- 2 days ago
For over a century, Iran and the United States shared a relationship built on trust, education, and cooperation. American doctors, teachers, and financial advisers were once welcomed across Iran as symbols of fairness rather than empire. But a secret coup in 1953 shattered that trust and helped create one of the most hostile rivalries in the modern world.
This documentary traces the forgotten history behind the conflict between Iran and America — from early friendship and the rise of oil politics to Operation Ajax, the fall of Mohammad Mossadegh, the rule of the Shah, the 1979 Islamic Revolution, and the hostage crisis that transformed global perceptions forever.
Through archival history, political intrigue, and personal stories, this film explores how intervention, fear, and decades of escalation turned two former allies into bitter enemies.
The story begins long before the chants of “Death to America.”
It begins with friendship.
This documentary traces the forgotten history behind the conflict between Iran and America — from early friendship and the rise of oil politics to Operation Ajax, the fall of Mohammad Mossadegh, the rule of the Shah, the 1979 Islamic Revolution, and the hostage crisis that transformed global perceptions forever.
Through archival history, political intrigue, and personal stories, this film explores how intervention, fear, and decades of escalation turned two former allies into bitter enemies.
The story begins long before the chants of “Death to America.”
It begins with friendship.
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LearningTranscript
00:03November 4, 1979
00:05The crowd surged forward through the gates of the American embassy in Tehran.
00:11Smoke drifted above the compound walls as young Iranian students climbed over broken fences and shattered windows.
00:18Some carried portraits of Ayatollah Khomeini high above their heads.
00:23Others gripped ropes, chains, or photographs of men long dead.
00:27Inside the embassy, American staff scrambled through corridors, feeding classified documents into shredders as the chants outside grew louder.
00:37Death to America
00:39The words echoed through the streets.
00:42For millions watching around the world, this became the image of Iran.
00:46An angry revolution, a burning embassy, blindfolded American hostages paraded before cameras.
00:53It looked like pure hatred, ancient hatred.
00:57But it wasn't ancient at all.
00:59Because only decades earlier, Americans walking through Iranian cities were welcomed as friends.
01:05In 1905, when an American doctor died in the city of Urmia after spending his life treating Iranian patients,
01:13more than 10,000 people attended his funeral.
01:16Muslims, Christians, Assyrians, Persians.
01:19They wept openly in the streets for an American.
01:23For over a century, Iran and the United States had shared something almost impossible to imagine today.
01:29Trust, respect, even admiration.
01:33So what happened?
01:34How did two nations that once viewed each other with affection become locked in one of the most bitter rivalries
01:40in modern history?
01:41The answer begins long before the hostage crisis.
01:45Long before the Islamic Revolution.
01:48It begins with empires, oil, and a coup that changed the Middle East forever.
01:54To understand why the streets of Tehran erupted in rage in 1979,
01:59you first have to understand what Iran once feared far more than America.
02:04The British Empire.
02:06And Imperial Russia.
02:08Throughout the 1800s, Persia, as Iran was then known,
02:13stood trapped between great powers that saw the country not as a nation, but as territory to be controlled.
02:20To the north, the Russian Empire pushed steadily southward,
02:24swallowing Persian lands after a series of disastrous wars.
02:28To the south, the British Empire tightened its grip through trade, finance, and political influence,
02:34determined to protect the route to India, the crown jewel of the empire.
02:38Persia was weak.
02:40Its rulers were divided.
02:42Its treasury was collapsing.
02:44Foreign powers exploited all of it.
02:46Russian officials loaned money to Persian shahs, binding the monarchy deeper into dependence.
02:52British businessmen secured exclusive rights to industries, trade routes, and infrastructure.
02:57Telegraph lines, banking systems, customs revenues, piece by piece, outside powers embedded themselves inside the country.
03:06And ordinary Persians watched it happen.
03:09Watched their government grow weaker.
03:11Watched foreign powers grow richer.
