Iran And The West

Iran and the West: 1901–2026

I. OIL AND EMPIRE (1901–1952)

1901 — The D’Arcy Concession British financier William Knox D’Arcy purchases sixty-year rights to extract, refine, and export oil across nearly all of Iran, in exchange for 16% of net annual profits and £20,000 in cash. The terms are extraordinarily lopsided and set the template for decades of foreign extraction of Iranian wealth.

1908 — Oil Discovered After years of fruitless drilling and mounting debts, D’Arcy’s team is ordered to cease operations. The lead driller, George Reynolds, delays acting on the order and strikes oil on May 26, 1908, at Masjed Soleyman. This stroke of luck transforms Iran into one of the most strategically significant territories on Earth.

1909 — Anglo-Persian Oil Company (APOC) Founded The British establish APOC to exploit the concession. Iran’s oil wealth begins flowing outward. The company grows rapidly, but Iranian workers are paid a fraction of what their British counterparts earn, housed in substandard conditions, and largely excluded from technical and managerial positions — despite contractual promises to the contrary.

1914 — The British Government Nationalizes APOC On the eve of World War I, First Lord of the Admiralty Winston Churchill persuades Parliament to purchase a 51% controlling stake in APOC for £2.2 million, securing cheap oil for the Royal Navy. The British government effectively nationalizes the company for its own strategic benefit — a fact that carries deep irony given what follows in 1953.

1933 — The Renegotiated Concession Under pressure from Reza Shah, the concession is renegotiated. The new terms modestly increase Iran’s share, but the company — now renamed the Anglo-Iranian Oil Company (AIOC) — retains dominant control. It promises to hire and train Iranians, build infrastructure, and improve conditions. Most of these promises go unfulfilled. By the late 1940s, the AIOC’s annual revenues from Iranian oil exceed the Iranian government’s total national budget. A British official privately describes the AIOC as “an imperium in imperio” — an empire within an empire.

1941 — Britain Overthrows the First Shah Concerned about Reza Shah’s pro-German sympathies during World War II, Britain and the Soviet Union invade and occupy Iran. Reza Shah is deposed and exiled. His 21-year-old son, Mohammad Reza Pahlavi, is placed on the throne — the first time Western powers install a Pahlavi monarch.

1951 — Mosaddegh and Oil Nationalization Mohammad Mosaddegh, a widely popular nationalist politician, becomes Prime Minister. Within days of taking office, he signs legislation nationalizing the AIOC, arguing that Iran’s oil belongs to its people. The move has overwhelming public and parliamentary support.

Britain responds with an economic blockade. The AIOC withdraws all its managers and technicians (having refused to train Iranians for such roles), organizes a global boycott of Iranian oil, and uses the Royal Navy to intercept tankers carrying Iranian crude. Britain’s ambassador in Tehran, Sir Francis Shepherd, writes in a cable: “It is so important to prevent the Persians from destroying their main source of revenue…by trying to run it themselves.” He adds: “The need for Persia is not to run the oil industry for herself (which she cannot do) but to profit from the technical ability of the West.”

II. THE COUP AND ITS ARCHITECTURE (1953)

1952 — Britain Reframes the Threat British officials initially try to persuade the United States to intervene on the grounds of protecting AIOC profits. Washington is uninterested. Britain changes strategy. In a December 1952 meeting between British diplomats and State Department officials, the British reframe Mosaddegh as a communist threat — arguing that if he is not removed, Iran will fall to Soviet influence. This framing succeeds. The Truman administration had rejected coup planning, but the incoming Eisenhower administration, steeped in Cold War anxiety, is receptive.

Early 1953 — Churchill Solicits Eisenhower Winston Churchill personally lobbies President Eisenhower and the CIA to support a joint operation. Britain’s MI6 has already drawn up plans under the codename Operation Boot. The CIA develops the American counterpart: Operation TPAJAX.

Declassified British files reveal a darkly ironic detail: both the British and US governments considered installing Ayatollah Kashani — a predecessor to Khomeini and a radical Islamist cleric — as a client political leader following the coup. Foreign Office official Alan Rothnie wrote that Anthony Eden had discussed with the CIA director the possibility of dealing with Kashani as an alternative to Mosaddegh: “They feel that Kashani might be bought, but are doubtful, once he was in power, whether he could be held to a reasonable line.”

