Latest news with #Mossadegh
News24
8 hours ago
- Politics
- News24
US and Iran have a long, complicated history, spanning far beyond Israel's strikes on Tehran
Jeffrey Fields reflects on significant events in US-Iran relations, highlighting the differences between the two countries and showing where opportunities for reconciliation were lost. Relations between the United States and Iran have been fraught for decades – at least since the US helped overthrow a democracy-minded prime minister, Mohammed Mossadegh, in August 1953. The US then supported the long, repressive reign of the Shah of Iran, whose security services brutalised Iranian citizens for decades. The two countries have been particularly hostile to each other since Iranian students took over the US Embassy in Tehran in November 1979, resulting in economic sanctions and the severing of formal diplomatic relations between the nations. Since 1984, the US State Department has listed Iran as a ' state sponsor of terrorism,' alleging the Iranian government provides terrorists with training, money and weapons. Some of the major events in US-Iran relations highlight the differences between the nations' views, but others arguably presented real opportunities for reconciliation. 1953: US overthrows Mossadegh In 1951, the Iranian Parliament chose a new prime minister, Mossadegh, who then led lawmakers to vote in favour of taking over the Anglo-Iranian Oil Company, expelling the company's British owners and saying they wanted to turn oil profits into investments in the Iranian people. The US feared disruption in the global oil supply and worried about Iran falling prey to Soviet influence. The British feared the loss of cheap Iranian oil. President Dwight Eisenhower decided it was best for the US and the UK to get rid of Mossadegh. Operation Ajax, a joint CIA-British operation, convinced the Shah of Iran, the country's monarch, to dismiss Mossadegh and drive him from office by force. Mossadegh was replaced by a much more Western-friendly prime minister, handpicked by the CIA. 1979: Revolutionaries oust the shah, take hostages After more than 25 years of relative stability in US-Iran relations, the Iranian public had grown unhappy with the social and economic conditions that developed under the dictatorial rule of Shah Mohammad Reza Pahlavi. Pahlavi enriched himself and used American aid to fund the military while many Iranians lived in poverty. Dissent was often violently quashed by SAVAK, the shah's security service. In January 1979, the shah left Iran, ostensibly to seek cancer treatment. Two weeks later, Ayatollah Ruhollah Khomeini returned from exile in Iraq and led a drive to abolish the monarchy and proclaim an Islamic government. Iranian students at the US Embassy in Tehran show a blindfolded American hostage to the crowd in November 1979. In October 1979, President Jimmy Carter agreed to allow the shah to come to the US to seek advanced medical treatment. Outraged Iranian students stormed the US Embassy in Tehran on 4 November, taking 52 Americans hostage. That convinced Carter to sever US diplomatic relations with Iran on 7 April, 1980. Two weeks later, the US military launched a mission to rescue the hostages, but it failed, with aircraft crashes killing eight US servicemembers. The shah died in Egypt in July 1980, but the hostages weren't released until 20 January, 1981, after 444 days of captivity. 1980-1988: US tacitly sides with Iraq In September 1980, Iraq invaded Iran, an escalation of the two countries' regional rivalry and religious differences: Iraq was governed by Sunni Muslims but had a Shia Muslim majority population; Iran was led and populated mostly by Shiites. The US was concerned that the conflict would limit the flow of Middle Eastern oil and wanted to ensure the conflict didn't affect its close ally, Saudi Arabia. The US supported Iraqi leader Saddam Hussein in his fight against the anti-American Iranian regime. As a result, the US mostly turned a blind eye toward Iraq's use of chemical weapons against Iran. US officials moderated their usual opposition to those illegal and inhumane weapons because the US State Department did not ' wish to play into Iran's hands by fueling its propaganda against Iraq.' In 1988, the war ended in a stalemate. More than 500,000 military and 100,000 civilians died. 1981-1986: US secretly sells weapons to Iran The US imposed an arms embargo after Iran was designated a state sponsor of terrorism in 1984. That left the Iranian military, in the middle of its war with Iraq, desperate for weapons and aircraft and vehicle parts to keep fighting. The Reagan administration decided that the embargo would likely push Iran to seek support from the Soviet Union, the US's Cold War rival. Rather than formally end the embargo, US officials agreed to secretly sell weapons to Iran starting in 1981. The last shipment, of anti-tank missiles, was in October 1986. In November 1986, a Lebanese magazine exposed the deal. That revelation sparked the Iran-Contra scandal in the US, with Reagan's officials found to have collected money from Iran for the weapons and illegally sent those funds to anti-socialist rebels – the Contras – in Nicaragua. 