History of US-Iran relations: From the 1953 regime change to Trump strikes
Here's a timeline of US-Iran relations since 1953:
United States-Iran tensions have surged to the highest point in decades after President Donald Trump on Sunday ordered direct strikes that he said 'obliterated' key nuclear facilities across the Middle Eastern country.
Iran remains the biggest adversary of the US in the region since the 1979 Islamic revolution led by Ayatollah Ruhollah Khomeini toppled pro-Western Mohammad Reza Pahlavi. Since then, the two nations have sparred over a multitude of issues, including Iran's nuclear ambitions, Iran's backing of proxies in the region, and US political interference.
Israel, which has long considered Iran a threat, launched unprecedented strikes across Iran last week after accusing the country of developing nuclear weapons. Israeli claims have not been backed by any credible proof, but Trump dragged the US into the war following the Israeli strikes.
On Sunday, the US directly hit Iran in what the Trump administration called a highly sophisticated covert attack that involved more than 125 US aircraft and 75 precision bombs. Washington said it 'devastated' Iran's nuclear sites, but Tehran has warned it will retaliate.
(1953) US-backed coup and reinstallation of the shah: Tensions initially began brewing over the democratically elected Iranian Prime Minister Mohammad Mosaddegh's efforts to nationalise the Anglo-Iranian Oil Company (now BP). The British colonial power controlled the majority stake in the joint-venture company since oil was discovered in the early 1900s. Mosaddegh's moves to nationalise the company after his 1951 election angered the British. The US's Central Intelligence Agency supported the United Kingdom in engineering a coup and backing once-deposed monarch, Pahlavi, back into power as shah.
(1957) Atoms for Peace: The shah's ambitions for a nuclear-powered Iran gained support from the US and other Western allies. Both countries signed a nuclear agreement for the civilian use of nuclear power as part of then-US President Dwight D Eisenhower's Atoms for Peace programme. A decade later, the US provided Iran with a nuclear reactor and uranium to fuel it. The nuclear collaboration forms the basis for the current nuclear question.
(1979) Islamic revolution: While relations between Tehran and Washington flourished, Iranians groaned under the dictatorship of the shah and resisted the perceived overreach of Western influence on their business. Revolutionary protests began rocking the country in late 1978 and forced the shah to flee in January 1979. Exiled Islamic scholar Ayatollah Ruhollah Khomeini returned to rule the new Islamic republic.
(1980) US cuts diplomatic ties: Following the US's move to admit the shah for cancer treatment after his exile, Iranian students broke into the US embassy in Tehran and kidnapped 52 Americans for 444 days. Washington cut off diplomatic ties and imposed sanctions on the country. The shah died in exile.
(1980-88) US backs Iraqi invasion: Following Iraq's invasion of Iran under Saddam Hussein, who was eager to push back against Khomeini's ideology, the US sided with Iraq, deepening tensions between the two nations. The war lasted till 1988 and saw thousands die on both sides. Iraq also used chemical weapons on Iran.
(1984) Sponsor of terror designation: President Ronald Reagan officially designated Iran as a 'state sponsor of terror' after a series of attacks in Lebanon, where the US had been drawn in after Israel invaded the country. In one attack on a military base in Beirut, 241 US service members were killed. The US blamed Hezbollah, a Lebanese Shia movement backed by Iran. Later, though, Reagan worked with Iran behind the scenes to free American hostages held by Hezbollah. When it came to light, the Iran-Contra affair, as it was termed, was a huge scandal for Reagan.
(1988) Iran Air flight shot down: Amid war tensions and even direct attacks on each other's military warships in the Gulf, a US naval ship breached Iranian waters and fired at the civilian Iran Air flight (IR655) headed to Dubai on July 8. All 290 people on board were killed. The US, which claimed it was a mistake, did not formally apologise or claim responsibility but paid families $61.8m as compensation.
