The US and Iran have had a history of cooperation and conflicts for a century. Dating all the way back to the early 20th century, Iran and the US have had a relationship. Later on the reliance for this relationship increased during the cold war. Since Iran bordered the former Soviet Union, the US needed to have a strong relationship. However, this kind of relationship has had negative consequences that have lasted up to this day. The differences between these countries are what break them apart. Social values such as women’s rights, homosexual tolerance, civil rights, and human rights are all viewed differently in the US and Iran. Women in the US are almost completely equal, but in Iran they are punished severely for the same crimes as men. In the US homosexuality is not completely accepted, but in Iran people are executed or arrested for their actions. All of these social and political differences have led to the current state of affairs between the US and Iran. Someday these two countries may be able to find a ground for peaceful agreement, but until then they seem to be on the brink of war.
The current state of affairs between the US and Iran is kind of scary. It appears that war could break out with any sort of minor conflict. The only thing that is needed is a reason to go to war at this point it seems. Some assume that it has always been this way, that the US and Iran have always had their differences. However, at first the US and Iran were friendly and had at least a slight interest in helping each other. Early relations between the US and Iran consisted of foreign relations that were connected through Britain. Iran was experiencing revolutions and their leadership was shifting frequently. What resulted was a friendly rela...
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... could be a massive world war between countries not directly involved.
So overall, the US and Iran have had a past of turmoil and cooperation. The future depends on how the relationship is now. Both leaders’ tones towards the other are obviously filled with disgust or disrespect. The social values held between the nations only help to add fuel to the fire. Acceptance or agreement on differences needs to be achieved before any progress can be made.
Works Cited
Coleman, Isobel. Paradise beneath Her Feet: How Women Are Transforming the Middle East. New York: Random House, 2010. Print.
Simon, Rita J., and Alison Brooks. Gay and Lesbian Communities the World over. Lanham: Lexington, 2009. Print.
Tyler, Patrick. A World of Trouble: the White House and the Middle East--from the Cold War to the War on Terror. New York: Farrar, Straus and Giroux, 2009. Print.
In All The Shah’s Men there seems to be a very strong hatred for all foreign powers, including the United States, taken by the citizens of Iran. I believe that this ultimately occurred because of the impatience of certain government officials in Washington D.C., and also in Great Britain. If only there could have been better communication between countries, I feel that there would have been a solution reached. The stubbornness of the British for the most part, led to many lives being lost, and a feeling of perpetual disgust being shown towards the United States for their involvement. Although the British were our allies and we did have an extreme fear of communism taking over the free world, this coup was disorganized, forced along too quickly, and put forth without any guidance or strong evidence, which in the end proved to completely defy what the United States was trying to impose on the world, and what Mossadegh was trying to give his people; freedom and democracy.
For decades, U.S. foreign policy in the Middle East had depended on a friendly government in Iran. The newly appointed leader, the shah of Iran, began Westernizing the country and taking away power from the Ayatollah, powerful religious leaders. The United States poured millions of dollars into Iran’s economy and the shah’s armed forces, overlooking the rampant corruption in government and well-organized opposition. By early 1979, the Ayatollah had murdered the Shah and taken back power of the government. A group of students who took the American embassy hostage on November 4th, 1979, turned the embassy over to the religious leaders. Carter knew he must take action in order to regain the American embassy and the hostages, but with all of the military cutbacks, the rescue attempt was a complete failure and embarrassment. It took the United States 444 days to rescue the hostages. This was the final straw for many Americans, and enough to push them to the “right” side of the political spectrum, Republican.
Since the 9/11 attacks, the Bush administration has been calling every citizens and every nations to support his Middle East policy. Nonetheless, the U.S. has been involved in the middle-east struggle for more than half of the century, wars were waged and citizens were killed. Yet, political struggles and ideological conflicts are now worse than they were under Clinton’s presidency. As “President’s Address to the Nation” is a speech asking everybody to support the troops to keep fighting in Iraq, I, as an audience, am not persuaded at all because of his illogical fallacy in the arguments. In this essay, I will analyze how and what are the illogical fallacies he uses in the speech.
