From friendly to violent: the history of US-Iranian relations | The Excerpt
On the Thursday, March 19, 2026, episode of The Excerpt podcast: As the U.S.-Israel war Iran intensifies, it’s hard to imagine Iran was once an important U.S. ally. In this special episode, we lay out key inflection points in the history of US-Iranian relations and how they continue to shape the ongoing conflict today. Ali Vaez, the Iran project director at the International Crisis Group, joins The Excerpt to share his insights and analysis.
Hit play on the player below to hear the podcast and follow along with the transcript beneath it. This transcript was automatically generated, and then edited for clarity in its current form. There may be some differences between the audio and the text.
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Zulekha Nathoo:
The White House is dealing with mixed reactions from critics and supporters alike over its decision to go to war with Iran alongside Israel. The ongoing conflict between the US and Iran shows no signs of abating, affecting everything from diplomatic relations to the price of oil. But could history perhaps provide us with clues on what to expect next, especially when the US and Iran were at one point allies?
Hello and welcome to USA TODAY's The Excerpt. I'm Zulekha Nathoo, a producer and host with the Special Projects team. Today is Thursday, March 19th, 2026. On this episode, we'll explore the complex history between the US and Iran to better understand the circumstances that have led to the current conflict and how it might be resolved. To help us do that is Ali Vaez. He's the Iran project director for the International Crisis Group, which is a nonprofit geared toward building peace by helping shape global policies.
Thanks for joining us, Ali.
Ali Vaez:
Great to be with you.
Zulekha Nathoo:
With all of the headlines about this conflict, it's important now to take a step back and understand the history of US-Iran relations so we can better understand what's happening now and why. So where would you say is a good place to start? What did the relationship look like, let's say, several decades ago between the two countries?
Ali Vaez:
Where you start would kind of determine where you end. Iran and the US had very good relations prior to 1979. Iran was the US's best ally in the Middle East, its biggest importer of US arms. It was really a linchpin of US policy in the region, but this is simplification of a very complicated history. In fact, in 1953, Iran had a Democratically elected prime minister who wanted to nationalize Iranian oil and the US joined the United Kingdom in organizing a coup against Prime Minister Mosaddegh and toppling him. And that created already the first structure in the relationship.
Zulekha Nathoo:
And that rupture or several ruptures are important to note because there were probably little times in the span of those years when maybe things could have been resolved, but kind of got worse and worse. So how would you describe the partnership or the relationship after those years that you mentioned?
Ali Vaez:
After the 1953 coup, Iran was prospering and had very good relations with the outside world and was culturally and socially free, but politically the Shah kept a very tight grip on power. And that was blamed by a lot of Iranians on the United States, which was seen as its main sponsor. The Iranian Revolution started in 1978 because of resentment against the Shah and his authoritarian rule, and it quickly snowballed into a revolution. By January, February, 1979, the Shah had completely lost control. And the Iranian army, which was US trained, decided to declare neutrality in this conflict between the state and the society, and that is how the revolutionaries managed to topple 2,500 year of monarchy in Iran and established an Islamic Republic. After the revolution in 1979, the Shah came to the US for medical reasons. He was suffering from cancer and needed treatment. And so President Carter reluctantly allowed him to come into the US, and that soaked fear among the revolutionaries that the US was planning to once again conduct a coup and return him to power.
And so they tried to preempt this by taking over the US Embassy. They took more than 50 American diplomats their hostage for 444 days, and there was a failed military operation to try to liberate the hostages. This was a real humiliation for President Carter and basically brought down his presidency. The Iranians basically, as an act of vengeance, waited until literally minutes until President Carter had stepped down from the presidency and President Reagan had been sworn in to release the hostages.
Zulekha Nathoo:
Now, the current conflict purportedly stems from efforts to limit Iran's nuclear energy capabilities, but Americans would probably be surprised to learn that the US was actually very involved with helping Iran develop a civil nuclear program in the 1950s and the 1960s.
Ali Vaez:
One of the biggest ironies of this situation is that the Iranian nuclear program was gifted to Iran by the United States as part of President Eisenhower's Atoms for Peace program. The concept at the time was that a lot of countries will try to get nuclear technology, which was the most advanced technology at the time. These programs would be only used for civilian purposes rather than allowing each country to develop its own outside of a system of monitoring. And the US granted a small research reactor to Iran that is still operational to this day. And it was at the time operating on highly enriched uranium, which could be used in weaponization, but then over the years it was converted to 20% enrich fuel. But that's really the beginning of Iran's nuclear program.
Barack Obama:
Today, after two years of negotiations, the United States, together were international partners, has achieved something that decades of animosity has not. A comprehensive long-term deal with Iran that will prevent it from obtaining a nuclear weapon.