August 15–19, 1953 — The Coup The initial attempt to remove Mosaddegh fails. The Shah flees the country. CIA headquarters cables its Tehran station: “Operation has been tried and failed and we should not participate in any operation against Mossadegh which could be traced back to US.” But the CIA’s chief officer in Tehran, Kermit Roosevelt (grandson of Theodore Roosevelt), ignores the order.

Using suitcases of cash, CIA and MI6 agents hire street thugs, bribe newspaper editors, pay senior clerics, create a fake communist party to stage provocations, and organize rented mobs — most famously led by a strongman named Shaban “The Brainless” Jafari — to simulate popular opposition to Mosaddegh.

On August 19, Mosaddegh is overthrown. The Shah returns to Tehran.

The Aftermath The CIA covertly provides $5 million to the new government within two days of the coup. Iran’s oil is carved up: Britain receives 40%, American companies receive 40%, Shell receives 14%, and France’s CFP receives 6%. Iran receives 50% of profits under the new arrangement — an improvement over the AIOC terms, but one achieved at the cost of its democracy.

The coup becomes the CIA’s first successful regime-change operation and serves as a template for future interventions, including the overthrow of Guatemala’s government the following year.

Destruction of Evidence The CIA subsequently destroys many records related to the 1953 operation — a fact first reported by the New York Times in 1997. The State Department destroys three-quarters of the records from the Office of Greek, Turkish, and Iranian Affairs for the relevant period.

III. THE SHAH, SAVAK, AND THE SEEDS OF REVOLUTION (1957–1978)

1957 — SAVAK Created with CIA and Mossad Assistance The restored Shah, whose legitimacy has been permanently undermined by his dependence on foreign powers, needs a security apparatus to maintain control. The CIA and Israel’s Mossad help establish and train SAVAK (Sazeman-e Ettela’at va Amniyat-e Keshvar — Organization of Intelligence and National Security).

The CIA assigns a permanent liaison team of 12 officers to Tehran. They teach tradecraft, analytical skills, interrogation procedures, and counterintelligence. The CIA also trains over 400 SAVAK officers per year at facilities near McLean, Virginia. According to SAVAK’s own Deputy Director, Hossein Fardoust, when the Americans pulled back, Mossad stepped in — sending instructors to Tehran and translating Hebrew training materials into Persian, making the agency more self-sufficient.

Former CIA official Jesse Leaf later tells journalist Seymour Hersh that a senior CIA officer had been “involved in instructing officials in the Savak on torture techniques…based on German torture techniques from World War II.”

1957–1979 — SAVAK’s Reign SAVAK operates with virtually unlimited power. It censors the media, screens government job applicants, surveils Iranian students abroad (including in the US, UK, and France), and runs its own detention centers — most notoriously Evin Prison, which remains in use under the Islamic Republic today.

Amnesty International documents SAVAK’s methods in a 1976 report, describing nail extractions, electric shocks (including with cattle prods applied to the rectum), cigarette burns, sitting on hot grills, acid dripped into nostrils, sleep deprivation, near-drownings, mock executions, and an electric chair with a large metal mask designed to muffle screams while amplifying them for the victim. Amnesty states that the Shah’s regime is one of the worst human rights violators in the world.

A critical long-term consequence: SAVAK is extraordinarily effective at destroying secular, liberal, and leftist opposition groups throughout the 1960s and 1970s. By the late 1970s, the only organized opposition network that remains intact is the one institution SAVAK cannot fully penetrate: the mosque. This organizational vacuum ensures that when revolution comes, it will be led not by democrats or socialists, but by the clergy.

1963 — The White Revolution The Shah launches the White Revolution — a sweeping, top-down modernization program including land reform, women’s suffrage, industrialization, and secularization. While some elements are genuinely progressive, the reforms are imposed without popular consent and destabilize the social order. Land redistribution often fails to give peasants enough resources to farm effectively, driving millions into urban slums. Rapid secularization and Westernization alienate the powerful merchant class (Bazaaris) and the Shia clergy.

1964 — Khomeini Exiled Ayatollah Ruhollah Khomeini emerges as the most vocal critic of both the White Revolution and the Shah’s relationship with the United States. He is arrested, then exiled — first to Turkey, then Iraq, and finally France. But exile does not silence him. Throughout the 1970s, thousands of audio cassettes and printed copies of his speeches are smuggled back into Iran. An increasing number of unemployed and working-poor Iranians — mostly recent migrants from the countryside, disenchanted by the cultural vacuum of rapid urban modernization — turn to the clergy for guidance and identity. Khomeini becomes the unifying symbol of opposition.