1988: US Navy shoots down Iran Air flight 655 On the morning of 8 July, 1988, the USS Vincennes, a guided missile cruiser patrolling in the international waters of the Persian Gulf, entered Iranian territorial waters while in a skirmish with Iranian gunboats. Either during or just after that exchange of gunfire, the Vincennes crew mistook a passing civilian Airbus passenger jet for an Iranian F-14 fighter. They shot it down, killing all 290 people aboard. The US called it a ' tragic and regrettable accident,' but Iran believed the plane's downing was intentional. In 1996, the US agreed to pay US$131.8 million in compensation to Iran. 1997-1988: The US seeks contact In August 1997, a moderate reformer, Mohammad Khatami, won Iran's presidential election. US President Bill Clinton sensed an opportunity. He sent a message to Tehran through the Swiss ambassador there, proposing direct government-to-government talks. READ | Embassy of Israel in SA: Why Iran's nuclear ambition could no longer be ignored Shortly thereafter, in early January 1998, Khatami gave an interview to CNN in which he expressed ' respect for the great American people,' denounced terrorism and recommended an 'exchange of professors, writers, scholars, artists, journalists and tourists' between the United States and Iran. However, Supreme Leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei didn't agree, so not much came of the mutual overtures as Clinton's time in office came to an end. In his 2002 State of the Union address, President George W. Bush characterised Iran, Iraq and North Korea as constituting an 'Axis of Evil' supporting terrorism and pursuing weapons of mass destruction, straining relations even further. 202: Iran's nuclear programme raises alarm In August 2002, an exiled rebel group announced that Iran had been secretly working on nuclear weapons at two installations that had not previously been publicly revealed. That was a violation of the terms of the Nuclear Nonproliferation Treaty, which Iran had signed, requiring countries to disclose their nuclear-related facilities to international inspectors. One of those formerly secret locations, Natanz, housed centrifuges for enriching uranium, which could be used in civilian nuclear reactors or enriched further for weapons. Starting in roughly 2005, US and Israeli government cyberattackers together reportedly targeted the Natanz centrifuges with a custom-made piece of malicious software that became known as Stuxnet. That effort, which slowed down Iran's nuclear programme was one of many US and international attempts – mostly unsuccessful – to curtail Iran's progress toward building a nuclear bomb. 2003: Iran writes to the Bush administration In May 2003, senior Iranian officials quietly contacted the State Department through the Swiss embassy in Iran, seeking 'a dialogue 'in mutual respect,'' addressing four big issues: nuclear weapons, terrorism, Palestinian resistance and stability in Iraq. Hardliners in the Bush administration weren't interested in any major reconciliation, though Secretary of State Colin Powell favoured dialogue and other officials had met with Iran about al-Qaida. When Iranian hardliner Mahmoud Ahmadinejad was elected president of Iran in 2005, the opportunity died. The following year, Ahmadinejad made his own overture to Washington in an 18-page letter to President Bush. The letter was widely dismissed; a senior State Department official told me in profane terms that it amounted to nothing. 2015: Iran nuclear deal signed After a decade of unsuccessful attempts to rein in Iran's nuclear ambitions, the Obama administration undertook a direct diplomatic approach beginning in 2013. Two years of secret, direct negotiations conducted bilaterally at first between the US and Iran and later with other nuclear powers culminated in the Joint Comprehensive Plan of Action, often called the Iran nuclear deal. Iran, the US, China, France, Germany, Russia and the United Kingdom signed the deal in 2015. It severely limited Iran's capacity to enrich uranium and mandated that international inspectors monitor and enforce Iran's compliance with the agreement. In return, Iran was granted relief from international and US economic sanctions. Though the inspectors regularly certified that Iran was abiding by the agreement's terms, President Donald Trump withdrew from the agreement in May 2018. 2020: US drones kill Iranian Qassem Soleimani On 3 January, 2020, an American drone fired a missile that killed Maj. Gen. Qassem Soleimani, the leader of Iran's elite Quds Force. Analysts considered Soleimani the second most powerful man in Iran, after Supreme Leader Ayatollah Khamenei. AFP At the time, the Trump administration asserted that Soleimani was directing an imminent attack against US assets in the region, but officials have not provided clear evidence to support that claim. Iran responded by launching ballistic missiles that hit two American bases in Iraq. 2023: The Oct 7 attacks on Israel Hamas' brazen attack on Israel on Oct. 7, 2023, provoked a fearsome militarised response from Israel that continues today and served to severely weaken Iran's proxies in the region, especially Hamas – the perpetrator of the attacks – and Hezbollah in Lebanon. 2025: Trump 2.0 and Iran Trump saw an opportunity to forge a new nuclear deal with Iran and to pursue other business deals with Tehran. Once inaugurated for his second term, Trump appointed Steve Witkoff, a real estate investor who is the president's friend, to serve as special envoy for the Middle East and to lead negotiations. Negotiations for a nuclear deal between Washington and Tehran began in April, but the countries did not reach a deal. They were planning a new round of talks when Israel struck Iran with a series of airstrikes on 13 June, forcing the White House to reconsider is position.