Ali Vaez:
Then fast-forward to 2015, we had a nuclear deal with Iran that put their program in a box and on their very rigorous monitoring. It was the first time since the revolution, the US and Iran reached a mutually beneficial diplomatic agreement.
It is clear to me that we cannot prevent an Iranian nuclear bomb under the decaying and rotten structure of the current agreement.
Ali Vaez:
And yet President Trump came to office three years later and withdrew from that agreement and reimposed sanctions. Biden came in on the promise of restoring that deal, but adopted the kind of positions that really poisoned the well and the deal was not restored and so on and so forth. At every time that there's been an opportunity for turning a corner, either one side has not been ready or another has not been ready.
Zulekha Nathoo:
We've been talking a lot about politics and leadership, and I'm curious how Iranians themselves viewed the US over the decades. Would you say it was in line with the way their governments viewed the US or in contrast or maybe a mix of both?
Ali Vaez:
What is very interesting about Iran up until now has been that it has had one of the most anti-American regimes in the world, but one of the most pro-American population, especially in that region. The US had done a lot in Iran in terms of helping the country develop itself, helping its universities flourish. And there was a lot of back and forth with Iranian students studying in the United States and returning home to try to help develop their own country. So there was, generally speaking, a good perception about the United States.
Now, after revolution, the new regime, the Islamic Republic, really tried to brainwash the entire population, and especially the newer generation against the United States. I grew up in Iran, and I had to, every single day before going to class, chant "Death to America" before we could go and sit behind our benches.
(Crowd chanting: Death to America.)
Reporter:
The chant hasn't changed for 30 years. And five U.S. presidents.
Ali Vaez:
And yet, my brother was studying in the United States, and I couldn't really say death to America because I was worried that that would, in a way, harm my brother. There were a lot of other Iranians who were in a similar position because the biggest community of Iranian diaspora is in the United States and the US culture, satellite networks, US movies, US music. I mean, there was a real cultural influence that the United States had even on us as the children of the revolution.
Zulekha Nathoo:
How did the economic sanctions affect the diplomatic relations between the two countries and how each country moved on from there?
Ali Vaez:
The US resorted to sanctions almost immediately after the revolution as a response to Iran taking American diplomats hostage. It cut off its trade with Iran and then started gradually imposing more and more stifling sanctions. But sanctions basically deprived the United States of having a lot of leverage on Iran, because after a period of time, the US really didn't have any trade with Iran anymore, and the Iranians adjusted and adopted to that fact. The Iranian middle class was about 60, 70% of the society about 10 years ago. Now, 30% of Iranians are below the poverty line. A lot of them don't get the 2,100 calories that we all need for our sustenance. Specialized medicine is very difficult to find. And all of that, the Iranians do blame the regime for its corruption and mismanagement and the policies that it has pursued that had created these sanctions, but there's also a sense that the US doesn't really care about them.
Zulekha Nathoo:
Even though the conflict for Americans can feel far removed, but what are some of the consequences of that popular sentiment if relations between US and Iran continue in a negative direction, how can that come back to haunt the US in a way? In
Ali Vaez:
The same way that the long tale of 1953 resulted in the tragedies of 1979 and the trauma that the Americans experience with the hostage crisis, some of these events will come back to haunt us. The reality is now we are creating a situation that in the Middle East, there are a lot of failed states. There are lots of countries that have suffered a lot as a result of either US-assisted military action against their populations, which creates the kind of emotions that would result in acts of terrorism, whether it's state-sponsored or lone wolves. It would make having positive, mutually beneficial relations with a lot of these countries in the future difficult.
Zulekha Nathoo:
Looking ahead, what do you think will be the most important thing in trying to end the violence, perhaps even begin to normalize relations between the two countries? Is that even possible at this point?
Ali Vaez:
It requires the mentality of understanding that zero sum outcomes are by definition, not sustainable. If we don't take dignity of other people into account, if we don't recognize that other countries might have legitimate security concerns, if we are only seeking domination without really any regards for what the people in the region, what the countries in the region want, then by definition, we're pursuing solutions that are not sustainable. The only thing that has helped us advance our interest with Iran has been diplomacy. We're in the middle of a conflict that is seeing a lot of innocent people lose their lives in addition to US service members. And again, it creates the kind of aftershocks that we have to deal with maybe for another generation.
Zulekha Nathoo:
Ali Vaez is the Iran project director for the International Crisis Group. Thanks for your time.
Ali Vaez:
Thanks for having me. Great pleasure.
Zulekha Nathoo:
Thanks to our senior producer Kaely Monahan for her production assistance. Special thanks to Lamar Salter and Ian McDonald. Our executive producer is Laura Beatty. Let us know what you think of this episode by sending a note to [email protected]. Thanks for listening. I’m Zulekha Nathoo. We'll be back tomorrow morning with another episode of USA TODAY’s The Excerpt.