Allies to adversaries: The complex history between the U.S. and Iran

Decades before the U.S.- Israel war in Iran began, Iran was considered one of the United States' most important allies in the Middle East.

As the U.S.-Israel war Iran surges on, it’s hard to imagine Iran was once an important U.S. ally. Iran was the United States 'best ally in the Middle East,” said Ali Vaez, the Iran project director at the International Crisis Group. “It was really a linchpin of U.S. policy in the region,” but he noted the countries have “a very complicated history.”  Friendly relations between the United States and Iran can be traced back to 1953, when the United States and the United Kingdom helped stage a coup against Iran’s then-prime minister,  Mohammad Mosaddegh, over concerns about Mosaddegh’s attempt to nationalize the country’s oil industry and fears that it would draw the influence of the Soviet Union. The coup would return the last Shah of Iran, Mohammad Reza Pahlavi, to power, with support from the United States.

The United States and Iran remained on friendly terms, for the most part, over the next two decades. The United States sold weapons and provided military support to Iran as it resisted the Soviet Union, and both countries embarked on a cultural exchange to improve higher education in Iran.  “There was a lot of back and forth with Iranian students studying in the United States and returning home to try to help develop their own country,” Vaez said. 

A key disagreement between the United States and Iran has been over Iran’s efforts to develop nuclear energy, with the United States concerned that Iran would be able to develop nuclear weapons. In 2015, after lengthy negotiations, President Barack Obama declared that a deal between the United States and Iran had been made that would prevent Iran from obtaining a nuclear weapon. However, in 2018, President Donald Trump announced that the United States would exit negotiations with Iran. “It is clear to me that we cannot prevent an Iranian nuclear bomb under the decaying and rotten structure of this deal,” President Trump said. President Joe Biden attempted to restore the Iran nuclear deal, and negotiations resumed in 2021. However, both countries failed to make an agreement.  Informal talks continued when President Trump returned to office but failed again, prompting the United States and Israel to strike Iran.  President Trump’s rationale for launching strikes against the country on February 28, 2026, was concerns over Iran’s nuclear capabilities. Yet the United States played a key role in helping Iran develop its nuclear program.  “One of the biggest ironies of this situation is that the Iranian nuclear program was gifted to Iran by the United States as part of President Eisenhower's Atoms for Peace program,” Vaez said.  The program aimed to improve relations between nations and quell interest in developing nuclear weapons by providing the components needed to establish a civilian nuclear program for energy production.  

But it was the 1979 Iranian Revolution that severely strained relations between the two countries. Contempt over the Shah’s authoritarian rule reached a boiling point for the Iranian people and he was eventually removed from power.   “The Shah had completely lost control, and the Iranian army, which was U.S.-trained, decided to declare neutrality in this conflict between the state and the society,” Vaez said. “And that is how the revolutionaries managed to topple 2,500 years of monarchy in Iran and established an Islamic republic.” 

Iran’s newly installed supreme leader in 1979 saw the United States as an enemy and spread anti-American sentiment among the society.  “The Islamic Republic really tried to brainwash the entire population, and especially the newer generation, against the United States,” Vaez said. “I grew up in Iran, and I had to, every single day before going to class, chant ‘Death to America' before we could go and sit behind our benches. And yet, my brother was studying in the United States, and I couldn't really say, ‘Death to America,’ because I was worried that that would, in a way, harm my brother.”   Vaez discusses the complicated history between the United States and Iran, including repeated efforts to quell Iran’s nuclear ambitions, in the latest episode of USA TODAY’s flagship podcast, The Excerpt.