Yahoo
9 hours ago
- Politics
- Yahoo
The US has toppled an Iranian government before. Here's what happened
Since Israel began its concerted attack on Iran, calls for regime change have grown louder, with US President Donald Trump and Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu raising the possibility of targeting Tehran's all-powerful leader, Ayatollah Ali Khamenei. Many Iranians have firsthand experience with the United States enforcing a regime change in their country. Oil fields: In 1953, the US helped stage a coup to overthrow Iran's democratically elected prime minister Mohammad Mossadegh. He had pledged to nationalize the country's oil fields – a move the US and Great Britain saw as a serious blow, given their dependence on oil from the Middle East. Height of the Cold War: The move to nationalize was seen as popular in Iran and a victory for the then-USSR. Strengthen Shah rule: The coup's goal was to support Iran's monarch, Mohammad Reza Pahlavi, to rule as Shah of Iran, and appoint a new prime minister, Gen. Fazlollah Zahedi. The coup: Before the coup, the CIA, along with the British Secret Intelligence Service (SIS), helped foment anti-Mossadegh fervor using propaganda. In 1953, the CIA and SIS helped pull pro-Shah forces together and organized large protests against Mossadegh, which were soon joined by the army. US cash: To provide Zahedi, the country's new prime minister, with some stability, the CIA covertly made $5,000,000 available within two days of him taking power, documents showed. US acknowledgement: In 2013, declassified CIA documents were released, confirming the agency's involvement for the first time. But the US role was known: Former President Barack Obama acknowledged involvement in the coup in 2009. It backfired: After toppling Mossadegh, the US strengthened its support for Pahlavi to rule as Shah. Iranians resented the foreign interference, fueling anti-American sentiment in the country for decades. Islamic Revolution: The Shah became a close ally of the US. But in the late 1970s, millions of Iranians took to the streets against his regime, which they viewed as corrupt and illegitimate. Secular protesters opposed his authoritarianism, while Islamist protesters opposed his modernization agenda. The Shah was toppled in the 1979 Islamic revolution, which ended the country's Western-backed monarchy and ushered in the start of the Islamic Republic and clerical rule.
Nahar Net
9 hours ago
- Politics
- Nahar Net
US and Iran have long complicated history, far beyond Israel's strikes on Tehran
Jeffrey Fields USC Dornsife College of Letters, Arts and Sciences Relations between the United States and Iran have been fraught 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. Since 1984, the U.S. State Department has listed Iran as a "state sponsor of terrorism," alleging the Iranian government provides terrorists with training, money and weapons. Some of the major events in U.S.-Iran relations highlight the differences between the nations' views, but others arguably presented real opportunities for reconciliation. 1953: US overthrows Mossadegh In 1951, the Iranian Parliament chose a new prime minister, Mossadegh, who then led lawmakers to vote in favor of taking over the Anglo-Iranian Oil Company, expelling the company's British owners and saying they wanted to turn oil profits into investments in the Iranian people. The U.S. feared disruption in the global oil supply and worried about Iran falling prey to Soviet influence. The British feared the loss of cheap Iranian oil. President Dwight Eisenhower decided it was best for the U.S. and the U.K. to get rid of Mossadegh. Operation Ajax, a joint CIA-British operation, convinced the Shah of Iran, the country's monarch, to dismiss Mossadegh and drive him from office by force. Mossadegh was replaced by a much more Western-friendly prime minister, handpicked by the CIA. 1979: Revolutionaries oust the shah, take hostages After more than 25 years of relative stability in U.S.-Iran relations, the Iranian public had grown unhappy with the social and economic conditions that developed under the dictatorial rule of Shah Mohammad Reza Pahlavi. Pahlavi enriched himself and used American aid to fund the military while many Iranians lived in poverty. Dissent was often violently quashed by SAVAK, the shah's security service. In January 1979, the shah left Iran, ostensibly to seek cancer treatment. Two weeks later, Ayatollah Ruhollah Khomeini returned from exile in Iraq and led a drive to abolish the monarchy and proclaim an Islamic government. In October 1979, President Jimmy Carter agreed to allow the shah to come to the U.S. to seek advanced medical treatment. Outraged Iranian students stormed the U.S. Embassy in Tehran on Nov. 4, taking 52 Americans hostage. That convinced Carter to sever U.S. diplomatic relations with Iran on April 7, 1980. Two weeks later, the U.S. military launched a mission to rescue the hostages, but it failed, with aircraft crashes killing eight U.S. servicemembers. The shah died in Egypt in July 1980, but the hostages weren't released until Jan. 20, 1981, after 444 days of captivity. 