Iran & America: A Century and Counting

In February 2026, decades of failed diplomacy ended in open war: roughly 900 strikes in twelve hours, a Supreme Leader killed, and oil past $100 a barrel. The finale covers the 2026 war in a strictly sober, factual register — this is current, lethal, and ongoing. We lay out Operation Epic Fury, the death of Ali Khamenei in the opening wave, Iran's missile-and-drone retaliation, the move to close t...

Painstakingly built, then torn up. How the 2015 nuclear deal came together — and how its collapse pushed the two countries to the brink of war. Episode 10 tells the deal's whole arc. A secret Oman channel and the first presidential phone call since 1979 lead to the 2015 JCPOA: Iran ships out enriched uranium, slashes centrifuges, and accepts intrusive inspections, pushing "breakout time" from week...

A piece of code physically destroyed thousands of Iranian centrifuges — opening the age of digital sabotage and reshaping the whole nuclear standoff. Episode 9 focuses on Stuxnet: the covert U.S.–Israeli cyber campaign that wrecked centrifuges at Natanz without a shot fired, and what it meant for a crisis that had no military off-ramp. We explain how the attack worked in plain terms, why it bought...

Iran quietly helped the U.S. after 9/11 — then got branded part of an "Axis of Evil." Then a secret enrichment site blew the nuclear crisis wide open. Episode 8 traces how the nuclear standoff opened. Post-9/11 cooperation against the Taliban is undone by Bush's January 2002 "Axis of Evil" speech; that same year an exile group exposes the secret enrichment site at Natanz and the heavy-water projec...

After Khomeini's death, a reformist president reached out with a "Dialogue Among Civilizations." So why couldn't Washington and Tehran turn a thaw into a deal? Episode 7 explains the 1990s in a measured tone. The Clinton administration's "dual containment" boxed in both Iran and Iraq; a 1995 total embargo and the 1996 Iran–Libya Sanctions Act tightened the screws. A real opening flickered with the...

Secret arms sales, a naval war in the Persian Gulf, and a civilian airliner shot from the sky with 290 people aboard. The decade that hardened the enmity. Episode 6 covers a violent decade soberly. In the Iran–Contra affair, Reagan officials secretly sell missiles to Iran and divert the proceeds to Nicaraguan rebels. Washington tilts toward Iraq in the Iran–Iraq War; the Tanker War brings U.S. and...

Did Reagan's 1980 campaign secretly signal Tehran to hold the hostages until after the election? It's a serious allegation — and, crucially, an unproven one. Episode 5 handles a genuinely contested story with care. Carter hoped for a pre-election release that might have saved his presidency; the hostages instead came home as Reagan took office. In 2023, Texas figure Ben Barnes told The New York Ti...

A short symbolic protest became a 444-day crisis — and the lever clerics used to seize a revolution and brand their rivals as American agents. Episode 4 narrates 1979 in a documentary tone. Mass strikes break the monarchy; the Shah flees in January, Khomeini returns in February, and a broad coalition briefly unites before the clerics consolidate. When Carter admits the Shah to the U.S. for cancer...

The coup put a king back on his throne for 26 years. What did U.S.-backed rule build in Iran — and what did it break? Episode 3 examines the Shah's reign in a sober register: the genuine modernization of the 1963 "White Revolution," set against SAVAK, the feared secret police established in 1957 with U.S. and Israeli help. We trace how aggressive Westernization and the extravagant 1971 Persepolis...

Truman said no. Eisenhower said yes. In a few days of August 1953, the CIA helped topple Iran's elected prime minister — and reset how Iranians saw America. Episode 2 walks carefully through the coup using the declassified record. Britain recasts an oil dispute as a Cold War emergency; the CIA's Kermit Roosevelt runs Operation TPAJAX on the ground; the first attempt fails and the Shah flees; then...

In 1945, many Iranians saw the United States as the friend who helped push the old empires out. How did that trust begin — and why did it start to crack over oil? This first episode of Iran & America: A Century and Counting sets the stage. We trace the Anglo-Iranian Oil Company's lopsided grip on Iran's oil, the WWII occupation that forced Reza Shah out, and the 1945–46 crisis when U.S. pressure h...