Transcript of 638. Revolution in Iran: The Hostage Crisis (Part 3)

Hello, everyone. We have some unbelievably exciting news for you all.

Tom, if anything, you are underselling it because this is truly spectacular. On the fourth and fifth of July this year, we are going to be hosting the inaugural Rest is History Festival. Out of all places, Hampton Court Palace. And crucially, this is just for the people who mean most to us. That is the members of the Rest is History Club. Tom, am I right?

You are so right, Dominic. So if you want to access tickets for the festival, then you will need to become a member of the Rest is History Club, which is so easy to do. All you have to do is go to therestlesshistory. Com. It's a matter of seconds.

Okay. So remember, by becoming a member of the Restless History Club, you will be able to enter that much prized ballot for tickets to this thrilling festival. But of course, on top of that, you'll get all our episodes ad free. You will get early the access to our epic series. You will get weekly bonus episodes. You will get access to our exciting new exclusive mini-series. Most of all, you'll get an entree to our much love chat community and many more such exciting benefits.

If you want guaranteed access to two tickets, you can join the very top tier of the club and become an Athel Stan. You will also get the exclusive opportunity to upgrade to a VIP ticket, which includes a range of special perks, including, and this is so exciting, unlimited food and unlimited drink. So go to therestishistory. Com and sign up immediately.

It is going to be the most extraordinary weekend. There'll be talks, there will be thrilling special guests, there will be historically themed music, there'll be all kinds of treats, there'll be all kinds of action, there might even be some battles. But above all, it'll be a time for friendship, to get to know your fellow members, and to get to know Tom and me in a very, very special place, Hampton Court Palace.

I know that I speak for Dominic as well as for myself when I say, We cannot wait to see you there. Like in the name of God, the Merciful and Compassionate, we Muslim students, followers of Imam Kamehny, have occupied the Espionage Embasy of America in protest against the ploy of the Imperialists and the Zionists. We announced our protest to the World, a protest against America for granting asylum and employing the criminal Shah while it has its hands in the blood of tens of thousands of women and men in this country. So we protest against America for creating a malignant atmosphere of biased and monopolized propaganda and for supporting and recruiting counter-revolutionary agents against the Islamic Revolution of Iran. And finally, for its undermining and its destructive role in the face of the struggle of the peoples for freedom from the chains of imperialism, wherein thousands of revolutionary and faithful people have been slaughter. So that, of course, was a student, and it was a female student, and she was phoning in to a Tehran radio station on the afternoon of Sunday, the fourth of November 1979, and she was speaking on behalf of a radical student group called themselves the Muslim Students Following the Line of the Imam.

What had prompted this call was a very dramatic development in the ongoing momentum of the Islamic Revolution in Iran, because a few hours earlier, several hundred Iranian students had broken into the United States's embassy compound in downtown Tehran. Their plan was, I mean, it's what students do all the time. They wanted to do a brief symbolic occupation, but it very rapidly turned into something much, much more serious with seismic geopolitical implications. Because within a few days, they had taken 66 Americans hostage, including Marine Guards, CIA officers and operatives, and US diplomats. Dominic, this crisis escalated very, very rapidly and would become one of the most dramatic humiliations in the whole of American history.

Definitely, yes. So hello, everybody. What an extraordinary reading that was. At one point, I thought you might be accused of punching down against female students. And then it occurred to me that your female student voice is actually just a little bit along from your Mick Jagger voice. Anyway, yes, this is an extraordinary story. It's a defining episode in the Iranian Revolution, and it's an absolutely catastrophic moment for Jimmy Carter. Poor old Jimmy Carter, he's been through the Ringer in the rest of his history. I mean, he was humiliated when he appeared in our episode about Love Island. People may remember he was a contestant on historical Love Island. Who did he end up with?

Can't remember. I don't think it was a good match, was it?

No, it wasn't. I think was he dumped by Marcia Williams for Judith Iscariot. I think something like that happened. He's had a terrible time because last week he collapsed on a run, watched by you at the time, remember?

Yes.

He was attacked by a killer rabbit. He was uprated by us for not pursuing peanut diplomacy with the Iatollus.

It's such an open goal.

Now he's paying the price for his folly, because this week we are telling the story of the seizure of the US Embassy, the ordeal of the hostages, and Carter's absolutely disastrous attempt to rescue them. We will be welcoming back in the next episode, an old friend and associate of the rest of his history. Yeah, Ronald Reagan will be returning to the show. Very exciting times. Let's remind ourselves where we got to. There'll be months of street protests, rather like the street protest, Tom, that we are witnessing right now. I know you're keen, aren't you, to bring out the extraordinary resonances between the late 1970s and the 2020s.

Yeah, so we're recording this on the ninth of January, and who knows what may have happened by the time you get to listen to this.

After street protest, the last Shah, Mohamed Reza Palavi, had fled Iran on the 16th of January, 1979. Sixteen days later, the Ayatollah Ruhaula Khomenei returned. This extraordinary moment when he returns to the airport. Then there's a period of total chaos, street battles and paramilitary violence and whatnot. But by the spring of 1979, it's pretty clear the Ayatollah has the initiative. Paramilitters who associate themselves with him control the streets. There's been a referendum and a massive majority for an Islamic Republic. There are Sharia courts that are trying and executing former Shah loyalists.

Dominic, it's not yet institutionalized, is it? But there is increasing pressure on women to start bailing, covering their hair, going into hijab.

Yes. Women's rights and other symbols of Westernization have been put into reverse. Really, some of them have. There is still a power struggle going on. So there is an interim government relatively moderate under this guy, Mehdi Bhazigan.

So he's weedy beard and mustache.

Yes, he's got intellectual, goatey beard and mustache. But power is increasingly concentrated in the hands of people with much more luxuriant beards, huge beards, who are the Council of the Islamic Revolution. And this is dominated by clerks who associate themselves with Khomenei. What nobody knows at this point is where all this is going. It's a He's in a situation in great fluidity and flux. No one knows really what Khomeni wants. He has gone off to the holy city of Gom, which is where he'd been at the seminary, and he hunkered down there praying and meditating and whatnot, whatnot And whatnot. And whatnot, yeah. There's a whatnot as well. I think he's probably writing mystical poems, isn't he? Isn't that what he enjoys doing? I would imagine so. Yeah, he's thinking about poetry, and that's nice. But what the Islamic Revolutionary state under clerical guardianship will mean in practice remains very unclear. Because of this sense of uncertainty, there is a deep fear, even paranoia, among Khomini's partisans that the forces of Satanism are going to strike back against their revolution. It reminds me a lot of the French Revolution. In the French Revolution, 1792, 1793, people were convinced that emigrés and foreign agents were plotting against the revolution.

And guess what? They were. They were right.

I suppose also, we call it the Islamic Revolution, but the notion of overthrowing a king because he's a king is pretty alien to Islam. I mean, isn't a precedent for this in Islamic history, but there is, of course, in European history. So there is a slight irony there that the process of institutionalizing a Republic is of necessity, importing certain Western ideas.

