The US and Iran Deadlock, Rooted in 1953: How a Coup Over Oil Set the Course to Today's Strait of Hormuz Crisis

The story begins with oil and a bargain that many Iranians viewed as a national humiliation. For decades a single British firm known as the Anglo Iranian Oil Company controlled Iranian oil. Under the first concession signed in 1901, Iran received just 16 percent of company profits. A 1933 revision raised that figure to about 20 percent of the net profit, but Britain still ran the operation and kept the larger share. By the late 1940s, the British treasury was earning more in tax from the company than Iran earned in royalties from its own oil.

In 1951, the Iranian parliament voted to take the oil back. Mohammad Mossadegh, the elected prime minister at the time, led that fight and nationalized the industry in the name of the country.

Britain refused to accept the loss. It pressed the United States to act by warning that Mossadegh might open the door to the Soviet Union. In 1953, the American Central Intelligence Agency and British intelligence organized a coup known in Washington as Operation Ajax and in London as Operation Boot. On August 19, 1953, they forced Mossadegh from office. The Shah of Iran, Mohammad Reza Pahlavi, who had fled the country earlier returned to Iran as the plot unfolded. The coup cleared the way for him to return to the throne, and Western companies won back a large share of Iranian oil. It would take 60 years until 2013 before the CIA publicly admitted it had run the operation.

For many Iranians, the lesson was simple. Their first elected government had been destroyed from the outside over oil.

What came next deepened that grievance. For the next 26 years, the Shah ruled as the closest American partner in the region. He modernized the country through a reform program he called the White Revolution, while a feared secret police force known as SAVAK jailed and tortured his opponents. Resentment built among the clergy, the political left, and the middle class.

In 1979, that resentment became a revolution. The Shah fled the country in January 1979. Ayatollah Ruhollah Khomeini, a Shia cleric who had spent years in exile for opposing the Shah, returned to Tehran in February 1979 and founded an Islamic Republic. The 1953 coup became a rallying cry of the uprising. To the revolutionaries, All those events were proof for Iranian's that Washington would always choose control over Iranian self rule.

The break in relations between the United States and Iran came within months, and it came hard. On November 4, 1979, militant followers of Ayatollah Khomeini stormed the United States embassy in Tehran and took 66 Americans hostage. Fifty two of them were held for 444 days. They were freed on January 20, 1981, the very hour Ronald Reagan was sworn in as president. Iran timed this release as a final humiliation of the outgoing Jimmy Carter.

The rupture outlasted the crisis. Washington cut diplomatic relations with Tehran in 1980, and the two countries have never restored them. For more than four decades since, their governments have not dealt with each other directly. They pass messages through Switzerland and through other intermediaries. This is why the 2026 ceasefire had to be brokered by Pakistan rather than agreed upon across a table.

The nuclear dispute at the heart of the 2026 war stems from this same long record of broken trust, and it holds one of the strangest turns in the story. The Iranian nuclear program did not begin as a threat to the West and its allies. It began in the 1950s with Western help. Under the Atoms for Peace program of President Dwight Eisenhower, the United States gave Iran its first research reactor and helped train its scientists. The Shah was an ally, so his nuclear ambitions were welcome in Washington. Only after the 1979 revolution did the same program become a danger in American eyes, prompting Iran to move parts of it out of sight.

For all that hostility, the two sides did reach a deal once. In 2015, under then President Barack Obama, Iran and six world powers signed the Joint Comprehensive Plan of Action. Iran agreed to enrich uranium no higher than 3.67 percent and to cut its stockpile to 300 kilograms, down from roughly 10,000, in return for relief from sanctions. International inspectors then certified that Iran was keeping its side of the bargain.

Then in 2018, President Donald Trump pulled the United States out of the agreement. He called it the worst deal ever negotiated and gave several reasons. He argued its limits on Iran would expire over time, it did nothing to stop Iranian ballistic missiles, and its inspections did not go far enough. He left over the objections of Britain, France, and Germany, making it a unilateral American decision, and he reimposed heavy sanctions.

The slide accelerated after that. In January 2020, an American drone strike killed the Iranian commander Qassem Soleimani. Iran answered by walking away from the limits of the deal one by one. By June 2025, the International Atomic Energy Agency reported that Iran was holding more than 400 kilograms of uranium enriched to 60 percent. This was far beyond any civilian use, though still short of bomb grade.

The final steps came fast. In late August 2025, Britain, France, and Germany triggered a mechanism written into the 2015 deal that automatically restored United Nations sanctions on Iran, a step known as snapback. The sanctions returned the following month. Talks mediated by Oman on February 26, 2026, ended with both sides agreeing to meet again the following week. Two days later, on February 28, 2026, the United States and Israel attacked.

Six weeks of war followed. The ceasefire Pakistan arranged in April did not bring peace. Israel kept striking Hezbollah in Lebanon and Iran kept attacking commercial vessels. By july the missiles were flying again.

The weapons and the names have changed across more than seventy years. The distrust still runs back to 1953.

• United States, Israel and the West

  1. Iran's enrichment had moved far past any civilian purpose.

  Washington and its allies point to the numbers. The 2015 deal capped Iran at 3.67 percent enrichment. By June 2025, the International Atomic Energy Agency reported that Iran held more than 400 kilograms of uranium enriched to 60 percent which is a technical step short from bomb grade. Iran had also hidden parts of its program from inspectors in the past. To the United States and Israel, a country that close to a weapon, run by a government Israel regards as an existential threat, could not be left alone. Both cast the 2026 strikes as a last resort rather than a war of choice.

