Why does iran hate the united states

Many of the disparate groups who had taken part in the popular revolutions had been optimistic they would have a place in the new hierarchy. But, within months, it was made clear who was in charge.

The US had been hopeful of good relations between its State Department and the new Islamic government. Secret files declassified in the last few years show considerable contact between diplomats and Khomeini's team, including himself, before he left Paris for Tehran. But, within days of the revolution being over, the administration of Jimmy Carter, which had admitted the Shah into the US for cancer treatment, began to realise there may be problems ahead.

The US embassy was vandalised on 14 February, and the following November a group of students seized the building and took its 66 occupants hostage. One of the leaders read out a statement, saying: "We Muslim students, followers of Imam Khomeini, have occupied the espionage embassy of America in protest… We announce our protest against America for granting asylum and employing the criminal Shah while it has on its hands the blood of tens of thousands of women and men in this country.

The takeover was backed by Khomeini, promoting Carter to put pressure on the new regime by freezing Iranian assets. In response, the Ayatollah unleashed a furious tirade of vitriol to his amassed followers, declaring: "Don't forget that the US is your worst enemy. Don't forget to chant: 'Death to US'. Amid the revolutionary fervour, there was no appetite in Iran for negotiation and in the end, 52 American diplomats were held for days, with a failed rescue mission along the way resulting in the deaths of eight servicemen.

While US diplomats were still being held hostage in Tehran, in September , Iraqi forces invaded Iran, citing Iran's failure to abide by a border agreement. By , Iran had hit back, retaking the territory Iraq had initially seized and pushing on towards the Iraqi city of Basra. The US, terrified the Iranians might defeat Iraq and move on to seize other Middle Eastern oil rich allies, began supporting the regime of Saddam Hussein and arranged for non-US-made weapons to be imported, according to several sources.

At the start of the Iranian revolution, the US had held up a shipment of weapons the Shah's regime had paid for, causing further rancour among his successors. In , two separate attacks against the US embassy and a US Marine peacekeeper barracks in Beirut killed a total of people, while another attack on a French base killed 58 troops.

The attacks were claimed by a previously unknown Shia Islamist group called the Islamic Jihad Organisation, but many sources have accused Iran of being behind them. Five years later, after the US stationed its navy in the Persian Gulf to protect shipping from the ongoing Iran-Iraq war, an Iran Air passenger jet was shot down over Iranian territorial waters by a surface-to-air missile fired by the USS Vincennes in the Straits of Hormuz.

The US said later the US navy ship had incorrectly believed the aircraft was an attacking war plane, but never apologised. Iran accused the US of being negligent. The same year, in , Pan Am Flight was blown out of the sky above Lockerbie, Scotland, an act of terror some have blamed on Iran. Despite the deteriorating relations between the two countries, there were moments when it appeared as though they were able to co-operate, albeit in controversial circumstances.

Evidence emerged in that a faction of the Reagan administration had arranged to ship replacement weapon parts to Iran, despite a US-sponsored arms embargo, in exchange for Iran's help in getting US hostages being held in Lebanon released.

The hostages were being held by a Shia militant group called the Islamic Jihad Organisation, which was allied to Hezbollah and arose out of the conflict in southern Lebanon. The US had designated Iran a State Sponsor of Terrorism in , originally for its support for Hezbollah and other militant groups and later for its support of Hamas.

Follow our live coverage for the latest news on the coronavirus pandemic. The hostility intensified in , reaching a fever pitch yesterday as the Pentagon ordered an air strike that killed Iran's most powerful general Qassem Soleimani. Oddly enough, it began with the British in the Middle East during the first part of the 20th century. Around the same time, the presence of Russians in northern Iran was becoming a critical issue for the US. Under a US "containment strategy", he says, the Shah of Iran was entrusted to keep that barrier, and also "make sure that oil continues to flow".

But that began to unravel when Mohammad Mosaddegh, a "strong nationalist figure", became Iran's 35th prime minister in Mosaddegh believed Iran, not Britain, should own and control the country's oil.

Professor Ehteshami says the leader was seen as "a menace to Western interests". In the British were expelled from Iran, and diplomatic relations ground to a halt. Osamah Khalil, a historian at Syracuse University, says there is some debate over whether the plot was about "a fear of communism" or "the issue of oil". While the US didn't believe Mosaddegh was a communist, he says, it saw him as a "demagogue" whose reforms could "create instability that would lead to the rise of the communist party in Iraq".

The other theory is that the coup was "really about the control of Iran's oil resources". Ali Ansari, a professor of Iranian history at the University of St Andrews, says though there was a "Cold War narrative in the background", the coup had a "very hard-nosed corporate aspect to it". Mobs were paid, police and soldiers were bribed, and the prime minister was driven from office. The Shah of Iran was reinstated. Mr Byrne says the Shah "clearly felt he owed his remaining in power to the US", and the Americans in turn felt they now had a loyal partner in the region.

Over the years, the US pumped a lot of money into the Shah's regime, and he was promoted in the Western press as a staunch ally. The Shah even received an honorary degree from Harvard. In what became known as the Nixon doctrine, the US effectively deferred to local allies to contain the Soviets.

At the same time, coinciding with increasing oil prices, Iran started importing arms from the US at a massive scale. There is high inflation, there's a big push from the rural areas into urban areas, there's a lot of dislocation".

Those who spoke out were often arrested or tortured. If you were lucky you got out," Mr Khalil says. The broad American antipathy towards the Iranian government can be traced back to the Iranian Revolution of , and in particular to the Iranian hostage crisis , which saw 52 American citizens held hostage in Tehran for months on end.

Most simply assumed that the American presence in Iran was fundamentally benevolent. Accordingly, they looked to explain the sudden explosion of hatred by looking at those who expressed it, not by reflecting on the legacy of American foreign policy.

That recourse was made easier by the nature of those who damned the US. As far as the average American was concerned, the Muslim clerics who led the revolution were about as alien as could be. As such, they were easily reduced to a crude caricature of religious fanatics who hated America merely because they were in thrall to a crazed and bigoted ideology. That said, not all Americans dislike the Islamic Republic equally.