I guess it is. But also no one knows the Republic will actually last. There's a lot of Palavi loyalists out there. The Shah is still out as we will discuss. Rather like in the French Revolution, people were worried that the King would strive back. Of course. This is what people are thinking right now. What is more, as in the French Revolution, the chaos in the capital has triggered revolts all over the country. Iran, remember, is not a nation state. Iran is multi-ethnic. For example, the southwestern province of Kuzustan, there has been a revolt by the Arab population. There were revolts all over Iran. Actually, that revolt in Kuzustan is the rebellion that inspires the takeover of the Iranian embassy by separatists in London in 1980. This is the embassy siege that ended with the SAS storming the building. On top of this, there's a very tense relationship with Iran's neighbor, Iraq, because Saddam Hussein, the Iraqi strong man, has been very alarmed by this talk of exporting the Islamic Revolution, because, of course, he lives in a country, as we discussed, a majority Shiaite population.

And he is a sunni.

And he is a sunni. So Saddam Hussein is thinking, maybe I should strike first and profit from Iran's fragmentation, which, of course, he will do, true or During the Iran-Irak war.

That goes well.

Yeah, for nobody. Finally, Khominy and his supporters remember that in 1953, the British and the Americans had carried out a coup against Mohamed Mosoudek. And they're very worried that the Americans might be planning another coup.

Well, they are, aren't they? They are, yes. Was it Zbigniew Brozinski?

Zbigniew Brozinski.

He sent orders to the American ambassador.

He's constantly ringing him up and saying, Get that coup going. Come on, where's the coup? So one of the students, Massimou Ebtekar, we quoted her before. As she said later on, We were sure that foreign elements were actively involved in attempts to weaken and undermine our young Republic.

So French Revolution, isn't it?

Yeah, it is very French Revolution. And as in the French Revolution, it's A, it is paranoid, but B, it's also true. They are trying to undermine the revolution. So people like Massimou Ebtekar and other students, they come to focus on one place above all, and that's the US Embassy.

This is the tweelery of the Iranian Revolution.

The Den of Spies, as they called it, the Center of counter-revolutionary intrig. The US Embassy, to give people a sense of the place because it's so important, it's a two-story brick building. It was finished in 1951. It's in this wooded compound. Americans used to say it looks just like a high school, and it does when you look at photos of it, it looks like the high school in Stranger Things or something.

Or The Simpson.

Or indeed, The Simpson, exactly. Or indeed, any American TV series. Because of the relationship with the Shah, the US Diplomatic Corps always knew the embassy might be a target. Actually, they were first attacked on Christmas Eve, 1978, before the Shah had even left. There was a crowd outside the compound, and they were repelled by US Marine guards with tear gas and by an Iranian army unit, then loyal to the Shah, which defended the US Embassy. Then, after the Shah has gone and the Ayatollah has returned, there is a second attack on the 14th of February, 1979. This is in the context of the chaos in the streets, the street battles after Khomini's return. This was much more serious. This time, the attack was led by Islamic militants with automatic weapons. At the time, ambassador William Sullivan, people may You remember him? He's acerbic. He has white bouffon hair. He's always arguing with the White House. He handled it really well. He said to the Marines, Hold your fire. Don't shoot back against these blokes. Retreat to the Chancery building. Put down some tear gas. Retreat behind this cloud of tear gas. The attackers got through the gates, but Sullivan himself went to meet them, and he kept them talking until intermediaries could arrive sent by Khomeny's Revolutionary Council.

Khomeny's men actually had a massive row with the attacker, said, What are you doing? Why are you here? No one told you to break him. They cleared the compound, and this will surprise some people. Khomini sent a group of clerks a couple of days later to see Sullivan and to say, We're dreadfully sorry that this happened. If this happens again, you have my personal assurance that I will help you. Let me know if this happens again. This is all from Sullivan's memoir, Mission to Iran, I think it's called. The obvious question is, once this has happened a a couple of times, why do the Americans not close the embassy?

I suppose it's so important, isn't it, Iran? I mean, it's the fulcrum of its position in the Middle East. Of course.

You're not going to run away, right?

And especially if you've got the eytolus personal guarantee that you'll be safe.

And also they want to keep talking to moderate element. They want to swing the government away from extremism. They want to keep talking to them.

Of course, the moderate element. The one thing American diplomats love, it's a moderate element in an Islamic regime.

But also, the CIA have listening posts on the border with the Soviet Union, on Iran's northern borders. They don't want to give them up. They're really important. Now, that said, the Americans are not complete idiots. So they start to wind things down at the embassy. By the spring of 1979, most American nationals have been flown out of Iran. From about one and a half thousand people, there are now fewer than 100 people working at the embassy. If you go to the compound in the middle of 1979, there's a handful of marines. I mean, we're talking about a dozen, maybe, maybe between a dozen and 20 marines. That's a hard posting, isn't it? Yeah, you don't really fancy that. There are about 80 local armed men who have been sent by Iran's provisional government. But these blokes just spend a lot of time drinking and squabbling around themselves, so they're clearly not going to be much use in a fight. However, after February 1979, all the militant factions on the streets, they're more worried about fighting each other than they are fighting the Americans. So the Americans are left alone. So a couple of months later, Sullivan is finally recalled to Washington.

As we talked about before, Carter has been itching to sack him for months because he thinks he's insubordinate. The State Department do not rush to replace him. They say, Look, the situation in Iran is so chaotic. We don't even know who's in charge. So we don't really know who we should send. We'll get this bloke's deputy, who's called Bruce Lengen. He can stay on as the caretaker head of mission until we send out a proper ambassador later on.

Dominic, can I just ask, if they had sent out an ambassador, would that have been an indication to the new Iranian regime that the United States recognized it as the legitimate government.

Yes, undoubtedly it would.

That would actually maybe have made a difference, do you think?

Much better. A lot of people, some people, at least in the State Department, certainly in the US Embassy, including Bruce Langen himself, thought, You should send another ambassador because that will send a to the Iranian regime, we accept you. We will work with you. We're going to find a way through this. But actually not sending an ambassador at all is a really bad sign. It's a snub. Yeah, it's seen as a bit of a snub. Sullivan gets back to Washington. The first thing he does when he gets back to Washington, he says to Cyrus Vance, who is the patrician Ivy League, boarding school-educated Secretary of State. Sullivan says to Cyrus Vance, I'd like to see you because I'm actually really worried about our embassy. He says, There is one thing that you could do that would be bound to provoke an attack, and that would be if you ever allowed the Shah of Iran into the United States.

That's his message. Whatever you do, don't allow the Shah of Iran into the United States. Whatever you do, whatever you do, do not do that.

Let's get on to the Shah. The Shah, remember, left in January, and the original plan was to him to go to this estate in Palm Springs that has been visited by Tom Holland, Walter Annenberg's estate. But the Shah has not done that. He has hung around and dallied in North Africa with his pal President Sadat in Aswan in Egypt, and then he's gone to see another mate of his, King Hassan of Morocco in Marrakech. The Shah is now a very sick really gaunt and miserable figure. He has seen the footage of Khomini's return, and he was really shocked by it. He's guttied about what's happened to Iran. He can't believe it. Of course, he was still out of touch, and he's really disappointed. Meanwhile, in Morocco, because, of course, the Islamic Revolution has caught the world's imagination, and because the Ayatollahs have made it very clear they'd like to export the ideals of their revolution, King Hassan of Morocco thinks, I don't know that having the Shah here is a very good idea. I mean, there are Islamist groups in Morocco. I don't want them all kicking off because the Shah's here. After a few weeks, he says to the Shah, I'd really like it if you moved on now.

