(Jefferey Fields’s post from THE CONVERSATION on 18 June 2025.)
US
and Iran have a long, complicated history, spanning decades before US strikes
on nuclear sites: With the U.S. bombing of three nuclear sites in Iran,
relations between the two countries have arguably reached one of the lowest
points in modern times.
But
the bad blood between the two countries isn’t new: The U.S. and Iran have been
in conflict for decades – at least since the U.S. helped overthrow a
democracy-minded prime minister, Mohammed Mossadegh, in August 1953. The U.S.
then supported the long, repressive reign of the Shah of Iran, whose security
services brutalized Iranian citizens for decades.
The two countries have been particularly hostile to each other since Iranian students took over the U.S. Embassy in Tehran in November 1979, resulting in economic sanctions and the severing of formal diplomatic relations between the nations.








