Transcript

How the Iranian Revolution Was Hijacked | EP 2

From The Rest Is History · Episode page · Watch on YouTube

· 1 h 8 min · 12,348 words · 114 timestamped sections

This is the full, timestamped transcript of "How the Iranian Revolution Was Hijacked | EP 2", an episode of The Rest Is History published January 22, 2026 (1 h 8 min, about 12,348 words). It mentions 11 people, works and ideas, including Iranian Revolution, 1979 Islamic Revolution, Islamic Republic, Sharia law, J. D. Vance.

What this episode is about

The discussion centers on the Iranian Revolution, detailing the turmoil faced by U.S. President Jimmy Carter as the Shah of Iran is overthrown and replaced by Ayatollah Khomeini, who establishes an Islamic regime. The narrative also hints at a peculiar backdrop involving a "killer rabbit" in America, adding a layer of intrigue to the historical events unfolding.

Key takeaways

  • Jimmy Carter: cardigan-wearing president, caught between a revolution and a killer rabbit—talk about multitasking!
  • The Ayatollah's Parisian manifesto sparked an Islamic revolution, forever altering the Middle East—proof that words trump swords.
  • The Shah's struggle: an American puppet who neglected the strings, proving weakness can be as dangerous as tyranny.
  • Iran's revolution: where an elderly cleric with a massive beard outmaneuvered a technocratic Southern president—#beardpower!
  • From oil wealth to revolution: modernization can't mask corruption, but a good propaganda speech can rally the masses.

Who speaks in this episode?

What is discussed, and when

  1. – 10:00: Hampton Court Palace, Iranian Revolution, 1979 Islamic Revolution, Muharram
  2. – 20:00: 1979 Islamic Revolution, Islamic Republic, J. D. Vance, Iran-Iraq War
  3. – 30:00: Islamic Republic, J. D. Vance, Sharia law
  4. – 40:00: Iranian Revolution, Paul Grim
  5. – 50:00: Islamic Republic, Sharia law, Iranian Revolution
  6. – 1:00:00: Iranian Revolution
  7. – 1:07:31: Iranian Revolution, Sharia law

Notable quotes from "How the Iranian Revolution Was Hijacked | EP 2"

  • Today on the rest is history, we continue the extraordinary story of the Iranian revolution and the cardiganwearing US President Jimmy Carter is facing multiple threats. The sha of Iran is faced with revolution.
    about Iranian Revolution · at
  • With the approach of Muharam, we are about to begin the month of epic heroism and self-sacrifice.
    about Muharram · at
  • And so that's another complication and obviously in the long run will be an element in the terrible war that Iran and Iraq will end up fighting throughout the 80s.
    about Iran-Iraq War · at
  • Of October 1978, while all these protests are going in Iran, come flies to Paris and he's settled in a small town west of Paris called Nerf Lhatau, this little town. He took a…
    about Nerf Lhatau · at
  • Valataki, which means the guardianship of the jurist. Now, this is going to be the basis for the Islamic Republic and the Islamic Revolution. So, Tom, do you want to explain to…
    about Islamic Republic · at
  • For the first time in Shiite history, the ayatollah is proposing that clerics like himself should shoulder theat which is the guardianship of the state. So as in velat a eaki that was supposed to have perished with.
    about 1979 Islamic Revolution · at
  • Streets. Let's stop messing around. They have a showdown in the Oval Office on the 10th of December. Cyrus Vance, the patrician kind of boarding school guy, he says, I think we…
    about J. D. Vance · at
  • Says this isn't going to be an ordinary government. It's a government based on the Sharia. Opposing this government means opposing the Sharia of Islam, a revolt against God.…
    about Sharia law · at

Who and what is mentioned in this episode?

People

  • J. D. Vance — Person · Referenced U.S. policymaker / dovish counterweight · 2 mentions · first at
    Presented as Carter’s Secretary of State advocating caution and engagement, contrasted with Brzezinski in an internal U.S. foreign-policy feud shaping Iran decisions.
  • Paul Grim — Person · Referenced victim / oil industry executive · 1 mention · first at
    His killing is used as a turning point prompting oil companies to evacuate and accelerating the shutdown of Iranian oil production, feeding the global oil shock.
    Have already left, but there are still 10,000 or so in Iran. But on the 23rd of December, the most senior oil executive in Iran was a guy called Paul Grim, who actually managed and ran the oil fields.
  • Richard Falk — Person · Referenced commentator / academic voice · 1 mention
    Cited as an example of Western/left intellectual optimism about Khomeini, illustrating misreadings of the revolution’s likely trajectory.
    With everything that they're they're reading. There's a very famous example, a left-wing activist, Princeton professor called Richard Fal, who wrote about him in the New York…

Concepts & topics

  • Islamic Republic — Concept · Key argument · 5 mentions · first at
    The political system established post-revolution, central to the episode's discussion.
  • Sharia law — Concept · Key argument · 4 mentions · first at
    The legal framework implemented post-revolution, discussed as a cornerstone of the new regime.

Places & events

  • Iranian Revolution — Event · Core topic · 6 mentions · first at
    Central theme of the episode, discussing the historical and political implications of the revolution.
  • 1979 Islamic Revolution — Event · Core topic · 3 mentions · first at
    Synonymous with the Iranian Revolution, highlighting the religious aspects of the movement.
  • Muharram — Event · Key argument · 1 mention · first at
    A significant religious period that played a pivotal role in mobilizing revolutionary sentiment.
  • Iran-Iraq War — Event · Key argument · 1 mention · first at
    Mentioned as a future conflict influenced by the revolution's outcomes.
  • Nerf Lhatau — Place · Setting · 1 mention · first at
    The specific location in Paris where Ayatollah Khomeini stayed during his exile.
  • Hampton Court Palace — Place · Setting · 3 mentions · first at
    Venue mentioned for an unrelated event, providing context to the podcast's promotional content.
    Tom, if anything you are underelling it because this is truly spectacular. On the 4th and 5th of July this year, we are going to be hosting the inaugural rest is history…

Full transcript with timestamps

Today on the rest is history, we continue the extraordinary story of the Iranian revolution and the cardiganwearing US President Jimmy Carter is facing multiple threats. The sha of Iran is faced with revolution. He's going to end up leaving. The Ayatollah Kamei is going to return and institute an Islamic revolution. And in the swamps of southern America, a killer rabbit is preparing for the attack. Thrilling stuff. Hello everyone and we have some unbelievably exciting news for you all. Tom, if anything you are underelling it because this is truly spectacular. On the 4th and 5th 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 the rest of history.com. And I mean, it's a matter of seconds. Okay. So, remember, by becoming a member of the rest is 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 adree. You will get early access to our epic series. You will get weekly bonus episodes. You will get access to our exciting new exclusive miniseries. Most of all, you'll get an entree to our muchloved chat community and many more such exciting benefits.

