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    "parsed_content": "War\u00a0in the Middle EastHouthi-Saudi\u00a0ConflictIran\u2019s Isolation GrowsDiplomacy StallsInside the Conflict in LebanonTimeline of WarChampagne, Caviar and Sinatra: Iran Once Hosted the Best Parties in WashingtonThere was a time that alcohol flowed freely at the Iranian Embassy, and celebrities like Frank Sinatra and Elizabeth Taylor were among the guests.The Iranian Embassy in Washington, designed by Francis Keally, in May 1962.Credit...Fred J. 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Win ProjectionsNEWSLETTERSThe PulseDelivering the top stories in sports, Sunday to Friday.See all newslettersPLAYConnections: Sports Edition Connections: Soccer Edition Connections Coach U.S.InternationalCanadaEspa\u00f1ol\u4e2d\u6587Champagne, Caviar and Sinatra: Iran Once Hosted the Best Parties in WashingtonThere was a time that alcohol flowed freely at the Iranian Embassy, and celebrities like Frank Sinatra and Elizabeth Taylor were among the guests.The Iranian Embassy in Washington, designed by Francis Keally, in May 1962.Credit...Fred J. MaroonSupported bySKIP ADVERTISEMENTListen \u00b7 10:00 min Share full articleBy Michael CrowleyReporting from WashingtonSept. 21, 2026See more of our coverage in your search results.Encuentra m\u00e1s de nuestra cobertura en los resultados de b\u00fasqueda. Add The New York Times on GoogleAgrega The New York Times en Google Long ago, before Iran officially banned alcohol, dancing and public mingling between men and women, it threw some of the best parties Washington, D.C., has ever seen.The setting was the Iranian ambassador\u2019s residence on D.C.\u2019s Massachusetts Avenue, a four-story, 46-room Georgian mansion adjacent to Iran\u2019s embassy that featured 14 fireplaces and a packed social calendar.The time was the 1970s heyday of Iran\u2019s last monarch, Shah Mohammed Reza Pahlavi, a pro-Western autocrat with close ties with the United States. With Iran\u2019s oil industry booming, he had billions to spend on American weapons \u2014 and to entertain American officials.Servants in white gloves poured Dom P\u00e9rignon into crystal glasses. Giant bowls overflowed with fresh beluga caviar. Senior American officials mingled with the celebrity likes of Frank Sinatra, Barbra Streisand and Andy Warhol. They might take in the gyrations of belly dancers, or join the occasional conga line.AdvertisementSKIP ADVERTISEMENTPresiding over these galas was Tehran\u2019s ambassador to the United States, Ardeshir Zahedi. By day, Mr. Zahedi was a regular at the White House and the State Department. At night, he was a hedonistic host, a handsome charmer who graced local magazine covers and could be found dancing past 2 a.m. with his shirt open like a Persian John Travolta.By one account, he once drank champagne from the shoe of his friend and reputed romantic partner Elizabeth Taylor.\u201cHe was the toast of the town,\u201d said Sally Quinn, a longtime Washington Post journalist who was close to Mr. Zahedi and attended his parties. \u201cNobody turned down an invitation to the embassy.\u201dImageThe Iranian ambassador Ardeshir Zahedi spoke with the actress Barbra Streisand and her escort Jon Peters as they admired the Iranian Embassy during a 1975 reception in Washington.Credit...Charles W. Harrity\/Associated PressThe good times would come to an abrupt end when the Islamic Revolution swept through Iran and transformed it into a repressive theocracy. The country\u2019s new ruler was Ayatollah Ruhollah Khomeini, a fundamentalist cleric who loathed Western culture.AdvertisementSKIP ADVERTISEMENTAfter Mr. Pahlavi fled Tehran in January 1979, Mr. Zahedi decamped to Switzerland. The embassy had its own mini-rebellion in which pro-Khomeini workers hacksawed a lock off Mr. Zaehdi\u2019s office door and assumed control. They closed down the embassy compound the next year.It never reopened. In the decades since, the United States and Iran have conducted periodic rounds of mostly fruitless diplomacy.With the countries in a state of war today, the shuttered Iranian Embassy, still identifiable from afar by the light blue Persian tile that frames its doorway, stands as an eerie monument to a friendlier era.\u201cThe antagonistic relationship between the United States and Iran since 1979 is an anomaly in the long arc of history for these two countries,\u201d said John Ghazvinian, a historian and author of a study of U.S.-Iranian relations. \u201cThe overwhelming majority of their history has been a story of mutual admiration.\u201dMutual Admiration DiesAmerica\u2019s founding fathers were steeped in Persian history, and Benjamin Franklin and Thomas Jefferson closely studied an ancient Greek account of Cyrus the Great, a Persian emperor they considered a model of enlightened leadership.AdvertisementSKIP ADVERTISEMENTAmerican Christians later celebrated Persia as an enemy of the Ottoman Empire, which they associated with the persecution of their faith.By the mid-20th century, Iran \u2014 which in 1935 formally asked governments to use that name rather than the traditional Western label of Persia \u2014 supplied the United States with oil and became a key anti-Soviet ally.Iranians in turn admired America. Many saw the young United States as a more benevolent version of European empires like Britain and Russia that had long manipulated their country.Sign up for the On Politics newsletter. It's a pivotal moment for American politics. Join us for 2026 and beyond. Get it sent to your inbox.But over time, admiration turned to animosity.In 1953, the C.I.A. covertly backed a coup against a democratically chosen prime minister, Mohammad Mossadegh, after he nationalized the country\u2019s British-run oil industry. That made America appear as imperial and exploitative as any European power. (The United States later confirmed the C.I.A.