In many ways, the conflict between Iran and the U.S. and Israel has been decades in the making. Ramtin Arablouei, host of NPR’s podcast “Throughline,” explains how.
EMILY KWONG, HOST:
In many ways, the conflict between Iran and the U.S. and Israel has been decades in the making.
RAMTIN ARABLOUEI, BYLINE: Like many of you, we’ve been watching the recent tensions between the U.S. and Iran escalate, and we’ve been thinking a lot about the origins of this incredibly complex issue.
KWONG: That’s Ramtin Arablouei, host of NPR’s podcast Throughline, a show that looks to history to answer the question – how did we get here? Ramtin was born in Iran and on the Throughline podcast has dug into several key moments in the history of U.S.-Iran relations. He’s with us now to help us understand how the events of the past few decades shaped the events of the last few hours. Ramtin Arablouei, welcome to ALL THINGS CONSIDERED.
ARABLOUEI: Thank you for having me, Emily.
KWONG: How did we get here?
ARABLOUEI: There’s a lot of places that we could start this story.
KWONG: Yeah.
ARABLOUEI: But I really think the U.S. and Iran’s issues started in 1953, when the very early version of the CIA overthrew the democratically elected prime minister of Iran, Mohammad Mosaddegh. There are many reasons why they did that, but the main one was they were trying to prevent Iran from nationalizing its oil on a long-term basis. This was the 1950s. Oil was kind of pushing the economic boom around the world, and it became very important for the U.S. to keep some kind of control over the oil there.
KWONG: And they chose to do that through a coup?
ARABLOUEI: They did it through a coup. What they essentially did was get rid of Mosaddegh and bring back the shah. And when the shah returns, there’s no more semblance of democracy in Iran. The country basically devolves into outright dictatorship under his rule. And over the next several decades, there’s more and more bitterness towards that dictatorial rule. So you could really argue that the 1953 coup opened up a wound in the relationship between Iran and the U.S. that just festered for decades.
KWONG: How did this coup set the stage for the Iranian revolution in 1979?
ARABLOUEI: Well, it’s important to know that 1953 stayed in the memories of many Iranians, particularly those who were politically active. When there was a protest movement that rose up against the shah’s rule in the late 1970s, people remembered. I mean, some of the chants that were used at the time in those protests referred back to 1953.
KWONG: Wow.
ARABLOUEI: And what essentially happened is the shah, who was close with the U.S. at the time – people pointed to what the U.S. was doing as basically holding up a puppet government in Iran that was oppressing everyone. So when the 1979 revolution finally happened and the shah was overthrown, one key moment where the 1953 coup comes back is when students overran the American embassy and took it over and held American hostages for a very long time, over a year. They cited the reason for doing that was that they wanted to prevent another coup from within the embassy against the revolution that had just happened.
KWONG: So what do historians say about what the revolution did for Iran?
ARABLOUEI: So we spoke to one author, Stephen Kinzer, who put it really bluntly – that for Americans, the hostage crisis is a key moment in this story, but for Iranians, it’s 1953.
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STEPHEN KINZER: In the United States, U.S.-Iran relations begin and end with the hostage crisis. That’s the moment that is the key turning point and the source of everything. From the Iranian perspective, things are very different. Iranian and American perceptions, they’re like parallel train tracks that just keep running parallel. They never coincide.
ARABLOUEI: So it was an open wound that festered, and it all manifests basically in 1979 with the Islamic revolution.
KWONG: So the origins of U.S. and Iran tension are very deep. They go back decades. What about Israel? Remind us, why have Israel and Iran been at war in a way all this time?
ARABLOUEI: So if you look at this recent hostility and attack…
KWONG: Yeah.
ARABLOUEI: …Against Iran and the 12-day war that happened last year…
KWONG: In June, yeah.
ARABLOUEI: Yes, you would be tempted to believe that Iran and Israel have always been fighting since Israel’s, you know, creation in 1948. But that’s not actually true. Iran and Israel were close allies in the 1960s and ’70s, and in fact, Iran was the second Muslim country to recognize Israel’s existence after Turkey.
KWONG: Wow.
ARABLOUEI: And so the countries actually cooperated deeply, whether it was economically, militarily, and the bridge between the two countries, really, was the Iranian Jewish community, which is a community that has been there for thousands of years.
KWONG: Who are some of the key figures in the history of Israel and Iran relations?
ARABLOUEI: There was someone named Habib Elghanian. He became a sort of industrial mogul. He brought plastics manufacturing to Iran in the mid-20th century. He opened up Iran’s first high-rise building, called the Plasco Building, and he became very wealthy. He also was a, you know, philanthropist. His story basically illustrates that bridge between the two countries. He was Iranian. He lived in Iran, but of course, he visited Israel many times. He had a relationship with people in Israel. He supported Iranian Jews who had moved to Israel. But he himself never did move there. He considered himself Iranian first, and his story really highlights the fact that Iran and Israel were friends. Their relationship was a really positive one during that time.
KWONG: So what happened that caused the relationship to go south?
ARABLOUEI: Basically, in the late 1970s, there was a protest movement against the shah. And one major element of that protest movement was pushed forward by Shia Islamic clerics in Iran, the clerics who have come to rule the country today.
KWONG: Yeah.
ARABLOUEI: And one of those clerics, Ayatollah Ruhollah Khomeini, as many people may know, was essentially the father of the Islamic revolution. He made it a point to say that Iran shouldn’t be allied with Israel and that Israel is a natural enemy of Iran. In fact, he pointed to the Elghanian family not as a bridge, but instead, sort of a problem for Iran – that they were too close to Israel.
KWONG: That’s a big change in the relationship…
ARABLOUEI: A very big change.
KWONG: …Between Iran and Israel.
ARABLOUEI: Yeah, what Khomeini is basically signaling is that if he is able to get into power – this is leading up to the revolution – that the relationship with Israel and Iran, it’s over, and they’re immediately going to become enemies. And that’s what happened. Actually, Habib Elghanian was the first civilian killed by the Islamic Republic. It was sending a message to the Iranian people that no one is above getting murdered by us. This is the Islamic Republic saying, no matter how famous you are, no matter how much money you have, you can be taken out. And the message to the Iranian Jewish community was, if you want to stay here, you have to be anti-Israel. And what happened was tens of thousands of Iranian Jews moved out of the country over the next few years…
KWONG: Wow.
ARABLOUEI: …Because for them, it became untenable.
KWONG: Ramtin, just when you think back over this reporting, 70 years of history, what is on your mind about what’s at stake going forward?
ARABLOUEI: One of the many things I think is being lost in all of this is that the Islamic Republic didn’t come into power sort of out of nowhere through a fluke. They were prepared for this. They’re very smart. You know, the 1979 revolution was not inevitable. There were many different people vying for power then, and the Islamic Republic took over because they were really savvy. They were really – they were willing to use force. They were willing to go as far as they could to gain that power. And I think it’s really important to know that despite taking out, you know, the supreme leader, this regime is prepared, I think, for a longer fight. If the Islamic Republic is able to survive this, from our reporting in their past, we realize they have survived many conflicts – maybe not of this size, but many conflicts in the past. They fought an eight-year war with Iraq. Saddam Hussein ruled Iraq. They survived that. If they’re able to survive this, it will be really difficult to unlodge (ph) them from ruling country in the future.
KWONG: That is Ramtin Arablouei, host of NPR’s podcast Throughline. Their episode diving into the story of Habib Elghanian is out on Thursday. Thank you for joining us, Ramtin.
ARABLOUEI: Thank you, Emily.
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