03:13Watched their country slowly lose control over its own future.
03:16Then came the humiliation that many Iranians would never forget.
03:22In 1907, Great Britain and Russia signed an agreement dividing Persia into spheres of influence.
03:29The Persians themselves were never consulted.
03:32The north would belong largely to Russia.
03:35The south would fall under British dominance.
03:38And the center would remain neutral.
03:40An entire nation divided on paper by outsiders.
03:43For many Persians, it was proof that the old empires viewed Iran not as a sovereign country, but as a
03:51prize.
03:51And yet during these same decades, another foreign presence entered Persia.
03:56A much smaller one.
03:57Americans.
03:58Not soldiers.
03:59Not oil executives.
04:01Not imperial governors.
04:02Missionaries.
04:03Teachers.
04:04Doctors.
04:05Beginning in the 1830s, American Presbyterian missionaries arrived in northwestern Persia,
04:11especially around the city of Urmia.
04:14They built schools, hospitals, and medical centers in communities that had little access to modern education or health care.
04:22Unlike the British and Russians, the Americans carried no colonies nearby.
04:26No armies occupied Persian territory.
04:29No American empire loomed over the region.
04:33To many Iranians, the Americans seemed different.
04:36One of the most respected among them was Dr. Joseph Plum Cochran.
04:41Born in Iran to missionary parents, Cochran spoke Persian fluently.
04:46He studied medicine in the United States before returning to Urmia, where he founded Iran's first modern medical school in
04:521879.
04:53He trained local doctors, treated the sick regardless of religion or ethnicity, and spent decades working among the people of
05:01the region.
05:01When he died in 1905 at just 50 years, old grief spread far beyond the Christian communities connected to the
05:09missions.
05:10More than 10,000 people attended his funeral.
05:13The crowds filled the streets of Urmia.
05:15Muslims stood beside Christians, Assyrians beside Persians.
05:20For them, this American doctor had not come to conquer their country.
05:25He had come to help it.
05:26And for decades, that distinction mattered.
05:29In the eyes of many Iranians, America was not another empire.
05:34It was the outsider.
05:36The distant nation that arrived without demanding control.
05:40But history was already beginning to move beneath the surface.
05:44Because soon, buried under Iranian soil, the world would discover something powerful enough to transform friendship into suspicion.
05:52And suspicion into catastrophe.
05:55By the beginning of the 20th century, Persia was exhausted.
05:59Its economy was unstable.
06:01Its government was deeply in debt.
06:03And foreign influence reached into nearly every corner of the state.
06:07To many Persians, it felt as though their country was slowly being suffocated.
06:12And yet, in the middle of this crisis, one nation still seemed untouched by the corruption and imperial ambition that
06:20defined the others.
06:21The United States.
06:23Unlike Britain and Russia, America had not seized Persian territory.
06:28It had not stationed armies inside the country.
06:31It had not forced unequal treaties onto the monarchy.
06:34In fact, many Persian reformers believed the Americans might be the only foreign power capable of helping the country recover
06:41without exploiting it.
06:42That belief became so strong that, in 1911, the Persian parliament made an extraordinary decision.
06:50They invited an American to help run the nation's finances.
06:54His name was W. Morgan Schuster.
06:58A former U.S. Treasury official, Schuster arrived in Tehran carrying what many Persians saw as their final hope for
07:06independence.
07:07The country's finances were in chaos.
07:10Foreign debt and outside pressure had crippled the government's ability to function.
07:14Schuster's mission was simple in theory.
07:16Restore order.
07:18Modernize tax collection.
07:19Stabilize the economy.
07:21Reduce foreign manipulation.
07:23But the moment he began challenging the interests of Russia and Britain, powerful enemies moved against him.
07:30Russian officials threatened military action.
07:33British diplomats pressured the government behind closed doors.
07:36Both empires understood exactly what was at stake.
07:40An independent Persia was dangerous.
