History has shown this to be so. It was only 3½ months after the U.S. broke diplomatic relations with Cuba in January 1961, that the disastrous Bay of Pigs invasion happened. By October 1962, the world was shaken by the Cuban Missile Crisis, as the U.S. and the USSR stared each other down in a terrifying game of nuclear chicken.

During the 1979 revolution, after Iranians stormed the U.S. embassy in Tehran and took 52 of its personnel hostage, Iran and the United States went from allies to adversaries practically overnight. The deeply traumatizing hostage crisis, which lasted 444 days, included a failed helicopter rescue mission which killed eight U.S. servicemen. This led shortly to U.S. aid to Saddam Hussein in the Iran-Iraq War (an extremely bloody, pointless, eight year ordeal), the 1983 terrorist attack which murdered 241 U.S. Marines in Beirut, the massacre of 290 passengers on an Iranian airbus in 1988, and numerous other calamities. Nearly four decades onward, there are still no normal diplomatic channels between the two countries.

The Iranian-American relationship really pivots not in 1979, however, but a quarter century earlier. In October 1952, following 18 months of quarreling over the oil nationalization issue, relations between England and Iran had deteriorated so badly that the Iranian government finally pulled the plug on the British. At the time, this was predicted by some to be the beginning of either a Soviet takeover of Iran, or the beginning of something like World War III.

Premier Mossadegh was the first to announce Iran’s intention, explaining the decision in an October 16th radio broadcast. The Truman administration had long feared that this day would come. Immediately, the State Department issued a ‘say it isn’t so’ statement, to no avail.

The media, too, howled in disapproval. The New York Times described the move as “merely one more attempt to blackmail not only Britain, but the West in general, with the threat of national suicide.” The Sydney Morning Herald predicted that the break-up “could do nothing to further Persia’s cause, and would plainly inconvenience Teheran far more than London.”

Prior to the breach, Iran asked Sweden to look after its interests in Britain, who, in turn, requested Switzerland do the same in Tehran. The modern day version of this arrangement is the Interests Section of the Islamic Republic of Iran, now located within Pakistan’s embassy in Washington, DC. The U.S. interests section in Tehran is handled by the Swiss.

How exactly does one nation tell another’s diplomatic corps to, in essence, ‘pack up and get the hell out of our country’? With civility and tact, of course.
Shown below is the text of Foreign Minister Hossein Fatemi’s message to the British Charge d’ Affaires, George Middleton. The note, delivered on October 22nd, ordered Middleton and his staff to evacuate the premises within a week. According to a British Foreign Service spokesman, there were 50 British embassy personnel in Tehran at the time, many of whom, Middleton included, resided in a compound in the nearby city of Shemiran. Fatemi also announced that martial law would be temporarily in effect there.

Dr. Fatemi left the door open to reconciliation, however, expressing the hope that Britain would “revise their attitude”. Rather than adjust its disposition, Britain chose to join forces with America and overturn the entire government in exchange for a pliable military dictatorship. Conveniently, the U.S. embassy in Tehran became the de facto headquarters for the August 1953 CIA operation, which resulted in lifetime house arrest for Mossadegh, and a chest full of bullets for young Fatemi.

Anglo-Iranian relations remained severed until December 1953, when the coup regime restored them prior to coming to any kind of an oil settlement. And everyone lived happily ever after.

MINISTRY FOR FOREIGN AFFAIRS’ LETTER TO HER BRITTANIC MAJESTY’S CHARGE D’AFFAIRES IN TEHRAN CONCERNING SEVERANCE OF DIPLOMATIC RELATIONS.