After the Iranian-American relations were characterized by a lot of cordiality during his reign, the flight of Shah Muhammad Reza Pahlavi to Washington upon the victory of the Iranian revolution in 1979 constituted the basis for the hostility between the two countries, the pace of which varied in the change of successive US administrations.

Tension and hostility ... the title of the US relationship with Iran over the past 4 decades (French)

Carter and the beginning of the hostility

The victory of the Islamic Revolution in Iran in 1979 coincided with the presidency of Democrat Jimmy Carter in the United States, which constituted a qualitative leap in Tehran's relations with its former ally Washington, especially after a group of revolutionary students stormed the US embassy in Tehran on the fourth of November in the year 1979 and their detention of 52 members of the American mission's staff and diplomats for a period of 444 days, in what was known at the time as the hostage crisis.

Tensions rose between Washington and Tehran after the Carter administration failed to resolve the hostage crisis, as it cut diplomatic ties with Iran, seized its assets and imposed an embargo on trade with Tehran, according to Abbas Aslani, a researcher at the Middle East Center for Strategic Studies.

The era of President Donald Reagan ranged between calm and tension, as Washington bombed two Iranian platforms in the Gulf (Associated Press)

Reagan, cautious calm

In his interview with Al-Jazeera Net, Aslani attributed the reason for Carter's defeat in the presidency in 1981 against his Republican rival Donald Reagan to the will of the revolutionaries in Iran and their failure to respond to the American efforts to release the hostages until the last minutes of his presidency, stressing that the release of the hostages coincided with the inauguration of Reagan as President of the United States. To a fragile calm in the relationship between the two sides.

The ball of tension rolled in the stadium of Iranian-American relations during Reagan's second term until the latter's administration placed the Islamic Republic on the list of countries sponsoring terrorism in 1984. What made matters worse was the American frigate Vincennes dropping an Iranian passenger plane on a flight from Bandar Abbas to Dubai Airport over the Gulf waters in 1988 and killing All of its 290 passengers and crew, and Washington refused at the time to bear any legal responsibility for the accident and has not offered any official apology for it until now.

The Iranian-American tension in the Gulf region did not end during the Reagan era until it reached a direct military confrontation during the last year of the Iran-Iraq War (1980-1988) and ended with the destruction of two Iranian naval platforms by order of Reagan on April 17, 1988, after an American frigate marine mine was damaged. Excessive in the Gulf waters, and Washington accused Tehran of planting mines in international waters.

Bush the elder was the first American president whose administration communicated with Iran after the revolution, and he succeeded in concluding what is known as the (Iran-Contra) deal with Tehran (Getty Images)

Bush Sr. continues timidly

Republican George W. Bush Sr. began communicating with Iran even before he came to power when he was serving as Reagan's vice president in a case known at the time as "Iran Contra", and he agreed with Tehran to sell it TOW missiles in exchange for help in the release of a number of Americans who were being held in Lebanon.

After what Bush Senior spoke during his inauguration ceremony about Iran and his intention to deal with it on the diplomatic level, he found in the earthquake that struck the city of Rudbar in northern Iran in 1990 an opportunity to overcome obstacles and raise opportunities for communication with Tehran, as he ordered the sending of humanitarian aid to Iran during the government of Hashemi Rafsanjani.

Some reports in Iran talk about the exchange of letters and communications at that time between Rafsanjani and Bush the elder, but the official circles of Tehran never supported it, and what is certain is that such communication took place through unofficial parties that were working in the shadows, according to the researcher at the Contemporary History Foundation for Studies, Dr. Reda Hajjat.

Clinton imposed a trade embargo on Iran despite his term coinciding with the era of reformist President Muhammad Khatami (European News Agency)

Clinton and the Sanctions War

In his speech to Al-Jazeera Net, Hajj added that although the era of Democratic President Bill Clinton coincided with the victory of his reformist counterpart Muhammad Khatami in the presidency of Iran in 1997 and the latter raised the slogan of the dialogue of civilizations and affirmed the possibility of communication between Iranian and American citizens, the American side imposed a comprehensive trade embargo on Tehran and accused it. Supporting international terrorism and the pursuit of weapons of mass destruction, which Iran has denied altogether.

