[Responsible Tradecraft] Relations between Washington and Tehran were never the same as before Eisenhower approved ’Operation Ajax’ in 1953.The history of U.S.-Iranian relations dates to the time when the once mighty Persian Empire, thanks to the Great Game played by Russia and Great Britain, was anything but mighty.
The "Yengi Donya" or new world, as the Persians called the United States, was an emerging global power with no colonial aspirations in Persia. Iranians admired America for its ideals of liberalism, democracy and individual freedom. For Iranians, the U.S. was the land of Howard Baskerville, the martyr of their 1906 Constitutional Revolution, and Morgan Shuster, the young financier who tried against all odds to help Iran stand on its feet against British and Russian colonialism. That history is long forgotten, however.
The romantic relationship that once existed between the two countries came to an abrupt end when Washington played a critical role in toppling the government of Prime Minister Mohammad Mosaddegh on August 19, 1953.
In the runup to the coup, Washington cut off its financial assistance to Iran, which, due to a British-sponsored boycott of Iranian oil, was facing a severe financial crisis. Indeed, President Eisenhower, in response to Mosaddegh’s pleas for an emergency loan, had asserted that "it would not be fair to the American taxpayers...to extend any considerable amount of economic aid to Iran." After the coup, Eisenhower approved an emergency loan in the amount of $45 million to help the new Iranian government.
But unbeknownst to Iranians, Eisenhower had personally approved "Operation Ajax," which we know now was assisted by the U.S. Central Intelligence Agency and British intelligence, to remove Mosaddegh. The U.S. had committed its "original sin" in Iran.
This episode marked the transformation of the U.S. image from a benevolent power sympathetic to Iranian aspirations to one similar to that of the British and Russians. To many Americans, however, the significance of the coup remains unknown.
Indeed, in the middle of the 1979-80 U.S. embassy hostage crisis, President Carter called Mossadegh’s ouster "ancient history" and "something that happened thirty years ago." But, for many Iranians, the episode’s trauma remains a living memory. Iranian students who stormed the embassy in November 1979, including Ebrahim Asgharzadeh, believed that Washington was "plotting" another coup in Iran by giving refuge to the ailing, exiled Shah. But, with the embassy seizure and subsequent hostage crisis, Iran, too, had committed its "original sin."...