Seventy-three years ago this week, on August 19, 1953, the United States and Britain helped overthrow the democratically elected government of Iranian Prime Minister Mohammad Mosaddegh. His crime, from Washington’s perspective, was not that he rejected democracy or threatened the United States. It was that he sought to nationalize Iran’s oil industry and assert democratic sovereignty over Iran’s political and economic affairs. The coup restored the Shah to effective political power and inaugurated a new era of authoritarian rule. As I have argued elsewhere, the 1953 coup was a decisive turning point: it transformed the United States in the eyes of many Iranians from a relatively respected Western partner into an imperial power.

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The significance of 1953 is not simply historical. It provides a lens through which to understand the tragic paradox of U.S.-Iran relations: American policy has repeatedly claimed to oppose authoritarianism while pursuing policies that have weakened the forces capable of democratizing Iran. This does not excuse the Iranian authorities, including the Islamic Republic, of their responsibility for authoritarianism. Iran’s democratic crisis is fundamentally an Iranian political problem, and the Islamic Republic has systematically restricted political competition, civil liberties, independent organization and popular sovereignty. But acknowledging this reality should not prevent us from asking another critical question: What has U.S. policy done to the prospects for Iranian democracy?

The answer is deeply uncomfortable. After the 1953 coup, Washington embraced the Shah as a reliable regional ally. During the Cold War, U.S. policy prioritized anti-communism, regional stability, oil and the security of Israel. Democratic accountability was repeatedly subordinated to the perceived need for a ‘friendly tyrant’ and strategically dependable regime. I have described this broader framework as the three pillars of U.S. Middle East policy: CIO, or containment, Israel’s regional security, and the free flow of oil. The contradiction was visible. The United States presented itself as the leader of the “free world,” while supporting an increasingly authoritarian monarchy in Iran. The 1979 Revolution changed the relationship but did not fundamentally change this contradiction. Washington moved from supporting an authoritarian ally to containing a revolutionary regime. During the Iran-Iraq War (1980–88), the United States supported Iraq with economic assistance, military training and dual-use technology, even after U.S. intelligence had evidence of Iraqi chemical-weapons use. In 1988, the U.S. Navy destroyed Iranian oil platforms and sank an Iranian warship; it also shot down Iran Air Flight 655, killing 290 civilians.

After the Cold War, containment increasingly took an economic form. Economic sanctions became a central instrument of American policy.........

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