The US Has Not Stopped Meddling In Iran Since 1953

US President Donald Trump is hellbent on overthrowing the Ayatollahs of Iran and installing a regime that will dance to his tune. In pursuit of that, he is ready to bomb Iran back to the Stone Age. But US vengeance goes back a long way.

US-Iran relations have been fraught since 1953. The Islamic Revolution of 1979, led by Ayatollah Khomeini, marked a turning point. While the US is hellbent on regime change, Iranians, now completely identified with the Ayatollahs, are waging a life-and-death struggle against the foreign invader.

In a Legal Studies Blog of the American Military University, Ilan Fuchs wrote on December 24, 2024, that since the 1980s, Iran has been a key adversary of the US, rooted in events like the 1953 coup that overthrew Iran’s democratically elected Prime Minister, Mohammad Mosaddegh. The US, working with the UK, played a key role in that coup. The US and UK feared that Mosaddegh’s policies might push Iran closer to the Soviet Union and wanted to protect Western economic interests in Iran’s oil industry.

After the end of World War II, Iran sought to limit its dependency on the West. Mosaddegh, a nationalist leader, became the Prime Minister in 1951. He was committed to reducing foreign influence over Iran's resources, particularly oil. At the time, the British-controlled Anglo-Iranian Oil Company (AIOC) dominated Iran’s oil industry. The vast majority of profits went to Britain, while Iran received only a small fraction.

British intelligence agencies warned that there was a danger of Soviet involvement. The US was worried about a communist takeover of Iran, which shared a border with Soviet Union satellite countries such as Armenia, Azerbaijan, and Turkmenistan. Consequently, the CIA, together with British intelligence agencies, backed a coup d'état in 1953 that created an authoritarian regime dominated by Shah Mohammad Reza Pahlavi.

The role the US played in the ousting of Mosaddegh painted the United States as a semi- colonial power and created many opposition forces in Iran, including a religious leader, Ayatollah Ruhollah Khomeini.

As an Ayatollah, the highest rank of leadership in the religious hierarchy of Shia Islam, Khomeini developed a political theory of Shia Islam. His theory called for the creation of an Islamic republic to be governed under sharia law as it is understood by Shia Muslims. Khomeini not only sought to turn Iran into a republic, but he also wanted to export Shia Islam into other countries around the world.

In his prolific texts, Khomeini identified the West and mainly the U.S. as the prominent rival of the Islamic Republic. He explained to his followers that Western cultural dominance threatened Iran's Islamic future. In 1979, Shah Mohammad Reza Pahlavi was forced to retreat into exile.

The Iranian Army refused to stop the revolution headed by Khomeini. The Shah took refuge in the US, which led to the conviction that the US planned to reinstate him.

On November 4, 1979, a group of radical Iranian students stormed the American Embassy in Tehran. They took 52 people hostage, demanding that the Shah be extradited to Iran to face trial and punishment. Diplomatic relations were severed after the Iranian Revolution.

Meanwhile, in 1980, Khomeini drafted a constitution based on his political theory called “Wilayat Al-Faqhi” (The Guardianship of the Religious Cleric). In this document, the Iranian Parliament and the Iranian President are subservient to bodies controlled by religious clerics and, above all, Iran's Supreme Leader.

This leader would be a religious cleric chosen for life by a group of religious clerics called the “Assembly of Experts of the Leadership.” This group, elected every eight years, comprised only religious clerics. Iranian politics are controlled by religion, and elected officials have to be approved by the religious authorities.

After the hostage crisis, the US supported Iraq’s Saddam Hussein, who invaded Iran in 1980. About 500,000 to one million people were killed over eight years in that war. From then on, Iran's foreign policy was focused on creating a Shia-dominated empire. Iran's Quds Force controlled proxy powers such as Lebanon's Shia militia, Hezbollah, which became a terrorist group that was responsible for multiple terrorist attacks against US targets.

After the Bush administration went to war against al-Qaeda in 2001, new forms of Jihadi terrorism emerged, and their members viewed both the West and Shia-led Iran as enemies. This development led to the rise of ISIS, a prominent Jihadi force. At its peak, ISIS nearly overran Iraq. In response, the Iranian Quds Force, alongside Shia Iraqi forces, launched a prolonged operation to dismantle ISIS.

The relationship between the US and Iran reached its lowest point when it became clear that Iran had nuclear weapons capabilities. In the 1990s, there were suspicions of Iranian nuclear armament, but in the early 2000s, information came out about the Natanz enrichment plant and the Arak heavy-water reactor.

The International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) launched an investigation of Iran's ability to develop nuclear weapons, which is still in progress.

The fear of an Iranian nuclear program and the stalling tactics that Iran used caused the US and the European Union to issue crippling economic sanctions against Iran. But economic sanctions did not bring about an end to the nuclear program.

US President Barack Obama sought to bring a resolution. He suggested a nuclear deal designed to reduce the threat of nuclear weapons to Israel and Saudi Arabia and to end sanctions against Iran. In 2015, Iranian supreme leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei agreed to the Iran Nuclear Deal, called the “Joint Comprehensive Plan of Action” (JCPOA).

The JCPOA promised that Iran would reduce its uranium enrichment capacity and limit uranium stockpile for 15 years. The International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA), monitored Iran’s nuclear sites and ensured compliance. Sanctions were removed.

The JCPOA was in place until 2018, when Donald Trump’s first administration withdrew from it. The reasons for withdrawal included violations by Iran and evidence that Iran continued to develop nuclear weaponry.

Former Secretary of State Mike Pompeo announced that the sanctions would be reinstated. The sanctions created unrest in the Iranian population. Iran suppressed the agitation and restricted the international community’s ability to inspect its nuclear sites. It also began to increase production of enriched uranium.

Iran-backed militias began attacking oil tankers in the Persian Gulf and shot down a US drone. Iran gave military support to its proxy terror groups in West Asia. These actions were led by the Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps (IRGC) commander, Gen. Qassem Soleimani. President Trump ordered the targeted killing of Soleimani with a US drone strike in Iraq.

However, when Trump’s first stint gave way to the Biden administration, the US promised to lift sanctions. Secretary of State Antony Blinken made multiple efforts to resume talks with Iran. Rumours of a secret channel in Oman circulated. But with Donald Trump returning to the White House in 2024, US-Iran relations deteriorated to the extent that the US went into a full-scale war with Iran, with the latter’s arch enemy, Israel, in tow.

The Trump Administration is now framing the US-Iran conflict as a “civilizational” one, while many Global South analysts like former Indian diplomat Vivek Katju are characterising it as the return of White imperialism, expansionism, hunt for resources and armed aggression.

In his speech at the Security Conference in Munich, US Secretary of State Marco Rubio declared war on all non-European non-White peoples inside the US and around the world. Rubio made it clear that America was, and should again be, a White country, and that it should tie up with Europe to save White supremacy.

Joseph Massad, writing in the Middle East Eye, says that this is both Christian supremacy and White settler-colonialism. He points out that the US ambassador to Israel, Mike Huckabee, said in a recent interview with Tucker Carlson that, as per the Bible, the descendants of Abraham (Israelites) would receive land that today would include the entire Middle East.