1980-1988: US tacitly sides with Iraq In September 1980, Iraq invaded Iran, an escalation of the two countries' regional rivalry and religious differences: Iraq was governed by Sunni Muslims but had a Shia Muslim majority population; Iran was led and populated mostly by Shiites. The U.S. was concerned that the conflict would limit the flow of Middle Eastern oil and wanted to ensure the conflict didn't affect its close ally, Saudi Arabia. The U.S. supported Iraqi leader Saddam Hussein in his fight against the anti-American Iranian regime. As a result, the U.S. mostly turned a blind eye toward Iraq's use of chemical weapons against Iran. U.S. officials moderated their usual opposition to those illegal and inhumane weapons because the U.S. State Department did not "wish to play into Iran's hands by fueling its propaganda against Iraq." In 1988, the war ended in a stalemate. More than 500,000 military and 100,000 civilians died. 1981-1986: US secretly sells weapons to Iran The U.S. imposed an arms embargo after Iran was designated a state sponsor of terrorism in 1984. That left the Iranian military, in the middle of its war with Iraq, desperate for weapons and aircraft and vehicle parts to keep fighting. The Reagan administration decided that the embargo would likely push Iran to seek support from the Soviet Union, the U.S.'s Cold War rival. Rather than formally end the embargo, U.S. officials agreed to secretly sell weapons to Iran starting in 1981. The last shipment, of anti-tank missiles, was in October 1986. In November 1986, a Lebanese magazine exposed the deal. That revelation sparked the Iran-Contra scandal in the U.S., with Reagan's officials found to have collected money from Iran for the weapons and illegally sent those funds to anti-socialist rebels – the Contras – in Nicaragua. 1988: US Navy shoots down Iran Air flight 655 On the morning of July 8, 1988, the USS Vincennes, a guided missile cruiser patrolling in the international waters of the Persian Gulf, entered Iranian territorial waters while in a skirmish with Iranian gunboats. Either during or just after that exchange of gunfire, the Vincennes crew mistook a passing civilian Airbus passenger jet for an Iranian F-14 fighter. They shot it down, killing all 290 people aboard. The U.S. called it a "tragic and regrettable accident," but Iran believed the plane's downing was intentional. In 1996, the U.S. agreed to pay US$131.8 million in compensation to Iran. 1997-1998: The US seeks contact In August 1997, a moderate reformer, Mohammad Khatami, won Iran's presidential election. U.S. President Bill Clinton sensed an opportunity. He sent a message to Tehran through the Swiss ambassador there, proposing direct government-to-government talks. Shortly thereafter, in early January 1998, Khatami gave an interview to CNN in which he expressed "respect for the great American people," denounced terrorism and recommended an "exchange of professors, writers, scholars, artists, journalists and tourists" between the United States and Iran. However, Supreme Leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei didn't agree, so not much came of the mutual overtures as Clinton's time in office came to an end. In his 2002 State of the Union address, President George W. Bush characterized Iran, Iraq and North Korea as constituting an "Axis of Evil" supporting terrorism and pursuing weapons of mass destruction, straining relations even further. 2002: Iran's nuclear program raises alarm In August 2002, an exiled rebel group announced that Iran had been secretly working on nuclear weapons at two installations that had not previously been publicly revealed. That was a violation of the terms of the Nuclear Nonproliferation Treaty, which Iran had signed, requiring countries to disclose their nuclear-related facilities to international inspectors. One of those formerly secret locations, Natanz, housed centrifuges for enriching uranium, which could be used in civilian nuclear reactors or enriched further for weapons. Starting in roughly 2005, U.S. and Israeli government cyberattackers together reportedly targeted the Natanz centrifuges with a custom-made piece of malicious software that became known as Stuxnet. That effort, which slowed down Iran's