Today, I will focus on a very interesting topic that I'm pretty sure many people would like to read about. It's about the US - Iran relations, more specifically about what happened in the past that led to the current bad relationship between these two countries. I've wrote before about Iran, the Middle East and other similar articles, but today's post its about the past. I'll try to explain as simple as I can the tumultuous events that shaped today's American - Iran events.
President Donald Trump, actually the former US president now, has long been fixated on Iran, but almost three years ago he has turned things up a notch. He stated in a press conference before boarding his official helicopter that the US
will be sending a relatively small number of troops.
&
one of the most powerful ships in the world that's loaded up and we don't want to do anything.
&
it's going be a bad problem for Iran if something happens, I can tell you that.
Trump and the President of Iran have been engaged in a war of words leading to some pretty dramatic headlines such as "major escalation between Iran and the US troops" or "Jumby turf war is growing louder from the White House".
But, in order to understand how we got here and why things have gotten so tense of quickly, we have to rewind to the 1950s. In 1953, British and American intelligence agents orchestrated a plot to oust Iran's democratically elected prime-minister, Mohammad Mossadegh and restore the autocratic king, the Shah to power.
Mossadegh has nationalized the country's oil industry which had previously been controlled by the British for almost 50 years. The young Shah, on the other hand, was much more willing to bend western interests. It were the United States, only a few years later, helped Iran set up its first nuclear technology.
Fast-forward to 1979, when protests led by nationalists and leftists and later co-opted by the religious right filled the streets of Tehran. After months of demonstrations, the US backed Shah fled the country and the religious leader, Ayatollah Khomeini declared Iran an Islamic Republic, pushing out nationalist and left-wing allies in favor of anti-American conservative social values.
In November that same year, a group of students stormed and occupied the US embassy in Tehran, taking more than 50 Americans hostage for over a year. The US cut ties and then went on to back Iraq after it invaded Iran, which led to a bloody eight-year war that involved chemical weapons and left nearly 1 million people dead. It was the bloodiest confrontation in the history of the Middle East.
Both the revolution and hostage crisis are seen as a direct response to American interference in Iranian affairs and would go on to set the tone for relations between the two countries for decades.
Then, in 1983, President Ronald Reagan labelled Iran as a state sponsor of terrorism, after a suicide bomber targeted a US military base in Beirut, killing 241 American troops.
Three years later, while Iran and Iraq were still at war, the Reagan administration was caught selling weapons to Iran and using the money to fund rebels in Nicaragua, violating both the government's own policy of not negotiating with terrorists and a series of laws designed to prevent American support of the Contras. Even Reagan recognized afterwards on television that the decision was a mistake.
Then, Iran Air Flight 655 happened. In 1988, towards the end of the Iran-Iraq war, a US naval ship mistakenly shot down an Iranian passenger plane killing all 298 people on board. The US has always said it was an accident, but many Iranians don't believe that.
Things started to get better in the late 90s, but it didn't last. George W. Bush stated that
states like these and their terrorist allies constitute an axis of evil.
When the US invaded Iraq in 2003, it further complicated the power struggle between Iran and its regional rival, the Saudi Arabia. Then, in 2005 Iran elected a new controversial leader, Mahmoud Ahmadinejad. During his time in office, tensions over Iran's nuclear program hit an all-time high. The international community feared that Tehran was working towards developing a nuclear weapon, so they imposed harsh sanctions that crippled Iran's economy. Despite that, Iran has continued to be locked in a proxy war with Saudi Arabia backing various militias across the Middle East.
Fast-forward to 2013, when moderate Hassan Rouhani came to power on the promise that he'd revive the country's weakened economy. To do that, he needed sanctions lifted, so right after his election, he resumed negotiations with the US and other world powers on Iran's nuclear program. Obama even called Rouhani the highest level of contact between the two countries since 1979. That set the ground for the Iran Nuclear Deal signed in 2015 between Iran and the US and five other world powers. It was a historic moment, but then 2016 happened.
Donald Trump was elected and he immediately declared that the United States will withdraw from the Iran nuclear deal. Since Trump pulled out from the deal, tings have taken a turn for the worst. Trump was surrounded by advisors who were staunchly anti-Iran. But even though both leaders have ramped up their military posturing, most experts agree that a conflict is unlikely.
Of course, it was hard to say what both leaders would do next, but if history is any indication, neither Iran, nor the United States want yet another war in the Middle East.
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