  2. Years of diplomacy had not stopped the program.

  The American case rests on a long record of talks that did not hold. The 2015 agreement was meant to settle the matter, yet enrichment resumed after 2020, and a fresh round of talks in Oman ended without a deal. Supporters of the strikes, including much of the Israeli and US security establishments argue that every pause simply bought Iran time to advance and that pressure was the only language left.

  3. The 2015 deal ignored the missiles and the proxies.

  For Israel and several Arab Gulf governments, the bomb was never the only danger. Iran's ballistic missiles and its funding of armed groups such as Hezbollah in Lebanon and Hamas in Gaza sat entirely outside the 2015 deal, a gap those governments had warned about for years. They argue that no agreement is worth signing unless it covers both the missiles and the proxies.

  Iran

  4. Tehran says its program is civilian, legal, and within its rights.

  Iran's case rests on treaty law. As a member of the Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty, Iran is permitted to enrich uranium for civilian energy. Iranian officials say they have never sought a weapon and that their enrichment level is open to negotiation, though the right to enrich is not. They note that Iran had agreed to talks in Oman in early 2026 before it was attacked.

  5. Iran argues the United States broke the last deal first

  Tehran's strongest argument concerns who abandoned the agreement. International inspectors had certified that Iran was complying with the 2015 nuclear deal when President Trump withdrew the United States from it in 2018 over the objections of Britain, France, and Germany and reimposed sanctions. From Iran's perspective, its later enrichment was a response to American abandonment, not the source of the crisis.

  6. Iran calls its 2026 response self-defense.

  Iran also contends it did not initiate the conflict. The United States and Israel struck first on February 28, 2026, killing Iran's head of state. Tehran characterizes its missile barrages and closure of the Strait of Hormuz as acts of self-defense and leverage by a country under attack. Iran is demanding international guarantees against future strikes and compensation for damage before it will agree to any lasting peace.

  The Arab Gulf states

  7. Iran's neighbors wanted pressure, but they want the war over even more.

  The Gulf states do not speak with one voice. Several of them wary for years of Iran's missiles and its proxies and quietly welcomed the pressure. After Iran struck their territory some expelled Iranian diplomats and demanded that Tehran pay for the damage. States such as Oman and Qatar have pushed hardest for a settlement, as their bottom line is stability, not victory.

• Of the United States and Israel

  1. The human and economic cost is enormous.

  Critics point to the wreckage. The war killed Iran's head of state and caused substantial damage across much of the country. The closure of the Strait of Hormuz sent shocks through the global economy since it carries roughly one-fifth of the world's oil and a large share of its gas. Traffic through the strait fell sharply and war risk insurance premiums jumped several times over. Iranian state media circulated an estimate of $270 billion in damage inside Iran. The United Arab Emirates state oil company stated normal flows may not return until 2027 even if the peace holds.

  2. A war for regime change, and threats against civilian targets, raise hard legal and moral questions.

  The second objection concerns how the war was fought and why. Washington and its partners openly aimed to topple Iran's government. President Trump warned more than once that the United States would destroy Iran's power plants and bridges if it did not yield. Critics including many in Europe and at the United Nations question the legal basis for a war fought to change a foreign government. They warn that striking the infrastructure ordinary Iranians rely will shift the cost of the conflict onto civilians.

  3. The strikes may have deepened the danger they were meant to remove.

  The sharpest objection draws from 1953. Outside force once before remade Iran to the West's liking. A generation later it produced the revolution and the hostility the West had feared. Critics argue 2026 may repeat that pattern by hardening Iranian nationalism and convincing a future government that only a bomb can keep it safe. They raise a practical concern that inspectors have not been able to enter Iran since the fighting began so no one can say what survived. International Atomic Energy Agency head Rafael Grossi warned that a deal without inspections would be an illusion.

  Of Iran

  4. Closing the Strait of Hormuz punished the entire world.

  Iran's first major criticism centers on a weapon that harmed everyone. By shutting the strait Iran did not only squeeze Washington and Israel but choked off oil and gas bound for Asia, Europe and the developing world while raising prices for other countries. To its critics and trading partners that turned Iran's grievance into a global problem.

  5. Iran's own enrichment and secrecy handed its enemies their case.

  A second line of criticism holds that Iran built the argument for the attack itself. Enriching uranium to 60 percent far beyond what a power station requires and keeping parts of the program away from inspectors gave Washington and Israel their claim that Iran was racing for a bomb. Critics contend that a country seeking only civilian energy would not need to operate like one concealing a weapon.

  6. Iran's missiles and proxies destabilized the region long before 2026.

  The third objection moves beyond the nuclear file. For years Iran armed and funded Hezbollah in Lebanon, Hamas in Gaza and militias in Iraq and Yemen while building a missile force capable of reaching across the Middle East. When the 2026 war began Iran fired on the Arab Gulf states as well and turned neutral neighbors into targets. Critics argue this long record of arming proxies and threatening neighbors created the conditions that made the region volatile in the first place.

  Observers, on the peace itself

  7. The ceasefire is a patchwork that keeps tearing.

  A final criticism targets the truce itself. The peace was never one agreement but a set of separate fragile deals where one for the United States and Iran was brokered by Pakistan and another for Lebanon was handled by Washington. The pieces did not hold together. Fighting returned within days of the first ceasefire and again while the central dispute over enrichment stalled every round. Many analysts warn that a pause stacked on unresolved grievances is one incident away from becoming a war again.