Official narratives date America’s conflict with Iran from 1979 and cast Iran as the aggressor. The gap between that story and the documented record of U.S. meddling is exactly what letter-writers and historians keep having to point out.
The Official Story Starts in 1979; the Record Starts in 1953
In a March 2026 letters section, The Des Moines Register published a reader, Don C. Yager, correcting a guest column that had dated America’s history with Iran from the 1979 takeover of the U.S. Embassy in Tehran. Yager wrote that history does not begin and end there. America’s first overthrow of an Iranian regime was in August 1953, when with British collaboration the government of Prime Minister Mohammad Mosaddegh was overthrown and a corrupt and much-despised shah was installed. That shah, assisted throughout his reign by the United States, ruled with ruthless determination; most Iranians remained in poverty and the SAVAK secret police suppressed dissent. The Iranian people finally rose in 1979 to throw out the shah and his chief foreign sponsor. It did not go well the first time, Yager noted, and there is no reason to believe it will be any different this time.
The American Prospect’s March 2026 brief history of U.S. involvement in Iran states that the CIA orchestrated the 1953 coup primarily to prevent Iran’s nationalisation of its oil industry and that the U.S. and Britain installed the Shah, eliminating any semblance of democracy. After the 1979 revolution, Washington’s 47-year war against Iran included supporting Saddam Hussein’s 1980 invasion with military aid and spare-parts embargoes that left 70 to 80 percent of Iran’s U.S.-sourced military equipment non-functional by 1982, as documented by Antiwar.com in March 2026. The official narrative typically begins with the hostage crisis and portrays Iran as solely responsible; that starting point obscures the deeper record.
Current Policy Ignores the Record Historians Have Documented
Ervand Abrahamian, a distinguished historian of Iran at the CUNY Graduate Center, has argued in New Left Review and elsewhere that foreign intervention has historically strengthened Iranian resistance rather than weakened it and that external threats consolidated support for the revolution. Jeffrey Sachs, the Columbia University economist, stated in a March 2026 interview that Washington’s regime-change attempts in Iran are very unlikely to succeed and that Iranians remember the 1953 coup with profound disfavour. Fortune reported in March 2026 that U.S. intelligence assessed that regime change was unlikely in Iran even with a broader war; Iran’s leadership quickly moved to preserve continuity by selecting a new supreme leader. Despite that assessment, the rhetoric of official statements still frames Iran as the sole threat and omits the decades of U.S. intervention that policy debates ignore. The gap between the official narrative and the facts is not an oversight; it is what allows the same story to be told again.
What This Actually Means
Every official narrative that starts in 1979 and casts Iran as the only bad actor is undercut by the documented record of U.S. coups, support for the shah, and support for Iraq’s war on Iran. Letter-writers and historians have long documented that meddling. Current policy debates still ignore it. Scholars and journalists have repeatedly documented the 1953 coup and its aftermath; the American Prospect’s March 2026 overview and NPR’s timeline of U.S.-Iran relations are among the many sources that place it at the centre of the relationship. Regime-change rhetoric in 2026 has not been matched by intelligence assessments. Fortune reported in March 2026 that U.S. intelligence assessed that regime change in Iran was unlikely even with a broader war, and that Iran’s leadership moved quickly to preserve continuity by selecting a new supreme leader. That gap between assessment and rhetoric is another example of the official narrative diverging from the documented record. Until the gap between the official story and the facts is closed, the same mistakes will be sold as new solutions.
What Was Operation Ajax?
Operation Ajax was the CIA-led coup in August 1953 that overthrew Iran’s democratically elected Prime Minister Mohammad Mosaddegh. Britain had imposed an oil embargo after Iran nationalised its oil industry; the U.S. joined the effort to remove Mosaddegh and restore the Shah. The CIA used bribery, propaganda, and staged unrest. Mosaddegh was removed and the Shah remained a close U.S. ally until the 1979 revolution. The coup is widely cited as the root of modern U.S.-Iran hostility and as a precedent for later CIA interventions elsewhere.
Who Was Mohammad Mosaddegh?
Mohammad Mosaddegh was Iran’s prime minister from 1951 until the 1953 coup. He championed the nationalisation of Iran’s oil industry, then controlled by the British-owned Anglo-Persian Oil Company. His government was overthrown by the CIA-backed Operation Ajax, which restored the Shah to full power. Mosaddegh was imprisoned and later placed under house arrest until his death in 1967. He is remembered in Iran as a symbol of elected government and sovereignty against foreign intervention.
Sources
The Des Moines Register (via Yahoo News), The American Prospect, Antiwar.com, NPR, Fortune