Why did the US partner with the shah of Iran in the 1950’s

The U.S. has had relations with Iran ever since the last quarter of the nineteenth century. American missionaries have been in Iran even longer than that. But the United States’ real engagement with Iran dates only from WWII. The relationship has generally been close, but it has been punctuated first by the involvement of the CIA in the coup of 1953 which overthrew a popular prime minister, Mohammed Mossadegh, and then by the Islamic Revolution of 1979, which led to a breach in relations that has not yet been repaired. Indeed, two countries that were once close friends and allies now see each other, respectively, as the “Great Satan” and a member of an “Axis of Evil.”

Explanation:In this period the U.S. did make a number of serious errors in Iran, in addition to doing a number of things correctly. Aside from a brief period under President Kennedy’s administration, when Kennedy pressured the shah to begin some reforms in Iran, particularly to break up the landed estates and give a greater share in land ownership to the peasantry, there was very little pressure in this entire period on the shah in the political sphere. The U.S. was pleased to see Iran stable and developing. It was developing spectacularly. The U. S. was pleased to have a large market for American goods. And as long as there was very little internal unrest, it seemed that everything was under control. The U.S. in this period, when it had weight and influence in Iran, missed opportunities to guide the shah politically, internally, in another direction.

Second, the U.S. was so pleased with the close alliance and with the apparent stability of the shah’s regime that it began less and less to study closely the internal political situation. We know now that a time was reached when at the shah’s insistence, the CIA agreed that it would not do its own intelligence work in Iran, but would rely on the shah’s sources. When the boom in oil prices occurred and the shah decided to use this huge revenue, less wisely than other Gulf

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