(1995) Tighter sanctions: Between 1995 and 1996, the US imposed more sanctions. Then, President Bill Clinton's executive orders banned US companies from dealing with Iran, while Congress passed a law penalising foreign entities investing in the country's energy sector or selling Iran advanced weapons. The US cited nuclear advancement and support of groups like Hezbollah, Hamas, and Palestinian Islamic Jihad.
(2002) 9/11 aftermath: Following the 9/11 attacks on the US, President George W Bush, in a State of the Union address, said Iran was part of an 'Axis of Evil' alongside Iraq and North Korea. At the time, Iran had been parlaying with the US behind the scenes to target their mutual foes – the Taliban in Afghanistan and al-Qaeda. The cooperation was soured, and by the end of 2022, international observers noted highly enriched uranium in Iran, inviting more sanctions.
(2013) Iran nuclear deal: Between 2013 and 2015, US President Barack Obama began high-level talks with Iran. In 2015, Tehran agreed to the nuclear deal, formally known as the Joint Comprehensive Plan of Action (JCPOA), that would limit Iran's nuclear activities in exchange for an easing of sanctions. China, Russia, France, Germany, the UK and the European Union were also party to the deal that capped Iran's enrichment at 3.67 percent.
(2018) Trump withdraws from the nuclear deal: Under Trump's first term, the US unilaterally withdrew from the deal in 2018 and slapped back sanctions against Iran. Trump and Israel had been critical of the deal. Iran also called off its commitments and began producing enriched uranium beyond the limits the deal had imposed.
(2020) IRGC leader assassinated: During Trump's first term, the US killed Iranian General Qassem Soleimani, the head of the elite Quds Force of Iran's Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps (IRGC), in Baghdad in a drone strike. A year earlier, the administration had named the Quds Force a 'terrorist' organisation. Iran responded with strikes on US assets in Iraq.
(2025) Letter to Tehran: In March, Trump shot off a letter to Iran's Supreme Leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei proposing new negotiations on a nuclear deal with a deadline of 60 days. But Khamenei rejected the offer, saying the US is not seeking negotiations with Iran but rather imposing demands on it. Talks started unofficially in Oman and Italy, with Muscat acting as the mediator. Trump claimed his team was 'very close' to a deal after several rounds of talks and warned Israel against strikes. Tehran, too, expressed optimism but insisted on the right to enrich uranium – a sticking point in the talks. Israel launched strikes across Iran a day before the sixth round of the Iran-US talks.
(2025) US strikes: The US bombed three key nuclear facilities in Iran, citing security concerns and the defence of Israel.
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Al Jazeera
an hour ago
- Al Jazeera
What the US and Israel really want from Iran
In his 2002 testimony to the United States Congress, then former Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu told US lawmakers that an invasion of Iraq was necessary for winning the 'war on terror' and preventing Iraq and terrorist groups from acquiring weapons of mass destruction. He further claimed that the war would be quick and would usher in a new age of Western-friendly democracy, not just in Iraq, but across the region, including Iran. Neither proclamation was true. As many experts and officials already knew before the 2003 invasion began, Saddam Hussein's regime did not have weapons of mass destruction and held no ties to al-Qaeda. The war was bound to cause widespread devastation, instability, insecurity, unspeakable suffering, chaos and the breakdown of governance. And that is what happened. Iraq today is at best a fragile state with enormous economic and political challenges. After Israel and then the US attacked Iran earlier this month, many analysts rushed to comment on how the two allies have supposedly failed to learn the lessons of the Iraq war and are now repeating the same mistakes in Iran. These analyses would have been accurate had the actual goals of the 2003 invasion been to stop the proliferation of weapons of mass destruction and to establish democracy. But they were not. For the US and Israel, the desired outcome of the war was an Iraq that would not pose any resistance to the Israeli settler-colonial project in Palestine and its role as an agent of US imperial power in the region. This is also the desired outcome in Iran today. Just like the claims about the weapons of mass destruction in Iraq proved completely false, the claims that Iran was on the 'verge of' developing a nuclear weapon have no grounds. No real evidence that Tehran was in fact close to gaining nuclear capabilities has been put forward. Instead, we have been presented with a truly unmatched level of hypocrisy and lies. Here we have a situation where two nuclear powers – one which stands out as the only state in history to use, not once but twice, a nuclear weapon