You've outstaged your welcome. Now, the Shah at this point This would be the point for him to go to California. However, the Americans have now slightly changed their mind. First of all, there are reports that the Revolutionary Committees in Iran started arresting foreigners. But also the National Security Council says to Carter, If we admit the Shah, it would mean, and I quote, Mass arrests of Americans in Tehran, and almost certainly another attack on the embassy. Now, Jimmy Carter, people may recall, is an evangelical, born-again Christian. So you would think he is a kindly man, a man of his word, who would want to honor his promise to the Shah, wouldn't you, Tom?

Well, and also he's gone over to Tehran and toasted the Shah and said how he's his best mate and how he loves him.

Yeah, correct.

Very publicly.

Yes. But you know what? Jimmy Carter now shows a perhaps less Christian side to his character. When they meet in Washington, he says, I think we should forget about the Shah. Let's cut him Let him twist in the wind. And Brzezinski, who's the hard man, he's really shocked by this. And he says, I think it would be repugnant to cancel our invitation. It would violate our loyalty to our friend. And Carter says, very curtly, I don't want the Shah playing tennis in the United States while Americans and Tehran are kidnapped or killed.

Well, it'd be very easy for Carter to stop the Shah playing tennis, wouldn't it? Because he doesn't put him on the booking list for the White House.

Right. Yeah. If there's anyone, it's funny. It's so revealing that Jimmy Carter reaches for that image. Right. Anyway, the Shah is now in a mess. Jimmy Carter doesn't want him. So where can he go? Now, remember, he has a house in our own beloved country.

But the weather's terrible.

But he said the weather was terrible. Now he gets that idea back. Jim Callahan, still Prime Minister, says, No, you're not coming. And then there's an election in Britain. Margaret Thatcher, big fan of Shah, she also says, No.

I mean, she's the Iron Lady. She's not going to be swayed by obligations to a sick king, is she?

Well, you know what? She actually felt really bad about it. But she was told, Security on the Shah's estate, which is just outside London, will be a nightmare. We're not convinced. It'll be very difficult to protect this country estate from attackers. But also, we will put our own Britain's embassy in Tehran at risk.

And they're right, because actually, we know that American diplomats are going to be taken hostage. British diplomats are not. In a sense, bearing in mind the notoriety of Britain in the Iranian demonology, that is a dog that doesn't bark in the night, isn't it?

It is, although there are massive protests outside the British Embassy, but it's not invaded.

And they changed the street name, don't they, from Winston Churchill Avenue to Bobby Sands Avenue. Bobby Sands is an IRA hunger striker.

Exactly, they do. So the Shah can't go to Britain. He goes off to the Bahamas in the end, and he gets a house on the beach, and he spends his time praying and reading the newspapers, and he rings up foreign diplomats to reminisce about the good old days, about food from maxims of Paris and champagne and stuff. Great days. And then after that, he goes to Cuernavaca in Mexico. Both of these bolt holes have been arranged by two American pals of his, so specifically, his great chum, Henry Kissinger, and Kissinger's mate, David Rockefeller, of oil family Fame, who is the President of the Chase East Manhattan Bank.

So useful friends.

Yeah, good contacts. And Kissinger and Rockefeller take it upon themselves to be the Shah's great champions. And they think it's terrible that the United States has abandoned him. And all through 1979, Kissinger and Rockefeller are pestering the Carter administration. Allowing the Shah, you're letting America down. This is really poor. Come on.

And does Carter respond to this in a tone of Christian obligation?

Tabby, get your bleeping machine ready. Carter says, and I quote, to the Shah. I'm not going to welcome him when he has other places where he'll be safe. This is not what Jimmy Carter says when he's teaching a Sunday school in Plains, Georgia. Surely. Anyway, the decisive factor is the Shah's health. Basically, his doctors have been visiting him, his French doctors, and they can see that his cancer is spreading. He's losing weight. He looks terrible. He's turned yellow with jaundice, all of this. Eventually, David Rockefeller sends his own medical team to Mexico to inspect the Shah, and they go back to and they report to the administration. In October 1979, so the 19th of October, there's a meeting at the White House to discuss this. Carter's aid say to him, I think you should let him in. He's dying. You should definitely let him in. Cyrus Vance, the Secretary of State, says, Common decency and humanity demand that we allow the Shah to have treatment in New York. He was our ally. He was our man. We can't abandon him now. Carter's Chief of Staff, Hamilton Jordan, a Georgian like Carter, he points out to the Carter.

He says, If the Shah dies in Mexico, Henry Kissinger will go around the world saying, First you caused his downfall, and now you've killed him.

' That's a bit harsh. It's the cancer that kills him, surely.

Yeah, but that is what Henry Kissinger would have said. Yeah, okay. Hamilton Jordan is right. And Carter eventually gives in. But at the end of the meeting, Carter, and we've painted Carter in some ways, we've perhaps been a bit unfair to Jimmy Carter in some ways. Here, Jimmy Carter shows his shrewdness because Jimmy Carter says at the end of the meeting, Does somebody have an answer as to what we would do if the diplomats in our embassy are taken hostage? And there's a long silence and nobody says anything. And Carter says, I gather not. On that day, we will all sit here with long-drawn white faces, and we will realize that we have been had.

So if he's alert to that, why doesn't he withdraw the diplomats before allowing the Shah in?

That's a good question. When they don't want to withdraw their diplomats, they think it's so important to have diplomatic representation and keep talking to these fabled moderate elements, I think. If Carter ran away from Iran, he would be accused of completely losing Iran, I think. So he doesn't want to do that.

Yeah, invidious situation.

Anyway, he doesn't handle it well, as we will see. So three days later, the 22nd of October, the Shah and Emperor Farah arrive in New York, and they are rushed straight to the Cornell Medical Center so that he can have emergency surgery. There's no attempt, really. Everyone knows they can't keep this a secret. So even as the doctors are operating on the Shah, there are crowds outside the building, chanting against him.

And are these Iranian?

Iranian students.

Iranian students.

So there were tens of thousands of Iranian students at American universities. They tend to be anti-Shah. And by this point, when they demonstrate against the Shah or whatever, they often get attacked by Americans or there's scuffles on campuses and things like this, and which will worsen of course, once the Hostia crisis begins.

But there are also lots of pro-Shah Iranians in America.

There are the exiles. So increasingly, exile groups who've arrived since 1978, settled in places like Florida and California, still exile communities of Iranians in America today. So in Tehran, when the US Embassy staff hear the Shah has arrived in New York, oh, God, they're not happy. So Bruce Lengen, who is the acting ambassador, had already said to Washington, please do not do this. Do not do this. And If you are going to do it, clear it with the Iranian provisional government beforehand. Explain to them what you're doing. Try to smooth the ground. Please send a new ambassador to show that you accept the new regime. And please do something to arrange proper security for Americans in Tehran. And as throughout this story, too many people in Washington just don't listen to the signals they're getting from their embassy. But in the first few days, Lengen thinks, You know what? We might just get away with this. There is no attack on the embassy. There are marches, but by Iranian standards, the streets feel reasonably calm, so maybe things are going to be all right. What he doesn't know is that at Tehran's University of Technology, there are students who have been plotting for weeks to attack the embassy.

Now, there are different groups of students who claim credit for this. The name that comes up most often is a guy called Ibrahim Ashkazada, who later on actually ended up being a reformist Iranian politician who was actually arrested in the 2000s.

