[somenameforme]

Iran's history is quite an interesting one if you're not familiar with it. In the 1950s Iran was a relatively secular democracy. They had a mixed relationship with the West, but it was workable. When they discovered that the West was not fairly paying oil royalties as agreed upon, they moved to nationalize their oil.

This was unacceptable to the West, so we covertly overthrew their democracy and installed an unpopular autocratic monarch in 1953. This Monarch would then rule for the next 26 years until in 1979 they would have their own "real" revolution. It was largely led by Islamic extremists, and they replaced our puppet monarchy with an Islamic theocracy. And this theocracy not only has a pretty negative view of the West, but for some reason always thinks we're trying to engage in covert actions to try to overthrow them! Go figure.

1953 - https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/1953_Iranian_coup_d'%C3%A9tat

1979 - https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Iranian_Revolution

[ARandomerDude]

Then a decade later the US gave Khomeini F-14s, which were the king of air dominance fighters at the time.

I’m not even suggesting this was good foreign policy, just that none of the above history proves the thesis that we set them back a few hundred years.

[DiogenesKynikos]

Iran's F-14s come from the Shah era, though the Reagan administration did secretly sell Iran spare parts during the 1980s, as part of a scheme to fund fascist militias in Central America without having to ask Congress for the money.