So, if you want guaranteed access to two tickets, you can join the very top tier of the club and become an Athe 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 the rest ishistory.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. And I know that I speak for Dominic as well as for myself when I say we cannot wait to see you there.

With the approach of Muharam, we are about to begin the month of epic heroism and self-sacrifice. This is the month blood will triumph over the sword. The month truth will condemn falsehood for all eternity. the the month that has taught generations throughout history the path of victory over the bayonet. The month the tyrants will be judged and the satanic government abolished. This month will be famous throughout history. The month that the powerful will be broken by the word of the right. The month that the Imam of the Muslims will show us the path of strength against the tyrants. The month the freedom fighters and patriots will clench their fists and win against tanks and machine guns.

When Islam is in danger, you should unite rise and sacrifice your blood. So that of course was uh this year's king's speech. It was uh Charles III addressing the nation. No, it wasn't really. That was the ayatah ruha kmeni. Uh and Dominic, it was a pivotal moment in the story of the Islamic Revolution because he drafted that not in Najaf in Iraq where he'd been in our previous episode, but in Paris, the French capital in November 1978. And this message was the one that triggered the final uprisings that led to the downfall of the sha of Iran and paved the way for the triumphant return from exile of the Ayatollah Kamei a few weeks later. So an incredibly dramatic moment.

An incredibly dramatic moment. One of the defining moments in world history in our lifetimes. I would say it's the moment that catapulted radical Islam into the headlines and completely transformed the Middle East. We'll come back to that message and the context of that message later in the episode. Um, but let's just remind people of that story of our three principal characters. So, last time we introduced the Sha, the second member of the Paranu Parliament dynasty. Uh, he's been in charge of Iran since 1941. He's been spending his oil winnings to modernize Iran and to try and turn it into a regional superpower.

But he's seen on the streets as an American puppet. Um he's a corrupt man, a repressive man, but also a weak man as we will discover.

That's terrible combination, is it to be both repressive and weak. Exactly. Be repressive and strong, I think, is the ideal combination. Tom,

it's the sandbuk way. So then you have the ayati. So this elderly cleric who has been in exile in Iraq since the mid60s. He is learned. He is um austere, formidable, a ferocious critic of the sha's modernization and secularization drive and of the corruption of his court. And of course a massive beard.

Yes, a huge beard. And then a stranger to a beard who is the US President Jimmy Carter who is another paranu actually another outsider in the halls of power. So he's from Plains, Georgia. And he is this strange combination of Christian evangelical of southern populist and a kind of technocratic uh micromanager.

So like the itala he loves God. He does love God. Yes. But in his in his own way I think it's it's reasonable to say. Now so far Carter has enthusiastically backed the sha as did his American predecessors. Like his predecessors he sees Iran as a key piece in the jigsaw of the American anti-communist alliance system. not least because Dayton is over and people are talking about a second cold war with the Soviet Union. But the question for Carter which we ended the last episode as the revolution on the streets of Iran gathers strength is he going to stick with the regime or is he going to twist?

So Dominic we left the story in uh in the autumn of 1978 and since that point you've had a cycle of demonstrations of riots of repression gathering momentum. It's the classic story of a revolution, isn't it? I mean, it's basically it's the it's the story that we visited with our series on the French Revolution.

And as in the French Revolution, you have this kind of coalition of groups who have lost faith with the regime. So, in Thran, you have the people who are called the bizaaris, the kind of urban shopkeepers and merchants and artisans.

Petty bourgeoisi. Yeah. Petty bourgeoisi who are alienated by the massive inflation caused by the oil boom. You have all these thousands upon thousands of young men, rural migrants who have moved to the big cities and feel alienated and left behind. You have tens of thousands of university students who are chafing at what they see as the repression of the sha secret police. And those are the classic ingredients of a 20th century revolution. But the one ingredient that you don't get in other revolutions is the fact that there are also Shiite clerics, Islamic clerics who feel undermined both ideologically and economically by the sha's modernization program.

Exactly right. Exactly. And all of this has gathered pace since the cinema rex fire on the 19th of August when 500 people burned to death. Probably caused by Islamic militants but blamed on the sha secret police. What has made it all worse is the sha conspicuously failed to follow a strong line in dealing with the demonstrations. So he has neither appeased the crowds nor cracked down and cleared the streets partly I think because he is ill with leukemia. So he cuts an increasingly listless and unhappy and disengaged figure and his generals have been begging him. There is a story of a general falling on the ground in tears, basically clutching his knees and saying to him, "Please give us the green light to just go in and clear the streets and do what needs to be done." And the sha said, "I am not a tyrant. Despite what people say, I will not preside over a massacre." And do you think that had the sha given the green

light, things might have been different? Well, this is the question. Michael Axworthy in his book Revolutionary Iran says, "Even if the Sha had not been ill, what would he have done? Where is the magic wand that would have sorted things out?" Because it's quite like Basher Assad in Syria, isn't it? I mean, he came down hard and the whole Syria just disintegrated into decades of terrible civil war. Would that have happened in Iran? Possibly. There are examples. I was trying to think of examples where it works. A a famous example, a very bloody one, is Indonesia in the mid 1960s. the world's biggest Muslim country by the way. There the military and its allies with American support killed I think half a million people um mainly communists and people on the left. It killed them all and then it held power for the next what 30 years or so.

Tiana Square. Tan Square. I mean repression can work right. It's not it's not a lesson that um people like to you know it's not something we like to tell ourselves. We like to tell ourselves the people will always triumph, but repression can work. So maybe it could have worked. I don't know. The sha made one last effort to recapture the initiative on the 5th of November. He brought in an emergency military government and he made an unprecedented TV broadcast to apologize to the people. He said, "I'm so sorry about the oppression and corruption that you suffered under my incompetent ministers of old." Nothing to do with me. Yeah, of course. But he says, "I have heard the voice of your revolution and once this is all over, you will have free elections and all sorts of reforms and all of this." Now, this is a classic pattern. If he'd said this two or three years earlier, people would have said,

"Gosh, how enlightened and progressive the sh is." But now, they say it's too little, too late. And there's actually lots of rioting that night following his speech. And the US embassy reports to Washington that banks and hotels and things in Tehran and Tabis and other cities are ablaze. So now the Americans have a big dilemma as we saw last time they've always struggled to work out what's going on in Iran and they haven't really got a clear strategy. Can I just ask even by this point have they fathomemed the fact that actually for lots of the protesters against the sha it's slightly more than just saying well we'll have elections or we'll have reforms that this is fundamentally a theological opposition is brewing

that can't be resolved by the kind of the tried and tested uh roots of democratic or secular politics.

