The world doesn't trust Iran because it has memory-holed past U.S. aggressions:
1953 - CIA-led coup overthrows democratically elected prime minister of Iran, Mohammad Mosaddegh; installs U.S.-friendly Shah, authoritarian monarch.
1957 - SAVAK (secret police) is established with CIA and Israeli (Mossad) assistance; this becomes the Shah’s primary tool of repression.
1979 - U.S. first imposes sanctions after the Shah is overthrown; these undergo a major expansion in 1995 under Clinton.
1980-1988 - U.S. backs Saddam Hussein in Iran-Iraq War, costing hundreds of thousands of Iranian lives
1988 - USS Vincennes “mistakenly” shoots down civilian Iran Air Flight 655 on July 3 over the Strait of Hormuz. All 290 aboard are killed, including 254 Iranians and 66 children. The US calls it a tragic error in a combat zone; Iran views it as deliberate.
2025-2026 - US and Israeli strikes on Iran (starting late February 2025/early 2026) cause thousands of Iranian deaths, including a missile strike that hit the Shajareh Tayyebeh girls’ elementary school in southern Iran, costing 156 lives, 120 of them schoolchildren.
~ Kevin Duffy, tweet, April 28, 2026