and another that refuses to sign the Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty and has a mass-murder-suicide type of nuclear doctrine – are undertaking illegal 'pre-emptive' aggression under the guise of stopping nuclear proliferation. Clearly, the US and Israel are not after Iran's nuclear programme. They are after Iran as a regional power, and that is why regime change has already been floated in public. In addition to multiple statements from Netanyahu, Israeli Defence Minister Israel Katz, and other Israeli officials, US Senators Lindsey Graham and Ted Cruz have also called for toppling the Iranian government. On Sunday, US President Donald Trump joined the calls for regime change in Iran with a post on social media. The Iranian people are now being encouraged to 'stand up' and fight for their 'freedom'. But freedom and democracy in Iran are certainly not what Israel and the US aim for. Why? Because a free and democratic Iran would not serve their interests and accept the brutalities of a settler-colonial project in its vicinity. They would rather see Iran return to the violent, tyrannical monarchy under the Pahlavi dynasty, which was overthrown in a popular revolution in 1979, or any other political force willing to do their bidding. If that doesn't happen, Israel and the US would rather have a fragmented, weak, chaotic, destabilised Iran, marred by a civil war. That would suit their interests, just as a war-torn Iraq did. Weakening regional powers in the Middle East and spreading instability through subversion and aggression is a well-established policy goal that the political elites in Israel and the US have jointly embraced since the 1990s. A policy document called Clean Break, authored by former US Assistant Secretary of Defense Richard Perle and other neoconservatives in 1996, outlined this strategy of attacking Middle Eastern states under the pretext of preventing the proliferation of weapons of mass destruction to secure Israel's strategic interests. Perle et al did not come up with something radically new; they simply built on the well-known imperial strategy of sowing division and chaos in order to facilitate imperial domination. But this strategy is not without risks. Just like the collapse of the Iraqi state paved the way for violent non-state actors to emerge and for Iran to solidify its position as a regional power challenging US-Israeli interests, a weakened or fragmented Iranian state can result in the same dynamics. On a more global scale, the actions of the US and Israel are encouraging more countries to pursue nuclear weapons. The lesson that states are drawing from the US-Israeli aggression on Iran is that nuclear weapons are necessary to acquire precisely to prevent such attacks. Thus, we are likely heading towards more proliferation as a result of this war, not less. The Israeli state does not seem to be concerned about proliferation as long as the chaos and destruction it spreads in the region allows it to achieve its strategic goal of eradicating the Palestinian struggle once and for all, and ending all resistance to its settler colonisation project. Israel, in a nutshell, wants the entire region on its knees and will stop at nothing to achieve that objective. This is because it does not really have to foot the bill of regional instability. By contrast, US interests are directly impacted when the Middle East descends into chaos. A dysfunctional Iraq or a weakened Iran may serve the US in the short term, but in the longer term, the instability can disrupt its grander plans for control of global energy markets and containing China. The rest of the world will also feel the ripple effect of this unjustified aggression, just as it did after the 2003 invasion of Iraq. Given the brutal, decades-long fallout of that war, the global response to the US-Israeli aggression against Iran has been self-defeatingly subdued; some European countries have appeared to endorse the attack, despite the many negative economic impacts they could face as a result of this war. If governments truly desire to make the world a safer place, this complacency with imperial violence needs to end. It is past time that they come to the sober conclusion that the US and Israel are agents of destruction and chaos by virtue of their racist colonial design. The Israeli settler colonial project is an unjustifiable project of displacement, expulsion and genocide; US imperialism is an unjustifiable project of robbing people of their resources, dignity and sovereignty. To establish peace and stability in the Middle East, the world needs to put pressure on Israel to give up its settler colonial project and become part of the region through a decolonial existence with the Palestinians in a decolonised Palestine; and to compel the US to release its iron grip on the region, allowing its people to live in freedom and sovereignty. This is the only way to avoid perpetual chaos, instability, suffering and pain. The views expressed in this article are the author's own and do not necessarily reflect Al Jazeera's editorial stance.