IV. REVOLUTION AND RUPTURE (1979–1981)

January 1979 — The Shah Flees After months of strikes, mass demonstrations, and escalating violence, the Shah leaves Iran on January 16, 1979, ostensibly for “medical treatment.” He never returns. The Pahlavi dynasty, installed by the British in 1941 and restored by the CIA in 1953, collapses.

February 1979 — Khomeini Returns Ayatollah Khomeini returns from exile to massive crowds. The Islamic Republic is established by referendum in April 1979. Opposition to the Shah’s regime — his autocratic rule, SAVAK’s brutality, the corruption of the elite, the unequal distribution of oil wealth, forced Westernization, and above all his status as an instrument of foreign powers — coalesces under Khomeini’s leadership.

November 4, 1979 — The US Embassy Hostage Crisis Begins A group calling itself the Students Following the Line of the Imam storms the US Embassy in Tehran and takes 52 Americans hostage. Their stated motivations are explicit: they fear another American-backed coup — a “second 1953” — to reverse the revolution and restore the Shah. Their demands include that the United States government formally apologize for its interference in Iran’s internal affairs, specifically the 1953 coup, and that Iran’s frozen assets in the US be released.

The embassy is not a random target. For 25 years, it had been the symbolic and operational center of American support for the Pahlavi regime — widely perceived by Iranians as a command center for directing the Shah’s policies, training SAVAK, and overseeing the extensive American military and intelligence presence.

Domestic Consequence: The Hostage Crisis Consolidates Theocratic Rule The crisis is more than a diplomatic standoff. It is a decisive internal political battle. Khomeini and the radical clergy use the crisis to sideline moderate and secular factions within the revolutionary coalition. Politicians who counsel pragmatism or negotiation are painted as American agents. The crisis creates an atmosphere of permanent emergency that entrenches theocratic authority. The 444-day ordeal permanently poisons US-Iran relations and establishes anti-Americanism as a foundational pillar of the Islamic Republic’s identity.

V. THE IRAN-IRAQ WAR AND CHEMICAL BETRAYAL (1980–1988)

September 1980 — Saddam Invades Sensing an opportunity amid Iran’s post-revolutionary chaos, Iraqi President Saddam Hussein launches a full-scale invasion. The war will last eight years, kill an estimated one million people, and fundamentally shape Iran’s military doctrine.

1983 Onward — US Complicity in Chemical Warfare (declassified) Declassified CIA documents and interviews with former intelligence officials reveal that the United States had firm evidence of Iraqi chemical weapons use beginning in 1983. Top officials, including CIA Director William Casey, are repeatedly briefed. A top secret CIA document states: “If the Iraqis produce or acquire large new supplies of mustard agent, they almost certainly would use it against Iranian troops and towns near the border.”

Despite this knowledge, the Reagan administration’s express policy is to ensure an Iraqi victory. The US provides Iraq with satellite intelligence, battlefield planning assistance, and economic support. As many as 90 US military advisors support Iraqi forces and help select targets for air and missile strikes.

Near the end of the war, US satellite imagery reveals a gap in Iraqi defenses that Iranian forces are preparing to exploit. American officials share this intelligence with Iraq, knowing that Saddam’s military will likely respond with nerve agents. Iraq does exactly that, killing thousands.

According to Iraq’s own declarations to UNSCOM, between 1983 and 1988, Iraq used approximately 1,800 tons of mustard gas, 140 tons of tabun, and 600 tons of sarin — delivered via 19,500 aerial bombs, 54,000 artillery shells, and 27,000 short-range rockets. A declassified 1991 CIA report estimated more than 50,000 Iranian casualties from chemical weapons; current estimates exceed 100,000, as long-term effects continue to cause illness and death decades later. These figures do not include contaminated civilians in border towns or the children of veterans who developed blood, lung, and skin complications.

The international community’s response is muted. The UN condemns the attacks but takes no meaningful action. No major international outcry follows.

The Doctrinal Legacy This experience — being subjected to weapons of mass destruction with the active support of the country that had overthrown Iran’s democracy 30 years earlier, while the world remained silent — becomes a founding trauma of the Islamic Republic’s strategic thinking. Iranian military planners draw two conclusions that shape all subsequent policy:

First, Iran can never rely on international law or institutions for its protection. Second, Iran must develop its own deterrent capabilities. This fuels three parallel programs that define the next several decades: a ballistic missile arsenal, a network of proxy militias across the region (Hezbollah in Lebanon, Shia militias in Iraq, the Houthis in Yemen), and — eventually — a nuclear program.

