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Comment by jacquesm | Hacker News Reader

I think the US/Iran resentment goes back a bit further, roughly to the time that Iran took a whole pile of US hostages that were held for more than a year.

That's not the sort of thing that is easily forgotten and it is one of the cornerstones of West/Islam conflict.

After that it was mostly a downward spiral, with some recent relaxation on both sides of the line.

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> I think the US/Iran resentment goes back a bit further, roughly to the time that Iran took a whole pile of US hostages that were held for more than a year.

But that didn't happen in a vacuum either. The U.S. engineered or facilitated the overthrow of a mostly democratic Iranian leader in 1953, and put in his place a mini-dynasty of dictators who brutally oppresssed Iranians, with U.S. support, until that day in 1979. I'm not saying the Iranians should have taken those innocent Americans hostage but they didn't pick the American embassy and take hostages in a random act of violence.

... and I'm sure the 1953 coup didn't happen in a vacuum either.

I said 'US/Iran' resentment. The 'Iran/US' resentment dates back even further, and if you trace it all to its roots you end somewhere in the 1700's or so, but then it was still (mostly) the UK and not the US.

> I said 'US/Iran' resentment

If you mean "US/Iran resentment" means "US resentment of Iran but not Iranian resentment of the US", I now understand what you intended. Unfortunately, your syntax is undocumented and not defined in the language standard. :)

Also, the overthrow of Mossadegh was fundamentally about communism. Eisenhower featured that Mossadegh's policies would lead Iran towards communism. (The British were the ones who got that ball rolling; they wanted to depose Mossadegh for other reasons, mostly related to oil, but were not in a position to do anything with him.)

That was a while after we deposed their democratically elected leader.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/1953_Iranian_coup_d%27%C3%A9ta...

Yes, I'm aware of that. But for the US that was not a reason to hate Iran (then Persia). (Of course it may not have helped the other side of the balance)

That's certainly a good point, but they can do little to change their history, other than plead for forgiveness, which the state is unlikely to do, as that is now part of their origin myth.[1]

[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Origin_myth

Or even further back to the time when CIA destroyed the democracy in Iran, and hasn't stopped interfering since ...

The US was also big time friend of the previous guy...

They all but installed him.

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