07:42Because a Persia capable of governing itself could no longer be controlled.
07:47Schuster later described the experience with bitterness.
07:50He believed foreign powers deliberately sabotaged the reforms before they had any chance to succeed.
07:56After only months in Tehran, he was forced out.
07:59But despite the failure of the mission, something important remained behind.
08:03The perception of America itself.
08:07To many Iranians, the Americans still appeared fundamentally different from the old empires surrounding them.
08:13And that perception only deepened in the decades that followed.
08:18After the First World War, Persia once again faced economic collapse.
08:23Once again, the government turned not to London or Moscow, but to Washington.
08:27Another American advisor arrived, Arthur Millspaugh, an economist tasked with reorganizing the country's shattered financial system.
08:37When he entered Tehran in 1922, one Iranian newspaper described him in dramatic terms.
08:44You are the last doctor called to the deathbed of a sick person.
08:48The message reflected both desperation and trust.
08:53Even Reza Shah, the powerful ruler who distrusted most foreigners, referred to the American mission as Persia's last hope.
09:01Not because the Americans were perfect.
09:03Not because every mission succeeded.
09:06But because, unlike the great empires surrounding Iran, Americans still seemed uninterested in domination.
09:12For decades, this image endured.
09:16American schools spread across the country.
09:19Hospitals treated Iranian patients.
09:21Iranian students traveled to the United States for education.
09:25Diplomatic relations remained warm.
09:27At a time when Britain and Russia were widely feared,
09:31America became associated with opportunity, modernization, and fairness.
09:35It was a remarkable foundation for friendship between two countries separated by oceans, language, and culture.
09:42But beneath all of it, another force was beginning to reshape the world.
09:47Oil.
09:48And once oil transformed Iran from a struggling regional kingdom
09:52into one of the most strategically valuable nations on Earth,
09:55the era of trust would begin to disappear.
09:59In 1908, British prospectors struck oil in southwestern Persia.
10:04At first, few people understood what it would mean.
10:08Within decades, it would change the modern world.
10:11Ships, factories, cars, armies.
10:13The industrial age ran on oil,
10:16and suddenly, Persia possessed one of the most valuable resources on Earth.
10:21The British moved quickly.
10:23Soon, the Anglo-Persian oil company secured enormous control over Iranian oil production.
10:30Refineries rose from the desert around Abaddon,
10:33transforming the region into one of the largest oil centers in the world.
10:37But while British power expanded,
10:39ordinary Iranians saw very little of the wealth flowing beneath their own soil.
10:44The profits largely flowed outward.
10:46To London, to foreign shareholders, to the British Empire itself.
10:51For many Iranians, the arrangement became a symbol of national humiliation.
10:57British engineers and managers lived in segregated compounds
11:00with electricity, running water, swimming pools, and modern housing.
11:05Meanwhile, many Iranian workers nearby lived in poverty
11:08under brutal working conditions and crushing heat.
11:11The contrast was impossible to ignore.
11:14Oil was making Britain stronger.
11:16But it was not making Iran free.
11:19And as the decades passed,
11:21resentment began to spread through every layer of Iranian society.
11:25Students, workers, nationalists, religious leaders.
11:29Different groups disagreed on many things.
11:31But increasingly, they agreed on one central belief.
11:35Iran's resources were being controlled by outsiders.
11:38Then, in the middle of this growing anger,
11:41one man emerged who seemed capable of changing everything.
11:44Mohamed Mossadegh.
11:45Elderly, emotional, aristocratic, and fiercely nationalistic.
11:51Mossadegh did not look like a revolutionary.
11:53He often appeared in public wearing pajamas beneath a blanket,
11:56speaking dramatically from his bed during periods of illness.
12:00Foreign observers sometimes mocked him as eccentric.
12:03But millions of Iranians saw something else.
12:06A man willing to stand up to the British Empire.
12:09By the late 1940s, public outrage over oil revenues had reached dangerous levels.
