The Danger of Historical Narcissism in U.S. Policy Toward Iran

The U.S. air strikes on Iranian nuclear facilities and President Donald Trump’s June 22 Truth Social post suggesting ‘regime change’ in Tehran revived the myth that the United States was primarily responsible for the 1953 coup that toppled Iranian Prime Minister Mohammad Mosaddeq. For far too long the U.S. role in the Mosaddeq coup has underpinned the narcissistic assumption that U.S. actions were the principal source of the Iranian dictatorship’s attitudes and behaviors. Consider the following from Battlegrounds, pp. 315-317:

“A superficial understanding of history is often more misleading than complete ignorance. The Obama administration accepted the founding myth of the Iranian Revolution—that the 1953 coup that toppled Iranian prime minister Mohammad Mosaddeq and consolidated the rule of the Shah was externally planned and executed. For the Iranian revolutionaries, the coup myth reinforced their meta-narrative of victimization at the hands of Western colonialists. For the Obama administration, the story reinforced its tendency to see the United States as the key determinant of Iran’s actions. Never mind that the Shah had the legal right to dismiss his prime minister and that Mosaddeq’s rejection of that dismissal was in fact unconstitutional and illegal. Although the prime minister, lionized by the revolutionaries in Iran and New Left historians in the United States, was indeed an honorable patriot, the Mosaddeq myth overlooked its protagonist’s obstinance and how his inflexibility crippled the Iranian economy, opening the door for radicals on both sides of the political spectrum. Never mind that the monarchy and the Shah were still popular and that Mosaddeq was a monarchist. Although British and U.S. intelligence agencies did conspire against Mosaddeq, a trove of documents released in 2017 demonstrated that their efforts would have failed without the support of domestic actors. In the end, the Shah’s coalition proved stronger than Mosaddeq’s narrow coalition of unhappy intellectuals and leftist politicians.

But the simplistic history of the coup appealed to those sympathetic to the New Left’s interpretation of history, in which the modern ills of the world are attributed mainly to capitalist imperialism and an overly powerful United States. The standard interpretation of the coup in U.S. universities is, in part, a late by-product of opposition to the Vietnam War.

The flawed interpretation of the Mosaddeq coup contributed to a predisposition toward atonement for America’s alleged sins as the first step toward improved relations. The University of Texas at Austin’s Texas National Security Review, for example, recently released an issue examining why the Eisenhower administration chose to overthrow the Mosaddeq government, taking as a foregone conclusion that it had actually done so. Or consider the February 2019 headline on NPR that read, “How the CIA Overthrew Iran’s Democracy in 4 Days.” In 2009, during the Cairo speech on American relations with the Muslim world, President Obama noted that, “In the middle of the Cold War, the United States played a role in the overthrow of a democratically elected Iranian government.” Although he went on to remind his audience that Iran had also committed its share of misdeeds against Americans, the oblique reference to the Mosaddeq coup was meant as an admission of guilt that might lead to better relations. Regardless of the reality in 1953, it is important to recognize the Mosaddeq myth as both a cause and a symptom of the deep resentment, sense of victimhood, and thirst for vengeance that drive and rationalize the Iranian revolutionaries’ most egregious acts. The United States, however, should not abet an abuse of history by a clerical order whose forebears were far more responsible for Mosaddeq’s demise than the CIA.”

Iranian leaders’ hostility toward the United States, Israel, and their Arab neighbors is not the result of the 1953 coup. That hostility and the language that it manifests such as “Great Satan,” “Death to Israel,” and “Death to America,” are foundational to the regime’s revolutionary ideology. That is why Trump’s post suggesting that “regime change” is the only way to “MAKE IRAN GREAT AGAIN” was accurate. But, as it was in 1953 and in 1979, any change in the nature of the Iranian government will come from Iranians.