So from the very beginning, the US developed this reputation in Iran as being hands-off, non-imperialist,

and for those people who actually bothered to study American history,

they saw this was a country that had come into existence less than a century earlier with a big revolution against the British Empire.

So you can see why on multiple levels the United States was really appealing

to Iranians. It's the Lawfare podcast. I'm Ariane Tabatabai, public service fellow here at Lawfare.

And with John Gersvenian today, he is the author of America and Iran, a history 1720 to the present.

To me, what's always very important is to recognize that for the vast majority of the

history of these two countries, they have actually been very, not just friendly, but

have had a great deal of mutual admiration, neutral fascination, you know, a really warm,

if sometimes idealized idea of each other, and that the last 47 years is actually the anomaly.

Today, we're going to zoom out of the ongoing war with Iran and U.S. Iran policy to talk

about U.S.-Iran relations and their history.

John, I want to start by talking about your vantage point as a historian of the relationship and what the sort of origin

story of this relationship is. Because when you ask most Americans, where this history begins,

it often starts with 1979 and the hostage crisis. For many Iranians, I think, you would

probably hear 1953 and the coup, which we will talk about.

But for you, how does it all start? Your book starts in the 1700s. So what should folks know

about this history, zooming out a little bit from the ongoing tensions?

I came to this topic as an Iranian-American who was curious about the history

between these two countries, basically. As someone who was a trained historian and a former

journalist, I felt I had some kinds of skills to bring to this. But I think fundamentally,

I came to this with curiosity. You know, as I think everyone or many people, I guess, many of us

...