12:16Despite possessing vast reserves,
12:18Iran received only a small fraction of the profits generated by its own resources.
12:23To Mossadegh, this was intolerable.
12:27He argued that no independent nation could survive while foreigners controlled its wealth.
12:31And across Iran, crowds rallied behind him.
12:36In 1951, Mohamed Mossadegh became prime minister through democratic constitutional processes.
12:42Within weeks, he made the decision that would alter the course of Middle Eastern history.
12:47He nationalized the Anglo-Iranian Oil Company.
12:50In Iran, celebrations erupted.
12:53For many citizens, it felt like the country was finally reclaiming its sovereignty after generations of foreign domination.
13:00But in London, the reaction was fury.
13:04British leaders viewed the nationalization not merely as an economic loss,
13:08but as a direct threat to imperial power itself.
13:12Because if Iran succeeded, other nations might follow.
13:15And Britain had no intention of losing control quietly.
13:19There was only one problem.
13:20The British Empire was weakening after the Second World War.
13:24It could no longer impose its will alone.
13:27So this time, Britain turned to a newer superpower.
13:31The United States.
13:33At first, the United States hesitated.
13:36Many American officials still viewed Iran through the older lens of friendship and reform.
13:41Some even admired Mossadegh personally.
13:44He was educated in Europe, deeply nationalist, and fiercely opposed to colonial control.
13:50But the world of the early 1950s was no longer shaped only by empire.
13:55It was shaped by fear.
13:58The Cold War had begun.
14:00China had fallen to communism.
14:02The Korean War was raging.
14:04And in Washington, officials increasingly viewed every international crisis through one terrifying question.
14:10Could the Soviets gain influence there next?
14:13Britain understood exactly how to use those fears.
14:17British intelligence officials warned the Americans that political instability inside Iran could eventually open the door to communist influence.
14:26Mossadegh himself was not a communist.
14:29But Iran's Communist Today Party had grown more active during the crisis.
14:33To American policymakers already obsessed with Soviet expansion, that was enough.
14:38Slowly, the argument began to change.
14:42This was no longer presented as a dispute over oil.
14:45It became a battle for the future of the Cold War.
14:49In 1953, the CIA and British MY6 launched a covert operation to overthrow Mossadegh.
14:58Its codename was Operation Ajax.
15:01The man chosen to help direct it was Kermit Roosevelt Jr., grandson of President Theodore Roosevelt.
15:08He arrived in Tehran carrying cash, political contacts, and a plan designed to destabilize the Iranian government from within.
15:16The operation relied on propaganda, bribery, and manufactured chaos.
15:22Newspapers were secretly funded to attack Mossadegh.
15:24Politicians were pressured, military officers were bribed, street gangs were paid to organize unrest across Tehran.
15:33Rumors spread through the city.
15:35Some claimed Mossadegh wanted to abolish the monarchy.
15:38Others warned he would hand Iran to the communists.
15:41Fear multiplied faster than facts.
15:44And gradually, Tehran began to boil.
15:46At first, the operation nearly collapsed.
15:50Iran's Shah, Mohammad Reza Pahlavi, panicked and fled the country after an initial attempt to remove Mossadegh failed.
15:57For a moment, it appeared the coup had been defeated.
16:01Then, the streets exploded.
16:03On August 19, 1953, pro-Shah crowds, military units, hired agitators, and anti-Mossadegh forces surged through Tehran.
16:13Gunfire echoed through the capital.
16:16Buildings burned.
16:17Tanks rolled into the streets.
16:19Mossadegh's home came under attack as fighting spread across the city.
16:23By the end of the day, the democratically elected prime minister of Iran was overthrown.
16:28The Shah returned to power shortly afterward.
16:31In Washington and London, the operation was celebrated as a triumph of covert strategy.
16:37A dangerous nationalist had been removed.
16:40Western influence was secured.
16:42Oil interests were protected.
