Dear Dr. Richardson,

I read your Letters from an American history blog daily on Substack, and am very grateful for your weaving of the often-perplexing current events with authoritative history.

It strikes me how universally the American press and media point to the Islamic Revolution in 1979 and the hostage crisis that ensued as the origin of the sad domestic and troubling international behavior of Iran's government.

I think this may do a disservice to the Iranian people, and is likely the wrong origin story for us to focus on in America.

I was fortunate to travel extensively in Iran in early 1973, part of some field studies in Asia. I was driving a diminutive Citroen 2CV Fourgennette (a panel van which may have been perceived as affording an opportunity for concealing a few passengers in the back) that I had bought during studies in Italy, and was approached multiple times by Iranians quietly asking me to help them escape from Iran out of fear of arrest by Savak, Shah Mohammed Reza Pahlavi's secret police. While I was not able to assist them, it did make me wonder...

My (perhaps oversimplified) understanding: in 1951, after a progressive development and maturation of its legislature, Iran held a general election for one of the first democratically-elected leaders in the middle east, Mohammed Mosaddegh, as Prime Minister. (en.wikipedia.org/wiki/M…). His administration moved quickly toward a social democratic approach, expanding many programs, and apparently nationalized resource-based industries, foremost petroleum extraction and refining, to fund these.

Unfortunately, his tenure in that role ended in 1953, with a coup d'etat organized by American and UK agencies at the behest of their respective nations' oil companies, and his resultant confinement. That coup left in place the Shah as an undemocratic and pro-west leader, exacerbated by the development of the Savak secret police (under the tutelage of those same American and British agencies) in the mid-1950s. I believe that the cruelty of Savak and M Reza Pahlavi's suppressive undemocratic rule likely contributed substantially toward Iran's Islamic Revolution in 1979.

While the Obama administration did apparently acknowledge the American role in the 1953 Iranian coup, this history seems to be being entirely overlooked in the recent and current news coverage.

I hope that you will consider including that revelatory history in your posts.

Very respectfully,

-George A Conway