Except we're not talking about the Pahlavi dynasty, we're talking about the Islamic Republic. You're trying to draw some direct causal link from the '56 coup to the '79 revolution, just because that's the conclusion your preconceptions demand, facts be damned.

Why stop there? France engineered and supported an anti-British coup in the underdeveloped but resource rich American colonies in the late 18th century, setting in motion the train of events that led to the Islamic Revolution!

And the Polish General Kosciusko fought valiantly for the Americans, on account of the partitions of Poland. Were it not for those partitions, he'd have been at home! So it is the Austrian, Prussian, and Russian Empires - the partitioning powers of 18th century Poland-Lithuania - to blame for the Islamic Revolution!

But why did Austria desire to get involved in the partitions of Poland, and what long game was it playing vis-a-vis the Shiite scholars of then-Persia...

Hold up, we need a corkboard and some pins. Where's Pepe Silvia in all of this? Who has the Jack Ruby?

You can draw the bowstring all the way to Mars if you want to, but the only people to blame for the monstrous regime of Iran are the people who put that regime in place, and that certainly wasn't the Americans. No amount of "well this encouraged that, which caused blowback to this, leading to that" Substack-level motivated reasoning is going to change that fact.

The gay kids being executed by Iran are not cursing the name of America, or Empress Maria Theresa of Austria, they're cursing the ghouls who are hanging them, who are their countrymen.

> but the only people to blame for the monstrous regime of Iran are the people who put that regime in place, and that certainly wasn't the Americans

Let’s put it this way: if we where to stack rank all the countries that where directly involved in the creation of the modern Iranian regime, Iran would be first and America would be second.

This isn’t some theory, it’s a pretty clear/succinct cause and effect.

It’s not clever, patriotic or even a good take to ignore that and hide behind “well it’s their fault for having a regime change orchestrated by us that installed an unpopular authoritarian monarch who curtained freedoms because he would oppose Russian interests and support western ones, ultimately leading to someone worse taking power after decades of human rights abuse supported by the west in return for continued alignment”.

Yes, ultimately the person who pulls the trigger is responsible, but the person who gave them the gun and told them where to shoot is also responsible.

That's quite a shift from your earlier post that US conduct "led to" the Islamic Republic, and a more measured and reasonable take. But in as far as the US had a secondary role in recent Iranian affairs, it was a very distant second to the Iranians themselves. It does the Iranians no favours to edit them out of their own history.

The thing is, it's very easy to get caught up in this kind of rhetoric and lose a lot of perspective. This is the kind of logical chain that leads people to end up deciding that Germany had "legitimate grievances" about the Treaty of Versailles and end up in some pretty dark places. Not saying that's you in the slightest, just noting the problems with that rhetorical style. It's fast, somewhat lazy, and greatly lacking in perspective.

If there's something I think we can agree on, the US role in '53 (corrected date) is nothing to be proud of, any more than *points generally towards the Strait of Hormuz* whatever the hell this is.