16:44And, in the minds of American officials, communist expansion had been prevented.
16:49But inside Iran, the memory formed very differently.
16:53For millions of Iranians, 1953 became proof that foreign powers would never allow their country true independence.
17:01The United States, once seen as the honest outsider, had joined the same imperial game Persians had feared for generations.
17:09And, unlike many political crises, this one did not fade with time.
17:15Parents told their children about it.
17:17Students studied it.
17:19Religious leaders invoked it.
17:20Revolutionaries would later build entire movements around it.
17:23Because, in the eyes of many Iranians, the coup was not just the removal of a prime minister.
17:29It was the theft of a nation's future.
17:32And the consequences were only beginning.
17:34After the coup, Mohammed Reza Shah returned to Iran, not as a weak monarch, but as the dominant force in
17:42the country.
17:43And behind him stood the United States.
17:46Over the next two decades, Washington poured enormous military and economic support into Iran.
17:53American advisers flooded into the country.
17:56Weapons contracts expanded.
17:58Oil revenues surged.
18:00To American officials, the Shah became one of the most important allies in the Middle East.
18:05Reliable, anti-communist, modernizing, a pillar of stability in a dangerous region.
18:11And on the surface, Iran appeared to be transforming rapidly.
18:15New highways stretched across the country.
18:17Factories expanded.
18:19Universities opened.
18:20Tehran grew into a sprawling modern capital filled with neon lights, luxury hotels, and Western influence.
18:28By the 1970s, the Shah envisioned Iran as a rising global power.
18:34He purchased advanced fighter jets and tanks from the United States.
18:38Grand military parades displayed the strength of the monarchy to the world.
18:43Newspapers celebrated modernization, industrial growth, and technological progress.
18:48To many outsiders, Iran looked successful, even glamorous.
18:53But beneath that image, fear was spreading.
18:56Because the Shah understood something fundamental, his power rested partly on foreign support.
19:01And many Iranians had never forgiven the coup that restored him.
19:05So, dissent had to be controlled.
19:08Opposition parties were weakened or banned.
19:11Critics disappeared into prisons.
19:13Journalists faced censorship.
19:15Student movements came under surveillance.
19:17And at the center of this growing system stood SAVAC.
19:21Iran's feared secret police.
19:23Created with American and Israeli assistance,
19:26SAVAC became one of the most powerful intelligence organizations in the Middle East.
19:31Its agents monitored universities, infiltrated political groups,
19:36intercepted communications, and hunted opponents of the regime.
19:40For many Iranians, the name itself became synonymous with fear.
19:45Stories spread of interrogations, torture chambers, midnight arrests,
19:50people vanishing without explanation.
19:52Some of those stories were exaggerated.
19:54Many were not.
19:55And the repression touched nearly every segment of society.
19:59Secular liberals resented dictatorship.
20:02Religious conservatives condemned westernization.
20:05Leftist groups denounced American influence.
20:08Even ordinary citizens increasingly viewed the monarchy as distant, corrupt,
20:13and protected by foreign powers.
20:15At the same time, the Shah pushed aggressively to modernize Iranian society from above.
20:21Land reforms disrupted traditional rural life.
20:24Western fashion and culture spread through major cities.
20:27Ancient monarchy was celebrated with extravagant ceremonies costing enormous sums of money.
20:33In 1971, the Shah held a lavish celebration marking 2,500 years of Persian monarchy.
20:42Foreign dignitaries dined beneath enormous tents in the desert,
20:46while imported food arrived from Paris and luxury decorations filled the celebration grounds.
20:51For supporters, it symbolized Iran's return to greatness.
20:56For critics, it symbolized a ruler increasingly disconnected from his own people.
21:01And everywhere, one memory refused to disappear.
21:05The coup lingered like a shadow over the monarchy.
21:09To many Iranians, the Shah was no longer simply a king.
21:13He was the ruler restored by foreign intervention.
