It did in 1953 when Prime Minister Mossadegh wanted to nationalize Iran's oil. The US and UK launched a coup to stop that and installed a dictator (who was initially reluctant to go along with this and had to be convinced). Then SAVAK cracked down on domestic secular left opposition for decades, aided by the CIA.
Yup, and the fascinating part was, that the US actually admitted doing that (well.. declassified some documents regarding this, 60 years after the fact).
So yeah... who know what they're denying now, and what we'll find out in 60 years
I have pics of my grandfather standing and talking with the Shah, and then sitting next to him at a large banquet as if the two of them were the important people in the room. It's still a mystery to me what he was doing there or what their relationship was. My grandfather was a professor of economics at Columbia University who was a leader of relief efforts such as in Armenia after the genocide there. He definitely did good in his life, but whatever his involvement was with the Shah makes me wonder.
UPDATE: more information makes its way onto the internet over time, and while I've done searches on him in the past, this tidbit is now available via Google that wasn't before; he was "Director of Relief for the American Persian Relief Commission in Teheran, Iran in 1919" and I guess he was still involved there when the Shah took over and they developed some sort of relationship.
Just a small clarification, you're talking about a different Shah - Mohammad Reza Pahlavi, the guy who was in full control after the 1953 coup, took initial power in 1941 with foreign help (to help out with WW2 due to the strategic location of Iran for oil and supplies to the USSR) from his father, Reza Shah, who took power in 1925 from Ahmad Shah Qajar, who would have been the Shah your grandfather has pictures with.