Have they figured that out? I think absolutely unequivocally the answer to that is no because if you read you can read online you can read the texts of their cables and of their internal memos and all of this kind of thing and there is very little mention of that there it's constantly kind of rearranging the deck chairs on the deck of the Titanic kind of stuff. Now Jimmy Carter already out of his depth in Washington according to lots of people on Capitol Hill and kind of Washington insiders is totally out of his depth in kind of Middle Eastern foreign policy. I mean before he was president he was governor of Georgia you know nothing in his life has prepared him and also he's changing his foreign policy even as this is going on because he's moving from day to hawkishness towards the Soviet Union so there's no clarity at the top but an equally big problem as so often in Washington there is a massive turf war

going on to control American foreign policy and Carter had institutionalized this in a way that's very familiar to people who study American administrations by basically appointing two different people to run his foreign policy and they will play a part in this series. So, one of them is his secretary of state Cyrus Vance. Dominic, can I just say it's mad he's called Cyrus? I mean, that's not a good sign to the Ayatoller, is it? Cyrus is the first of the great Persian kings and and the sh's personal hero.

So, Cyrus Vance is the ultimate patrician wasp. He went to boarding school. He went to Yale. He's very good at ice hockey, wasn't he? Yeah, he's he's a kind of sporty, you know, um he'd wear a barber jacket now if he was around.

He'd wear a jile if he was British. Definitely he would. He's the classic insider. He worked for Kennedy and Johnson. He was profoundly affected by Vietnam, which he came to oppose. So, he's cautious and dovish and sort of suave and elegant and whatnot. Now, the other bloke is the national security adviser. You'll be delighted to see his name looming at on the notes. very Scrabble friendly name.

Yeah. So he's Zignf Brzinski and he's Polishborn born born in Warsaw. He's a foreign policy realist. He is tough. He is hawkish. He is, you know, very hard on Russia as you would expect because of his Polish background. He's kind of mates with Henry Kissinger. He's very much cut from Kissinger's cloth. And since the first day of the administration, Cyrus Mance and Signniff Brzinski have been fighting for Carter's ear. And by late 1978, there's basically this undeclared feud going on between the two of them. The State Department on the on the one side, the National Security Council on the other, and they're both fighting for influence. I mean, it's a very common thing in American administrations, frankly. So, they're massively dithering in Washington. The SHA's inert because he's got his illness and he doesn't know what to do. And that means the initiative has really passed to the third of our

principal characters who is the forbidding figure of the Ayatollah. And we left him in Najaf in Iraq from where his supporters have been smuggling in these tapes of his sermons. Now the Iraqis, the people who run Iraq are not keen on the Ayatollah. They've tolerated him being there all this time as a sort of little, you know, as a little sort of gesture of spite towards their Persian neighbors, but they are baists. So the Bath party are Arab nationalists. They're socialists and they're relatively secular. And Bism has been the fashionable cause of the 1950s and 1960s in the Arab world. But also Dominic crucially the bartists by this point are almost exclusively Sunni and the Sunnis are a minority in Iraq. So I think Iraq is about 60 65% Shia and so that's another complication and obviously in the long run will be an element in the terrible war that Iran and Iraq will end up fighting throughout

the 80s. Exactly. Now the big bulk in Iraq at this point is the vice president a very familiar name Saddam Hussein and Saddam Hussein you know because he's a baist because he's a secularist because he's a Sunny all of these he thinks why are we having this mad bloke you know this Ayatollah why do we tolerate him so eventually in September 1978 he kicks the Ayatala out at first wants to go to Q8 or to Syria the Q8 won't have him. The Syrians won't have him. And some of his kind of um acolytes say to him, "This is mad, but why not go to the West?" Because actually, although, you know, you hate the West, if you went to the West, you'd have much more freedom. No one would interfere with you. You'd have complete access to the world's press and it'd be dead easy for you to broadcast your message. You know what better place? And so he says, "Okay, fine." And on the 6th of October 1978, while all these

protests are going in in Iran, come flies to Paris and he's settled in a small town west of Paris called Nerf Lhatau, this little town. He took a house and he becomes for the first time really a massive international celebrity. So the European media who have now become interested in Iran, it's starting to make the headlines. this bloke turns up in Paris who to them seems like he's like a have come in a time machine from the Middle Ages. Yeah. Because because um you know a cleric with a massive beard and black robes in Iran or Iraq isn't news, but one at this point outside Paris absolutely is. And it is the inongruity, isn't it? It's imagine if you're a British newspaper reader. You're living in a world where Larry Grayson is presenting the generation game and you know the Sex Pistols they're past their prime that you know this is the world that you live in and suddenly on the front page of the

newspapers there's this bloke who's turned up in Paris with this big beard and and he gets up at 3:00 in the morning and he fasts and he prays and he talks about sin and good and evil and the end of the world. You're like wow this guy's this is wacky. This is fun. When I was in Iran, I went to this place, Hamadan, ancient Ekpatana. And I met a guy who claimed that while he was in par exile in Paris, the Ayatollah got very into buying expensive French lingerie for his wife. And I have no idea whether this is true. I'm not I'm not convinced he was an entirely trustworthy informant. But if there are any specialists in uh in the ital sex life out there, let me know.

I mean, I I find that very implausible, frankly. I just want to distance myself from that from that rumor for the avoidance of doubt. Now within days of the Ayatella arriving in Nerf Chatau, his house is surrounded by TV gurus and reporters and so on, people demanding an audience and this is for the you know we've described him as a medieval throwback. This is like he's arrived in a time machine, but actually in many ways he is a very modern media figure because in the few weeks that he's in Paris he gives 130 separate interviews to the world's press and this is again a sign you know it's easy to see him as a pantoime villain particularly you know for Americans for whom he did become a pantoime villain in 1979 1980 but he is more canny I think and more pragmatic in some ways skillful than people sometimes give him credit for because when he does these interviews he uses speech writers who are not religious conservatives but

are people who have been dissident based in Paris you know Iranian dissident who are more liberal left-wing secular and they craft his message and they downplay his Islamism now his Islamism is absolutely central Obviously, it's heartfelt and it all comes down to a concept that he calls valataki, which means the guardianship of the jurist. Now, this is going to be the basis for the Islamic Republic and the Islamic Revolution. So, Tom, do you want to explain to people what this actually means? On the one hand, it is exceedingly conservative. So the Ayatollah, the clerical establishment in Iran are deeply opposed to anything that smacks of western style legal innovations. So whether that is the concept of secularism, whether that's the concept of human rights or whatever, they see these as contrary to the law of God. And this law in the opinion of the Shia jurists among whom the Ayatollah is

