America and Iran: A History

I suspect that any average American who visits Iran for the first time is impressed by the friendliness, openness, and sense of humor of the average Iranian.  Our own press has prepared us to encounter a closed, hostile society, something along the lines of Soviet Russia.  Despite the hostility of our respective governments, however, Americans and Iranians tend to enjoy each other's company.

How did it all go so wrong diplomatically?

Iranian-born writer John Ghazvinian -- who earned his Ph.D. from Oxford, and who writes for a number of influential American magazines -- has tried to answer that question in his recently-published book,  America and Iran: A History, 1720 to the Present (2021).

Ghazvinian begins the heart of his study with the appearance of Protestant missionaries in northwestern Iran in the 1830s, and gives a detailed account of the generally high esteem in which America and Americans were held for many years.  Iran was a weak power, under continuing pressure from both Russia and Britain for favors and "capitulations" -- similar to the demands made by the colonial powers on China.  America appeared to be an idealistic new power with little interest in or ambitions toward  Iran.  Iran hoped that a close friendship with America would help avoid partition of their country between the two large European powers.

The subsequent story has been sad and increasingly tragic.

America's fall from grace dates most memorably from 1953 when, under pressure from Britain and its Anglo-Iranian Oil Company, the CIA joined in undermining the popular and liberal government of Mohammad Mossadegh.  I have a vague memory of this episode from my childhood.  I was under the impression -- an impression fostered by the CIA -- that Mossadegh was a Communist.  He wasn't.  From Ghazvinian's description, he was in fact the very sort of democratically-supported ruler that America purported to support in every nation.  Except when oil was involved.  

Because the Mossadegh government had nationalized the Anglo-Iranian assets in Iran.

Americans have forgotten that episode, and how it restored to absolute power the Pahlavi Shah.  Iranians never have.

The Shah ruled -- increasingly despotically -- as a firm American ally until 1979, when he was overthrown by a popular revolution, backed by devout Muslims, Western-oriented liberals, and extreme left-wing radicals.  Since that date, Iran has become an Islamic Republic, with government functions divided between an elected president and a religious ruler (the ayatollah).  

In the last half of his book, Ghazvinian describes in detail the times since 1979 that our two countries have come close to resolving their differences.  Each time, the attempt failed because of conservative and religious opponents in Iran, Republican and conservative and/or hawkish Democratic opponents in America, and the strong diplomatic efforts of Israel (and to a lesser degree, and with different motivation, Sunni Arab states) to avoid any successful reconciliation between the two.

If Iran has been willing to forget that America supported Iraq's Saddam Hussein in his war against Iran from 1980-88 -- a war that devastated Iran and cost it about a quarter million deaths -- America can surely forget that an Iranian mob held 52 Americans hostage in 1979.  

The book is long and complex, but Ghazvinian is a good writer, and writes in a colloquial, non-academic style.  The book is aimed at the average reader, although it will no doubt be of interest to academic readers as well.