nuclear program was one of many U.S. and international attempts – mostly unsuccessful – to curtail Iran's progress toward building a nuclear bomb. 2003: Iran writes to Bush administration In May 2003, senior Iranian officials quietly contacted the State Department through the Swiss embassy in Iran, seeking "a dialogue 'in mutual respect,'" addressing four big issues: nuclear weapons, terrorism, Palestinian resistance and stability in Iraq. Hardliners in the Bush administration weren't interested in any major reconciliation, though Secretary of State Colin Powell favored dialogue and other officials had met with Iran about al-Qaida. When Iranian hardliner Mahmoud Ahmadinejad was elected president of Iran in 2005, the opportunity died. The following year, Ahmadinejad made his own overture to Washington in an 18-page letter to President Bush. The letter was widely dismissed; a senior State Department official told me in profane terms that it amounted to nothing. 2015: Iran nuclear deal signed After a decade of unsuccessful attempts to rein in Iran's nuclear ambitions, the Obama administration undertook a direct diplomatic approach beginning in 2013. Two years of secret, direct negotiations initially bilaterally between the U.S. and Iran and later with other nuclear powers culminated in the Joint Comprehensive Plan of Action, often called the Iran nuclear deal. Two years of secret, direct negotiations conducted bilaterally at first between the U.S. and Iran and later with other nuclear powers culminated in the Joint Comprehensive Plan of Action, often called the Iran nuclear deal. Iran, the U.S., China, France, Germany, Russia and the United Kingdom signed the deal in 2015. It severely limited Iran's capacity to enrich uranium and mandated that international inspectors monitor and enforce Iran's compliance with the agreement. In return, Iran was granted relief from international and U.S. economic sanctions. Though the inspectors regularly certified that Iran was abiding by the agreement's terms, President Donald Trump withdrew from the agreement in May 2018. 2020: US drones kill Iranian Maj. Gen. Qassem Soleimani On Jan. 3, 2020, an American drone fired a missile that killed Maj. Gen. Qassem Soleimani, the leader of Iran's elite Quds Force. Analysts considered Soleimani the second most powerful man in Iran, after Supreme Leader Ayatollah Khamenei. At the time, the Trump administration asserted that Soleimani was directing an imminent attack against U.S. assets in the region, but officials have not provided clear evidence to support that claim. Iran responded by launching ballistic missiles that hit two American bases in Iraq. 2023: The Oct. 7 attacks on Israel Hamas' brazen attack on Israel on Oct. 7, 2023, provoked a fearsome militarized response from Israel that continues today and served to severely weaken Iran's proxies in the region, especially Hamas – the perpetrator of the attacks – and Hezbollah in Lebanon. 2025: Trump 2.0 and Iran Trump saw an opportunity to forge a new nuclear deal with Iran and to pursue other business deals with Tehran. Once inaugurated for his second term, Trump appointed Steve Witkoff, a real estate investor who is the president's friend, to serve as special envoy for the Middle East and to lead negotiations. Negotiations for a nuclear deal between Washington and Tehran began in April, but the countries did not reach a deal. They were planning a new round of talks when Israel struck Iran with a series of airstrikes on June 13, forcing the White House to reconsider is position. This article is republished from The Conversation under a Creative Commons license. Read the original article here:
NDTV
11 hours ago
- Politics
- NDTV
The Long Complicated History Of How Iran And US Became Enemies
Relations between the United States and Iran have been fraught 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. Since 1984, the U.S. State Department has listed Iran as a ' state sponsor of terrorism,' alleging the Iranian government provides terrorists with training, money and weapons. Some of the major events in U.S.-Iran relations highlight the differences between the nations' views, but others arguably presented real opportunities for reconciliation. 1953: US overthrows Mossadegh In 1951, the Iranian Parliament chose a new prime minister, Mossadegh, who then led lawmakers to vote in favor of taking over the Anglo-Iranian Oil Company, expelling the company's British owners and saying they wanted to turn oil profits into investments in the Iranian people. The U.S. feared disruption in the global oil supply and worried about Iran falling prey to Soviet influence. The British feared the loss of cheap Iranian oil. President Dwight Eisenhower decided it was best for the U.S. and the U.K. to get rid of Mossadegh. Operation Ajax, a joint CIA-British operation, convinced the Shah of Iran, the country's monarch, to dismiss Mossadegh and drive him from office by force. Mossadegh was replaced by a much more Western-friendly prime minister, handpicked by the CIA. 1979: Revolutionaries oust the shah, take hostages After more than 25 years of relative stability in U.S.