the leading figure derives from various sources. So uh the Quran of course um the sayings and practices of the prophet and his family the teachings of the various imams. So that's Ali Hussein and there are 11 of them and the 12th uh Imam the Mardi is waiting to appear. There is also uh scope for independent reasoning but this independent reasoning must be rooted in the the kind of the the classical texts of Shiite Islam. Um and this is centuries and centuries old and the Ayatollah is absolutely conscious of himself and proud of himself as the heir of this inheritance from the golden age of Islam. Um and to quote Abbas Amanat in Iran this had resulted in a fetishistic avoidance and frowning defiance of anything new novel and unfamiliar. So on one level the Ayatollah is what he seems to be a kind of bristling bearded beetlebrowed conservative. On the other hand, however, it is profoundly revolutionary.

The Ayatollah is a deeply subversive figure in the context of Shiism, let alone in the the context of the Sha's secular state because he is proposing something incredibly radical and novel. For the first time in Shiite history, the ayatollah is proposing that clerics like himself should shoulder theat which is the guardianship of the state. So as in velat a eaki that was supposed to have perished with Ali and Hussein. So we talked in the previous episode about how the attitude of of the Shia uh jurists had always been one of kind you know well any state is illegitimate but they're now saying no we can shoulder this burden we can run the state um you know we're not going to wait for the mardi we are going to do it so it is I mean it takes it's a massive theological innovation and I think what inspires the Ayatollah to do it is a genuine sense of himself as as guided by God and he in due horse will

come to be called an imam. So you know one of the lines of these these imams I think also it reflects desperation in a sense that if they're going to topple the sha they need something else to put in his place because the ayatollah is anxious that otherwise it will lead to communist revolution or socialism which in I think in the Ayatollah's eyes would possibly be even worse than monarchy and I think ironically there is also a hint of western influence or perhaps one might say Greek influence because we mentioned how the Ayatollah's area of academics specialization was Greek philosophy and particularly Plato. And Plato had this idea of a state being run by, you know, enlightened experts. And you can see how that is something that could be reinterpreted by a Shiite philosopher. And I just also wonder, you know, he goes to to to Paris to France, which is the home of revolution against monarchy. Perhaps just lurking in the

background is an awareness of that. I don't know. So basically this idea of the guardianship of the jurist, it means that um for the first time in Iranian history, the clerics and their interpretation of of Sharia law will be the basis of the state. But actually what that means in practice at this point is very very vague. And actually it's one of the beauties of the Ayatollah's idea of Islamic government is because the details aren't spelled out. Yeah. That's why it's so potent. Yeah. Read it. They can assume it'll be whatever they like. So he's got this idea that he's been developing all these years. But in the interviews in Paris, he plays that down. So what he says to the western interviewers, he says, "Look, I'm just a teacher. I'm just a scholar. I hate the sh I hate his corruption and his secret police. I think Iranians should be free to choose their own government." And people, a lot

of the western visitors say, "What's not to like?" You know, he seems that what he's a holy man. He's an a he's obviously not corrupt. he's not, you know, he's never been guilty of violence. What's could possibly be bad about him?

But I think there's also something that specifically appeals to people on the left, uh, and particularly the anti-colonialist left because the ayatoller is very keen on a Quranic phrase, the disinherited of the earth. And in translation, this echoes very famous postcolonial phrase, the wretched of the earth, which is the title of France Fannon's book that came out in 1961 and is really the foundational text of kind of postcolonial theory. And he's against imperialism, right? He's against western imperialism. She from the left,

but when people on the left hear him talking about the disinherited of the earth, you know, it absolutely chimes with everything that they're they're reading. There's a very famous example, a left-wing activist, Princeton professor called Richard Fal, who wrote about him in the New York Times. He said, "When the Ayatella comes in, he may well provide a desperately needed model of humane governance for a third world country." Fuko was also a big fan, wasn't he?

Yeah, this is the kind of commentary you get on him at this point. Now, the messages that uh Hmeni is sending back to Iran strike a very different note. You read one of those, the most crucial one at the beginning of this episode, which was his jolly new year message smuggled into Iran for the opening of Muharam. Now, Muharam is the first month in the Islamic calendar, and it's really important and holy for Shiites, isn't it? Because it begins with nine days of mourning. And the 10th day is Ashura, which is this day that we talked about in the previous um episode, which is the anniversary of the death of Hussein at the battle of Kbala, which is seen as this kind of cosmic moment of disaster.

Exactly. And so, Hmin sends this message and he says, "This is the month. This is the month that will be famous throughout history when the freedom fighters will clench their fists and win. you know, when people should sacrifice their blood, he says, "If you have to kill 5,000 people, 10,000 people, 20,000 people, do whatever it takes to bring down the sharp."

And this rhetoric is revolutionary, but it's also apocalyptic. The language of blood and sacrifice is hardwired into Shiite thinking. And it strikes a massive chord because for the next 9 days, for the first nine days of morning, there are thousands of people dressed in white mourning shrouds out on the street. I mean, Western reporters watching this said there were like an army of the dead or something. It was an extraordinary scene. All of these people dressed in white chanting against the sha. There are nightly confrontations with the sha soldiers um every evening.

There are tanks and armored cars in the streets. I mean you talk about apocalypse Tom there's a massive sense of apocalyptic dread in December 1978 on the streets of Iran and then just as the Ayatollah had foreseen the climax comes on Ashura so the night of the 10th into the 11th of December which is your anniversary of the battle of Carbal in 680 and basically what happens is the sha's army seals off the kind of ceremonial core of the city the palaces the ministers, the embassies, and they abandon the rest of the city to the crowds. And there are some estimates that there are a million people in the streets chanting Margar, death to America, and all this kind of thing. Now, the fact that they're chanting death to America tells you that they think the Americans are the sh they're the embodiment of westernization and secularism. They're the puppet masters. But the the irony is if they are puppet masters, they are useless

puppet masters. It's because they can't agree what to do. And we ended the last episode with Ambassador William Sullivan standing there in the US embassy and thinking this is a flipping nightmare. It's all going to pieces. We're going to have to change horses. We should find out what the Ayatala wants. He doesn't like communism. We don't like communism. We can do a deal, right? There's some middle ground. Let us build bridges with the Islamic clerics. We don't know anything about Humeni. Come on. The the window of time is closing. Let's sort this out. This goes down incredibly badly in Washington, especially with the hawkish national security adviser Ziggny of Brazinski. Brzinski says to Carter, "Your bloke in Tehran has totally lost his marbles." Like the Sha is our man.

