With President Donald Trump’s decision to intervene in the Iran-Israel war, Iran, a country 6,500 miles away from Washington, D.C., has once again taken an outsize role in the story of an American presidency. In fact, Iran has been a big part of American presidencies for nearly a century.
Although most people know the story of how the Iranian hostage crisis helped bring down President Jimmy Carter, the truth is that Iran has been a challenge for American diplomats for decades. In 1924, during the Coolidge administration, a mullah-inspired mob in Tehran attacked and murdered American Vice Consul Robert Imbrie, inflicting 138 wounds on him. Imbrie was falsely accused of poisoning a sacred fountain, and his murder made him the first American foreign service officer
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