The Contemporary History of Iran - Part 14: “America & Iran before 1979”

“America & Iran Before 1979” - Part 14 of the Roqe Media series, The Contemporary History of Iran. Today, we know America and Iran to be publicly declared enemies that engage in verbal saber-rattling, threats, sanctions, and a tenuous on-and-off again nuclear deal. But what about the years before the rise of the Islamic Republic? If we look at the totality of the relationship between the United States and Iran before 1979, what might we find? Historian and Executive Director of the Middle East Center at the University of Pennsylvania, Dr. John Ghazvinian, author of the new book, “America and Iran: A History from 1720 to the Present,” joins Jian Ghomeshi from Philadelphia to detail that the answer seems to be the story of two nations who engaged in decades of mutual respect, admiration and overt cooperation all the way from the 18th Century through to, say, very warm relations between the last Shah of Iran and President Richard Nixon.