So a moderate element.

Moderate element, but not in 1979. He was an engineering student. He was absolutely typical of the students who were very excited about Khomini's return, seeing it as a chance for a new start, banishing the corruption and the frustrations of the '70s. And he meets up with some friends of his at a cafe in Tehran one day in the autumn. And they say, We would love to demonstrate our... It's classic student stuff. Let's make a stand. Let our voices be heard, all of this thing. Strike at the Imperialists. Strike at the Imperialists. Why don't we break into the US Embassy and from there, proclaim our message to the world? Brilliant idea. They meet up with students from other Tehran colleges and they form this group with the catchy name Muslim student followers of the Imam's Line. Love it. Their plan is they will occupy the embassy for a few hours, maybe a few days, and they will broadcast the message that you read out. We don't like the Shah, we don't like America, we don't like imperialism. Huzar, huzar, end of story.

It's a sit-in in exactly the way that sit-ins from 1968 onwards have operated in the West and presumably inspired by them.

Yes. That's the funny thing, isn't it, about the Iranian Revolution, that in some ways, it was often described in the West as backward-looking, as medieval, all this thing. And yet it's very modern. It's informed both by Shia tradition and also by the Ayatollah's radical vision. But also there's hints of the 1960s and 1968 in there, too.

Yeah, and that's what people on the left in the West who are enthusiastic, initially, for the Iranian Revolution are picking up on.

That's what they liked, exactly. So now we come to the fateful day, Sunday, the fourth of November, 1979. It is exactly one year to go until the US presidential election. I mean, you could not make this up. So 365 days time, Jimmy Carter will face the American voters. And about dawn, 300 students gathered near the embassy. At least one of the female students, they're wearing these black-Chadoras. Yeah, chadoras, black robes. They have bolt cutters hidden under their chadoras. They brought enough food for three days. That's as long as they think the occupation will plausibly last at the outside. They go through the streets towards the embassy. Remember that Teran, there are always street protests and stuff, so people don't think anything of it. And inside the embassy, nobody really has any idea what's happening. There's a brilliant book on this by an American writer called Mark Bowden called 'Guests of the Ayatollah', all about the siege and the hostage experience, which I heartedly recommend to the listeners. And one of the people he talks about in this book is the press attaché who was Barry Rosen, who was a big Iranophile. He'd been a Peace Corps volunteer in Iran.

He spoke Farsi, all of this. He's in his office. It's nine o'clock. He's typing a report and he hears shouting at the window. He goes to the window with his secretary. There's this huge crowd, men with a lot of stubble shouting death to Jimmy Carter, death to America, women in their chador, fist pumping, hurrah for the Ayatollah, all this thing. Standard stuff. And he watches it for a little while. And then to his horror, he sees they're starting to climb the gates.

I guess if you're an American diplomat in the '70s, seeing people climb over the walls of American embassies, it's not a good sign.

You're absolutely It is only four years since the fall of Saigon. The scar of South Vietnam's fall has not healed by any means. And those scenes that the US Embassy must be, they are very fresh in people's minds.

And there are no helicopters on hand.

There are no helicopters. Well, as yet. Rosen goes back in, he says, bar the door, I need to get rid of any sensitive papers. But actually, before he can do that, men are already forcing their way into his office. And he shouts at them in Farsi, get out or whatever. But more and more of them are coming in. One of them says to him, Leave immediately or you will be hurt. We are in control. Rosen can see they're very young, they're very disorganized, they are frightened, of course, and they're angry. They're in a terrible state. And he thinks, Well, I'll just give in because this will be over soon. I know how these things work. I'm just going to have to set this up for the time being. And he's led outside by these blokes. And there are already hundreds of people pouring into the compound, and they They're moving around the buildings. They're going through all the cupboards. They're pulling out documents, all of this thing. In the Chancery building, the students demand that the staff open the safes. The staff don't have the combination. Some of the students start hitting them, and then they drag the staff outside.

They bind them, they blindfold them. And this happens in every building in the compound. It's a very confused and dramatic scene, but it all happens pretty quickly. An obvious question is why the Americans don't fight back? Why is there no shooting? And there are a couple of explanations. One is that not all the students are violent. So some of them carry signs in English that say, Don't be afraid, we just want to sit in.

Right. So this is like Berkeley. This is like a student sitting in California.

Exactly, or the London School of Economics or the sit-ins that have been so familiar in the '60s and '70s. Secondly, an obvious point, the marines are massively outnumbered. I think there are about just over a dozen marines in the compound. There are 300 students. You're not going to shoot them all, so they're overwhelmed. But crucially, everybody thinks this will be over within hours because there have been attacks on the embassy before. It's scary and it's traumatic, but it's not going to last forever. So by lunchtime, it's all over. The compound is now full of hundreds of Iranians, and about 60 Americans have been taken prisoner. Most of them have been blind folded or bound. Some of them are really... They've been hit, they're bruised, they're battered. Some of them are terrified they're going to be shot. Some of them are saying to their friends, Don't worry, it's fine. We'll probably be on a plane going home tomorrow. This is how these things work. The chief diplomat, Bruce Lengen, and two of his senior officials are not there. They had a meeting at the Iranian Foreign Ministry. They went to the Foreign Ministry. Lengen found out what was going on, and he said, I want to see the Foreign Minister.

They basically showed him into a dining room, and he was there for hours, and then he was there overnight, and then he was there for another day. Then he basically realized, I'm never getting out of this room.

And then does he get taken back to the embassy?

No, they get shut up in the foreign Ministry. Forever? Forever.

Well, what happens to them? Do they get out as well in the end?

They're hostages. They're hostages, but stuck in the foreign Ministry.

Not even with their mates back in the embassy.

Well, as we will see, the hostages, a lot of them end up getting spit up. They're getting solitary, confinement, and so on and so forth. So they're all prisoners. They've ended up as prisoners of the Iranian Revolution. Of the 72 embassy staff Half, only six of them avoided capture. This is an extraordinary story.

Yeah, because this is the film, isn't it?

This is Argo. There were five of them, Mark and Cora Lyak, Joseph and Kathleen Stafford, and Robert Anders, who were working in the consulate. The consulate building had a separate exit onto the street, so they were able to sneak out. Their original plan was to go to the British Embassy, but there was a massive crowd outside the British Embassy, so they had to abandon that. After a various goings on, they ended up being taken in by the Canadians, as well as the sixth guy called Henry Lee Shatz. The story of how they're taken in by the Canadians and then they get out of Iran is the Ben Affleck film, Argo. This extraordinary story, just to cut it a very long story short, the Canadians, who are the great heroes of this story, teamed up with a CIA agent called Tony Mendez. Of course, he was called Tony Mendez. He created full-site entities for them. They pretended they'd been working as Hollywood film scouts, checking out locations for a science fiction film called Argo. The CIA went to the length of opening a Hollywood studio to make this film. They made posters. They ran ads in variety in the Hollywood reporter to create a cover story for them.

Mendes, in January 1980, flies into Iran with his forgery kit to basically get these guys out.

It's such a good film.

Yeah. Canadian caper, it was called at the time. An amazing story. I I mean, the fact that I'm telling the story, if you haven't seen the film, you can probably guess whether they get out or not, but it is still worth watching the film.