We should stick with the sha. Get the sha to send in the troops. Clear the streets. Let's stop messing around. They have a showdown in the Oval Office on the 10th of December. Cyrus Vance, the patrician kind of boarding school guy, he says, "I think we should actually listen to Sullivan. He knows what he's talking about. He's, you know, be my man from the State Department." Presinski says, "Are you mad? You'd plot with some mad medieval fanatic against our own close ally." I forgot to put this in the notes. Amazing story. Brzinski got an interview from Lemon, translated, and gave it to Carter. And Carter read it and he sent it back with one word written in the margin, nutty.

And he was, this wasn't peanut diplomacy. Such a missed opportunity. This was his psychiatric diagnosis of the Ayatollah. And so Carter said, "You is the is obviously a mad man. Let's we can't do a deal with him." Now Sullivan when he heard the news went mad in Thrron and he sent off an incredibly insolent telegram back to Washington and he said Carter has made a gross and perhaps irretrievable mistake by failing to send an emissary to Paris to see Humeni. I cannot repeat cannot understand the rationale. I'm going to say it right now. Ambassador Sullivan was undoubtedly right. I think it is a colossal mistake from Jimmy Carter not to have sent an emissaryy to see Hommini. Maybe Hummeni would still have ended up in power and it would still have an Islamic Republic of Iran or whatever, but the Americans missed a window there. But if you have no understanding of the potential power that Islam and therefore the Ayatollah

as someone who is channeling the power of Islam has, you can understand why he would you would just say, "Well, he's nutty." That's what your ambassador is for. Your ambassador is there to get the temperature on the streets to understand what's going on. I mean, Sullivan wasn't perfect, but he had a sense things are spiraling out of control.

I I accept that, but I'm just sticking up for Jimmy Carter here that that he doesn't know what he's dealing with.

Okay. He definitely doesn't know what he's dealing with. Anyway, Carter wanted to sack Sullivan straight away, and Cyrus Van said to him, "We actually need to keep an ambassador and we can't be sacking our ambassador at this crucial moment." Anyway, the next day, Sullivan goes to the palace to see the sha and it's an extraordinary scene, a ghostly scene. The place is deserted. A lot of the sha's courteers have already fled abroad. They've been taking crates of furniture and jewelry and paintings and so on. They've been making bank transfers to the Cayman Islands, all their goten gains, all of this. But the sh and empress Farah are still there in this kind of marble prison of the palace surrounded by mirrors. these sort of sad figures dining by candle lights and the power cuts. Sullivan goes in and he says to the sha, "Look, we had a plan to contact many. I mean, you might not like it, but we did and we've we've scrapped

it." And the sh is shocked cuz he he has always believed weirdly this thing about the Americans being puppet masters. He's believed it too. And he said, "What? You don't have any plan?" Sullivan said, "We we don't have any plan now. I'm really sorry." I mean, it's a classic example, isn't it, of the way in which actually conspiracy theories are a comfort blanket. It reassures you that somebody knows what's going on.

You mean the British aren't masterminding this? It's a real disappointment. It is total anarchy. And and Sullivan says in his memoirs, "Up to this point, the sha had imagined that we had some grand design that was intended to save his country and perhaps somehow or other his dynasty." And it's like the scales fall from the sha's eyes. It suddenly became clear to him, as it had to me, that we had no design whatsoever, and that our government's actions were being guided by some inexplicable whim. So Sullivan, it was a bad day for both of us. I mean, it's a particularly bad day for the sha. So events are now moving very quickly indeed. A lot of Americans have already left, but there are still 10,000 or so in Iran. But on the 23rd of December, the most senior oil executive in Iran was a guy called Paul Grim, who actually managed and ran the oil fields.

He was ambushed and shot by militants. He was the first foreigner to be killed in the revolution. And the oil companies at this stage say, "Okay, we're pulling the plug. We're getting the people out." So they start getting their workers families out. And by the end of December 1978, the oil fields of Iran, which are so central to the world's economy, have been pretty much completely shut down. So now, insanely there is petrol rationing in Iran's cities. Iran, this oil rich country doesn't is not has no oil for its own people. And in Europe, oil prices are going up daily. They've gone up by about 20%. So not good news for Jim Callahan. Not good news.

Although Britain is now, of course, about North Sea oil is about to come on stream for for Britain. So oddly, Britain is one country that wasn't massively affected. Oh well, that's a positive. Yeah. So we're the rig winners in all this. And now on the last day of 1978, the sha makes one final despairing effort to recapture the initiative. He sacks his military government. He brings in a new prime minister who is a moderate liberal dissident called Shapor Bactiar. He's the kind of person who a few years earlier he'd have been a nice progressive hero with his lovely mustache, but now you know he's just a sort of shrony and he's been left behind.

He's the Kinsky of the Iranian revolution. Now, at this point, the sh is already thinking, I'm probably going to have to get out. The next time he meets Sullivan, he says, "I I'm I'm I realize I'm going to have to go." And Sullivan says, "Where do you want to go?" And the shark says, "A terrible thing, actually, the worst thing he ever did." He says to William Sullivan, "I have a home in England, but I don't want to go there because the weather is so bad." But I mean, that's great news for Britain, isn't it? because it would actually have been terrible for him to come because

do you know what Jim Galahan great friend of the rest is history had already said he didn't want the sha didn't want him to come like George V refusing Nicholas II

yes so Sullivan says to him would you like to come to the United States would you like me to organize an invitation for you and he said the sha lent forward like a little boy and said oh would you so sullivan reports back to him and says I've got a place for you great publishing magnate and former ambassador to Britain Walter Annenburgg he's got a house in Palm Palm Springs, California. And he says you can have that.

I've been to it. Did you stay in it though, Tom? I didn't stay in it. I was But it was the Palm Springs Literary Festival, which I highly commend. We had a little tour. Well, the sh He says, "I'm going to go to Egypt first to see my mate, President Sedat, then I'll go from there to California." And Sullivan says once they discussed this and once the sh reconciled himself to it, he seemed relieved, even excited at the prospect. I mean, it's interesting to think what would have happened had he ended up in California because California becomes the great bolt hole, doesn't it, for lots of upper and middle class Iranians.

