<![CDATA[In Vienna, Austria, representatives from Britain, China, France, Germany, Russia and the USA are currently negotiating the terms of a nuclear agreement with representatives from Iran. The negotiations relate to a twelve year long dispute over Iran's atomic program. The meetings currently being held in Austria are aimed at reaching an agreement where Iran limits its nuclear program in exchange for the other six negotiators lifting trade sanctions on the country. Although all sides in the negotiations claim that progress has been made, for the third time in two weeks they have had to apply for an extension, with an Iranian official anonymously telling journalists that negotiators from the 'West' were constantly changing and complicating their position, obstructing the path to an agreement. The long dispute over Iran's nuclear capability, which the summit in Vienna hopes to resolve, is just one facet of the tense recent history of relations between Iran and the 'West'. Since the 1950s, overtures towards positive diplomatic relations have been contrasted, sometimes simultaneously, with suspicion, clandestine activity and open hostility from both sides. As far back as the reign of Shah Abbas in the seventeenth century, a complex political relationship existed between the kingdom of Iran and Western Europe. A brutal, authoritarian leader who was also unique in the region for his tolerance of Christians - to the extent he funded the construction a Cathedral for Armenians living in the Iranian Kingdom -Abbas attempted to form military alliances with the likes of Britain and France against the Ottoman Empire. Although Iranian and British forces combined to attack and remove the Portuguese presence on the island of Hormuz, an alliance against the Ottomans never materialised. Conflicts among the Western European nations were a pressing distraction which took priority over involvement in events in the East. As Brian Whittaker suggested in a 2009 article in the Guardian, this failure to unite against the expanding Ottoman Empire may have formed ideas of a "duplicitous west" among Iranians. In the twentieth century, the relationship between Iran and the West reached its greatest complexity. The USA and Britain took steps to manipulate Iranian politics, fueling accusations in Iran that the West was attempting to control the country, while the proclamation of the Iranian Republic in 1979 signaled a severe breakdown in Iran's diplomatic relations with Europe and the USA. In 1953 Iran's democratically elected premier, Mohammad Mossadeq, sought to nationalise the country's hugely lucrative oil industry. From his appointment in 1951 he quickly turned on British oil concerns in the country, calling for their expropriation. Both British and US intelligence services watched the developing situation with concern. In the middle of the Cold War period, there were genuine fears that Mossadeq could lead Iran into the sphere of the Soviet Union. Just as importantly, both countries relied on Iranian oil fields for a cheap supply of the increasingly precious commodity. The CIA and British intelligence services began to form alliances with pro-Western and pro-Shah elements in Iran in the hope of usurping Mossadeq. A first attempt at a coup d'etat was thwarted in 1952 when Iranian citizens took to the streets to protest the overthrow of their democratically elected Premier. The intelligence services continued to build their influence in Iran through dubious means, and in 1953 the country's military, with financial and political support from the CIA, overthrew Mossadeq. It wasn't until 1953 that the CIA publicly admitted to the role it had played in the coup d'etat. The British Foreign Office, at least officially, continues to deny any involvement. For more than twenty five years after 1953 western governments largely cooperated with Iran, providing technical and financial assistance. In 1957 the USA signed a civil nuclear cooperation deal with the Shah, meaning the United States would provide direct assistance in the creation of nuclear power plants in Iran. It is important to note that Iran's role in this collaboration was decided by its autocratic government, one which was not representative of the country's people. Decades of resentment against the regime of the Shah, and what was seen as Western meddling in Iran, exploded in 1979 with the Iranian Revolution. Months of demonstrations against the Shah's rule and the increasing influence of the West eventually led to the Shah fleeing the country. The publicly popular religious leader, the Ayatollah Khomeini, returned from exile to take power, and on the 1st April 1979 the Islamic Republic of Iran was proclaimed. The 1979 US Embassy Hostage Crisis in Tehran, and the bombing at the US embassy in Beirut in 1983, coincided with the USA cutting its diplomatic ties with Iran and lending its support to Iraq in the devastating Iran-Iraq war. On the other hand, the 1985 Iran-Contra Affair saw the Reagan administration illegally selling weapons to the Iranian government in exchange for assistance freeing American hostages in the Lebanon, reinforcing the trend that relations between Iran and the West were rarely transparent. A series of naval skirmishes in the Persian Gulf culminated in the USS Vincennes shooting down an Iranian passenger airline in 1988. In the 1990s, the US accused the Iranian government of having sponsored terrorist attacks around the globe, from Argentina to Saudi Arabia. A constant theme throughout was mistrust, Western governments regularly associated Iran with terrorism (to the extent President George Bush Jr. placed it in an ‘Axis of Evil’ with North Korea and Iraq in 2003), while past interference in Iranian affairs made it easy for the most conservative of Iran’s political and religious leaders to advocate cynicism of the West, particularly in regard to the USA. Following decades of tension and fractured diplomacy, representatives from the West and Iran are attempting to negotiate a compromise on Iran’s nuclear program. The negotiations could herald a comparative thawing of relations between Iran and the West, when the history of conspiracy, aggression, and conflict that has formed between the leaders of the involved parties is considered. Put in this context, the current obstructions to an agreement are perhaps easier to understand. Image courtesy of Wikimedia Commons user: Fabienkhan]]>
History of the Relationship Between Iran and the West