\u2019s long-presumed role.)Washington\u2019s subsequent decades of support for the shah, Mr. Pahlavi, suggested that America was largely indifferent to his regime\u2019s corruption and repression so long as the oil flowed. Breaking the shackles of America\u2019s control over Iran would be a core theme of the 1979 revolution led by Mr. Khomeini.AdvertisementSKIP ADVERTISEMENTA New EraIran\u2019s embassy in Washington remained open for more than a year even after Mr. Zahedi departed, managed by a succession of more junior Iranian diplomats aligned with the new regime.The first was Shahriar Rouhani, a 29-year-old Yale University physics doctoral student who traveled from New Haven, Conn., for the mission, and who left untouched a large plastic decorative peanut in Mr. Zahedi\u2019s office that the ambassador had displayed in symbolic tribute to President Jimmy Carter, who was a Georgia peanut farmer.\u201cWe believe there are genuine grounds for friendship between the American people and the Iranian people,\u201d Mr. Rouhani told reporters. \u201cThe oil will flow so long as there is a friendly relationship.\u201dMr. Carter initially hoped the same.ImageIranians poured out thousands of bottles of alcohol into a fountain behind the residency at the Iranian Embassy on May 27, 1979. The action was by order of the new regime in Iran.Credit...Larry Morris\/The Washington Post, via Getty ImagesThat changed soon after Iranian revolutionaries overran the American Embassy in Tehran in November 1979 and took 52 Americans hostage for what would be 444 days. In April 1980, the Carter administration formally severed relations with Tehran, ordering the closure of its U.S. facilities and the expulsion of its remaining diplomats.AdvertisementSKIP ADVERTISEMENTBefore locking up, Iranian Embassy workers poured more than 4,000 bottles of wine, champagne, gin, scotch and other spirits down an outdoor fountain drain, according to a Washington Post account from the time.A Building in Need of RepairsIran maintains diplomatic relations with most Western nations. But its embassy in Washington has never reopened.Under a 1961 Vienna Convention, countries that break ties are obliged to care for vacated diplomatic properties under all circumstances, including armed conflict. That job has fallen to the U.S. State Department, whose Office of Foreign Missions manages Iran\u2019s properties in Washington along with several others across the United States.After a 2010 study found that the 37,000-square-foot chancery required $10 million to $14 million in renovations, the State Department spent $700,000 to mothball the building instead. It proceeded with a projected $1.17 million in renovations of the residence, which it has funded by renting out the building.ImageThe exterior of the Iranian Embassy in December 1979.Credit...Gerald Martineau\/The Washington Post via Getty ImagesIran has not exactly reciprocated, turning the former American Embassy in Tehran into what it calls the U.S. Den of Espionage Museum.AdvertisementSKIP ADVERTISEMENTSome low-level Iranian diplomats still remain in Washington. They handle routine consular matters like visas and passports from a U.S.-approved Interests Section within Pakistan\u2019s embassy.But their presence bothers some Iran hawks, especially after a 2024 incident when an Iranian employee of the office was recorded making a death threat gesture toward an Iranian anti-regime activist at a memorial event. A Maryland court issued a restraining order against the diplomat, who has returned to Iran.Little Hope for ChangeFew people expect the two countries to reestablish diplomatic ties anytime soon.And despite his view that hostility between the United States and Iran is anomalous, Mr. Ghazvinian sees little hope for change.\u201cI\u2019ve always believed that the enmity between the United States and Iran is not necessary,\u201d he said. \u201cAt the same time, I\u2019m deeply pessimistic about either country\u2019s ability to break past that impasse at this particular moment.\u201dAdvertisementSKIP ADVERTISEMENTMr. Zahedi, once the face of warm U.S.-Iranian relations, had also become more pessimistic \u2014 and more critical of the United States \u2014 before his death in November 2021 in Switzerland at the age of 93.Long derided in Iranian state media as an American puppet, Mr. Zahedi earned some respect from regime outlets later in life, particularly after he praised the Iranian military commander Qassim Suleimani, whom Mr. Trump ordered killed in a 2020 drone attack.Ali Vaez, an Iran analyst at the International Crisis Group who befriended Mr. Zahedi late in the diplomat\u2019s life, acknowledged Mr. Zahedi\u2019s fabled people skills. But the sparkle of his entertaining obscured growing frictions in the U.S.-Iran relationship \u2014 including over the scope of Iran\u2019s nascent nuclear program, which had been launched in the 1960s with American assistance, Mr. Vaez said.\u201cWe have experienced the two extremes \u2014 a relationship that was too close for both sides to have real appreciation for its underlying problems,\u201d he added, \u201cand a rupture that has now resulted in both sides absolutely not understanding one another.\u201dAdvertisementSKIP ADVERTISEMENT",
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