I mean, I got to say Tehran is an excellent place for thrillers. There's also a tremendous Israeli spy series called Tehran.

Oh, yeah. I remember you telling us I'm not sure about that.

Mossad agent who goes undercover in Tehran. It's actually very le Carré. Both sides are morally ambivalent. I really recommend it. It's intense, particularly the first two episodes, is incredibly tense in exactly the way that This episode is tense.

And tense, Tom, I would like to believe in the same way that this episode is tense, no? Yeah, absolutely. Because 66 hostages have now been left in captivity, and Jimmy Carter now has a massive headache. So he's at Camp David, his retreat. It's four o'clock in the morning and he gets the call from the State Department that the embassy has been taken and people have been taken hostage. And he puts the phone down and he tries to get back to sleep, but he can't sleep for obvious reasons. He had specifically asked his advisors what they would do if this happened, and they had not given him a clear answer. He must know, even at this stage, that if he can't find an answer, then he and his presidency are heading for the dustbin of history.

Not the dust bin of history.

Do you know what? It's a Ronald Reagan image. That's why I chose it.

Dominic, well, you said, Tension. Tension, we've got it. Come back after the break to find out if Jimmy Carter can get out of the bin. Hello, and welcome back to The Rest is History. We left you with the United States Embassy in the hands of student militants and some 66 American hostages from that embassy being held hostage. So, Dominic, what happens to these hostages?

So at first, remember, the hostages don't think they're going to end up as long term hostages. They think they will be out within hours, maybe a day, worst case, two or three days. At first, they were held in the embassy compound. They were held there for a very long time, for weeks and months, until the Uranians became worried that the Americans might try to rescue them, and they moved them to prisons. They spit them up and moved them to prisons around Iran. I mentioned Mark Bowden's book, Guests of the Ayatollah. This was an expression used by the Iranians. They said, These people are the guests of our regime. But they Weren't treated like guests. They were blindfolded. They were regularly interrogated. They were bullied. They were beaten. People would put guns to their heads. They would pretend to play Russian roulette with them. They would threaten to shoot them unless they admitted that they were spies and handed over secrets.

I'm surprised they would use the word guests, actually, because hospitality is such a big deal in Islam.

It's a joke, isn't it? There's something mocking about the attitude of the Iranians during this crisis.

But the rules of hospitality are so important.

Well, I mean, this is not a great advert for Iranian hospitality, not least because the hostage takers themselves, of course, they're young, they're in their early 20s. They themselves are frightened, over-excited, disorganized, They had temper. They spend a lot of time screaming at each other and at the hostages. Some of the hostages, the women and African-Americans, were released before the end of November after a few weeks, obviously because the captors wanted to make a political point. This is the 1968 side of the Iranian Revolution. That left 52 of them still in captivity. Their story is a pretty grim one. I mean, a lot of them had a really terrible time. They were regularly beaten. They were regularly bound for days. They were brought out before jeering crowds. They were split up and put into solitary confinement and so on.

And they're always wearing blindfold, aren't they? So all the photographs, they're always... I mean, just awful.

And when they were moved to prisons, they had a really, really tough time. And the prison guards, so who were not students, the prison guards, they beat them, they tortured them, all of this thing. And of course, the greatest torment of all is just how long this goes on for. So huge spoiler alert now. These guys are going to be in captivity for 444 days. So far, far longer than they had envisaged or indeed, the students had envisaged. I mean, this is the interesting thing. So the question is, why? This was never part of the student's plan. Why didn't they let them go?

And what about the Ayatollah's promise that, just get on the phone to me and I'll sort it out?

Well, this is where we get to the nub of the story at the Ayatollah. So Hominy, despite what was often said in, particularly American newspapers in 1979 and 1980, Hominy almost certainly knew nothing about their plan, or if he did know anything, the vaguest possible the intimations of it. Because we know that when his foreign minister went to him and said, This is what has happened, Khomini was really surprised. And he said, and I quote, Who are these people? Why have they done this? Go and kick them out. So that was his initial reaction, midday or so on the fourth of November. But by that evening, he already seems to have changed his mind. There are some suggestions that this is because his son was in Tehran and his son went to the embassy and reported back. He said, The students are massive fans of yours. They're doing this in your name, and people love it. The reaction on the streets of Tehran is one of delirium, of joy, of ecstasy. Everybody thinks this is the most tremendous coup. What is more, actually, within days, the embassy becomes a massive tourist attraction. Great crowds will go.

They're celebrating and cheering. There are people selling tapes of Khomini's sermons.

Are they taking souvenirs? Yeah.

There are people They're selling souvenir hats and stuff. I read this, and I did some enthusiastic googling. I don't know what a souvenir US Embassy seizure hat would look like.

A Stetson?

No, I don't. Well, are they Stetsons? I mean, who's making Stetsons in Teran? Baseball caps.

Maybe baseball caps. I mean, are these hats that the…

The Iranians are wearing?

They're not hats that they've taken from the US Embassy.

No. How many hats could there have possibly been in the US Embassy?

I imagine it's obligatory for a US It's an ambassador to have a Stetson.

Surely. But I mean, that's only one Stetson. They're selling loads of hats. Anyway, we've got sidetracked into this hat issue, millenary. We're not the rest as millenary, Tom. To go back to Khomini, this is a good example, I think, of his political skill, his underrated political skill, because he sees this is the perfect symbolic issue to maintain his hold on the streets. Because the longer he can spin all this out, the better for him. It makes the so-called moderates in his interim government look a bit weak and feeble, and it allows the more extreme elements, the hardline elements, the revolutionary committees to build support. So Baker Mohin's biography of Khomini quotes him talking to a friend, We Keep the hostages, finish our internal work, then release them. This has united our people. We can put the Constitution to the people's vote without difficulty and carry out the presidential and parliamentary elections. And when we've finished all these jobs, then we can let the hostages go. In other words, we keep them for as long as we need to cement our control of Iran.

And do you think also the optics of it is that you keep a hostage to ensure that your enemy won't do anything? And even though perhaps the United States were not planning, by this stage, a military invasion or anything, it might generate subliminally in the minds of Iranian revolutionaries, the sense that their revolution is under threat by holding the hostages.

Yeah, possibly. Of course, might give you a little bit of security. The Americans won't attack us now because we have 52 of their people held hostage. Now, the hostage takers did have a list of demands. They wanted the United States to hand over the Shah for trial. They wanted the Americans to issue a formal apology for the coup of 1953, so that sense of history again. And they wanted American banks to release all Iran's frozen assets. But I think these demands are completely beside the point. And this is something that Americans never really realized that the White House, the State Department, could never quite get into their heads, that the demands were irrelevant because Khomini and the clerks didn't want to release the hostages. They were too useful because right away, he gets results. The interim government of Barzigan, the goaty-bearded guy and all these people, they resigned days after the embassy seizure. They were shocked by the embassy seizure. They resigned. Khomini thought, Well, brilliant, because basically now the hardliners are left unchallenged to wheel power in my name, which is what he wanted. But the Americans, I think, didn't really realize this. Most people in Washington thought that the Iranians would be keen to negotiate.

