For those who are not familiar with the story, it starts with the Iranians democratically electing a president, Mohammad Mosaddegh. But he was too friendly with the Soviet Union and threatening to nationalize the oil industry, so the intelligence agencies of the US and the UK helped sponsor a coup to overthrow him and install the Shah as dictator. But the Shah was cruel and oppressive, and was eventually overthrown in the 1979 revolution and replaced with the present Islamist government.
Not surprisingly, this history left the Iranian people very suspicious of the US government. However, until this document release, the US government has denied it was involved in the coup.
- “The public and scholarly community owes a great debt to not only the remarkable effort and perseverance of literally generations of State Department historians and the [History] Office’s leadership, but also their collective commitment to historical accuracy and transparency,” said Prof. Immerman.
And that is why Americans are fast becoming world-wide discredited.
https://twitter.com/HistoryAtState/status/875473063156084736