Al Jazeera
an hour ago
- Al Jazeera
US, Israeli strikes on Iran nuclear sites: How big are radiation risks?
Early on Sunday, the United States bombed three Iranian nuclear sites after more than a week of Israeli strikes on Tehran's military and nuclear sites, stoking concerns about radiation leaks and contamination in Iran and neighbouring countries in the region. US President Donald Trump said the US strikes 'obliterated' key nuclear enrichment facilities at Fordow, Natanz and Isfahan. So far, no increase in radiation levels has been detected outside the targeted sites. But the United Nations nuclear watchdog, the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA), has warned of chemical contamination inside these facilities. And experts have said that any attack on Iran's only operating nuclear power plant, Bushehr, could lead to a major radiation crisis. Here is what we know about the potential of radiation risk and contamination in Iran and the region: What do we know about the Israeli attack on the Fordow site? The Israeli army attacked Iran's Fordow nuclear site a day after it was targeted in US strikes, according to a spokesman for the Qom province crisis management headquarters. Morteza Heydari provided no further details regarding the attack, but said 'no danger is posed to citizens' in the area. Following the attacks on three nuclear sites, including Fordow, Trump claimed 'monumental damage' to the nuclear sites. 'Obliteration is an accurate term!' he posted on his Truth Social platform. On Monday, Rafael Grossi, the head of the IAEA, said 'very significant damage' is expected at the Fordow site. While 'no one, including the IAEA, is in a position to have fully assessed the underground damage at Fordow', he said it is expected to be 'very significant'. That's because of 'the explosive payload utilised and the extreme vibration-sensitive nature of centrifuges', Grossi said at an emergency meeting of the IAEA's board of governors. Did the US attacks cause radioactive contamination? In the aftermath of Sunday's attack, levels of radioactivity in Iran and nearby countries are normal, confirmed their governments and the IAEA, which noted that no off-site radiation has been reported. In a statement on Sunday, the IAEA said that the Isfahan site, which was previously also struck by Israel, had sustained additional damage after the US strikes. The IAEA said that any radioactive contamination caused at Isfahan is limited to the buildings that were damaged or destroyed. 'The facilities targeted today either contained no nuclear material or small quantities of natural or low-enriched uranium, meaning any radioactive contamination is limited to the buildings that were damaged or destroyed,' the agency said. Grossi, the IAEA chief, said that the US strikes on Isfahan hit several buildings, including some 'related to the uranium conversion process' while a fuel enrichment plant was hit at Natanz. Grossi said IAEA inspectors stand ready to check the targeted facilities 'when agreed with Iran'. The IAEA monitors and reports nuclear activities of Iran through inspections, monitoring equipment, environmental sampling, and satellite imagery, according to a UN website news release. Why did radiation remain at normal levels? There are multiple possible reasons why the radiation has stayed at normal levels. One is that Iran had moved away its nuclear infrastructure in anticipation of an earlier Israeli strike. Mahdi Mohammadi, an adviser to Iran's parliament speaker, Mohammad Bagher Ghalibaf, said earlier that Iran had moved its nuclear infrastructure from Fordow in anticipation of an attack. So far, only enrichment sites, where uranium is enriched to make atomic bombs, have been hit. At enrichment sites, uranium exists in gaseous form, which combines with fluoride gas to form uranium hexafluoride. This is spun around in centrifuges to increase the amounts of uranium-235, the isotope that can support nuclear fission chain reactions. Hence, if struck, uranium hexafluoride might leak out of enrichment sites. The fluoride gas is deadly when inhaled and can be corrosive to the skin. Moreover, enrichment facilities are also fortified underground and buried hundreds of metres deep, making them difficult to damage and hence lessening radiation risks. On the other hand, nuclear reactors primarily use uranium. In a nuclear reactor, the fission chain reaction needs to take place within a fraction of a second, leading to a nuclear explosion from the tremendous amount of energy released. Typically, 90 percent enrichment is needed to make an atomic bomb. Why are experts