VI. MISSED OPPORTUNITIES AND ESCALATION (2001–2015)

September 2001 — Secret Cooperation After 9/11 In one of the least-known chapters of US-Iran relations, Iranian diplomats hold secret meetings with American officials — including diplomat Ryan Crocker — in Geneva and Kabul following the September 11 attacks. Iran despises the Sunni extremist Taliban and Al-Qaeda, and provides the US military with valuable targeting intelligence that helps overthrow the Taliban in Afghanistan. Iranian officials believe this cooperation may lead to a diplomatic thaw.

January 2002 — “Axis of Evil” Instead of reciprocating, President George W. Bush includes Iran in his “Axis of Evil” alongside Iraq and North Korea in his State of the Union address. Iranian reformists who had championed cooperation with Washington are humiliated and marginalized. Hardliners in the Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps (IRGC) seize the initiative, concluding that the United States responds only to force and deterrence. Iran’s covert nuclear program accelerates.

~2006–2010 — Stuxnet: The First Cyberweapon The United States and Israel collaborate on a highly classified cyber operation codenamed Operation Olympic Games. The resulting malware, Stuxnet, infiltrates Iran’s Natanz nuclear facility and causes centrifuges to spin out of control and destroy themselves — the world’s first known use of a cyberweapon to cause physical destruction. The operation sets the precedent for covert, preemptive attacks on Iranian nuclear infrastructure.

2012 Onward — The Shadow War with Israel Israel conducts a series of covert operations targeting Iran’s nuclear program, including assassinations of Iranian nuclear scientists. Iran retaliates through proxy attacks and its own covert operations. An undeclared shadow war escalates steadily over more than a decade.

VII. THE NUCLEAR DEAL AND ITS DESTRUCTION (2015–2020)

July 2015 — The JCPOA After years of negotiations, Iran and the P5+1 (US, UK, France, Russia, China, and Germany), together with the European Union, finalize the Joint Comprehensive Plan of Action (JCPOA) in Vienna. Under the deal, Iran agrees to dramatically limit its nuclear program — reducing centrifuges, capping uranium enrichment levels, redesigning its heavy-water reactor at Arak, and accepting the most intrusive international inspections regime ever negotiated. In exchange, nuclear-related sanctions are lifted.

The deal represents the most significant diplomatic opening between Iran and the West since the 1979 revolution.

May 2018 — Trump Withdraws from the JCPOA Despite the International Atomic Energy Agency repeatedly confirming Iranian compliance — and despite Trump’s own Secretary of State, Mike Pompeo, acknowledging this compliance — President Trump unilaterally withdraws the United States from the JCPOA and reimpose sanctions under a policy of “maximum pressure.”

Iran continues to comply with the deal for approximately one year after the US withdrawal, waiting for European signatories to find a workaround. When no effective mechanism materializes, Iran begins incrementally exceeding the deal’s limits on uranium enrichment.

Within Iran, the deal’s collapse devastates the reformist political camp. Moderates who had staked their credibility on diplomatic engagement with the West are discredited. Hardliners are vindicated.

January 3, 2020 — The Assassination of Qasem Soleimani The United States assassinates Major General Qasem Soleimani, commander of the IRGC’s Quds Force and the architect of Iran’s regional proxy network, via drone strike at Baghdad International Airport. The killing shatters the unspoken norm that senior state officials are not targeted for assassination.

Iran responds with ballistic missile strikes on US bases in Iraq. More consequentially, Iran announces it will no longer observe any of the JCPOA’s restrictions. Uranium enrichment accelerates toward weapons-grade levels. The diplomatic path effectively closes.

VIII. COLLAPSE AND WAR (2025–2026)

Late 2025 — Iran’s Internal Crisis Iran’s economy, devastated by years of sanctions, mismanagement, and corruption, reaches a breaking point. The rial collapses. Beginning on December 28, 2025, protests erupt in all 31 of Iran’s provinces — including areas traditionally loyal to the regime. It is the broadest mobilization since the 1979 revolution. The immediate triggers are economic — soaring inflation, unemployment, collapsing living standards — but the underlying grievances run far deeper: decades of political repression, corruption, and a social contract that has disintegrated.

The government responds with overwhelming force. The scale of the crackdown is severe: internal estimates from Iran’s Ministry of Health indicate massive casualties in the early days.

