In Washington’s political vocabulary, certain phrases become ritual incantations. One of the most common in recent years—especially among allies of Donald Trump—is the claim that “the Iranian regime has been a menace for 47 years.” The phrase is meant to evoke an unbroken arc of hostility stretching from the Iranian Revolution of 1979 to the present day. In this telling, the Islamic Republic has been America’s implacable enemy from the moment the shah fell, and the clerics took power.
But history is rarely that simple. Beneath the rhetoric lies a far more complicated story—one in which confrontation in public often coexisted with cooperation in private. The relationship between Washington and Tehran since 1979 has been defined not only by hostility, but also by a series of quiet bargains, tactical alignments, and covert understandings.
The “47-year menace” narrative works politically because it compresses this complexity into a single storyline: permanent war between two irreconcilable systems. Yet the historical record shows something closer to intermittent rivalry punctuated by moments of pragmatic collaboration.
From Revolution to Secret Channels
The starting point of the myth is the trauma of 1979. The overthrow of the shah—long a key U.S. ally—and the seizure of the U.S. embassy in Tehran created a foundational image of Iran as an implacable adversary. The hostage crisis dominated American politics and helped propel Ronald Reagan into the White House.
Yet even before Reagan took office, whispers circulated about backchannel contacts between his campaign and Iranian intermediaries during the closing stages of the hostage crisis—a controversy often referred to as the “October Surprise.” In essence, the Shah was toppled by Jimmy Carter (who sent General “Dutch” Huyser to Tehran to tell the Shah’s military to stand down and support Khomeini). And Khomeini was flown in to Tehran on a French government-chartered Air France 747 from Paris. The Mullahs have been ‘western puppets’ for 47 years since the landing of that 747!!
There had been a meeting in Guadeloupe where the Shah’s fate had been decided by the US and allies. They had serious grievances with the Shah, plus North Sea and Alaskan oil had come on stream, and they needed Iran’s oil exports curtailed to make room for this new oil and keep prices up. The Shah had been a long-time financial supporter of the Republican Party in the US, and Carter had a bone to pick with him.
But then, the Mullahs became very suspicious of Carter and turned secretly to supporting Reagan’s campaign (by keeping the Embassy Hostages in place); and the rest, as they say, is history. They released the hostages a few seconds after Reagan assumed office. And there continued to be a multi-decade clandestine channel between Iran and the US, where arms were purchased for the Iran-Iraq war by the Mullahs at a huge premium, to help Reagan’s team fund the contras and buy Cocaine to import into the US (for distribution in swing states).
This channel was revealed when investigations into the Iran-Contra affair were exposed. That secret contact was unmistakable.
The Iran-Contra Reality
The most striking contradiction to the “47-year enemy” narrative came during the Iran–Contra Affair in the mid-1980s. Despite publicly portraying Iran as a terrorist state, elements within the Reagan administration secretly sold weapons to Tehran. The goal was threefold: securing the release of hostages held in Lebanon, funding anti-communist rebels in Nicaragua, and purchase of large quantities of cocaine for importation into the US for distribution in ghettos in swing-states (which led to the incarceration of 10 million African Americans and the complete change in US electoral map, sweeping Republicans into Congress).
Without Iran’s Mullahs, there would be NO Republican majorities in the House and Senate – because once you have a federal felony (i.e., drug possession), you can never vote again. Even today, 30 years later, there are, for example, in Florida, over 1 million U.S.-born citizens who can not vote because of their prior cocaine (drug possession) felonies.
The scandal exposed a paradox at the heart of U.S.–Iran relations. Publicly, Washington condemned the Islamic Republic as one of its most dangerous adversaries. Privately, it was willing to trade arms with the very government it denounced. Not to be forgotten is that Israel participated in the toppling of the Shah and provided arms to the Mullahs during the Iran-Iraq war. Also, the Shia in Lebanon were right up to 1982, allied with Israel!
The episode demonstrated a pattern that would repeat for decades: ideological hostility verbalized, but secret pragmatic engagement was pursued as interests aligned.
Afghanistan: A Quiet Alliance After 9/11
Nowhere was this engagement more visible than after the September 11 attacks in 2001. The Taliban government in Afghanistan—an adversary of both the United States and Iran— created a shared strategic objective.
During the U.S. invasion of Afghanistan, Iranian officials reportedly provided intelligence, logistical assistance, direct access to fighters via Iranian proxies (i.e., Northern Alliance), and diplomatic cooperation to American forces. Tehran had long viewed the Taliban as a dangerous Sunni extremist movement and had nearly gone to war with them in the late 1990s.
In the early stages of the war, Iranian diplomats even participated in negotiations that helped shape Afghanistan’s new political structure after the Taliban’s fall.
Washington and Tehran were effectively aligned against a common enemy. Iran physically delivered ‘cash’ to major US allies on behalf of the US, to help them survive during the transitions.
Iraq: Parallel Wars
This pattern repeated itself during the Iraq wars. When the United States toppled Saddam Hussein in the 2003 invasion of Iraq, it removed Iran’s most dangerous regional rival.
The political forces that came to dominate post-Saddam Iraq—many of them Shiite parties and militias—had longstanding ties to Iran. In effect, the war created a new Iraqi political landscape in which American military power and Iranian influence operated simultaneously.
