Iran condemns decades of US hostility towards Iran, citing 1953 Anglo-American coup
The Iranian Foreign Ministry spokesperson Esmaeil Baghaei condemns decades of US hostility towards Iran, citing the 1953 Anglo-American coup against the then Iranian government and a “long record of American intervention, sanctions, threats, and military aggression.”
In a post published on social media platform X on Wednesday, Baghaei said May 19 marks the birthday of Mohammad Mosaddeq, “the famed Iranian Prime Minister whose government was violently overthrown in a coup engineered and backed by the United States and UK, solely for his unwavering defense of Iran’s national interests, his fierce resistance to foreign domination, and his refusal to allow the plunder of Iran’s national resources.”
The spokesperson said that references by US officials to 47 years of confrontation with Iran deliberately overlook earlier events.
“American officials repeatedly speak of '47 years' of confrontation with Iran. This is a deliberate distortion of history; the US hostility toward the Iranian nation did not begin in 1979 — it began in 1953. For more than 73 years, the Iranian people have endured a long record of American intervention, sanctions, threats, and military aggression,” he added.
Today, 19 May (29 Ordibehesht), marks the birthday of Dr. Mohammad Mosaddegh, the famed Iranian Prime Minister whose government was violently overthrown in a coup engineered and backed by the United States and UK, solely for his unwavering defense of Iran’s national interests,… pic.twitter.com/nHg4rXBoUl
— Esmaeil Baqaei (@IRIMFA_SPOX) May 19, 2026
Baghaei further said that revisiting Dr. Mosaddeq’s legacy and the 1953 Anglo-American coup “delivers a clear and timeless lesson: the only true path to national dignity, sovereignty, and sustainable progress is resolute insistence on sovereign rights and political independence.”
The 1953 CIA-MI6 coup remains the foundational trauma of Western-Iranian relations. The coup reinstalled the Shah, whose brutal, US-backed rule for the next 26 years created deep anti-American resentment.
This resentment culminated in the 1979 Islamic Revolution, which ousted the Shah and and led to the first wave of illegitimate US sanctions on Iran.
Relations descended into a "state of low-level war". The US backed Iraq during former dictator Saddam Hussein's 1980-1988 war on Iran, and in 1988 shot down Iran Air Flight 655, killing all 290 civilians aboard. Washington designated Iran a "state sponsor of terrorism" in 1984.
While the 2015 nuclear deal briefly offered a détente, US President Donald Trump's 2018 withdrawal and "maximum pressure" campaign escalated tensions.
The 2020 assassination of Iran's legendary anti-terror commander General Qassem Soleimani brought the two countries to the brink of open war. By February 2026, this decades-long American malice escalated into direct US-Israeli military strikes on Iranian soil.
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