Hajj stressed that the relations between Iran and the United States during the presidency of Clinton and Khatami were not without tension, contrary to what observers had expected at the time, adding that the Democrats had never put aside the sanctions and pressure machine on Iran.

Bush Jr was the first American president to place Iran within the "axis of evil" (Reuters)

Bush Jr. and the return of tension

After the events of September 11, 2001, President Khatami’s government expressed its willingness to help eliminate terrorism, which led to limited coordination between Washington and Tehran during the US invasion of Afghanistan. However, relations between them entered a dark tunnel in 2002 when US President George W. Bush designated Iran as The "axis of evil" again accused Tehran of running a secret nuclear weapons program.

After conservative President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad won the presidential elections in Iran in 2005, he responded to the US measures that he considered hostile to his country, and he restarted the nuclear program for uranium enrichment, which led to a renewed tension between the two countries.

Tehran had frozen enrichment operations during the Khatami era, pending the results of negotiations with Europe, which offered Iran cooperation in the fields of trade, technology and security in the event that it abandoned its nuclear activities.

The Obama era witnessed a major breakthrough in the relations of Washington and Tehran with the signing of the nuclear agreement (Reuters)

Obama has a historic deal

With the arrival of Barack Obama to the White House in 2009, he offered to negotiate directly with the Iranians in an effort to reduce the tension that reached high levels during the tenure of his predecessor, Bush Jr., which caught listening ears to the government of Iranian President Hassan Rouhani, which culminated in a telephone conversation between the two presidents on the sidelines. The work of the United Nations General Assembly in 2013, a day after a round of direct negotiations was held between Iran's Foreign Minister Mohammad Javad Zarif and his US counterpart John Kerry in New York.

After a long journey of negotiations between Iran and the Six-Party Group, the Joint Comprehensive Action Plan on the Iranian nuclear file was signed in 2015.

The nuclear agreement provides for a gradual and conditional lifting of sanctions against the Islamic Republic in exchange for guarantees that it will not seek to acquire nuclear weapons, which Tehran repeatedly denies that it will not seek to acquire nuclear weapons based on a religious fatwa from the Iranian guide, Ali Khamenei.

The Obama administration suspended sanctions related to Tehran's nuclear program, but imposed a new ban, more severe than those of his predecessors - according to Iranian researcher Abbas Aslani - on charges of Iran's lack of respect for human rights and its support for terrorist groups and its ballistic missile program.

In his speech to Al-Jazeera Net, Aslani stressed that although the United States during the Obama era invoked flimsy pretexts to impose sanctions on Iran, his era was characterized by a relatively reduced tension between Washington and Tehran, noting that the behavior of the Rouhani government contributed to a large extent in converging views between the two sides.

An Iranian opposed to the regime in Iran raises a thank you note to Trump after the latter tore up the nuclear deal with Iran in 2018 (Reuters)

Trump and unprecedented tension

The honeymoon between Iran and the United States did not last long.

As US President Donald Trump withdrew from the nuclear agreement in 2018, and designated the Iranian Revolutionary Guard a "terrorist organization" within the framework of the policy of maximum pressure on Iran, as well as imposing various types of sanctions on Tehran that bypassed economic sectors and affected Supreme Leader Ali Khamenei and Foreign Minister Mohammad Javad Zarif.

After a year of the US withdrawal from the nuclear agreement, Tehran gradually retreated from its commitments under the Joint Comprehensive Plan of Action, until it announced on January 5, 2020, that it would suspend all its commitments under the agreement, in light of the killing of the commander of the Quds Force of the Iranian Revolutionary Guard, Qassem Soleimani An American air strike at Baghdad International Airport.

The assassination of Soleimani was a dangerous escalation in the existing tension between Iran and the United States, as Tehran responded by bombing the Iraqi Ain al-Asad base, which houses American forces, with dozens of missiles.

And in June 2019, the Iranian Revolutionary Guard announced the downing of an American Global Hawk spy plane as it penetrated Iranian airspace in the southern province of Hormozgan.

After the American rally was shot down, Trump announced later that he had decided to stop carrying out military strikes on Iran 10 minutes before its implementation, because it was not proportional to the shooting down of an unmanned American surveillance drone, but he strengthened the circle of sanctions against Iran.