So, it really would have been a king in exile there. Yeah. So, the plan is put in motion on the morning of Friday the 19th of January. The sha and his empress leave the palace for the last time. The guards, it's an amazing scene. The guards are all lined up, a lot of them in tears. They get on a helicopter. It's going to take them to Terron airport. It's a freezing cold and windy day. And as they look out of the helicopter, they can see these great lines of people waiting for emergency paraffin supplies and these huge cues of cars outside petrol stations that are being held in line by troops firing automatic weapons in the air to stop people getting out of line. They get to the airport, it's totally deserted because the strikes have shut it down. There's just a row off upon row of Iran airplanes standing there idle. And there's a little group of politicians and officers that have come to say farewell. There's this guy,

the last prime minister, Shapoor Baktiar. And the sha says to him, I entrust Iran to you and to God. And he starts walking very stiffly towards the plane. And he's clearly trying to hold back the tears. Now, meanwhile, at exactly this moment, news has reached the city. The sh is fleeing. People are going berserk. They're blaring their kind of car horns. They're tearing down statues. They're tearing down street names. They are burning portraits. They're doing all this kind of thing. The shark gets to the plain steps and at this point one of his generals, a very famous photograph, um, bends over to kiss his hand. The general is crying uncontrollably and the sha looks away.

He can't look at him because he and his face, you can see in the photo, his face is this mask. It's absolutely stricken, but he's clearly trying to hold back the tears himself. And then he gets on the plane and the plane lifts off and he goes up into the sky and a few moments later he is gone. The sha of shars has fallen and the stage is set for the return of the Ayatollah. And the exciting news Dominic is that the Ayatollah will be returning after a commercial break. Hello. Welcome back to the rest is history. And uh we left you at Thrron airport on the 19th of January 1979. The sha was disappearing on a plane into the sky. Um but Dominic, let's pick the story up 16 days later and head back to Thrron airport because someone someone now is uh is arriving.

Yeah, we haven't left. So it's the 1st of February 1979. Another plane is coming into land and this is a chartered Air France 747 from Paris. And the plane lands, it taxes to a halt. This time there's a huge crowd, massive crowd, reporters, cameramen, airport staff. You can see the clips online. The door opens. A French flight officer comes down the stairs and he's holding with his left hand. He's supporting this tall, gaunt figure behind him, dressed entirely in black. And this is the Ayatala Hmeni back on Iranian soil for the first time in 15 years. It is one of the great set pieces in 20th century history comparable to you know Lenin at the Finland station. One of these kind of you know Kennedy at the Berlin wall one of these kind of iconic moments. But the one person who's not moved by it is the Ayatollah. He is totally impassive and very famously on the flight on the way over there were loads of journalists

and ABC's American reporter Peter Jennings said to him what are you feeling at this moment and he said in far nothing I have no feelings and you know that's the to right you're not playing the game you know defying the expectations of the western media preserving this formidable imperturbable unflapable ability, you know, I feel nothing. You know, it's such a sort of powerful moment. Anyway, he gets into the airport building. There are thousand clerics there. There's a huge banner. The flag of the revolution is in your hands. You are our leader. What no one knows is what that means. But there is a hint straight away in the airport building when addresses the crowds and he says to them, "Our final victory will come when all the foreigners are out of the country. I beg God to cut off the hands of all evil foreigners and all of their helpers.

I mean, that's that's a delightful way to pay back that French guy who'd helped him down the steps.

The stairs. I think he would probably make an exception for him. Oh, that's good.

Well, you know, does he mean it? I mean actually as we'll see later on Kmeni was not always you know incredibly unfriendly to foreigners in Tehran but a kind of nivism I think was a nationalism was always a key part of his appeal. Yeah it's interesting because on the flight over he'd been asked should we destroy Pepilolis the ancient city of the Persian kings and he'd said no because it's part of the glory of Iran. There's a nationalism to the Iranian revolution and to the, you know, the Islamic Republic that I think is possibly sometimes overlooked um by Western observers. They see it purely in terms of the the the Islamism of it. But the Iranian nationalism is, I think, a really important element.

Well, the the the Shiite character of of Iranian Islam in a way enables the nationalism and the Islamism to to blend and blur.

Exactly. So then he travels from the airport into the city. this unbelievable scene. I mean, he's in a Mercedes van and he is traveling along the streets. The streets are packed with people. There were people on the rooftops, on balconies, and hanging from cranes on every ledge screaming and shouting. Leond estimated that there were 10 million people there. I mean, how can you possibly tell? But there are undoubtedly millions plural and millions more watching on TV. I mean, it is one of the defining moments of Iranian history. And they stopped when they finally got to this huge cemetery in southern Thran, the biggest cemetery in the city. And he gave another ferocious speech. The sha destroyed our country and filled our cemeteries. His government are criminals. I shall appoint my own government. I shall slap this government in the mouth. Rabust is robust. Now he's talking about what the

shar's government is returning to a country in total and utter chaos with a complete vacuum at the top. The sha's last prime minister, Mr. Bactiar is still supposedly running the country now. Bactar had tried to contact Hommini in Paris and Humeni had completely ignored him. Hommini had said, "Your government is illegal. You're appointed by the Sha who's a bad man. You should quit. I don't care what you think about anything." When Hmeni announced that he was coming back, Bactar tried to stop him by closing the airports. There were massive demonstrations. The troops fired into the crowds. They killed several dozen more people. And that was bactar basically tarnished forever because he just looks like the sha's puppet and another version of the sha. So now when returns has the he absolutely has the initiative but no one knows what he will do. And to be honest I actually don't think he knows himself what he will do

because he hasn't been in Iran for 15 years. But God will guide. He knows that God will guide. But what will God want him to do? Michael Axworthy in his brilliant book on the early days of the revolution says you know probably Humeni thought that he would end up being a kind of figurehead a guardian for regime in which there would be different elements shocking for power or he just doesn't know how can you know certainly a lot of his colleagues and a lot of the people that he works with in the first months of the revolution thought he'll be there at the beginning he'll be the standard bearer he'll be the face of it but over time he'll fade into the background. I mean, he's never had political power. He's never run anything because that's Shia clerics don't have power. It's it's unheard of the very idea of it.

Yeah. At first, he sets up a revolutionary council at a girl school in the city center. Now, funny enough, this is exactly what the Bolsheviks did in 1917 at the Smoly Institute in Petrorad, another girls educational establishment. So, maybe this is an argument for outlawing girl schools because they become hot beds of revolution. I don't know. And he appoints his own rival prime minister who actually is very like Mr. Bactiar. He's a man called Medi Barzagan.

Does he have a mustache? He does. He's got a mustache and a kind of little very it's an intellectuals mustache and beard sort of goatee combination.