June 2025 — Israel-Iran War An initial round of direct military conflict between Israel and Iran escalates throughout 2025. In its aftermath, Iran officially terminates the JCPOA on October 18, 2025, after 10 years.

February 13, 2026 — Trump Endorses Regime Change President Trump publicly states that regime change in Iran would be “the best thing that could happen.”

February 28, 2026 — War Begins At 2:30 AM, Trump releases an eight-minute video statement. Hours earlier, the United States and Israel have launched coordinated military strikes against Iran under the codenames Operation Epic Fury (US) and Operation Roaring Lion (Israel). Supreme Leader Ali Khamenei is killed in the initial strikes, along with multiple senior military and political officials.

The stated justifications shift repeatedly in the following days: preventing an imminent threat, destroying missile capabilities, eliminating nuclear weapons potential, and regime change.

March 2026 — Escalation By day seven, Tehran is under heavy bombardment. Iran retaliates with over 500 ballistic missiles and nearly 2,000 drones, targeting Israel as well as US military bases in Qatar, Bahrain, and Kuwait. At least 1,300 people are confirmed killed in Iran, including at least 181 children according to UNICEF. The Natanz nuclear facility is struck, though Iran reports no radioactive leakage.

The US Senate votes 53–47 to reject a war powers resolution that would have forced Trump to withdraw, falling short of the 50-vote threshold needed to pass.

The Question of Succession Trump states he wants to be involved in selecting Iran’s next leader: “We’re going to have to choose that person along with Iran.” He compares the effort to the US role in replacing Venezuela’s government.

Reza Pahlavi — the son of Mohammad Reza Pahlavi, the Shah who was installed by the CIA in 1953 and overthrown in 1979 — announces he is ready to lead a transitional government. Trump calls Pahlavi a “very nice person” but expresses a preference for “someone already in Iran.”

IX. THE CAUSAL CHAIN

Each event in this timeline created the conditions for what followed. The connections are not speculative — they are documented, acknowledged by the governments involved, and in many cases explicitly cited by the actors themselves as motivations:

  • Britain nationalized Iran’s oil company for its own benefit in 1914, then overthrew Iran’s government in 1953 for attempting the same thing.
  • The 1953 coup destroyed Iranian democracy and installed an authoritarian monarch, requiring a secret police force (SAVAK) to maintain control.
  • SAVAK, trained by the CIA and Mossad, systematically eliminated all secular and liberal opposition, leaving the mosque as the only surviving organized political force.
  • The Shah’s top-down modernization program alienated the clergy, merchants, and rural poor, creating a broad coalition of opposition unified by Khomeini.
  • The 1979 revolution was explicitly framed by its participants as a response to the 1953 coup and 25 years of Western-backed authoritarian rule.
  • The hostage crisis was motivated by documented fears of a “second 1953” — and was used domestically to consolidate theocratic power and eliminate moderates.
  • The Iran-Iraq War, in which the West supported Iraq’s use of chemical weapons against Iran, convinced Iranian leaders they could never trust international institutions or Western powers, driving the development of missiles, proxies, and nuclear ambitions.
  • Post-9/11 secret cooperation between Iran and the US was repaid with the “Axis of Evil” designation, discrediting reformists and empowering hardliners.
  • The JCPOA represented a rare opening; its destruction by the US — despite verified Iranian compliance — vindicated those in Tehran who argued that negotiation with the West was futile.
  • The assassination of Soleimani crossed a threshold that normalized the targeting of senior state officials and ended any remaining nuclear constraints.
  • In 2026, the United States is once again at war in Iran with the stated goal of regime change, and the American president is once again publicly discussing who should lead Iran — 73 years after the CIA last made that decision.

X. BELATED ACKNOWLEDGMENTS

The governments responsible have, at various points, acknowledged what they did — though always decades after the fact, and never with a formal apology:

  • 2000 — Secretary of State Madeleine Albright: “The coup was clearly a setback for Iran’s political development. And it is easy to see now why many Iranians continue to resent this intervention by America in their internal affairs.”

  • 2009 — President Barack Obama, in Cairo: “In the middle of the Cold War, the United States played a role in the overthrow of a democratically elected Iranian government.”

  • 2013 — The CIA formally acknowledges its role in the 1953 coup for the first time, releasing heavily redacted documents on the 60th anniversary.

  • 2017 — The State Department finally releases an updated official history of the coup, 64 years after the fact.

  • As of 2026 — The United Kingdom has still never officially acknowledged its role in planning and executing Operation Boot, despite the evidence being an open secret in Washington, London, and Tehran.