US-Iran Relations

For four decades after Iran's 1979 revolution, the US and Iran fought tanker battles, proxy attacks, and a covert cyberwar but never went to direct war until 2025.

To counter Iran's 1979 revolution, Saudi Arabia poured oil wealth into spreading strict Sunni Islam worldwide and turned its rivalry with Iran into a Sunni-Shia contest.

Iran held 52 Americans hostage for 444 days, then released them minutes after Ronald Reagan was sworn in to replace Jimmy Carter as president.

In 1953, the CIA secretly funded two Tehran mobs to fight each other, part of a plot to topple Iran's elected prime minister.

The US gave Iran its first nuclear reactor in 1967, fueled with weapons-grade uranium, on a campus that later hosted weekly 'Death to America' chants.

Ayatollah Ali Khamenei, the longest-serving leader of Iran's Islamic Republic, spent nearly four decades defying the US and Israel until their strikes killed him in 2026.

Created to protect Iran's revolution from a coup, the Revolutionary Guard grew into a parallel army, a business empire, and a sponsor of militias abroad.

In the school year before the Islamic Revolution, Iranians were the largest group of international students in the US, about 18% of all foreign students.

Watch CBS News report that Iran's shah had fled the country in January 1979, ending a Pahlavi dynasty that had ruled since 1925.

Sunni and Shia Muslims lived peacefully together for centuries, but Saudi Arabia and Iran have used Islam's 1,400-year-old split to fuel their regional rivalry.