In 1947 Iran was the first country to recognize the newly-independent state of Pakistan.

During the Shah's era, Iran moved closer to Pakistan in many fields and the two nations worked closely with each other. Pakistan, Iran and Turkey joined the United States-sponsored CENTO (Central Treaty Organization) defence treaty which extended along the Soviet Union's southern perimeter. Their relationship further strengthened in the 1970s to suppress a rebel movement in Balochistan, across provinces of Iranian Baluchestan, Pakistani Baluchistan and Afghan Balochistan. In addition the Shah offered considerable development aid to Pakistan including oil and gas on preferential terms. Iran is also believed to have assisted Pakistan financially in its development of an atomic bomb program after India's surprise test detonation Smiling Buddha in 1974. Pakistanis and Iranians frequently visited each other's countries. Considerable business, educational and infrastructure development took place in this period.

Military relations
Both nations were part of a Cold War alliance called the Central Treaty Organization. Iran has always supported Pakistan when it went to war with India, sending over squadrons of airplanes and extra tanks as well as other arms to support it. Dr. Abdul Qadeer Khan, the prominent Pakistani nuclear scientist, is popular in Iran.[citation needed] In 1965 war Pakistani fighter jets were often sent to Iran for fueling and other tactical purposes. Iran also supplied Pakistan with American military weaponry and spare parts after America cut off their military aid to Pakistan.[3] In the 1971 war[which?] Pakistani planes were sent to Iranian bases in Zahedan and Mehrabad for protection since Russian radar jamming and early Airborne warning An-12[clarification needed] blinded Pakistani fighters. Similarly Iran sheltered its jets at Pakistan Air Force Bases during the Iran-Iraq War. Pakistan became intermediary in several of defense deals of Iran with China and North Korea.[citation needed] After 1971 Indo-Pakistani War, new Prime minister Zulfikar Ali Bhutto immediately withdrew Pakistan from CENTO and SEATO after Bhutto thought that the military alliances failed to protect or appropriately assist Pakistan and instead alienated the Soviet Union. After the Iranian Revolution and overthrow of Shah of Iran, Ayatollah Khomeini withdrew Iran from CENTO and dissociated itself from the United States and US-friendly countries such as Pakistan in response to their support of the previous Government. By 1979 Pakistan under President Zia ul Haq was close allies again with the US and came under Sphere of influence a position Pakistan has remained in since . Despite close ties under the Shah, Pakistan was among the first countries to recognize the new Iranian government, and attempted to rebuild ties. In 1980s, the Soviet Union invaded the fragile Afghan Soviet Socialist Republic (Afghan SSR) which improved the Pakistan-Iran ties and coordinated their covert support for the Afghan mujahideen. During the 1990s, their relations were dominated by the Taliban in Afghanistan, and Iran's material support of Shiite paramilitary organizations in Pakistan in response to Saudi financial and logistical support to an Anti-Shiite Sentiment.

During World War II the United Kingdom and the Soviet Union invaded Iran to gain access to the nation's infrastructure and restrict ties to Germany. The Shah, Iran's monarch, was forced to abdicate in favor of his son, Mohammad Reza Pahlavi. During this time Iran was a constitutional monarchy with a strong prime minister. In the early 1950s the new prime minister, Mohammad Mosaddegh, nationalized the country's petroleum industry. The move angered the British and U.S. governments which, in 1953, engineered a coup d'tat that deposed Mosaddegh and established the Shah, Mohammad Reza Pahlavi, as a de facto autocrat, sympathetic to the U.S. and U.K.[20] The Western-backed Shah rapidly became unpopular and the Ayatollah Khomeini, who was an outspoken critic, was exiled. The nation became an increasingly centralized royal power structure state, which was heavily protected by a lavishly financed army and security services.[21][22][23] The revolution was in part a conservative backlash against the Westernizing and secularizing efforts of the Shah,[24] and a liberal backlash to social injustice and other shortcomings of the ancien rgime.[25] The Shah was seen by many as beholden to if not a puppet of an alien Western power (the United States)[26][27] whose new culture was affecting that of Iran. The Shah's regime was seemingly became oppressive, brutal,[28][29] corrupt, and extravagant;[28][30] it also suffered from basic functional failures an over-ambitious economic program that brought economic bottlenecks, shortages and inflation.[31] That the revolution replaced the monarchy and Shah Pahlavi with Islamism and Khomeini, rather than another leader and ideology, is credited in part to the spread of the Shia version of the Islamic revival that opposed resources loot by Westernization, saw Ayatollah Khomeini as following in the footsteps of the beloved Shi'a Imam Husayn ibn Ali, and the Shah in those of Husayn's foe, the hated tyrant Yazid I.[32] Also thought responsible was the underestimation of Khomeini's Islamist movement by both the Shah's regime who considered them a minor threat compared to the Marxists and Islamic socialists[33][34][35] and by the secularist opponents of the regime who thought the Khomeinists could be sidelined

Shah Pahlavi maintained a close relationship with the U.S. government, both regimes sharing an opposition to the expansion of the Soviet Union, Iran's powerful northern neighbor. Like his father's regime, Shah Pahlavi's was known for its autocracy, its focus on modernization and Westernization and for its disregard for religious[42] and democratic measures in Iran's constitution. Leftist, nationalist and Islamist groups attacked his government (often from outside Iran as they were suppressed within) for violating the Iranian constitution, political corruption, and the political oppression by the SAVAK (secret police). Ali Shariati's vision of Islam as the one true liberator of the Third World from oppressive colonialism, neo-colonialism, and capitalism;[48] and Morteza Motahhari's popularized retellings of the Shia faith, all spread and gained listeners, readers and supporters.[47] Rastakhiz Party ("Resurgence party", also Hizb-i Rastakhiz) was founded on March 2, 1975 by Mohammad Reza Pahlavi, the Shah of Iran. The party was intended as Iran's new single party, holding a monopoly on political activity in Iran, and to which all Iranians were required to belong. It survives today in exile as an Iranian monarchist party oppos

Through a progressive reconciliation and diplomatic efforts, both countries come closer to each other in last few years. Regretfully, on October 18, 2009, a suicide attack allegedly of Jundallah militant group killed over forty people including senior commanders of Iranian Revolutionary Guards Corps (IRGC) in Sistan-o-Balochistan.
INTERNATIONAL oil politics, the murder of an Iranian nuclear scientist and reports of renewed uranium enrichment by the Islamic Republic are all factors contributing to keeping tensions between the West and Iran at an uncomfortable level. A car bomb in Tehran claimed the life of Mostafa Ahmadi Roshan recently; the scientist worked at the Natanz nuclear facility and his assassination brings the number of Iranian scientists killed in similar fashion to four since 2010. It appears the assassination had Israel`s fingerprints all over it.