from WNYC studios. I'm Brian Lehrer. This is my daily politics podcast. It's Tuesday,

March 10th. We are honored to have Christian Amunpour joining us today to talk about issues

in and some historical context for the war with Iran.

Christiane holds the joint positions of CNN's chief international anchor and PBS host as her show Ammanpur airs first on CNN International and then also on PBS as Aminpore and company, which is where many of you probably see it in the United States.

In New York, for example, that's 4 p.m. and midnight on Channel 13.

And as some of you know, Christian in her own life has also had feet in multiple worlds growing up in both Iran and the UK,

adding to the perspective, of course, that she can

bring to world events like these in her 40-plus years now with CNN.

Christian, we always appreciate it when you take some time from your own very demanding

schedule to come on with us. Welcome back to WNYC.

My pleasure, Brian.

I wonder if we could take advantage of your deep knowledge by asking you to help listeners

know some of the historical context, which I think doesn't get talked about enough since the

beginning of the war.

Maybe start the clock in 1953 when Iran had an elected leader named Muhammad Mossadegh, who the United

States helped overthrow that year, in 1953, and reinstall the Shah of Iran, raised

the Shah Pahlavi. Why did the United States care who ran Iran at that time and want to see

Mossadegh out? Well, because there were competing

objectives, the U.S. CIA did this with the British MI6, their foreign intelligence service here.

And for the British, it was trying to get, you know, a reverse of Mossadegh's nationalization

of the Iranian oil company and the Iranian oil production and

export, et cetera.

...