The United States and Iran

This study presents an analysis of US-Iranian relations in the twentieth century, with particular attention to the crisis over nationalization of British oil interests at midcentury. As such, it focuses on the career of Muhammad Musaddiq, who struggled during those years to free his country from foreign influence, and whose memory continued to haunt ties between Washington and Tehran up to the Iranian revolution. The shadow of Muhammad Musaddiq has at last faded. Today, the former nationalist prime minister of Iran seems tame compared to those fellow countrymen who established the Islamic Republic, but for decades he assumed an importance in official thinking often overlooked by the causal observer of US-Iranian relations. Throughout, it examines Western views of Iran and Iranians (and by implication of other non-Westerners) which affected - and still affect - the conduct of international relations.