The U.S. and Iran in One Long Sentence
Just two months before handing the keys to the Oval Office over to Dwight Eisenhower, Harry Truman insisted that all covert action in Tehran be put on hold. “We tried to get the block-headed British to have their oil company make a fair deal with Iran,” Truman complained privately, but “no, no, they could not do that.” — Historian Douglas Little on U.S.-Iranian relations
By way of providing historical context for the just announced U.S. –
The U.S. and Iran: History in a Sentence
As long ago as 1900 the U.S. and Britain coveted Persian (as it was then called) oil, a valuable commodity that became critical to powering the Royal Navy during World War I; some guys in Persia decided that locals weren’t getting a fair share of the oil revenue from the Anglo-Iran Oil Company – we call it BP today – so they set up a fellow called the Shah; this first Shah flirted with Nazi Germany in the 1930’s – some people still say the Iranians are “Nazi-like” – and alarmed the western allies, so Churchill and Stalin secretly plotted to depose him and they installed the Shah’s son in his place, Iran was then occupied by Allied and Russia forces and after the second World War the U.S. cozied up to this new Shah – Mohammed Reza Pahlavi – believing he would be a good buffer against Soviet designs on the region (and the oil), but in 1949 an Iranian politician named Mossadegh – he never
A Simpler Sentence…
There is a simpler sentence to explain the long and troubled relationship. Let’s just say: It is complicated, very, very complicated.