READING, Pa. – Dr. Randall Fegley spent years teaching Middle Eastern history and international law at Penn State Berks.
He says to understand what’s happening now, you have to go back decades.
“Back in the beginning of the 1950s, Iran’s prime minister, Mohammad Mossadegh, challenged Western oil companies over their distribution of profits, which he felt was unfair and a violation of Iran’s sovereignty, essentially. He would be eventually overthrown by a combination of British intelligence and the CIA.”
He says that moment still shapes how many Iranians see the United States. Then came the 1979 Iranian Revolution. American diplomats were taken hostage.
“Cheating a country out of its resources is against international law. And also, holding diplomats hostage is against international law. And so, both sides had very deeply-seated grievances.”
So where does international law fit in now? Dr. Fegley says the problem is there’s no global police force.
“For any system of international law to work, it requires a tremendous amount of trust. And yet, this really doesn’t exist,” he said.
He says mistrust has defined this relationship for decades, and history is cyclical.
So yes, he expected this moment could come. And now?
“The best-case scenario I can envision is that the Iranian people themselves will overthrow the regime, as opposed to it being overthrown from the outside,” added Fegley.