So not not a full-froed one. Oh no, he's another liberal dissident kind of democratic dissident. And Medi Barzagan, you know, when when he goes in front of the cameras, he says, you know, we're going to have an elected constituent assembly. We'll have right a new constitution. We'll have democratic elections. All of this it's very kind of European revolution because I guess at this point those secularist revolutionaries against the sh's government whether they're the kind of centrist dads or whether they're the socialists or whether they're the communists they think that they can use the Ayatollah.

I think they do. I think they undoubtedly do riding a crocodile and very soon we'll be swallowed up by There's a sort of perhaps an ominous hint from Mr. Barzigan at this press conference because Homminine is there and Humeni says this isn't going to be an ordinary government. It's a government based on the Sharia. Opposing this government means opposing the Sharia of Islam, a revolt against God. And revolt against God is blasphemy. You know, people can't say they weren't warned. And in Michael Axworth's book, he says these two elements of the revolution are always in tension, not just in the early days, but actually throughout the history of the Islamic regime to the present. On the one hand, it's the Islamic Republic of Iran. You know, there is a kind of republican idealism, but on the other hand, it's Islamic. Yeah. So, people do vote. There is a parliament. Women can vote and they still can vote today,

right? They have elections. They have competitions for for offices. And yet, at the same time, there is the Islamic Foundation and the idea that opposing it is blasphemous and opposing Sharia law and all of that kind of I mean one of the amazing illustrations of the way in which um if it's banned by the Sharia then you can't do it. So say homosexuality would be banned but there is nothing in the Sharia about sex changes. So Iran I think historically is the country where there's been the largest number of sex changes.

Yeah that's right I know is a really weird thing isn't it? Now there is a potential threat to new order and that is the army. I mean always the issue right in revolutions. What's the army going to do? Carter had sent an American general, General Heiser, to encourage the Iranian generals to stand firm and to make plans for a coup. But they couldn't trust their own men. They've got thousands of conscripts who are precisely the kind of young workingclass men who have been attracted to Homine's message. These men start deserting. On the 10th of February, so we're just, you know, less than 2 weeks after Homminine's return. Crowds of Homminine supporters invade the police stations and barracks to find weapons.

There are two prime ministers. Remember there's Bactiar with his mustache and Barzagan mustache and goatee beard. Baktiar orders the army to restore order. So now the generals have to decide who to back. And on the next day, the 11th, which is remembered in Iran today as the moment the revolution basically reached its apotheiois. The army issued a statement. They said, "We're going to stay neutral. All troops must remain in in their barracks." And for Hummeni and his supporters, this was a massive victory because they were now free to take over the ministries, the prisons, the police stations, and the TV stations and so on. And there's an interesting moment here on this day, the 11th, in the chaos, a group of American military advisers were taken prisoner by the crowd. And basically, Ambassador Sullivan had to get them out. And in the middle of all this, he got a call from the white house and it was the under

secretary of state and he said, "I've got a message for you from the national security adviser, Zign of Brzinski. He wants you to organize an army coup against we've realized get the army to intervene now." And Sullivan said, "Are you joking? Like the army have said they're going to stay neutral and a load of our advisers have been captured and I'm negotiating with commun to get them out. I'm not going to organize a coup now." And the under secretary of state said, "He really, really wants you to focus on this coup. Please get this coup done today. And Sullivan said, and Tabby, you'll have to bleep this out.

Please tell Brzinski to off. The under secretary of state said, "That's not very helpful." And Sullivan said, "Oh, I'm sorry. Would you like me to translate it into Polish for you?" And then he slammed down the phone. So Dominic, we've I mean we've been listening to the you know what's going on in Iran with Sha's gone, government's collapsed. Um Kmeni followers are getting their hands on the levers of power, but what what is going on in America at this point? So as this would suggest, the Americans don't really have a clue what's going on. Until the end of 1978, most Americans had probably never ever thought about Iran at all. The first time it really made front page news was when the sha left and most American papers said, "Oh, the sha's left Iran. Well, he was useless and corrupt. Thank god he's gone. He should have gone earlier if anything. But there are people within the kind of foreign

policy establishment who are very alarmed. So Henry Kissinger, the SHA's old friend, Kissinger said, dogooders and liberals and human rights people have undermined the sha and it's all their fault. This is classic Kissinger. And then Kissinger went on to say, you know, you can say what you like about the sha going, "Oh, new order for Iran. This is going to be a massive disaster for us, for the Middle East, for the international order. I mean, you could say on this latter point, Kissinger is not entirely wrong, right? No, I mean, he's not wrong at all. The other people who are very alarmed are US businesses.

So, some American businesses had invested very heavily in Iran in the 1970s. I give an example, the Starret Housing Corporation. So, that might not sound an exciting corporation. They were the people that had built the Empire State Building and they have just signed the contract to build Trump Tower. Imagine Trump Tower in Thran. Well, they were going to build a housing complex on the edge of Thran. Half a billion dollars the contract was worth. And they are now facing if this revolution goes ahead and they lose the contract, they're facing massive losses. The list of companies, Gillette, Pepsi, Colgate, Coke, Johnson and Johnson, General Motors, all of these companies have got factories. They've got investments in Iran. they're going to lose a lot of money.

So in the ' 50s, an Ayatollah had issu actually issued a fatwa against Pepsi. Um but that was because it was owned by a Bahigh industrialist,

the franchise, the local franchise. The local franchise. Yeah. Wow. I think not because he was particularly opposed to Pepsi per se.

Yeah. This these are these are going to be dark days for Pepsi drinkers in Iran. I think um in the early 1980s, the bigger issue, of course, for Americans is oil. Remember, Iran is the second biggest oil exporter in the world, but its production has been shut down since December. Prices are surging all the time because people are very worried that this revolution is going to spread across the Middle East to other oil producing countries to Q8. People there are articles in Western papers saying it could spread to Saudi Arabia. It, you know, Egypt could be the next country.

Who knows? So, in the next few weeks, the basic price for a barrel of crude oil went from $13 to $34. And of course, it's that classic thing. You're an ordinary driver. You read in your newspaper that petrol prices are going to be shooting up. You think, well, I'm going to start filling my car. You know, I'm going to never let it go below 3/4 full because I don't want to have to pay more for my petrol. So, you get cues at pumps. The demand rises, the price rises, you get a massive inflationary spiral. And for Carter, this is politically poisonous. Most Americans, let's be honest, they don't give a damn about Iran. I mean, it's not Vietnam. It wasn't in the newspapers year after year. When Carter runs for reelection in 1980, you know, Iran might come up, but it's not the thing. If you're, you know, an ordinary housewife in Ohio, Iran isn't the first thing you think about.

