In 1953, Western powers backed the overthrow of Iranian Prime Minister Mohammad Mossadegh, and according to a growing body of analysis, the world has been living with the consequences ever since.
The argument being made is a sweeping one: that today's most urgent geopolitical flashpoints, from conflict in Ukraine to Africa's scramble for critical minerals to the US-Israeli war on Iran, are not separate crises but connected blowback from that single historical moment. One coup, seven decades of reverberations.
It is a provocative lens, and not a simple one. But it asks a question worth sitting with: when we talk about resource wars and global instability in 2026, how far back do we actually need to go to understand what we are watching unfold?
Originally published by This Is Africa.