Between reforms and repressions: the evolution of the US-Iranian relations in the 19th - first half of the 20th centuries

Iran has a special place in the world politics. This country is situated at the crossroads of two important global and regional security areas of the world: South Asia and the Middle East. This country has been the object of policies of great powers because of its geopolitical location and the vast resources of hydrocarbons. In the 19th century British and Russian empires encountered on the territory of the Iranian plateau. From the mid-twentieth century the United States and the Soviet Union became main antagonists here. And at the beginning of the 21st century relations between Washington and Moscow in Iran are still full of contradictions and differences. This article attempts to trace the evolution of U.S. policy toward Iran since the moment when the first Americans landed on the Persian ground until the turning-point in the history of US-Iranian relations - the overthrow of Mohammad Mossadegh's government. This coup was followed by the first attempts of social and economic reforms in Iran. Thus, chronologically the article covers a period from 1830 to 1961, stopping on the eve of the so-called "White Revolution" or the Reforms of the Shah and the People. This work is based on the U.S. diplomatic documents published in The Foreign Policy of the United States, as well as on the earlier collections of documents published in connection with the beginning of the Islamic revolution in Iran. The historical-genetic method was chosen as the main method of this article. The method allowed to reveal the nature of changes in the U.S. Iran policy, to show the cause-and-effect relations and patterns of American policy in its evolution. This is partly a due explanation of such a long time period under study. This article continues a series of critical publications about the U.S.-Iranian policy, initiated in 1988 by American historian J. Bill. His critical approach was continued by his compatriots M. Gasiorowski, D. Little, K. Pollack. They see reasons for the Islamic Revolution in the inconsistent course of reforms in the 1960-1970s. In contrast to his American colleagues, the author of this publication offers to have a broader look to the problem and cover the period preceding the "White Revolution".

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