How did we get here?

James Fallows has a can't-miss post (part 1 of 2) outlining the post-WWII history of US/Iran relations:

Almost as soon as World War II ended, the US began sizing up regimes around the world on whether they were “with us or against us,” in the global struggle against the Soviet Union and global communism. This eventually led to open or covert US alliances with the likes of the Diem family in Vietnam, the Marcoses in the Philippines, Batista in Cuba, Somoza in Nicaragua, Syngman Rhee in Korea, Chiang Kai-Shek in mainland China and then Taiwan, and many more.

In Iran, this global struggle led the US to a fateful turn in 1953. In the early 1950s, Iran had a nascent democratic moment. A Western-educated lawyer, professor, politician, and government official from a prominent family, named Mohammed Mossadegh, was elected prime minister in 1951. Soon some of his “reform” efforts upset the US and the UK. The most dramatic was his nationalization of the Iranian oil industry, then largely controlled by British companies.

Thus in 1953, the CIA, with help of British intelligence, orchestrated a coup to overthrow him, and transfer governing power to the Shah. The CIA’s role in this coup is not speculation or conspiracy theory.

Why does this matter now? Boosters of Trump’s Iran war think they are sounding history-minded when they say they’re finishing a battle that has been going on “for 47 years.” Meaning that, in their minds, the first strike was when Iranian students and protestors took US diplomats hostage, under Jimmy Carter, in 1979.

Very few of today’s Iranians would have any living memory of the CIA-Mossadegh coup. But in my experience, and based on everything I have heard and read, the date “1953” remains as resonant in Iran now as “9/11” still is for most Americans, or “December 7, 1941,” for my parents’ generation.

When did the US-Iran war “start,” from most Iranians’ perspective? Not 47 years ago, but 73.

It's well known how little Americans know about history. And it's human nature that Americans, who care so little for it, have a nearly impossible time understanding that most of the world thinks about history all the time.