American-Iranian Relations Research Articles

The foreign policy of the United States of America towards Iran in the period from 1953 to 1974.

The article examines the foreign policy of the United States of America in the Greater Middle East region, which acquired strategic importance after the end of World War II and the beginning of the Cold War with the Soviet Union. The subject of the study is the American-Iranian relations of 1953-1974, within the framework of which the Iranian Shah Mohammad Reza Pahlavi consistently built cooperation with D. Eisenhower, J. Kennedy, L. Johnson and R. Nikson. Despite the fact that their approaches to the implementation of American foreign policy in the Greater Middle East underwent significant changes, the desire to maintain influence in the country, consolidate control over cheap Iranian energy resources and prevent the return of Soviet influence on Iran remained the main directions of American activity. The methodological basis of the research is based on the principles of historicism, objectivity and consistency. The following methods were used in the work: historical-comparative, historical-typological and historical-systemic methods. The reviewed diplomatic documents of the United States of America "Foreign Relations of the United States" allow us to establish that the influence of the oil factor on American-Iranian relations in 1953-1974 remained high, despite changes in the approaches of the presidents to the implementation of foreign policy in the region. The return of Iranian oil to the global market allowed Shah Mohammad Reza Pahlavi to initiate the start of the "white revolution", supported by the United States, among others. Huge oil revenues allowed Iran in a short time not only to realize its claims in the region, but also to become an important ally of the United States, responsible for regional security during the presidency of R. Nixon. The work illustrates the changing role of the United States of America and Iran in the Greater Middle East, due, among other things, to the influence of the oil factor.

Contributing Authors

Dr. Mary Frances Berry, professor of history and Geraldine R. Segal Professor of American Social Thought at the University of Pennsylvania, is the author of twelve books, including History Teaches Us to Resist (2018). From 1980 to 2004, she was a member of the U.S. Commission on Civil Rights and from 1993–2004 served as chair. Between 1977 and 1980, Dr. Berry served as the assistant secretary for education in the U.S. Department of Health, Education, and Welfare. She has also served as provost of the University of Maryland and chancellor of the University of Colorado at Boulder. In recognition of her scholarship and public service, Professor Berry has received 35 honorary doctoral degrees and many awards.Brandon James Render is a PhD candidate in the History Department at the University of Texas at Austin. His research interests include twentieth-century United States social and intellectual history, post-1945 social movements and “the culture wars,” and public policy. His dissertation, “Colorblind University,” traces the intellectual genealogy of race-neutral policies and practices in higher education through admissions policies, departmental structure, and curriculum design. In addition to service as a graduate research fellow at the Center for the Study of Race and Democracy in 2018–19, he is the 2021–22 Mitchem Dissertation Fellow at Marquette University.Lee Sartain is a senior lecturer in American history at the University of Portsmouth, England. His research focuses primarily on the NAACP and civil rights activism from the 1910s to the 1970s. His first book, Invisible Activists: Women of the Louisiana NAACP and the Struggle for Civil Rights, 1915–1945 (2007) won the Landry Prize for best book on a southern topic. He has also published Borders of Equality: The NAACP and the Baltimore Civil Rights Struggle, 1914–1970 (2013) and coedited Long Is the Way: One Hundred Years of the NAACP (2009). Recent articles have focused on the NAACP and the Great War and on youth movements and the NAACP in New Mexico. He has also written various encyclopedia entries on the NAACP. He is a member of the Royal Historical Society.Matthew Shannon is associate professor of history at Emory & Henry College. He is the author of Losing Hearts and Minds: American–Iranian Relations and International Education during the Cold War (2017). Dr. Shannon's research has been published in Iranian Studies, Diplomatic History, International History Review, and The Sixties. He is the editor of American–Iranian Dialogues: From Constitution to White Revolution, c. 1890s–1960s (2021), and the coeditor of 9/11 and the Academy: Responses in the Liberal Arts and the 21st-Century World (2019).Quito Swan is professor of African American and African diaspora studies at Indiana University Bloomington. A historian of Black internationalism, he is the author of Pauulu's Diaspora: Black Internationalism and Environmental Justice (2021), Black Power in Bermuda (2010), and the forthcoming Pasifika Black: Black Internationalism in Oceania. Swan has garnered several major awards for his research, including fellowships from the National Endowment for the Humanities, Harvard University's Radcliffe Institute, Australia's University of Queensland, and, most recently, Pennsylvania State's Humanities Institute.Dr. Rhonda Y. Williams, professor and John L. Seigenthaler Chair in American History at Vanderbilt University, is the author of the award-winning The Politics of Public Housing: Black Women's Struggles against Urban Inequality (2004) and Concrete Demands: The Search for Black Power in the 20th Century (2005). She is also the coeditor of the award-winning book series “Justice, Power, and Politics” from the University of North Carolina Press. During her tenure at Case Western Reserve University, she founded and directed the Social Justice Institute, as well as the postdoctoral fellowship in African American studies.

Losing Hearts and Minds: American-Iranian Relations and International Education during the Cold War

Losing Hearts and Minds: American-Iranian Relations and International Education during the Cold War

Matthew K. Shannon. Losing Hearts and Minds: American-Iranian Relations and International Education during the Cold War.

M<scp>atthew</scp> K. S<scp>hannon</scp>. <i>Losing Hearts and Minds: American-Iranian Relations and International Education during the Cold War</i>.

Book Review: Losing Hearts and Minds: American-Iranian Relations and International Education During the Cold War.

Jonathan Shoup, a graduate student at Temple University, reviews Matt Shannon's book, Losing Hearts and Minds: American-Iranian Relations and International Education During the Cold War.

Matthew K. Shannon. Losing Hearts and Minds: American-Iranian Relations and International Education during the Cold War. Cornell University Press, 2017. 256 pp.

