The story of US hostility towards Iran is famous and dramatic: the revolution that overthrew the US-friendly, anti-Soviet Shah in 1979; the humiliating detention of over fifty diplomats and other US citizens for 444 days in 1979-81; the impotent failure of a mission to rescue them; the controversial alliances with Israel and Saudi Arabia; the hawkishness of John Bolton and Mike Pompeo. Less well known is the view from Tehran itself.
Iran is a country of 81 million people with an enduring sense of history. And it’s quite some history, going right back to the Elam culture 5,000 years ago and the even more notable Persia of Cyrus the Great, a mere 2,500 years ago. Despite the younger generation’s liking for western lifestyles, including those of the US society, we should not forget that Iran can date its dynamic history ten times as far back as the US and its relatively recent 1776 declaration of independence.
That issue of independence, though, does loom large, not least with the nineteenth-century history of Russian involvement in the country. The Constitutional Revolution of 1905-1911 brought in a legislature, but Russian and British influence in the second world war still rankles, though not as much as the US-UK-fomented coup that brought down an elected prime minister, Mohammad Mosaddegh, when he had the temerity to seek control of Iran’s oil in 1953. If it comes to the crunch, a US president all too easily seen as little more than a caricature will not counter Iran’s deeply ingrained sense of being a truly significant state with a powerful history, whatever the strength of his military.
