On January 20, 1977, President Jimmy Carter was inaugurated. He was handed a gift, cultivated by the hard work of previous presidents and their administrations. That gift was two pillars of stability for U.S. foreign policy in the Middle East: Israel and Iran.
Yes, you read that right. Israel and Iran. The two countries that are currently at war. It will shock younger people to learn that Israel and Iran were once our two top allies in the Middle East, but thus they were. Ask Middle East scholars and they’ll tell you. Israel and Iran were our two top allies in the region, period. I know it’s hard to believe, but it’s true.
When Jimmy Carter left the presidency merely four years later, Iran was no longer our ally. It had become our worst enemy in the Middle East. The country that in January 1977 had viewed America as its best friend and benefactor now burned U.S. flags in the streets and denounced us as “the Great Satan.” (RELATED: The Weekend Spectator Ep. 43: How Jimmy Carter Gave Us Iran)
The difference could not have been more dramatic and starker.
How did this happen? The answer is Jimmy Carter. Carter and his administration let the Shah of Iran fall, to be replaced by the Ayatollah Ruhollah Khomeini, and the rest was history. It’s a history that has America at war with Iran today in June 2025.
What Carter Did
Laying out all the details of this Carter failure would require a book, but here, in a nutshell, is how things unfolded.
When Jimmy Carter became president, he inherited a superb U.S. relationship with Mohammad Reza Pahlavi, i.e., the Shah of Iran. There was a saying in the Nixon administration: “Whatever the Shah wants, the Shah gets.” As Henry Kissinger put it, “the starting point” of U.S. policy in the region was the rock of stability provided by the Shah in Iran.
The Shah faced internal dissent from radical Islamists, including the Ayatollah, who had been in exile abroad for over a decade. But still, America had resolutely backed the Shah. So long as we did, he was secure.
Jimmy Carter himself spoke to that stability in his first year as president. On December 31, 1977, Carter attended a sumptuous state dinner in Tehran on New Year’s Eve. There, Carter stood beside the Shah, raised his glass, and gave a toast, asserting: “Iran, because of the great leadership of the Shah, is an island of stability in one of the more troubled areas of the world.”
It had been just that.
“It’s hard to find areas where we disagree,” continued Carter. “We have no nation on earth … closer to us.” More so, “And there is no leader with whom I have a deeper sense of personal gratitude and personal friendship.”
This was a glowing endorsement of the Shah’s continued reign.
And yet, there was trouble afoot.
The president from Plains, Georgia, wanted a foreign policy that prioritized human rights and democracy above all else.
If you lost the Shah, that was what Iran would get, courtesy of the Ayatollah.
Very soon, just a year later, Iran was teetering on the precipice. This was clear when a reporter on December 7, 1978, asked President Carter if he thought the Shah “could survive” the present crisis. That question was once inconceivable. Nonetheless, previous presidents would have immediately responded in the affirmative, with an unequivocal statement that went something like: “You can be damned sure the Shah will survive. He has America’s unwavering support. He remains a great friend. We will not abandon our close ally.”
Instead, President Carter offered a stunning response that immediately became infamous: “I don’t know. I hope so. This is something that is in the hands of the people of Iran. We have never had any intention and don’t have any intention of trying to intercede in the internal political affairs of Iran.” And then this: “We personally prefer that the Shah maintain a major role in the government, but that’s a decision for the Iranian people to make.”
This was an extraordinary statement. The fact was that America had long interceded in Iran’s internal political affairs. We did so to keep the Shah in power. To say we were no longer going to intercede, and that we merely “preferred” that the Shah have a “role” in the government, was a headscratcher and jawdropper. The reality was that Iran was the Shah and the Shah was Iran. Alas, Carter said that whether the Shah would “maintain a role” in governing his country was a decision in the hands of the Iranian people. America had no intention of intervening.
For the Iranian Islamists, that was the green light — the green flag, if you will. They took to the streets, which erupted.
Shockingly, the Carter administration internally had decided that the Ayatollah would not pose a great threat to the country. The National Front and other “moderates” in opposition to the Shah would lead the nation. Khomeini would probably not make major changes nor reverse the popular elements of the Shah’s Western-style modernization. The Shah himself was becoming an obstacle to stability. This was the “remarkable consensus” (in the words of Carter NSC official Gary Sick) at a decisive January 11, 1979 mini-SCC meeting in the Carter White House that sealed the Shah’s fate.
On January 16, merely five days after that meeting and five weeks after Carter’s infamous public statement, the Shah fled Iran.
Two weeks later, on February 1, a triumphant Ayatollah returned to Tehran. He had said he would not return until the Shah left. He was now in charge.
Americans Held Hostage
As for the Shah, he bolted for Egypt, welcomed there by Anwar Sadat, and then went country to country in exile (Morocco, Bahamas, Mexico, Switzerland). He was not only homeless but very sick with cancer. President Carter, the benevolent Bible Baptist, granted a request from the Shah to come to New York City on October 22, 1979 to receive special cancer treatment. This gesture enraged the Iranian fundamentalists.
On November 4, they seized the U.S. embassy in Tehran and took over 50 hostages, to be held for 444 days—freed not until January 20, 1981, as Ronald Reagan was being inaugurated after crushing Carter in the November 1980 presidential election. (RELATED: Write That Damned Book — Now!)
The Shah left America on December 17, 1979. He died on July 27, 1980 at age 60. He never returned to his homeland. It was toast.
The Ayatollah proceeded to revolutionize Iran. It became the world’s leading theocratic terrorist state for 46 years and running.
To be clear, the Shah was no democrat, but he certainly was nothing like the theocrats that wrecked his country. The mullahs created a brutal, repressive, totalitarian state. No other country in the world — including Afghanistan, Iraq, and Libya — has so consistently sponsored terrorism. And of course, Iran has also long sought nuclear weapons. Because of that, America bombed Iranian nuclear sites last weekend. (RELATED: MOPping Up Iran)
It didn’t have to be this way. All hell broke loose under Jimmy Carter. Joe Biden’s four years have been described as “Jimmy Carter II,” and not without due reason, including in the Middle East. President Donald Trump, like President Ronald Reagan, was left with a mess to clean up.
We are still dealing with Jimmy Carter’s disaster in Iran. And it may be far from over.
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