By Davina Synder
For The Parthenon
History professor Chris White shared historical insight into the background of the ongoing war in the Middle East. Starting with the coup d’état in 1953, the U.S. has long been involved with politics in Iran.
“A lot of this has sort of been festering over time,” White said.
The coup was orchestrated by the U.S. and the U.K. to uphold Britain’s oil interests in Iran. The Iranian government was trying to nationalize their oil industry at the time, so the U.S. and U.K. reacted by overthrowing the prime minister.
After the coup d’état, an Islamic government was implemented, and the rule of Mohammad Reza Pahlavi, the Shah of Iran, was strengthened.
The U.S. supported the Shah and Iranian monarchy until the 1979 Iranian Revolution. Part of this revolution was in opposition to U.S. influence and activities in Iran. It resulted in the creation of the Islamic Republic of Iran, which is the official name of Iran.
After 1979, the U.S. and Iran have had various small conflicts, but none as devastating as February’s attacks.
“I think it’s important that this not be seen as something totally new or out of the blue. It’s coming out of that tension from the longer history, especially 1979,” White said.
With various news headlines dubbing this conflict “The U.S.-Israel War on Iran,” it should be noted the U.S. has not officially declared war through Congress since World War II.
“If you look at a history of warfare, you’d probably look at more of these existential wars, where it’s major armies against each other.” White said. “Military action is probably more accurate than war, although it certainly feels like a war to the Iranian people.”
Since February, the U.S. and Israel have conducted multiple strikes on military bases, oil sites and civilian areas in Iran and Lebanon. Peace talks began in Islamabad, Pakistan, Saturday, April 11, and lasted until early morning Sunday, April 12, but no deals between the U.S. and Iran have been made.
After the February attacks, Iran blocked ships from entering the Strait of Hormuz, a major waterway between the Persian Gulf and the Gulf of Oman where 20% of the world’s oil is transported for trade.
“I feel like any American leader needs to be much more aware of not just history, but geography as well,” White said. “We see this with the little Strait of Hormuz. We had the same problem in Iraq, so they could have looked at how they handled that back then.”
As part of their demands, the U.S. ordered Iran to open the strait, with President Donald Trump explicitly threatening the entire country of Iran if the block was not removed.
“A whole civilization will die tonight, never to be brought back again. I don’t want that to happen, but it probably will,” Trump stated in a Truth Social post on April 7.
Nothing came from this threat, and the U.S. has now put their own blockade on Iranian oil ports and parts of the strait.
“When he threatens to kill people like that, which to my knowledge is the first time a U.S. president has done that totally unprecedented, it threatens the ability of our country to be economically and politically viable,” White said.
“This escalation means that we’re going to spend hundreds of billions of dollars, and that’s hundreds of billions of dollars that we can’t use for jobs, education and social services back home,” he said.
Read more from The Parthenon, here.
