." American support for Israel—which Iranian leaders call "the Zionist entity"—features prominently in this narrative.
Western analysts offer different explanations. Some argue that the Iranian government needs an external enemy to justify domestic repression and bind the regime to its loyal constituency. The Great Satan provides a useful bogeyman.
American officials point to the hostage crisis, Iran's human rights abuses, its anti-Western ideology, its nuclear program, and its funding of groups the United States considers terrorist organizations: Hamas in Gaza, Hezbollah in Lebanon, and the Houthis in Yemen. These groups serve as Iranian proxies, extending Tehran's influence throughout the Middle East without direct military confrontation.
The truth likely includes elements of all these explanations. Historical grievances, ideological differences, regional competition, and domestic political incentives on both sides have created a self-reinforcing cycle of hostility.
Maximum Pressure
Since 1995, the United States has maintained an embargo on trade with Iran. The severity of sanctions has waxed and waned with different administrations.
In 2015, the Obama administration led successful negotiations for a nuclear deal called the Joint Comprehensive Plan of Action, or JCPOA. The agreement placed substantial limits on Iran's nuclear program, including inspections by the International Atomic Energy Agency and limitations on enrichment levels. In exchange, most sanctions against Iran were lifted in 2016.
The deal was controversial in both countries. Iranian hardliners saw it as capitulation. American critics argued it merely delayed Iran's path to nuclear weapons while providing the regime with billions of dollars in sanctions relief.
In 2018, President Donald Trump unilaterally withdrew from the nuclear deal and reimposed sanctions, initiating what his administration called a "maximum pressure campaign" against Iran. The goal was to force Iran back to the negotiating table for a more comprehensive agreement that would also address its missile program and regional activities.
Iran responded by gradually reducing its commitments under the nuclear deal. By 2019, it had exceeded pre-JCPOA enrichment levels. The maximum pressure campaign had produced maximum resistance.
The View from Both Sides
Public opinion data reveals the depth of mutual hostility—and a curious asymmetry.
According to a 2013 BBC World Service poll, only 5 percent of Americans viewed Iranian influence positively, while 87 percent expressed negative views. This was the most unfavorable perception of Iran anywhere in the world.
Iranians hold similarly dim views of the American government. A 2019 survey found that only 13 percent of Iranians had a favorable view of the United States, while 86 percent expressed unfavorable opinions—the most negative perception of America anywhere in the world.
But here's the asymmetry: research consistently shows that most Iranians hold positive attitudes about the American people, even as they despise the American government. The distinction between a nation and its leaders matters to ordinary Iranians in a way it apparently does not to ordinary Americans.
Perhaps this is because Iranians have lived under a government they did not choose. They understand that people and their rulers are not the same thing.
Unlikely Partners
Despite the hostility, American and Iranian interests have occasionally aligned. During the Iraq War, both countries wanted to defeat Sunni militants. When the Islamic State swept across Syria and Iraq, both Tehran and Washington—though they would never admit it publicly—were working toward the same goal: destroying the caliphate.
These moments of tacit cooperation hint at what might be possible if the two countries could move past their history. Both face common threats from Sunni extremism. Both have interests in regional stability. Both would benefit economically from normalized relations.
But trust, once destroyed, is extraordinarily difficult to rebuild. In August 2018, Supreme Leader Ali Khamenei banned direct talks with the United States. According to the U.S. Department of Justice, Iran has since attempted to assassinate American officials and dissidents, including former President Donald Trump.
The relationship has come a long way from the days when American missionaries founded Iranian medical schools and American financiers were trusted with the national treasury. Howard Baskerville, the schoolteacher who died fighting for Iranian freedom in 1909, would not recognize what his two countries have become to each other.
Whether they can find their way back to something better remains one of the great unanswered questions of international relations. The history suggests it will take more than treaties and negotiations. It will require both nations to reckon honestly with the choices that brought them here—the coup that overthrew democracy, the revolution that took hostages, the decades of sanctions and proxy wars and mutual demonization.
For now, they communicate through Switzerland and Pakistan, two countries serving as go-betweens for nations that cannot bear to speak directly. It is an arrangement befitting a relationship defined by grievance, suspicion, and the long shadow of history.