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"Using both English and Persian-language sources, Firoozeh Kashani-Sabet outlines the evolving relationship between the U.S. and Iran from 1800 until 1988. Highlighting the oft-neglected impact of social and cultural changes on diplomatic developments, she offers a holistic history of two powerful countries' dynamic relationship"--

In 1946, the entertainer and activist Paul Robeson pondered America's intentions in Iran. In what was to become one of the first major crises of the Cold War, Iran was fighting a Soviet aggressor that did not want to leave. Robeson posed the question, "Is our State Department concerned with protecting the rights of Iran and the welfare of the Iranian people, or is it concerned with protecting Anglo-American oil in that country and the Middle East in general?" This was a loaded question. The US was pressuring the Soviet Union to withdraw its troops after its occupation of the country during World War II. Robeson wondered why America cared so much about Soviet forces in Iranian territory, when it made no mention of Anglo-American troops "in countries far removed from the United States or Great Britain." An editorial writer for a Black journal in St. Louis posed a different variant of the question: Why did the American secretary of state, James F. Byrnes, concern himself with elections in Iran, Arabia or Azerbaijan and yet not "interfere in his home state, South Carolina, which has not had a free election since Reconstruction?"

Early America engaged with Islam through multiple channels. As American missionaries traveled abroad in search of converts, and lived among Muslims, they often viewed the religion and its adherents through the lens of Christianity. For some, Islam's prophet was a false hero, "an impostor," and the message of the religion was an unfortunate pastiche of the Judeo-Christian tradition. Simultaneously, American scholars of religion and the ancient Near East in the nineteenth century approached the Islamic world out of an academic desire to understand Middle Eastern antiquity. Through this process of intellectual inquiry, the American academy eventually developed an interest in the study of Islam itself. Thus, two dominant strands of thought emerged that led to divergent discourses about Islam in the United States. These two discourses—an academic one versus a popular one rooted in missionary experiences—have endured and shaped the contemporary understanding of Islam in America.

Revolutions are chaotic affairs. In February 1979, when Ayatollah Khomeini and his followers declared victory, Iran's future seemed uncertain. After a long night of hostility and bloodshed, an eerie silence fell on Tehran, and in some corners fear supplanted exhilaration. Those of us who witnessed these historic events did not fully fathom what Islamic politics augured. Within weeks, on the occasion of International Women's Day, it became clear that women had become targets of the regime's cultural indoctrination. Other matters remained murky for months and would play out gradually in the first decade after the revolution.

The American public came to know Iran through its missionaries who had lived among the Persians. For their part, Iranians grew familiar with Americans through interactions with these missionary pioneers as well. While American Presbyterians quickly established and expanded their institutional presence in the country, it became abundantly clear to them that Muslim converts to Protestantism remained few and far between. Missionary perceptions of Iranian Muslims, however, left an indelible imprint on American public understanding of Iran and its people. The paper argues that religious ideology frequently colored perceptions and influenced policy-making. Even after more than a hundred years of interaction, cultural representations were refracted through religious difference and similarity. Despite the increasingly secular cultures of Iran and America in the early twentieth century, religion remained a salient ideology for the public in both societies—one that has had a profound impact on the nature of US–Iranian relations. Thus, it is important to analyze the origins and impact of this contact beginning in the nineteenth century.