warning against attacking the Bushehr plant? Concerns have particularly been raised against attacks on the Bushehr nuclear site, with the IAEA chief warning of a disaster if the plant located at Iran's Gulf Coast is hit. Grossi said on Thursday that a direct hit to Bushehr, which is monitored by the IAEA, would result in a 'very high release of radioactivity to the environment'. Grossi added that Bushehr contains 'thousands of kilogrammes of nuclear material'. In a worst-case scenario, it would require evacuation orders to be issued for areas within several hundred kilometres of the plant, including population centres in other Gulf countries, he said. The IAEA chief said that a strike on the two lines that supply electricity to Bushehr could cause its reactor core to melt, with dire consequences. Authorities would need to take protective actions including administering iodine to populations and potentially restricting food supplies, with subsequent radiation monitoring covering distances of several hundred kilometres. On June 19, the Israeli military said that it had attacked Bushehr, but later said that the announcement was a mistake. Bushehr, which is located around 750km (465 miles) south of Tehran, is Iran's only commercial nuclear power plant. It is run by uranium produced in Russia. Bushehr, home to around 223,504 people, has two large nuclear reactors – one of them still under construction. 'It would be very dangerous if it were hit with a bomb or the cooling systems are interrupted,' Robert Kelly, a former IAEA inspector who has worked in Iraq, South Africa and Libya, told Al Jazeera. 'You might get an accident on the scale of Fukushima, where the reactor would melt down inside its building and maybe release small amounts of gas to the environment,' Kelly said. In March 2011, a magnitude 9 earthquake and tsunami disabled the power supply and cooling systems of three reactors at the Fukushima Daiichi nuclear power plant, located in Okuma on Japan's east coast. Radioactive material was released from the site, leading to tens of thousands of people being evacuated. A UN report deems Fukushima the largest civilian nuclear accident since that in Chernobyl, Ukraine in 1986. 'If somebody attacks the town of Bushehr, it may not be the reactor. So when people are saying they're attacking Bushehr or attacking the reactor of Bushehr, it could be the one that's not finished yet,' Kelly said. 'I think the Russians would have a lot to say about someone attacking the facility that they already built and the one that's worth about $7bn that isn't finished yet. I think Israel has to take the Russians into account in this case, too.' Russian state news agency RIA reported that the head of Russia's nuclear energy corporation Rosatom, Alexei Likhachev, warned: 'If there is a strike on the operational first power unit, it will be a catastrophe comparable to Chernobyl.' Why are Gulf States worried? A strike on Bushehr would contaminate a critical source of desalinated potable water for Gulf countries, including Qatar. Qatar and Bahrain are 100 percent reliant on desalinated water for drinking water. All of Bahrain's groundwater is saved for contingency plans. In March, Qatar's Prime Minister Sheikh Mohammed bin Abdulrahman bin Jassim Al Thani said during an interview with US media personality Tucker Carlson that Qatar had conducted simulations of an attack on Bushehr. The Qatari PM revealed that an attack on the plant would leave the Gulf entirely contaminated and Qatar would 'run out of water in three days'. The United Arab Emirates (UAE) is reliant on desalinated water, which accounts for more than 80 percent of its drinking water. In Saudi Arabia, around 50 percent of the water supply came from desalinated water as of 2023, according to the General Authority for Statistics. While countries like Saudi Arabia, the UAE and Oman have access to other water sources, Qatar, Bahrain and Kuwait do not have other options. Kelly said that the nuclear reactors are extremely tough and are designed to melt down inside their containment in certain accident situations. 'The idea that very much of the material inside is going to get out is actually pretty small, so I think people are maybe obsessing too much,' he said. 'Granted, if it goes into the Gulf, it will be in water that people desalinate. That's an awfully large body of water that will dilute down any materials to get out there. I think it's an overstated problem.'
Al Jazeera
2 hours ago
- Al Jazeera
Israel Bans international media from Gaza to 'hide' realities
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