And in the State Department, the working assumption was, Probably this is all about money, and we can do a deal, we can release frozen Iranian bank assets, and that way we'll get the hostages back. And this will take weeks, worst case in months, but it's perfectly doable. And in fact, the mad thing, some of Carter's re-election team thought this would work in his favor. So he's going to be facing a challenge from Chapaquodix, Ted Kennedy. And they think, well, this will allow Carter to wrap himself in the flag. Kennedy is playing politics. Well, the President is doing all he can for the hostages. And Carter's Chief of Staff, Hamilton Jordan, said, Let's keep this on the front pages. That's mad.

That's the worst strategy.

I know. It is a mad strategy. He said, I quote, It will provide a nice contrast between Carter and our friend from Massachusetts and how to handle a crisis. Oh, God.

I mean, neither of them are very good in the crisis, has to be said.

No. So Carter takes this whole business incredibly seriously. He can't sleep. He's always going off to prayer meetings. He insists on personally meeting the families of all the hostages. His aides become quite worried about him. They say he's just constantly going on about hostages, having all these meetings. And a lot of this, I think, is guilt. Because when he was asked by congressional leaders, Is this our fault for admitting the Shah? He snapped at them in a very I don't give a damn whether or not you like the Shah, he said. And the techiness suggests to me that he feels personally responsible because he admitted the Shah, he didn't really want to do it. He gave in, he let the Shah in, and this is the result. However, in the short term, broadly, it does work in his favor because this is a thing that's often elided in accounts of the hostage crisis. There was a big jump in his approval rating in November 1979. Well, because you rally to the flag, don't you?

Yeah, exactly. I mean, it's like in the wake of 9/11, disastrous intelligent failure. Everyone thinks Bush is brilliant.

Yes, exactly. But this spike in his popularity will only be sustainable if he gets the hostages out. If If he doesn't get them out, it's bound to fade. And the other thing is, what he wants to do and what his chief of staff wants to do, they want to make his presidency now all about getting the hostages home because they think it will work in his favor. But that's so reckless, because if he's mortgaging his presidency to the decisions of people in Tehran that he doesn't understand. Now, the other thing is, I say people he doesn't understand. Nobody in Washington still understands the Ayatollah Hamini. I mean, you were talking in our previous episodes about the Ayatollah's his apocalyptic sense, the red raw intensity of his eschatological, theological vision. No one in Washington has the slightest sense of this. The National Security Council's Iran Specialist guy called Gary Sik, wrote afterwards.

Gary Sik?

Gary Sik was his name. Nobody knew what person Khomini was. He was simply beyond the experience, if not the imagination of anyone in the United States government. They have no sense of this. What Khomini then does, which they didn't expect, he loves this and he personalizes it and he makes it into a duel between himself and Jimmy Carter. Khomini gave interviews to all three American networks pretty much straight after the seizure of the US Embassy. He was completely unflappable. He was completely unrepentant. He said, The hostages were spies. This is all Carter's fault. It's Carter who's the criminal, breaking international law by admitting the Shah. And he mocked Carter. This is, again, you think of the Ayatollah as so grim and formidable, which, of course, he was. But there's a bit of the school bully in him, I have to say. He says explicitly, Carter is beating an empty drum. Carter does not have the guts to engage in military action. Weak, weak, weak.

Yeah. But I wonder also, though, whether there isn't... We talked about this apocalyptic vision that the Ayatollah has. And Iranian sheerism, I think, is massively influenced by this the dualist tradition of Zoroastrianism and Manecheism, this sense of the world divided into rival forces of good and evil. And he's not just demonizing Carter. He is also literally demonizing America. Because the day after the students occupy the US Embassy, he coins this phrase, the great Satan. I'm sure most of our listeners will have a sense of the great Satan as the phrase that is most often used by Islamic militants to describe America. The thing is that this isn't a Quranic phrase. The Aya Talith basically seems to have made it up. In the Quran, the figure of Satan isn't the figure that would be familiar to Christians, the sense of a terrifying demonic figure contesting the rule of the world with the divine forces of good. But Satan is a a tempter. He's the person who seduces devout Muslims from the path of righteousness. But I think the Ayatollah is making the the figure of Satan into a a manakean figure of evil. And that's what America becomes for him.

And of course, In America as well, you also have this Manechean sense of good and evil. And both sides now are starting to think of the other as a literal cosmic representation of evil.

Yeah, I think that's true because remember that in America, we were saying in a previous episode, American TV networks previously devoted five minutes a year to Iran.

To the Shah going skiing.

I mean, now this becomes this huge TV spectacle We've talked in previous series, for example, the Jack the Ripper series, about how important the media can be in framing a crisis and creating a story, and how important is it, mediating all these things, constructing stories, I suppose. And this is a really good example because the American networks all start running special programs about the hostage crisis. So ABC led the way. They had a show called America Held Hostage. It ran every single night. And every edition of this show began day Day 57, Day 58. The sense of a ticking clock. I think the whole thing is incredibly unsettling. And the scenes from Iran seem much more alien to American viewers than, say, the scenes of Red Square.

Yes, because they're in military uniforms, like Western uniforms.

There is something unbelievably alien, I would say. You're watching it in Wichita, Kansas, or something. This might as well be happening on an alien planet as as you're concerned. You talked about the Manichaeanism. The good versus evil sense of it is so important. We already mentioned this is only four years after the fall of South Vietnam, after the end of a story that was so confused and rubby and morally ambiguous, in which America was often painted as the villain, and many Americans believe that they were the villains. This is a story in which it seems to Americans this is clear-cut, good versus evil. There are clean cut hostages, many of whom are in their 20s, and there are these howling mobs shouting about the great Satan. I mean, it's a story. It had colossal cut through. The families, the mothers of the hostages became TV stars. So When a particular hostage might be dragged out on TV, on American TV, his mother would then be dragged out and she would be crying for the cameras and whatnot. There was a mother who went to Iran called Barbara Tim. Her son Kevin was the youngest hostage.

He was a Marine. She got into Tehran. She got to see him for 45 minutes and talk to him about the fortunes of his high school basketball team who had made, I believe, the Wisconsin State Championships.

That must have cheer him up.

That's what they talked about. I mean, there were also, I have to say, some very mentioning Vietnam. There is that tradition of the anti-war left. There are some, shall we say, colorful visitors to Teheran.

Jane Fonda doesn't go.

No, but some Vietnam, some clergymen, some lefty clergymen go. At Christmas, The hostages had the treat of a visit from these clergymen led by a veteran peace activist called William Sloan Coffin.

You got diplomats called sick, you got clergymen called Coffin. But wait for it.

This is unbelievable. This bloke turned up and he met the hostages and he said to them, they were hoping for an inspiring message from an American priest, and he said, Stop feeling sorry for yourselves. He said, I envy you having an extended period of peace and quiet to rest and think. Their The hostages listened to this in stupid fashion. Then when the meeting was over, he went in front of the cameras and he said on American TV, Yeah, we scream and shout about the hostages, but very few Americans heard the screams of tortured Iranians. This thing, obviously, the hostages don't want to hear this. Then actually, it possibly even worse than this, a few weeks later, another group of radical activists visited the embassy, and they were led by a guy who was a Native American activist with the unimproveable name of John Thomas. John Thomas He'd previously occupied Wounded Knee in 1973. And now he led the Iranian crowd, chanting, Death to Carter.

I thought you were going to say, Death to Custer.

Well, yeah, that's at the US Embassy. So maybe he was misheard. Maybe he was shouting death to Custer. Who knows? Anyway, the peak of all the interest in the hostages came at Christmas. So I mentioned Bruce Lengen, who was the most senior diplomat taken hostage in the foreign Ministry. His wife, Penny, gave a very moving interview to the Washington Post.

