Seven decades of US regime change efforts: What have they achieved?

What the report says

Al Jazeera reports that the latest US-Iran confrontation is part of a longer history of American efforts to reshape governments seen as hostile to Washington, with Iran as one of the clearest examples. The article says the pattern began with the 1953 CIA-backed overthrow of elected Iranian prime minister Mohammad Mosaddegh, after he nationalized the Anglo-Iranian Oil Company, and the restoration of the shah, Mohammad Reza Pahlavi. It notes that the two countries were then close allies for years, including on nuclear cooperation, before the relationship collapsed after Iran’s 1979 Islamic Revolution.

According to the report, the post-1979 era brought hostage-taking, sanctions, support for Iraq during the Iran-Iraq War, and repeated diplomatic breakdowns. It also describes a brief opening under the Obama administration that produced the 2015 nuclear agreement, which was later abandoned by President Donald Trump in 2018, leading Iran to expand uranium enrichment. More recently, Al Jazeera says Trump returned to nuclear talks in 2025, but those negotiations were interrupted when Israel attacked Iran and the US joined the strikes.

The article frames the 2026 war on Iran as another failed regime-change attempt. It says the US and Israel launched strikes on February 28 and that Trump initially described regime change as an aim, but the government in Tehran remained in place after senior figures were killed and replaced. The piece also links the conflict to wider regional fallout, including fighting in Lebanon and disruption to energy routes, while arguing that US intervention elsewhere — such as Iraq in 2003 — has also produced major human and financial costs.