21:16A monarch protected by Washington.
21:18An image his enemies would use relentlessly in the years ahead.
21:22Among the loudest critics was an exiled religious figure who denounced both the Shah
21:27and American influence with growing fury.
21:31Ayatollah Ruhollah Khomeini.
21:34At first, few outside Iran imagined he would one day overthrow the monarchy itself.
21:39But beneath the appearance of stability, pressure was building.
21:43And by the late 1970s, the system created after Operation Ajax was beginning to crack.
21:49By the late 1970s, Iran looked powerful from the outside.
21:54Oil money flooded the economy.
21:56The military was among the strongest in the Middle East.
21:59American weapons filled Iranian air bases.
22:02Western leaders praised the Shah as a modernizer and strategic ally.
22:06But beneath the surface, the country was beginning to fracture.
22:10Inflation surged.
22:12Corruption spread.
22:13The gap between rich and poor widened dramatically.
22:16And perhaps most dangerously of all,
22:19Millions of Iranians no longer feared the monarchy the way they once had.
22:24The protests began slowly.
22:27University students, religious demonstrators, intellectuals, workers.
22:32Then, funerals for killed protesters turned into larger protests themselves.
22:36Each cycle of violence created another wave of anger.
22:40Crowds grew larger.
22:41Government crackdowns became harsher.
22:43And across the country, one name echoed louder and louder.
22:47Khomeini.
22:49From exile, Ayatollah Ruhollah Khomeini smuggled speeches into Iran on cassette tapes.
22:54His messages spread through mosques, bazaars, and private homes.
22:58He condemned the Shah as a tyrant.
23:01He condemned corruption.
23:02And again and again, he condemned foreign influence, especially American influence.
23:08For many Iranians, the monarchy had become inseparable from the United States.
23:14American advisers surrounded the Shah.
23:17American weapons protected him.
23:18And in the background lingered the memory of 1953, the belief that Washington had once stolen Iran's democracy.
23:27By 1978, entire cities were erupting in unrest.
23:32Soldiers opened fire on demonstrators.
23:34Martial law failed to stop the protests.
23:37Strikes paralyzed the economy.
23:39Then came Black Friday.
23:41September 8, 1978.
23:43In Tehran's Jaleh Square, government troops fired into massive crowds of protesters.
23:49The exact death toll remains disputed to this day.
23:52But the psychological impact was devastating.
23:56Any remaining possibility of compromise between the monarchy and the opposition began to collapse.
24:01The Shah appeared increasingly isolated, increasingly uncertain, increasingly alone.
24:08Then, in January 1979, after months of chaos, Muhammad Reza Shah boarded a plane and left Iran.
24:17Many citizens poured into the streets celebrating.
24:20Others watched silently, uncertain what would come next.
24:24Some wept openly.
24:26Because even many who opposed the Shah feared what might replace him.
24:30Only weeks later, Ayatollah Khomeini returned to Iran from exile.
24:35The scenes were extraordinary.
24:37Millions flooded the streets of Tehran.
24:39Men climbed rooftops.
24:41Women threw flowers toward his convoy.
24:44Entire highways disappeared beneath human crowds stretching to the horizon.
24:49Within weeks, the monarchy collapsed.
24:51The Islamic Revolution had succeeded.
24:54But the crisis between Iran and the United States was only beginning.
24:58In November 1979, revolutionary students stormed the American embassy in Tehran.
25:05Officially, they claimed they feared another American-backed coup.
25:09Another Operation Ajax.
25:11Another attempt to restore foreign control over Iran.
25:14Inside the compound, diplomats were seized and held hostage.
25:1852 Americans would remain captive for 444 days.
25:24In the United States, the images became unforgettable.
25:28Blindfolded hostages burning flags.
25:31Crowds chanting, Death to America.
25:33For Americans, it felt shocking and irrational.
25:36How could an ally transform into an enemy so quickly?