The Carter Administration’s misguided relations and interactions with the Iranian government, especially the Shah, prior to the Iranian Hostage Crisis made evident the impending nature of the hostage crisis. During the period of time during which the Shah was in power in Iran, the United States maintained strong relations with the Iranian government and the Shah, however by supporting the Shah, they supported the crimes he committed against the Iranian people. The United States’ support of the Shah is evident by the photograph in Figure 1 in which President Jimmy Carter and the Shah are shaking hands to display the strong relations between the United States and Iran. At this state dinner, Carter, in his speech, praised Iran by stating that the country was an “island of stability” that was
...th and early 20th centuries entwined a power struggle between Great Britain and Russia, which only intensified after the discovery of oil in Iran in 1901. Following this discovery, western nations systematically exploited Iran for its natural resources, and fought to install sympathetic governments in the hopes of acquiring better oil deals, culminating in 1953 with the overthrow of Iranian Prime Minister Mohammed Mossadegh by a combination of US and UK forces (Yergin). The continual fighting left Iran a political mess that was only rectified by Khomeini’s strong, Islamic government. Though he severely limited the power of the Iranian citizens, he increased the power of Iran within the Middle East, and world at large, as its strong military presence and large oil reserves empower the country to resist interference from countries that wish to take advantage of them.
One thing that I noticed with regard to the differences between the Iran and America culture is that the Iran culture is more conservative while the American culture is more liberal. For example, in Iran if a couple goes out on a date, it is always the
Thesis Statement: I want to show Iran’s dramatic change of regimes and the way its people were treated starting with Pahlavi’s authoritarian rule. I also want to discuss the turbulant realtionship bewteen Iran and the United States, and how this all makes the Iran Hostage Crisis.
Even today, Iran has largely maintained its anti-American stance, and conflict between the two nations is tangible. The United States, still wary of Iran’s hate for all western influence, keeps sanctions on Iran, in an attempt to restrict Iran's nuclear power. To many Americans, Iran is considered part of the Axis of Evil, a nation of terrorists and radical Muslims. In Iran, there still exist many ‘death to America’ slogans. With Iran’s new president, Hassan Rouhani, however, the United States and Iran have started restoring diplomatic relations. We can only hope that Iran and the US will find enough common ground to break the shackles of
In 1950, the Shah of Iran fled when Mossadegh was elected Prime Minister. After this election, Mossadegh nationalized Iran 's oil industry, reducing the European influence throughout the nation over the oil commodity. This sparked great fear throughout the United States; they feared the communists would turn the Iran democracy against them. After three years in exile, in 1953 the Shah was brought back to power, thus resulting in the United States and Iran become close allies once again. The United States support of the Shah and his treatment towards the Iranian people angered the people of Iran. “Between 1953 and the early 1970s the U.S. supported the Shah’s ambitious plans for economic development and regional leadership
...tween Iran and the United States, and the decline of the provisional government and later political moderates.
Trice, M 2008, The Middle East: A gigantic Task for the New Administration. Wiley, N.Y.
In the book Arms and Influence by Thomas Schelling, he points out that when diplomacy and bargaining are taking place, there has to be a common interest, even if the common interest is to avoid mutual damage. In order for bargaining to work, there must be “An awareness of the need to make the other party prefer an outcome acceptable to oneself” (Schelling 1). In much of the language reported from Iran, however, it does not appear that Iran is willing to negotiate, maybe because it does not feel that damage will be inflicted by not bargaining. Iran may be correct. Unless Iran openly inflicts violence on another country, it may be able to develop its nuclear arms and continue to make threats in spite of what other countries have tried to force Iran to do. This opinion seems surprising considering that Iraq was invaded and Saddam Hussein taken down, even though the nuclear threat from Iraq was not as clear as the nuclear threat coming from Iran. But as argued by Ivo Daalder (2006), the cont...
Throughout the 20th century, the United States tried to control Iran to ensure the exportation of oil to America. Shah Mohammad Reza Pahlavi came to power in 1941 and became allies with the United States. However in the 1950s, Prime Minister Mohammad Mossadegh began to gain political power. Unlike the Shah, he was extremely against western influence in Iran. Mossadegh won national elections and he demanded more power. In order to retain influence in Iran, the CIA helped overthrow Mossadegh and bring Pahlavi back to power....
Iran was a country ruled by the Shah (King), who began his rule in the beginning of the 1950’s. He would help Iran greatly improve conditions. He began to improve relations with the United States securing oil deposits throughout Iran with American companies. However, the shah slowly became more and more dependent on the United States. He began asking the United States for advice on almost every decision he made. Although no such reports were printed in the United States (to my knowledge) there are sources, which lived in Iran and experienced a...
When one hears the words “LGBT” and “Homosexuality” it often conjures up a mental picture of people fighting for their rights, which were unjustly taken away or even the social emergence of gay culture in the world in the 1980s and the discovery of AIDS. However, many people do not know that the history of LGBT people stretches as far back in humanity’s history, and continues in this day and age. Nevertheless, the LGBT community today faces much discrimination and adversity. Many think the problem lies within society itself, and often enough that may be the case. Society holds preconceptions and prejudice of the LGBT community, though not always due to actual hatred of the LGBT community, but rather through lack of knowledge and poor media portrayal.