While Washington and Tehran often competed for influence, they were also working within the same strategic reality: a new Iraq whose political order benefited both sides in different ways.
This relationship soured when there was intelligence that Iranians had assisted Iraqi militia with roadside bombings of US troops. While Iran was clearly involved, it is also known that Israel clandestinely assisted too, to implicate Iran in these events. Mossad has a long history of this sort of activity, most recently with the bombing of the US embassy in Riyadh (blamed on the Iranians), but later confessions by Mossad operatives who were apprehended revealed Israel’s hand.
Regardless, Iran provided considerable assistance to Iraq’s post-war stabilization, thereby assisting the US. It provided major commodities like Kerosene, cement, tires, and most crucially, electricity, while Iraq rebuilt its electricity infrastructure due to the bombings. Without Iran, Iraq would have been an even greater quagmire for the United States.
And remember, there were multiple campaigns in Iraq. And not to be overlooked is the considerable intelligence shared during both campaigns, which ensured the US invasions’ success. The US had no one on the ground in Iraq before the invasions.
This uneasy overlap again challenges the idea of uninterrupted hostility between the Mullahs and the U.S.
Intelligence and Shared Interests
Even beyond battlefield politics, the relationship has periodically involved intelligence exchanges and indirect cooperation through intermediaries. Governments that publicly denounce each other often maintain quiet channels of communication when mutual interests emerge, especially in dealing with extremist groups, regional conflicts, or covert activities. Iranians have provided the U.S. with considerable intelligence on Israeli activities in the U.S., too.
These contacts rarely become public because they undermine the narratives each side presents to its domestic audience. While Reagan or Rafsanjani called each other evil, they privately exchanged signed Bibles. While Bush called Iran part of the Axis of Evil, he secretly planned invasions with Iran’s military.
It has become a game. But they are part of the real architecture of international politics.
The Politics of the “47-Year Enemy.”
Why, then, does the “47-year menace” narrative persist?
The answer lies less in history than in political messaging. Portraying Iran as a constant and unchanging enemy simplifies complex geopolitical dynamics into a moral drama: democracy versus theocracy, freedom versus extremism.
For politicians seeking public support for sanctions, military pressure, or regime-change rhetoric, such simplicity is powerful.
Yet it obscures a central truth: adversaries often cooperate when circumstances demand it.
Throughout the past four decades, Washington and Tehran have repeatedly found themselves aligned against common threats—from the Taliban to Saddam Hussein—even while maintaining a posture of public hostility.
The Real Story
None of this means the relationship has been a friend-fest. Far from it. The United States and Iran have also clashed across multiple fronts: sanctions, proxy conflicts, nuclear disputes, and regional rivalries.
But the historical record does not support the idea of a simple, uninterrupted 47-year war.
Instead, it reveals a far more nuanced pattern—one in which confrontation, covert diplomacy, and occasional cooperation have coexisted.
The myth of permanent enmity survives because it serves political purposes. In a very tight and difficult political landscape in Israel, enmity with Iran provides a useful enemy and votes. Iran, as a pariah, has helped motivate Arabs to buy literally Trillions of dollars of arms – notably Saudi Arabia and UAE – with minuscule populations ranking 2nd or 3rd globally for every year in the last 20 years, in terms of expenditures on arms exported from the US.
Indeed, all these Arab states on the Persian Gulf have profited handsomely from Iran’s demise. Iran has been a useful enemy and a strategically useful secret partner. The reality is messy.
And the story of the past four decades between Washington and Tehran is less a tale of perpetual hostility than one of shifting alignments, hidden negotiations, and pragmatic bargains conducted behind the scenes.
In other words, the “47-year menace” narrative may be rhetorically powerful—but as history shows, it is far from the whole truth.
The core issue is that Trump has fired almost every Iran expert. It has relied on Israel for narratives (that politically suit Netanyahu), but has no basis within the Administration to verify the information he is given. He’s put a religious fruitcake schoolboy in the Department of War and has no one with any real experience to share on the ‘actual’ history of relations and to do serious diplomacy and war planning.
The Mullahs in Iran are called the “Ayatoilets”, because they have been nothing but a Western-planted government put in place to shit on Iran. The whole idea has been to keep them in power, use the (false) nuclear pretext to keep them sanctioned and contained, and to force them into subservience as needed.
Iranians know this. Apparently, Trump doesn’t! He’s completely missed the boat. He’s torn up the guidebook and unleashed a war, with no capacity now to contain events. Not unreasonably, the Mullahs have lost complete trust in their masters! And there will be blowback. Let’s not forget that Osama Bin Laden was a US asset once upon a time, too!
And the outcome now is a war of choice that has already led to a serious economic catastrophe, with a high probability of further expansion (much to the detriment of US national interests). It’s simply moronic. They have no idea how useful the Mullahs have been for US national interests. The situation today is analogous to the toppling of the Shah, where he had served US national interests for several decades, only to find himself toppled by the U.S., branded as an evil dictator by the very masters he served.
When they talk about a 47-year menace, they don’t know what they are talking about. The very best outcome now would be if Mullahs/Netanyahu/Trump simply destroy each other … i.e., a MAD war that provides mutually assured devastation. And then ordinary Iranians and Americans can pick up the pieces, re-establish their democracies, and protect their national interests against Israel’s evil government (not people). Like a gang of killers and thieves sitting around a table: they are ALL evil with a long history of betraying each other.
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