25:41But inside Iran, many revolutionaries believed they were preventing history from repeating itself.
25:46The embassy itself became symbolic.
25:49Not merely a building.
25:51But a reminder of decades of foreign interference, humiliation, and betrayal.
25:56And from that moment forward, the relationship between Iran and the United States entered a new era.
26:02One defined no longer by friendship, but by mutual fear.
26:08The hostage crisis shattered what remained of the relationship between Iran and the United States.
26:14Diplomatic ties collapsed, sanctions followed, and the anger hardened on both sides.
26:20In America, Iran became associated with extremism, hostage-taking, and anti-American fury.
26:27In Iran, the United States became known simply as the Great Satan.
26:33The language grew harsher with every passing year.
26:36And soon, events across the Middle East turned that hostility into something far more dangerous.
26:43In 1980, only months after the revolution, Iraq invaded Iran under Saddam Hussein.
26:49The war that followed became one of the bloodiest conflicts of the late 20th century.
26:54Trenches stretched across the desert.
26:57Cities were bombed.
26:58Teenagers marched across minefields.
27:01Chemical weapons poisoned entire battlefields.
27:04Hundreds of thousands died.
27:06For many Iranians, the war reinforced a deep sense of isolation and betrayal.
27:12The United States officially tilted toward Iraq during the conflict,
27:16providing intelligence and strategic support to Saddam Hussein,
27:19despite growing evidence of chemical attacks against Iranian forces.
27:23Once again, many Iranians believed foreign powers were helping destroy their country.
27:29And once again, old memories resurfaced.
27:33The Shah, the embassy, the war.
27:36Each crisis layered itself on top of the last.
27:39Then came another shock.
27:42In July 1988, the USS Vansen mistakenly shot down Iran Air Flight 655 over the Persian Gulf.
27:50Two hundred and ninety civilians were killed.
27:53Among them were dozens of children.
27:56In the United States, the tragedy was framed as a terrible accident during a tense military confrontation.
28:02But in Iran, the downing of the passenger plane became another scar, added to decades of mistrust.
28:09Another example, many believed, of Iranian lives being treated as expendable.
28:13The Cold War eventually ended, but the hostility did not.
28:18Throughout the 1990s and 2000s, the two countries moved further apart.
28:24Iran expanded support for armed groups across the Middle East.
28:27The United States increased sanctions and military pressure.
28:31American politicians described Iran as a sponsor of terrorism.
28:35Iranian leaders continued leading crowds in chants of,
28:39Death to America.
28:40And yet behind the slogans, fear drove both sides.
28:44Iran feared another attempt at regime change.
28:47The United States feared nuclear expansion and regional instability.
28:51Then came the wars that reshaped the Middle East after September 11th.
28:56American forces invaded Afghanistan, then Iraq.
29:01Suddenly, U.S. troops surrounded Iran on multiple borders.
29:05In Tehran, leaders feared they might be next.
29:08At the same time, Iran's nuclear program accelerated, creating a new international crisis.
29:14American and Israeli officials warned that Iran could eventually develop nuclear weapons.
29:20Iran insisted its program was peaceful.
29:23Neither side trusted the other enough to believe it.
29:26Negotiations rose and collapsed.
29:28Sanctions intensified.
29:30Cyber attacks targeted Iranian infrastructure.
29:33Scientists were assassinated.
29:35Proxy wars spread across Syria, Iraq, Lebanon, and Yemen.
29:39Again and again, the two countries moved to the edge of direct conflict.
29:44And yet beneath all the geopolitics, something deeper remained trapped inside the relationship.
29:50Memory.
29:51Americans remembered the embassy, the hostages, the chants.
29:55Iranians remembered the coup, the Shah, the sanctions, the war.
29:59Two nations staring at each other through generations of accumulated mistrust.
30:04And with every new crisis, the distance between the friendship of the past and the hostility of the present seemed
30:12to grow even wider.
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