-Iran relations, the Iranian public had grown unhappy with the social and economic conditions that developed under the dictatorial rule of Shah Mohammad Reza Pahlavi. Pahlavi enriched himself and used American aid to fund the military while many Iranians lived in poverty. Dissent was often violently quashed by SAVAK, the shah's security service. In January 1979, the shah left Iran, ostensibly to seek cancer treatment. Two weeks later, Ayatollah Ruhollah Khomeini returned from exile in Iraq and led a drive to abolish the monarchy and proclaim an Islamic government. In October 1979, President Jimmy Carter agreed to allow the shah to come to the U.S. to seek advanced medical treatment. Outraged Iranian students stormed the U.S. Embassy in Tehran on Nov. 4, taking 52 Americans hostage. That convinced Carter to sever U.S. diplomatic relations with Iran on April 7, 1980. Two weeks later, the U.S. military launched a mission to rescue the hostages, but it failed, with aircraft crashes killing eight U.S. servicemembers. The shah died in Egypt in July 1980, but the hostages weren't released until Jan. 20, 1981, after 444 days of captivity. 1980-1988: US tacitly sides with Iraq In September 1980, Iraq invaded Iran, an escalation of the two countries' regional rivalry and religious differences: Iraq was governed by Sunni Muslims but had a Shia Muslim majority population; Iran was led and populated mostly by Shiites. The U.S. was concerned that the conflict would limit the flow of Middle Eastern oil and wanted to ensure the conflict didn't affect its close ally, Saudi Arabia. The U.S. supported Iraqi leader Saddam Hussein in his fight against the anti-American Iranian regime. As a result, the U.S. mostly turned a blind eye toward Iraq's use of chemical weapons against Iran. U.S. officials moderated their usual opposition to those illegal and inhumane weapons because the U.S. State Department did not ' wish to play into Iran's hands by fueling its propaganda against Iraq.' In 1988, the war ended in a stalemate. More than 500,000 military and 100,000 civilians died. 1981-1986: US secretly sells weapons to Iran The U.S. imposed an arms embargo after Iran was designated a state sponsor of terrorism in 1984. That left the Iranian military, in the middle of its war with Iraq, desperate for weapons and aircraft and vehicle parts to keep fighting. The Reagan administration decided that the embargo would likely push Iran to seek support from the Soviet Union, the U.S.'s Cold War rival. Rather than formally end the embargo, U.S. officials agreed to secretly sell weapons to Iran starting in 1981. The last shipment, of anti-tank missiles, was in October 1986. In November 1986, a Lebanese magazine exposed the deal. That revelation sparked the Iran-Contra scandal in the U.S., with Reagan's officials found to have collected money from Iran for the weapons and illegally sent those funds to anti-socialist rebels – the Contras – in Nicaragua. 1988: US Navy shoots down Iran Air flight 655 On the morning of July 8, 1988, the USS Vincennes, a guided missile cruiser patrolling in the international waters of the Persian Gulf, entered Iranian territorial waters while in a skirmish with Iranian gunboats. Either during or just after that exchange of gunfire, the Vincennes crew mistook a passing civilian Airbus passenger jet for an Iranian F-14 fighter. They shot it down, killing all 290 people aboard. The U.S. called it a ' tragic and regrettable accident,' but Iran believed the plane's downing was intentional. In 1996, the U.S. agreed to pay US$131.8 million in compensation to Iran. 1997-1998: The US seeks contact In August 1997, a moderate reformer, Mohammad Khatami, won Iran's presidential election. U.S. President Bill Clinton sensed an opportunity. He sent a message to Tehran through the Swiss ambassador there, proposing direct government-to-government talks. Shortly thereafter, in early January 1998, Khatami gave an interview to CNN in which he expressed ' respect for the great American people,' denounced terrorism and recommended an 'exchange of professors, writers, scholars, artists, journalists and tourists' between the United States and Iran. However, Supreme Leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei didn't agree, so not much came of the mutual overtures as Clinton's time in office came to an end. In his 2002 State of the Union address, President George W. Bush characterized Iran, Iraq and North Korea as constituting an 'Axis of Evil' supporting terrorism and pursuing weapons of mass destruction, straining relations even further. 