Does he get special treatment or not?

Perhaps slightly better treatment, but still not great.

Yeah. Okay.

I think the fact that they're in the foreign Ministry meant it wasn't quite as bad as elsewhere, but it wasn't a bundle of laughs. His wife, Penny, said, as long as you're not too cynical, it's a very touching interview. She says, I'm going to be decorating our house with a wreath and advent candles as normal because that's what Bruce want me to do. She She says, I take comfort in Bruce's captivity from ringing the bells at my local church. I hope other people will do the same. I think it's such a lovely symbol. It conveys hope and joy.

Like Joan of Arc.

Well, a bit like Joan of Arc. People did do this, actually. People were very moved by this. And then she says, We've got an old oak tree in the garden, and I've tied a yellow ribbon around it. And she's inspired, she says, by a number one single from 1973, which was, Tie a yellow ribbon around the old oak tree by Tony Orlando and Dawn. Because I don't want to be too cynical, I can't bring myself to listen to it because I'm worried that if I listen to it, you'll sob. No, I'm worried I will scoff in a cruel and unfeeling way, and I don't want to do that. So this song was inspired by stories about the US cavalry in the American Civil War. Women whose sweethearts were cavalrymen would wear yellow ribbons in their hair, so it is said.

How did the old oak tree come into it?

Well, Penny Langen tied a yellow ribbon around this oak tree.

Yeah, but in the song?

No, she was inspired by the song.

I know, but if the women are tying yellow ribbons in their hair, how did they come up with the idea for the oak tree in the song?

It's her idea. That's her idea.

No, it's not. It's the idea of Tony Orlando and Dawn.

You'll have to ask Tony Orlando and Dawn how they made the leap from the ribbon in the hair to the ribbon around the tree.

I mean, it's quite a leap. If there are any musicologists out there, let us know.

The important fact is that she tied the yellow ribbon around her oak tree, and then she said, One of these days, Bruce is going to untie that yellow ribbon, and it's going to be out there until he does. And Tom, if you don't have a tear in your eye listening to this, there's something wrong with you. Lots of people did anyway, even if you didn't.

Hey, I do find that affecting.

They tied it to trees. They tied them to lampposts. They tied them to flags. Jimmy Carter put a yellow ribbon on his Christmas tree.

You see, that's a political error, isn't it?

Well, he said, You Also, this is typical miserablism from Jimmy Carter. He said, I'm not going to turn on the lights on the Christmas tree.

Or the heating.

Yes. His thermostat is set at zero or whatever. He's traveling on the bus to save energy. He doesn't turn on that. He says, I'm not going to turn on the lights on the Christmas tree till the hostages come home. He says, They don't come home.

Does that mean he's got to leave the Christmas tree up until they come home?

No, I don't think he does that. Tabeas is pointing out that Jimmy Carter's would keep him warm. So no wonder he's got the thermostat down. Actually, there was a yellow ribbon, so the Super Bowl, Stealers versus Rams. There was a huge yellow ribbon tied around the stadium.

Wow.

Americans must think it's mad that we're laughing at this, but anyway, I'm not laughing at it.

You are.

So I don't want to laugh at the hostage crisis, obviously. There are some mad things connected with it, though. So there were pro-war demonstrations on college campuses. So there were students, for example, Ohio State, chanting, Nagasaki, Hiroshima, Why not Iran? I mean, that's a change from the Vietnam War protests. Princeton, students waving bedsheets in which they'd written, Nuke the Ayatollah. There were some mad songs. So I know you like a song. Are you familiar with Take Your Royal and Shove It by Bobby Baker?

No, Dominic, I'm not. But I am familiar with that great song by the Baratome Dwarfs, Bomb, Bomb, Bomb, Bomb, Iran. Yes. Based on Barbaran by the Beach Boys.

Do you know there were more than... I think there were six different Bomb, Iran songs done by different bands, all based on the Beach Boys, Barbaran.

Not good news for the hostages if Tauran gets nuked.

No, it wouldn't be good news.

And also, you can understand the the Iatollas wanting their ownNucléaire weapon. Nucléaire weapon.

Well, they've been provoked because American toy companies have started selling dolls of the Aetalas. How many have seen this? I'm going to read you the advertising copy. Available for those who want to strike back. Make him your prisoner. Act now. Get rope, pins, other torture equipment. Oh, my God. That's the words. And then the words, Fabulous gift item. Imagine your child opening that at Christmas.

Oh, thanks, mommy.

But then my favorite story, there was a brothel in the arena called the Mustang Ranch, and they put up a sign on the door that said, no more Iranian students will be permitted on this premises until the hostages are released. How many Iranian students were going to the Mustang Ranch? I don't know how much custom they were losing through making a stand. Now, on a more serious note, what's happened to the most controversial Iranian living in America? Not, I think, a client at the Mustang Ranch. They're somebody who was not a stranger the escort industry. This is the Shah. The Shah, you may remember, had arrived at the Cornell Medical Center for Emergency Treatment. He had complications in the surgery. The cancer didn't go away. There was more suffering ahead because he had to endure bedside visits from Henry Kisenter and Frank Sinatra.

Will the torture never end?

Well, it didn't actually.

What's Frank Sinatra doing, turning up? I actually quite like Frank Sinatra in Hospital.

Really?

Where you seem yourself, yeah.

Yeah, I think Frank Sinatra, at this point, has moved to the right, I'm guessing. Because he's quite pally with Reagan. And maybe showing solidarity with the Shah is part of Frank Sinatra's vibe.

Maybe he's just a hospital visitor.

Maybe. So the Carter administration, still not terribly keen on the Shah. They basically kicked him out again. They said, We want you to go. And in December, they said, We've arranged for you to go to Panama. So he moved to Panama, and the dictator of Panama at the time, General Torrijos, was not a good host. He charged the Shah $21,000 a day for bored and lodging, which seems harsh. And he also, I think the expression is, trolled the Shah by appointing to supervise him in his exile, a Marxist sociology professor.

That's the worst professor.

Exactly. The worst Marxist, the worst sociologist, the worst professor. Every day, the Shah would get up feeling incredibly sorry for himself and ill, and this bloke was hanging around, lecturing him about the evils of imperialism. The Shah was still... He still thought he would get back to Iran. So General Torrijos in Panama, as part of his winding the Shah up, said to him, You're a bit like Napoleon in exile, aren't you? You're like Napoleon on Saint Helena. And the Shah said, No, because Napoleon never got back. But I will. My dynasty will prevail.

Well, time will tell, I guess. As we record this, who knows?

So he ends up finally, he moves on from there to Egypt. He's very, very ill indeed. The cancer was spread and the Shah died on the 27th of July, 1980. His last words, supposedly, which he whispered again and again, were, Iran is Iran, which is exactly what you would want him to say, I suppose. The reaction from the Islamic Republic, probably not as gracious as one would hope. The official Iranian news agency issued a statement, He died in disgrace, misery, and vagrancy. And Radio Tehran, The bloodsucker of the century has died at last. So that's harsh.

He was a bloodsucker, to be fair.

He was Yeah. That's harsh.

He lavished masses of money on ludicrous French food in celebrating Cyrus the Great.

He did, but I think it's harsh to go from that to call him a bloodsucker.