Matthew K. Shannon. Losing Hearts and Minds: American-Iranian Relations and International Education during the Cold War. Cornell University Press, 2017. 256 pp.

The Champion of Human Rights Meets the King of Kings: Jimmy Carter, the Shah, and Iranian Illusions and Rage

Building on the recent re-discovery of the Iranian Revolution, this analysis examines the policies of the Carter Administration and their effects on Iran and the Iranian opposition. Starting with Jimmy Carter's election and hopes for a new era in American–Iranian relations, there occurred the progressive creation and expansion of a rift between the Carter Administration and the Iranian opposition. This rift was exacerbated by stubborn American support for an increasingly weak Shah, and by the complete unwillingness, both in Washington and at the American Embassy in Tehran, to meet with opposition members, let alone with Ayatollah Ruhollah Khomeini. In this sense, the horizon of the analysis of the origins of the Iran hostage crisis is expanded with a longer-term perspective. The taking of the hostages represented the final act of a troubled relationship that had probably begun before Carter took office.

Avoid Repeating Mistakes toward Iran

Avoid Repeating Mistakes toward Iran

Diplomacy in Bad Faith: American–Iranian Relations Today

American–Iranian relations have always been the most significant variable in Iran's nuclear programme, yet, in the absence of direct diplomatic communication, have never been addressed during multilateral negotiations. Since 1979, misperceptions of each other's intentions and capabilities have prevented Iran and the United States from escaping an ambiguous “cold war” relationship. The decision of the Obama and Ahmadinejad governments to open negotiations in Switzerland in Autumn 2009 marked the first bilateral high-profile meeting between both countries in over thirty years. At this time Iran was dealing with the effects of its June presidential elections, which was Teheran's greatest crisis of legitimacy since the Islamic Revolution. In addition, Iran's power elite was informed by a siege mentality vis-à-vis its own people and the international community. Also at this time, the Barack Obama Administration decided to engage Teheran directly. The Iranian government failed to reciprocate American initiatives. The breakdown of talks has, in turn, produced a new United States-sponsored containment doctrine against Iran. Whilst Washington may have shed an exclusive reliance on belligerency, as was the case under President George W. Bush, coercion remains the basis of Iran policy. Within two years after the Obama Administration began experimenting with “two-track” diplomacy, the situation has returned to mutual hostility. The United States and Iran are conducting diplomacy with each other in bad faith.

The eagle and the lion: the tragedy of American-Iranian relations. By James Bill pp. 544, illus. New Haven and London, Yale University Press, 1988. U.S. $30.00.

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The Eagle and the Lion: The Tragedy of American–Iranian Relations. By James A. Bill. New Haven: Yale University Press, 1988. 520p. $30.00 cloth, $13.95 paper.

The Eagle and the Lion: The Tragedy of American–Iranian Relations. By James A. Bill. New Haven: Yale University Press, 1988. 520p. $30.00 cloth, $13.95 paper.

The Eagle and the Lion: The Tragedy of American-Iranian Relations.

The Eagle and the Lion: The Tragedy of American-Iranian Relations.

Review: The Eagle and the Lion: The Tragedy of American-Iranian Relations, by James A. Bill

Review: <i>The Eagle and the Lion: The Tragedy of American-Iranian Relations</i>, by James A. Bill

The Eagle and the Lion: The Tragedy of American-Iranian Relations

The Eagle and the Lion: The Tragedy of American-Iranian Relations

The eagle and the lion: the tragedy of American-Iranian relations and The US press and Iran: foreign policy and the journalism of deference

The eagle and the lion: the tragedy of American-Iranian relations and The US press and Iran: foreign policy and the journalism of deference

The Eagle and the Lion: The Tragedy of American-Iranian Relations

The Eagle and the Lion: The Tragedy of American-Iranian Relations

AMERICAN‐IRANIAN RELATIONS, 1972–76: A SEARCH FOR EXPLANATIONS

Southeastern Political ReviewVolume 9, Issue 2 p. 2-33 AMERICAN-IRANIAN RELATIONS, 1972–76: A SEARCH FOR EXPLANATIONS Jerry Waltman, Jerry WaltmanSearch for more papers by this author Jerry Waltman, Jerry WaltmanSearch for more papers by this author First published: September 1981 https://doi.org/10.1111/j.1747-1346.1981.tb00758.xAboutPDF ToolsRequest permissionExport citationAdd to favoritesTrack citation ShareShare Give accessShare full text accessShare full-text accessPlease review our Terms and Conditions of Use and check box below to share full-text version of article.I have read and accept the Wiley Online Library Terms and Conditions of UseShareable LinkUse the link below to share a full-text version of this article with your friends and colleagues. Learn more.Copy URL Share a linkShare onFacebookTwitterLinked InRedditWechat Volume9, Issue2September 1981Pages 2-33 RelatedInformation

American Relations with the Islamic Republic of Iran, 1979–1981

The triumph of the Khomeini forces and of the Iranian revolution in February 1979, sweeping away the old imperial regime and the transitional Bakhtiyar government, marked the beginning of a highly critical period in American-Iranian relations. The conflict culminated in the seizure of the American embassy in Tehran and in the holding of U.S. diplomats as hostages for well over a year. The hostage issue was the most controversial question for U.S. foreign policy in 1980 and marked a historic low point in relations between the two countries.From the viewpoint of most Iranian leaders, this battle was an inevitable one. Based on their perceptions of bilateral relations over the previous three decades, Ayatollah Khomeini and his supporters expected a deterministically hostile United States. In their eyes, Washington had provided the main foreign support for the shah, a regime for which their passionate hatred can scarcely be overstated, and had tried to prevent the revolution's triumph.