What does the CIA have to do with us paying 50 cents a gallon more for gas than we did 10 days ago? Plenty, it turns out. But we have to go all the way back to 1951 to discover why. That’s when Iran’s first democratically elected prime minister, a doctor named Mohammad Mossadegh, nationalized British-owned oil production facilities.

Infuriated, the British requested U.S. assistance in overthrowing him. President Truman turned them down. But our next president, Eisenhower, took a different view and tasked the CIA with orchestrating Mossadegh’s removal. Sure enough, a year later he was under house arrest, and the tyrannical former Shah, Mohammad Reza, was put back on the Peacock throne.

For a time, violent Western intervention appeared to succeed. The increasingly brutal, authoritarian but pro-Western regime jailed and tortured dissidents and forced Islamic leaders like Ayatollah Khomeini (Khameini’s predecessor) into exile. That only set the stage for a popular rebellion 25 years later, in 1979.

With so much blood on U.S. hands, it’s no wonder Iran’s revolutionaries viewed America as the “Great Satan” and termed our embassy a “nest of spies.” After embassy staff were held hostage for 444 days, a newly elected President Reagan won their release by agreeing to unfreeze Iranian assets.

The history we don’t know has a knack for coming back to bite us. Only this time around, a poorly thought-through, devastating attack on Iran is sending oil prices spiraling and wreaking economic havoc around the world. 

William Holland
Durham