Renato Velez Castro

2023 marked the 50th anniversary of the US-backed military coup that overthrew the democratically elected government of Salvador Allende in Chile, and installed a military junta led by General Augusto Pinochet. It also marked the 70th anniversary of the US-backed coup against Mohammed Mossadegh in Iran. Beyond the parallels of Western intervention directed against sovereign governments, and the imposition of authoritarian US-client regimes, the fact is that Pinochet’s rule signaled a period of closer ties between Chile and the Pahlavi regime. From the establishment of a Chilean embassy in Tehran in 1974, cooperation even reached the field of state terror both at home and overseas, as the Chilean secret police reached SAVAK for advice on repression and Pinochet agents offered collaboration in chasing some of the Shah’s enemies abroad. The triumph of the Islamic Revolution in 1979 put an end to Chilean-Iranian cooperation and diplomatic relations. The Chilean military industry then supported Saddam’s war against Iran by providing weapons to the Iraqi regime - including cluster munitions. Through declassified documents from the Chilean Foreign Ministry, as well as findings by journalistic research, those connections and exchanges, little known by the peoples of both countries, are revisited.