A demonstration in support of Prime Minister Mohammad Mosaddegh in Tehran in July 1953. The elected prime minister was overthrown in a coup organized by the CIA and British intelligence.
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US strikes on Iran over the weekend, accompanied by Israeli military strikes, marked a stunning new phase in relations between the two countries.
But this is the first time that Washington and Tehran have clashed politically and militarily.
Here are some key historical moments between the US and Iran.
1953: The US helps the coup that overthrows Mohammed Mossadegh
Great Britain had controlled Iran’s oil industry for decades, but in 1953, Iran’s elected Prime Minister Mohammad Mossadegh nationalized the country’s oil sector.
That move prompts Great Britain to appeal to the US for help and results in a CIA-led campaign to overthrow the Mosaddegh government. The coup allowed the last shah (or king) of Iran, Mohammad Reza Pahlavi, to consolidate power around him. (The CIA, long suspected of involvement in the coup, officially acknowledged its role in 2013.)
Mosaddegh was imprisoned and then placed under house arrest until his death in 1967. Pahlavi would lead Iran for the next two and a half decades, becoming a strong US ally.
1979: The Iranian Revolution and the US Hostage Crisis
Iran’s opposition leader Ayatollah Ruhollah Khomeini gives a speech before journalists board a flight to Tehran at Rossio Airport near Paris on January 31, 1979. Khomeini establishes an Islamic Republic in Iran.
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But in early 1979, after months of protests by secularists, Islamists and leftists against his authoritarian rule, Pahlavi fled Iran and entered the US.
The revolution was led by Ayatollah Ruhollah Khomeini, a Shia cleric living in exile near Paris after being ousted by the Pahlavi in ​​1964. Khomeini returns to Iran and becomes Iran’s supreme leader. Khomeini establishes a strict theocracy and labels America the “Great Satan”.
In November of that year, a group of Iranian students stormed the US Embassy in Tehran and captured 66 Americans.
A US rescue effort in the spring of 1980, codenamed Operation Eagle Claw, authorized by President Jimmy Carter, is hampered by mechanical problems, a severe dust storm, and a crash that kills eight service members. Failure to secure release of hostages.
After 444 days in captivity, the remaining 52 hostages were released on January 20, 1981 – the day of President Ronald Reagan’s inauguration.
Early 1980s: The Iran-Contra Affair
But Reagan’s tenure was marked by the now infamous deal with Iran.
Officials in his administration are understood to have sold arms to the Iran-allied militant group in Lebanon in the hope that it would help free American hostages.
The Reagan administration used proceeds from arms sales to fund the paramilitary Contra rebel group fighting the socialist Sandinista government in Nicaragua.
Reagan would confirm the story at a 1986 White House press conference and take public responsibility for the so-called Iran-Contra affair.
Late 1980s: Tensions in the Persian Gulf
In July 1988, thousands mourned during the funeral of the dead in Tehran when an Iranian passenger jet was shot down over the bay by the US military.
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Iran and Iraq have been at war since the 1980s, and toward the end of that decade, Iran began attacking oil tankers belonging to Iraq’s financial backers, Kuwait and Saudi Arabia.
In 1987 the US launched a military operation known as Operation Earnest Will to protect Kuwaiti tankers.
During that mission in 1988, the US warship USS Samuel B. Roberts hit an Iranian mine that blew a 15-foot hole in the hull but did not kill any American sailors.
However, that incident touched off another military operation, Operation Praying Mantis, in which US forces retaliated for the explosion by attacking several Iranian oil platforms.
In 1988, the US Navy shot down civilian Iran Air Flight 655, killing all 290 people on board. US forces mistook the plane for an Iranian fighter jet.
2015: Obama signs the Iran nuclear deal
The US will reach a deal with Iran and five other world powers to curb Iran’s nuclear capabilities in exchange for the lifting of some punitive UN sanctions.
The deal allows Iran to continue enriching uranium for civilian energy purposes, but President Barack Obama argues that it would prevent the country’s ability to build a nuclear bomb. Iran also agrees to more inspections of its nuclear facilities.
In 2018, President Trump pulled the US out of the Iran nuclear deal during his first term and reimposed sanctions on Iran.
The Biden administration will hold indirect talks with Iran, and when Trump returns to office in 2025, he will sign an executive order aimed at exerting “maximum” pressure on Iran to end its nuclear weapons ambitions.
2020: A US drone strike kills Major General Qasem Soleimani
A major recent development in US-Iran relations occurs not in Iran but in neighboring Iraq.
A few days into 2020, US forces launch a drone strike near Baghdad International Airport and kill Major General Qassem Soleimani.
Soleimani, who headed the elite branch of Iran’s Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps, known as the Quds Force, was seen as one of the country’s most influential officers.
Khamenei responded at the time that “severe retaliation awaits” for the US Several days later, Iran fired at least a dozen ballistic missiles at two military bases in Iraq that housed US forces. The Pentagon says 109 US troops will suffer brain injuries in strikes next month.
2025: US and Israel attack Iranian nuclear facilities
In June, the US and Israeli militaries launched a dramatic attack on several Iranian nuclear sites. For the US, the military escalation follows a diplomatic effort to deter Tehran from pursuing a nuclear weapon.
President Trump says in a White House speech that the goal of the operation is to disrupt Iran’s nuclear enrichment capabilities.
“Tonight, I can report to the world that the strikes were a spectacular military success. Iran’s major nuclear enrichment facilities were completely and utterly obliterated,” Trump says, though there are questions about exactly how much damage was done.
The attacks come roughly two months after the U.S. and Iran began a new round of talks to renegotiate a deal related to Iran’s nuclear program.
In March, Director of National Intelligence Tulsi Gabbard said US intelligence believed Iran “is not building a nuclear weapon and has not authorized the nuclear weapons program that Supreme Leader (Ayatollah Ali) Khamenei suspended in 2003.”
