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    Letter: Susan Shelley’s conveniently incomplete tale of U.S.-Iran history
    • March 10, 2026

    Re “Trump isn’t starting a war with Iran. He’s ending one.”

    Susan Shelley’s history of US-Iran relationship leaves out some key details.

    Twenty-six years before Shelley’s 1979 start date, the CIA overthrew Iran’s democratically elected Prime Minister Mohammad Mosaddegh and installed Shah Mohammad Reza Pahlavi, whose U.S.-backed secret police tortured and killed dissidents for over two decades. The 1979 revolution was inseparable from that legacy.

    During the 1980s Iran-Iraq War, the United States actively supported Saddam Hussein — providing intelligence and diplomatic cover even as Iraq deployed chemical weapons against Iranian soldiers and civilians.

    On July 3, 1988, the USS Vincennes shot down Iran Air Flight 655, killing all 290 civilians aboard, including 66 children. The commanding officer was subsequently decorated.

    A reckoning that omits a CIA-engineered coup, a U.S.-backed torture state, American sponsorship of chemical warfare against Iran, and the killing of 290 Iranian civilian air passengers gives a distorted view of the justifications for the US/Israeli attack.

    Marc Joffe, Walnut Creek

    ​ Orange County Register 

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