From New York Times, I'm Michael Bobaro.

This is the Daily.

At the heart of the current U.S. war against Iran is an inconvenient truth,

that the United States is in many ways responsible for bringing about

the very regime that it now seeks to topple.

Today, my colleague, Times Magazine contributor Scott Anderson, tells us the story of America's

outsized role in the Iranian revolution

and why all these years later

were still no closer to understanding Iran.

It's Friday, June 12th.

Thank you. It's very nice to the Daily.

Thank you. It's very nice to be here.

It's great to have you here.

We are at a moment in this almost four-month-long conflict between the United States and Iran,

where the hostility and the distrust on both sides means that the ceasefire is kind of in name only.

Right, kind of a postmodern type of ceasefire. Exactly. And the peace talks that are supposed to be

built atop that postmodern shaky ceasefire are pretty much a mess. And at the heart of this

all is a profound decades-old hatred.

And I don't think that's too strong a word between the governments of Iran and the U.S.

And it's a hatred whose origins we've never quite definitively told the story of on this show.

And you, not long before the war began, pulled that story in what

turned out to be a very well-timed book called King of Kings. And what your book so powerfully recounts

...