It's a metaphor.

Okay, fine. I mean, I think you're-I'm not saying he's literally a vampire. If there are any Shah-friendly, Iranian exiles listening, I'm distancing myself from Tom here.

He did loot Iran.

Well, he was very corrupt. He was very corrupt. He was weak.

He had loads of palaces.

And he was foolish, I think. But I don't think he's one of the worst tyrants of the century. I mean, he had a pretty hideous secret police. I mean, this is a mad thing to say, given that they were a hideous secret police, but they weren't as hideous as some.

On the hideous mistakes, how do you think they compare to the Islamic Republic secret police?

This is very rare for the rest of history. I'm just going to come out and say, I don't know.

Okay. Well, I suppose it depends which side you're on, probably.

I'd be more likely, I think, to end up on the wrong side of the Islamic Republic's secret police.

I definitely would.

Well, you definitely would. No question. Anyway, the Egyptians organized a state funeral for the Shah. President Sadat was the chief mourner. Jimmy Carter, do you think he went?

No, I don't think he did.

Of course, he didn't go. By this point, he's effing and blinding against the Shah.

Does Frank Sinatra go?

No, but I'll tell you who did go. He flew Economy, and that shows his commitment. A friend of the show, Richard Milhouse Nixon. He flew Economy to Cairo to give the eulogy. And do you know what he said of the Shah? He said he was a real man.

Unlike who?

Unlike Jimmy Carter, obviously.

Had Nixon gone to the Sairus's Great Party?

No, I don't think he did. I'd like to think that Spiro Agnew, his vice president went, but I'm not certain. I'd have to check. Anyway, Nixon said, The Shah was a real man, and Jimmy Carter's treatment to the Shah is one of the black pages of American history.

I mean, that's really poor for Carter, isn't it? Because on the one hand, he's let the Shah in and all the hostages have been taken. And on the other hand, he doesn't get any credit for it at all.

He's lost every way, exactly. Now, actually, by this point, Carter's got bigger things to worry about. So he hasn't been able to turn on the White House Christmas lights. That's one thing because, of course, the hostages have not been released. The longer this has gone on, the rallying around the flag has weakened, and the perception of weakness has built and built. And it's not just about Iran. We talked about the inflation, and this is the economy Economy has got worse and worse. So the Federal Reserve, under its new monetary boss, Paul Volcker, a really important figure in economic history in the last 50 years or so, they've put up interest rates to squeeze inflation. So interest rates will peak at almost 18% in the spring of 1980. Really, really punishing. The result is the American economy in January 1980 goes into a deep recession. A million jobs in manufacturing alone are lost in the next few months. That's the picture at home. The picture abroad is even worse. Carter was getting a hammering for being too weak even before the Iranian Revolution, all this talk about communism in the ascendant, America going backwards. But now it seems like actually, just as people have predicted, the Islamic Revolution is spreading.

So two weeks after the American Embassy seizure, Islamist militants seized the Grand Mosque in Mecca. And as you will know, Tom, that is the one place in Islam that matters more than any other, effectively.

It's literally Mecca.

There's two weeks of fighting before they're evicted by Saudi troops. Hundreds of people are killed. Khomini from Tehram says, This occupation was a false flag operation. It was the work of criminal American imperialism and international Zionism. As mad as it sounds, a lot of people believe them. There are demonstrations against America after this, everywhere from Turkey to Indonesia and the Philippines. In Islamabad, in Pakistan, in Tripoli, in Libya, mobs literally burn the US embassy to the ground. They raise it to the ground. There is a sense, and this is unprecedented, that the Muslim world has risen up and is in a war against the United States. Well, against the great Satan.

I think that phrase is really taking fire.

Yes. Time magazine, a couple of days after this, announced that Khomini was its man of the Year. And Time magazine, which speaks, of course, so often for middle America, said, his revolution matters more than any political event since Hitler's conquest of Europe. And now that may sound overblown to some listeners, But that was the thinking in 1979, 1980. Actually, were they necessarily wrong when we look at the last 40 years or so? And then I'll tell you who's been absent from this conversation, finally about to enter the chat, the Kremlin. Because on Christmas Day, 1979, the policymakers in the Kremlin are themselves very alarmed about radical Islam, of course, because they have a lot of Muslims within the borders of the Soviet Union in Central Asia. They decide they're going to intervene in Afghanistan to support their Communist client regime in Kabul against the Mujdatideen, the insurgents who are already being funded, ironically, by the Americans. Jimmy Carter is at Camp David. He's watching a film called The Black Stalion with his daughter Amy. When he gets a call, Soviet troops have crossed the Amudaria River, the Oxus, once crossed by Alexander the Great, and they've gone into Afghanistan.

He thinks, Oh, my God, it couldn't get worse. He tells Congress a few days later, we are now facing the greatest threat to peace since the Second World War. It's as though all across this what they call the Crescent of crisis, going through the Middle East into Central Asia and beyond. Communism, radical Islam are on the march, and Western democratic capitalism is embattled.

What's a poor peanut farmer to do?

There's a real sense now among the American people of retreat and failure. Carter's approval ratings are tanking, and a lot of his advisors, don't forget, the election is in November, only months to go now. A lot of his advisors are thinking, If we do not do something now, we are doomed. His chief of staff, Hamilton Jordan, I mentioned him a couple of times. There's a story in his memoirs. One day, his nephew, who was 12 years old, said to him, Why doesn't the President actually do anything? Why doesn't he do anything? Hamilton Jordan said to him, Well, like what? And this kid said, Bomb around, wipe them all out. A lot of my friends at school say that Jimmy Carter doesn't have their guts to do anything.

You know who they need?

Yeah.

General Curtis LeMay, the guy who thought nuclear war was a good thing.

In an alternative universe where George Wallace had become President in 1976 with Curtis B. Lemay as his running mate, the Iranian Revolution, things would have taken a very different turn, I think. But actually, do you know what? This little brats' mates are wrong. Jimmy Carter does have the guts to do something. Because on the 22nd of March, 1980, Carter summons his National Security team to Camp David, and he says, Okay, fine. It's time to consider a really drastic option. And he turns to the head of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, and his military chiefs now unveil the plan for one of the most daring gambles in American history, a plan for an elite Special Forces unit to fly into the heart of Iran to make their way into Tehran and to rescue the hostages. It's an unbelievably jaw-droppingly audacious plan. But Tom, will it work? Well, you have to wait until the next episode to find out.

Cliffhangers, we've got them. And if you want to hear, well, you can join our very own elite Special Forces Unit, the Rest is History Club. And by doing that, you'll be able to hear that last episode right away. And of course, you'll get a whole host of extra benefits as well. And you can sign up, of course, at therestishistory. Com. Dominic, thank you. Thank you, everyone, for listening. Bye-bye.

Bye-bye. But what I still wanted to say, my daughter is fighting the Studium. Semester-bed, Laptop, Books, Software, Handys, Internet. A Master is really expensive. Tell her, she can get it back. You mean, from a tax-subset. But she doesn't deserve it. No, the magic word 'verlustvortrag'. She just did it with 'visosteuer'. And when she then works, it means, kaching. That's possible? Safe. 'Visosteuer'. Get your money back. Now, free. Now, free. Now, free. Now, free. Now, free. Now, free. Now, free. Now, free. Now, free. Now, free.