The US’s Long History of Destabilizing Iran

For twelve months since last October, US leaders have cheered on Israel’s relentless bombardment of Gaza, even as the genocide there — funded and armed by the United States — has killed over forty thousand Palestinians, roughly half of them women and children. The cheers have continued as Israel has expanded its bombardments to, now, three other Arab countries:  Lebanon, Yemen, and Syria.

Still unsatisfied, some are now rooting for Israel to bomb Iran. Joe Biden has been reportedly “discussing” the prospect of an Israeli attack on Iran’s oil fields, the lifeline of Iranian economy, which has been languishing under a devastating US embargo for decades.

Following Iran’s missile barrage into Israel last week, carried out in retaliation for Israel’s assassinations of Hamas and Hezbollah leaders, vice president and Democratic presidential nominee Kamala Harris called Iran a “destabilizing, dangerous force” in the Middle East, opening a new chapter in a long history of US hawkishness against Iran. This past Monday, she went even further, calling Iran the United States’ “greatest adversary.”

For those familiar with this history, it’s hard to hear such statements without hearkening back to New Year’s Eve, 1977, a year before the Iranian Revolution broke out. In the heat of growing civil unrest in Iran, US president Jimmy Carter attended a lavish state dinner with the shah of Iran, Mohammad Reza Pahlavi, where Carter toasted, “Iran, because of the great leadership of the Shah, is an island of stability in one of the more…