The Forgotten Shah

How America and Its Allies Built the Iran They Fear

Iran’s regional influence is often explained as the product of ideology, religion, or revolutionary ambition. That explanation is emotionally satisfying, and analytically wrong. The power of Iran and later on the Islamic Republic did not rise because it became stronger than its rivals; it rose because, over decades, every structure that once constrained it was dismantled through strategic error. What we are living today is not the result of one revolution or one war, but the cumulative outcome of a long domino chain. And unless that chain is stopped now, the final tile will fall with Iran irreversibly locked into China’s strategic, energy, and monetary orbit.

The story begins with oil, but not in the way it is usually told. Oil was discovered in Iran in 1908 at Masjed Soleyman by a British company operating under concession. The resource was developed, extracted, and monetized in a way that overwhelmingly favored external interests, leaving Iran with limited control over pricing, reven…