Cover photo: NASA/MODIS Land Rapid Response Team, Terra satellite (public domain), 2020-12-04
Iran: The History Behind the War
How a seventy-year friendship collapsed into today's Iran, US, and Israel conflict.
About
In nineteen fifty-three, a coup involving the CIA overthrew Iran's democratically elected prime minister and propped up the pro-Western Shah. Twenty-six years later, the Islamic Revolution flipped everything: America's closest ally in the Middle East became its sworn enemy.
From the hostage crisis at the US embassy to a region-wide network of allied armed groups, from the collapse of a nuclear deal to the assassination of Iran's entire leadership in two thousand twenty-six, this book traces seventy years of decisions that led to today's closure of the Strait of Hormuz — and lays out, evenhandedly, the competing explanations for why this war began.
A story of friendship that collapsed, step by step, into one of the deepest enmities of the modern era.
Sources
- CFR — "The 1953 Overthrow of Iranian Prime Minister Mohammad Mosaddeq" — https://www.cfr.org/articles/the-1953-overthrow-of-iranian-prime-minister-mohammad-mosaddeq
- Wikipedia — "1953 Iranian coup d'état" — https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/1953_Iranian_coup_d%27%C3%A9tat
- Wikipedia — "Iran hostage crisis" — https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Iran_hostage_crisis
- Encyclopaedia Iranica — "Iraq vii. Iran-Iraq War" — https://www.iranicaonline.org/articles/iraq-vii-iran-iraq-war/
- Middle East Institute — "Hezbollah's Regional Activities in Support of Iran's Proxy Networks" — https://mei.edu/publication/hezbollahs-regional-activities-support-irans-proxy-networks/
- Human Rights Watch — "Woman Dies in Custody of Iran's 'Morality Police'" — https://www.hrw.org/news/2022/09/16/woman-dies-custody-irans-morality-police
- Amnesty International — "Iran: Over 1,000 people executed as authorities step up horrifying assault on right to life" — https://www.amnesty.org/en/latest/news/2025/09/iran-over-1000-people-executed-as-authorities-step-up-horrifying-assault-on-right-to-life/
- Britannica — "12-Day War" — https://www.britannica.com/event/12-Day-War
- Wikipedia — "Assassination of Ali Khamenei" — https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Assassination_of_Ali_Khamenei
- Al Jazeera — "Iran's Assembly of Experts says consensus reached on Khamenei's successor" — https://www.aljazeera.com/news/2026/3/8/irans-assembly-of-experts-says-consensus-reached-on-khameneis-successor
- Wikipedia — "Rationale for the 2026 Iran war" — https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rationale_for_the_2026_Iran_war
- Al Jazeera — "Strait of Hormuz tensions linger as Iran and US move further from a deal" — https://www.aljazeera.com/economy/2026/9/27/strait-of-hormuz-tensions-linger-as-iran-and-us-move-further-from-a-deal
- NASA Earth Observatory / MODIS — "Strait of Hormuz" (2020-12-04) — https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Strait_of_Hormuz_(MODIS_2020-12-04).jpg
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