David Remnick

You can find some extraordinary reporting from Cora Engelbrecht all at newyorker.com.

We'll continue on Iran and its relationship with the United States in just a moment.

This is the New Yorker Radio Hour.

This is the New Yorker Radio Hour.

I'm David Remnick.

When the United States instigated a regime change in Iran in 1953, it didn't do so with aircraft carriers.

There was no shock and awe.

It was a piece of covert business involving the CIA and British intelligence.

Together, they engineered the overthrow of the elected prime minister, Mohammad Mossadegh, because his government was pursuing a plan to nationalize Iran's oil industry.

There were also concerns about the influence of communists in Iran.

But contemporary Iran is not Venezuela.

Does Donald Trump want to force Iran to make a nuclear deal to replace the one that he scrapped in his first term?

Or is he really seeking regime change?

To understand how this complex situation might play out, I called on one of the best sources I know on Iran, Karim Sajjadpour.

Sajjadpour is a policy analyst at the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace, and he writes about the Middle East for Foreign Affairs and other publications.

Let's begin our conversation about now with the most obvious resonance—

In 2002, 2003, the American government looked on the leadership Iraq, quite rightly, as horrific.

And we went to war with Iraq, and it was a catastrophe.

Right now, the United States, under Donald Trump, is amassing a gigantic military force that

around Iran.