Iran-backed Hezbollah launched a drone strike on RAF Akrotiri just after midnight on 2 March. Damage was minimal and no one was injured. I live nearby and heard nothing at the time, though I did hear aircraft about 25 minutes later.

I only learned of the attack the next morning. Curious about its roots, I looked into Iran’s history and found, with some help from a friend, that much of today’s turmoil traces back to decades of foreign interference…

The coup that rewrote Iran’s destiny

In the early 1950s, Iran stood at a crossroads – one that might have led to a durable parliamentary democracy. Instead, it became the stage for one of the most consequential covert operations of the Cold War, a plot that toppled an elected leader and helped shape the turbulent Middle East we know today.

By 1953, Iran operated largely as a parliamentary constitutional monarchy. Power was not absolute in the hands of the Shah; it was contested and negotiated in the Majlis, the national parliament, which possessed the authority to appoint prime ministers and wielded genuine legislative influence.

Into this political arena stepped Mohammad Mosaddegh.

Mosaddegh and Iran’s fight to nationalise oil

A patrician reformer and member of the Moderate Socialists’ Party, Mosaddegh rose to the premiership in 1951 after winning a decisive vote in the Majlis and had the support of the Shah.

But the democratic vote in the Majlis election was flawed. The voting process was stopped by Mosaddegh after enough MPs were elected to form a parliamentary quorum (79 out of 136). The decision is viewed as manipulation, because Mosaddegh meant to prevent opposition candidates taking seats in the rural areas. Consequently, the highly organized Tudeh Party (a major Marxist-Leninist communist party) failed to win a single seat, despite receiving the second-highest number of votes.

Mosaddegh’s political mission was simple but explosive: Iran’s vast oil reserves, he argued, should enrich the Iranian people rather than flow into the coffers of the British-owned Anglo-Iranian Oil Company (AIOC), later known as BP.

Nationalisation followed, which resulted in the formation of the National Iranian Oil Company (NIOC.) Tudeh Party members supported the move.

The 1953 coup in Iran: CIA and MI6’s covert operation

For Winston Churchill, the UK Prime Minister at the time, the move was intolerable. Britain had long treated Iranian oil as a strategic asset underpinning its post-war economy. Churchill was determined not to lose it. When diplomatic pressure and economic sanctions failed to reverse Mosaddegh’s decision, Britain turned to covert means.

MI6 began plotting his removal and enlisted the help of the United States and, in 1953, the CIA joined and quickly lead the operation. What followed was a carefully orchestrated campaign of political sabotage: propaganda, the bribery of officials, and the mobilisation of paid protesters designed to destabilise Mosaddegh’s government.

Their efforts culminated in a coup that forced prime minister Mosaddegh from power in August 1953.

(Decades later, the United States would publicly acknowledge its role. In 2013, during the presidency of Barack Obama, American officials formally confirmed that the CIA ran the operation as part of US foreign policy, which included funding demonstrators and bribing key figures to bring down Iran’s elected government.)

Th political sabotage and riots by paid protesters against Mossadegh cemented the beginning of unrestrained US domination and the fading of British influence in Iran.

The Shah’s return and the rise of authoritarian rule in Iran

The coup restored monarchical power to Shah Mohammad Reza Pahlavi, who imprisoned Mosaddegh for three years followed by life-long house arrest, and led to a 50-50 oil revenue split with Western firms.

What followed was not a revival of constitutional balance but the consolidation of authoritarian rule. The Shah’s regime relied on sweeping surveillance, censorship and political repression. Dissidents – whether communist, socialist, nationalist or religious – were targeted by the feared secret police, SAVAK. Arrests, torture and imprisonment became tools of governance.

For many Iranians, the promise of parliamentary democracy had been replaced by a pro-Western autocracy sustained by foreign backing.

Ayatollah Khomeini and the end of Iran’s monarchy

By the late 1970s, resentment had reached boiling point. Years of repression, vast inequalities in society and political exclusion fuelled mass protests that ultimately coalesced around a powerful religious figure in exile: Ayatollah Ruhollah Khomeini.

In 1979, the Shah fled Iran.

The Iranian Revolution swept away the monarchy and replaced it with a radically different order. Khomeini returned to Tehran to tumultuous welcoming crowds. A fledgling multi-party parliamentary democracy had been expected, but by late 1980 Khomeini’s Islamic Revolutionary Party had systematically banished, closed down or eliminated all political opposition.

A referendum sealed the establishment of the Islamic Republic, transforming Iran from a Western-aligned monarchy into the Islamic theocracy that endures today.

Most recently Iran’s security forces acted to suppress widespread public dissent across the country. They massacred many thousands of protesters. Estimates of the death toll ranged from 7,007 to upwards of 36,500.

Iran–West relations after the 1953 coup

More than seven decades after the coup against Mosaddegh, historians and analysts still debate its legacy. Yet one fact remains difficult to escape: the decision by Western powers to remove a quasi-elected Iranian leader profoundly altered the country’s political trajectory.

Relations between Iran and the West have been shaped by a cycle of confrontation, intervention and retaliation. Tensions have played out through sanctions, covert operations and military pressure from the West, while Iran has answered with regional proxy networks, missile strikes and attacks on Western interests.

In June 2025, the US and Israel attacked Iranian nuclear and military sites, later claiming that the Iranians had been trying to rebuild its nuclear programme and develop missiles capable of delivering nuclear weapons.

Although negotiations between US and Iran appeared to be making progress, on 27 February 2026 Trump said he was “not happy” with the way the talks were going.

Hours later, the US and Israel began launched a massive pre-emptive military attack on Iran, with missiles, drones, and airstrikes targeting Iranian missile bases, air defences, military facilities, and its senior leadership.

Iran has responded with missile and drone strikes against U.S. bases and regional targets, escalating the conflict into a wider regional confrontation involving states that host US military bases as well as shipping through the vital Strait of Hormuz trade route.

What began as a struggle over oil ended by reshaping a nation and continues to cast a long shadow over relations between Iran and the West and will probably do so for many years to come.