By Abdulrauf Aliyu
For much of the last century, Iran has been at the center of global geopolitical currents. Its internal political evolution, regional influence, and relationship with the United States have been shaped not only by events on the ground, but by the narratives constructed around those events. Understanding Iran today requires confronting the historical forces that produced those narratives and the interests that have sustained them.
Iran’s modern history was shaped by repeated tensions between domestic sovereignty and external influence. In 1906, a popular movement established the first constitutional order in Iran, seeking to limit royal authority and create representative institutions. This early experiment in constitutionalism was undermined by imperial competition, particularly between Russia and Britain. According to historian Ervand Abrahamian, this period left an enduring imprint on Iran’s political psychology by associating foreign intervention with the weakening of indigenous political autonomy (see Abrahamian, A History of Modern Iran).
The ascent of Reza Khan in 1921, with support from British advisers, marked a decisive shift. As Reza Shah Pahlavi, he pursued rapid modernization and state centralization. His reforms transformed infrastructure, education, and the military, but did so with an authoritarian imprint that suppressed political pluralism. The West often presented his regime as a success story of modernization. At the same time, Western governments quietly supported his repression of political dissent, reinforcing the impression that stability was more valuable than democratic freedom when strategic interests were at stake.
The 1953 coup against Prime Minister Mohammad Mossadegh remains one of the clearest examples of how external power politics shaped Iran’s internal trajectory. Mossadegh, elected by the Iranian parliament, nationalized the oil industry previously controlled by the British‑owned Anglo‑Iranian Oil Company. Declassified documents from the U.S. Central Intelligence Agency confirm that the United States and Britain engineered his overthrow with the aim of reversing nationalization and strengthening the monarchy (see The CIA’s Role in the 1953 Coup in Iran). This intervention was a defining moment in Iranian memory, reinforcing the belief that Western powers prioritized strategic and economic interests over the will of the Iranian people.
After the coup, the Shah, Mohammad Reza Pahlavi, consolidated power. Supported by the United States, he pursued ambitious economic and social reforms under what he called the White Revolution. Under the surface of modernization, however, political repression intensified. The Shah’s secret police, known as SAVAK, was trained and supported by U.S. and Israeli intelligence agencies, contributing to deep resentment and fear within Iranian society. Western liberal narratives frequently described the Shah as a modernizer and a bulwark against communism, while downplaying the authoritarian nature of his rule and the social grievances it produced.
The Iranian Revolution of 1979 was a broad and multifaceted movement that brought together secular nationalists, leftists, clerics, workers, and students. It represented a repudiation of monarchical authoritarianism and foreign domination. Yet many Western accounts have reduced the revolution to a story of religious zeal, minimizing its nationalist and anti‑imperialist dimensions. Ayatollah Ruhollah Khomeini, the revolution’s most visible leader, articulated a political theology that combined religious authority with resistance to external influence. To many Iranians, the revolution was as much about reclaiming sovereignty as it was about religion.
The Iran‑Iraq War, from 1980 to 1988, further cemented the revolutionary regime’s cohesion and Iran’s sense of strategic encirclement. Saddam Hussein’s invasion, backed by several regional governments and tacitly supported by Western powers, inflicted more than a million casualties and devastated Iran’s infrastructure. In the context of this war, Iranian leaders framed their struggle as defensive survival against a hostile regional order. Western narratives, especially in the United States, tended to depict Iran’s behavior as aggressive or irrational, often ignoring the profound impact of war and external hostility on Iranian strategic perceptions.
In the post‑Cold War era, Iran’s regional role expanded as the United States and its allies intervened in Iraq and Afghanistan. The removal of Saddam Hussein in 2003 eliminated a key regional counterweight and created strategic space for Iranian influence. Tehran developed deeper ties with political factions in Baghdad, expanded its support for non‑state actors such as Hezbollah in Lebanon, and increased its diplomatic profile across the Middle East. These developments were met in Western discourse with alarm, often anchored in tropes of Iranian expansionism rather than analyses of power vacuums and regional competition.
The issue of Iran’s nuclear program has become perhaps the most consequential focal point of Western framing. Iran is a signatory to the Treaty on the Non‑Proliferation of Nuclear Weapons, which grants the right to pursue peaceful nuclear technology in exchange for commitments not to seek nuclear weapons. Yet Western narratives have often presented Iran’s nuclear ambitions as inherently destabilizing or a prelude to weaponization, while overlooking the fact that established nuclear powers maintain arsenals with minimal scrutiny. The Joint Comprehensive Plan of Action, negotiated in 2015, was an unprecedented diplomatic achievement that demonstrated Iran’s willingness to accept intrusive monitoring in exchange for sanctions relief. Critics in the West framed the agreement as insufficient or dangerous, reflecting a broader pattern in which Iranian concessions are discounted and external pressures amplified.
More recently, as tensions have escalated between Iran and Western allies, dominant narratives have tended to emphasize Iranian hostility and malign intent. This framing rarely questions how decades of intervention, support for authoritarian regimes friendly to Western interests, and selective enforcement of international norms have shaped Iranian strategic culture. When commentary presents Iranian actions as irrational or uniquely threatening, it obscures the broader dynamics of power politics in which all states pursue interests and perceive threats based on historical experience.
The pattern of framing Iran’s political evolution has profound implications for policy and public understanding. When Western narratives cast one actor as inherently threatening and another as inherently benign, they reduce the space for nuanced analysis and constructive engagement. They also reinforce cognitive biases that equate difference with danger and dissent with irrationality.
A more accurate approach requires grounding analysis in empirical history and acknowledging the role of *narrative framing itself as a strategic tool*. Power politics involves not only military capability and economic leverage, but the narratives that shape how actors interpret one another’s behavior. Identifying how framing privileges certain interpretations over others allows for a more honest assessment of both Iranian actions and Western policies.
This is not to excuse any specific policy decision made by the Iranian government. Iran’s regional conduct, its human rights record, and the behavior of some of its proxies raise legitimate questions about accountability and governance. But framing Iran’s political history solely through the lens of threat and hostility perpetuates a partial and skewed understanding. It blinds analysts to the structural roots of many of Iran’s strategic choices and to the ways in which external pressures have shaped internal dynamics.
Recognizing the limits of Western liberal framings of Iranian history is both intellectually honest and strategically prudent. If policymakers and publics hope to engage with Iran constructively, they must begin by acknowledging how power politics and narrative framing have shaped both perception and policy. Only by examining both the historical record and the narratives built around it can we move beyond simplistic binaries and toward a deeper understanding of one of the most consequential states in the international system.