2002: Iran's nuclear program raises alarm In August 2002, an exiled rebel group announced that Iran had been secretly working on nuclear weapons at two installations that had not previously been publicly revealed. That was a violation of the terms of the Nuclear Nonproliferation Treaty, which Iran had signed, requiring countries to disclose their nuclear-related facilities to international inspectors. One of those formerly secret locations, Natanz, housed centrifuges for enriching uranium, which could be used in civilian nuclear reactors or enriched further for weapons. Starting in roughly 2005, U.S. and Israeli government cyberattackers together reportedly targeted the Natanz centrifuges with a custom-made piece of malicious software that became known as Stuxnet. That effort, which slowed down Iran's nuclear program was one of many U.S. and international attempts – mostly unsuccessful – to curtail Iran's progress toward building a nuclear bomb. 2003: Iran writes to Bush administration In May 2003, senior Iranian officials quietly contacted the State Department through the Swiss embassy in Iran, seeking 'a dialogue 'in mutual respect,'' addressing four big issues: nuclear weapons, terrorism, Palestinian resistance and stability in Iraq. Hardliners in the Bush administration weren't interested in any major reconciliation, though Secretary of State Colin Powell favored dialogue and other officials had met with Iran about al-Qaida. When Iranian hardliner Mahmoud Ahmadinejad was elected president of Iran in 2005, the opportunity died. The following year, Ahmadinejad made his own overture to Washington in an 18-page letter to President Bush. The letter was widely dismissed; a senior State Department official told me in profane terms that it amounted to nothing. 2015: Iran nuclear deal signed After a decade of unsuccessful attempts to rein in Iran's nuclear ambitions, the Obama administration undertook a direct diplomatic approach beginning in 2013. Two years of secret, direct negotiations initially bilaterally between the U.S. and Iran and later with other nuclear powers culminated in the Joint Comprehensive Plan of Action, often called the Iran nuclear deal. Two years of secret, direct negotiations conducted bilaterally at first between the U.S. and Iran and later with other nuclear powers culminated in the Joint Comprehensive Plan of Action, often called the Iran nuclear deal. Iran, the U.S., China, France, Germany, Russia and the United Kingdom signed the deal in 2015. It severely limited Iran's capacity to enrich uranium and mandated that international inspectors monitor and enforce Iran's compliance with the agreement. In return, Iran was granted relief from international and U.S. economic sanctions. Though the inspectors regularly certified that Iran was abiding by the agreement's terms, President Donald Trump withdrew from the agreement in May 2018. 2020: US drones kill Iranian Maj. Gen. Qassem Soleimani On Jan. 3, 2020, an American drone fired a missile that killed Maj. Gen. Qassem Soleimani, the leader of Iran's elite Quds Force. Analysts considered Soleimani the second most powerful man in Iran, after Supreme Leader Ayatollah Khamenei. At the time, the Trump administration asserted that Soleimani was directing an imminent attack against U.S. assets in the region, but officials have not provided clear evidence to support that claim. Iran responded by launching ballistic missiles that hit two American bases in Iraq. 2023: The Oct. 7 attacks on Israel Hamas' brazen attack on Israel on Oct. 7, 2023, provoked a fearsome militarized response from Israel that continues today and served to severely weaken Iran's proxies in the region, especially Hamas – the perpetrator of the attacks – and Hezbollah in Lebanon. 2025: Trump 2.0 and Iran Trump saw an opportunity to forge a new nuclear deal with Iran and to pursue other business deals with Tehran. Once inaugurated for his second term, Trump appointed Steve Witkoff, a real estate investor who is the president's friend, to serve as special envoy for the Middle East and to lead negotiations. Negotiations for a nuclear deal between Washington and Tehran began in April, but the countries did not reach a deal. They were planning a new round of talks when Israel struck Iran with a series of airstrikes on June 13, forcing the White House to reconsider is position.
