Each time, empires cast their regime-change operations as benevolent actions, designed to protect Iran’s people and the global order. They succeeded in embedding despotism at the heart of the country’s politics and civic life. Also read: Khamenei’s assassination—what did US achieve by ripping up international law Empire and terror Long buried in the bowels of the British Ministry of Defence, a top-secret minute records just how nuclear terror came to Iran. The clerics knew nothing of it: Late in 1955, the United Kingdom firmed up plans, together with the United States, to destroy oilfields in Iran using nuclear weapons in...