You do care about inflation, though. You massively care about it. Even in 1978, the US inflation rate was 9%. Now, Carter had been confident he could get that down with interest rates, but he didn't expect an Iranian revolution. And actually, what happens as a result through the course of 1979, inflation doesn't come down. It goes up 10%, 11%, 12% by October. No one expects the Iranian revolution.

No one does. And if you open any American newspaper from 1979, it's full of people complaining about price rises. So John Updike wrote a book called Rabbit is Rich, one of his rabbit novels set in 1979. He wrote it a couple of years later. And his everyman character in the rabbit novels, Harry Angstrom, is always winging about inflation. I mean, he puts his money into um South African Krugarans in the novel because he tells his wife this is a way to deal with their savings being eroded by inflation. He'd be a crypto dealer now.

Exactly. He would. And we know from 2024 when Camela Harris lost to um Trump, how much prices matter. You know, this is the classic breadandbut issue that American voters and all Western voters really care about.

So, Dominic, this is a lesson from history for those, you know, wondering who was going to win in the last election. You only had to study this period and you'd have known.

So, Jimmy Carter, let's get to Jimmy Carter. People will remember Jimmy Carter. He's basically 50% evangelical Sunday school teacher and 50% humanist policy wonk.

Your kind of guy. Yeah. So basically if you Jimmy if you ask Jimmy Carter for his ideal evening it's putting on his cardigan TV address to the nation unveiling a 73point energy plan and telling everybody to turn the heating off and put on their hair shirts. And so that's what he does on the 5th of April 1979. He goes on TV and he says to the American people, "You're going to have to pay more for your gas. I would like you I mean this is unbelievable an American I imagine this unm you can't conceive for a 21st century American president doing this he says I would like you to drive 15 miles a week fewer than you do now at least once a week take the bus go by carpool if you work close enough to home walk the thought of the commanderin-chief of the United States telling people to get the bus this is not what they were used to hearing from John F. Kennedy or Richard Nixon. And obviously, if you

live in a quite a cold part of the United States, so in the Northeast or the Midwest, where people use more oil and they're paying more for it, they don't want to hear this. They don't want to hear they have to pay more for their gas. And these places already have a lot of working-class Democrats who are very Carter skeptic. So even at this point in the spring of 1979, a lot of Liberal Democrats and sort of labor union bosses and things so crucial to the Democratic party are saying, "How the hell did we wind up with this bloke from the South?

This weird evangelical Christian who's telling us to turn the heating down." Like we should get rid of him. Get in Ted Kennedy. I know Ted Kennedy disgraced himself. Yeah. They're forgetting the whole drowning the woman thing. They're foretting that. That's not a deal breaker anymore. if he's going to get the petrol prices down. Now, get Kennedy in. And actually, in the next few weeks, things go from bad to worse. So, by May, there are huge lines outside gas stations in Southern California. There was there was rationing in California. So, basically, if you had a if your kind of registration pace, if your license pace of your car ended in an even number, you could go to the gas station on an even number day. Was this under um Governor Jerry Brown, whose nickname was Moon Beam? Yeah, Governor Jerry Brown. And it might sound mad, but actually lots of other states copied that that um rationing even in oddnumbered days

because within weeks the gas stations are running out of petrol in New York and the Mid-Atlantic states and people start basically driving to other states to get their petrol. Wouldn't that use up all your petrol? Well, of course. So, people are so there are huge lines of cars everywhere. It's complete shambles. Now, compared with what's been going on in Iran, this might not sound like a very big deal, but in the context of 1970s America, when you consider that people are already very bruised after Vietnam and Watergate, this is really, really dangerous for Carter and his administration. And there are two elements of it actually that are very resonant today. So, one of them is there are loads of conspiracy theories about all this. So polls showed that eight out of 10 Americans thought that somebody was controlling all this and they usually said it's corrupt Washington politicians, it's Arab oil shakes, it's

bankers probably in league with the British. It's always the British. So it's a kind of weird echo of Iranian conspiracy theories then.

Yeah. Sort of paranoid uh resentments that are very deep-seated. And then the other thing is nationalism. So you start seeing bumper stickers on cars, nuke their ass and take their gas or posters. People make posters showing gis standing over kind of dying Arabs with nuclear mushroom clouds in the background and the caption says, "How much is the gas now? Did they not know that the Iranians are not Arabs?" Well, I knew you'd be thinking that. So this crisis peaked on the weekend of the 23rd and 24th of June 1979. by which point about twothirds of the gas stations and Americans had closed and people were waiting sometimes days to get petrol. And in one place in particular which becomes a symbol of this crisis, this turns into violence.

This is Levittown, Pennsylvania. And it's so um symbolic because this is your classic post-war planned suburban community. It was built by Levverton sons for returning GIS after the Second World War. A symbol of the American dream, a symbol of their dependence on the car. There's rioting outside a service station. It spreads the two days of riots. People looting shops, the post office setting cars on fire. The local officials have to declare a state of emergency. All of this kind of thing. You know, it's small beer compared with what's going on in Iran. But in the context of US politics, it's it's a terrible look and especially with an election coming up.

Well, an election in 1980, a year later. So, what's Carter going to do? Carter has been planning a fifth nationwide address to the people about energy, but he decides to cancel it. And the reason that he cancels it is that his wife Roslin and his opinion poll guru, who's a 29-year-old wonk called Pat Cadell, have persuaded him that this is actually about something much bigger than petrol prices. Remember, Carter is an evangelical Christian. And they say to him, "The US is suffering from a deep spiritual malaise and you have been appointed by history or indeed by God to bring about the regeneration of the American people."

So again, such a weird kind of distorted echo of what's happening in Iran, right? Except I don't can't really see the Ayatollah doing what Carter does now. Carter goes into this sort of retreat and he gets loads of trendy cultural theorists. people who were very well known in the 70s kind of forgotten now like Daniel Bell and Christopher Lash these people who wrote these you know they would write articles in the New York Times about the cultural contradictions of capitalism or the new age of narcissism and all of this stuff very fashionable in the 70s Carter meets dozens of these people I mean dozens and dozens of them and he takes reams of notes and he says yes this is absolutely right I need to educate the American people all this kind of thing his vice president Walter Manddale thought that Carter had lost his marbles and actually wanted to resign. He he thought that this was a terrible idea. He had to be

talked out of it. But finally on the 15th of July, Carter when he'd finished his sort of self-reeducation, he went on TV. He'd been secluded for 10 days writing this speech and he goes on TV to address the American people and he says, "I know you're all worried about oil prices, but we are suffering from a national crisis of confidence. Too many of us worship self-indulgence and consumption, but we've discovered that owning things and consuming things does not satisfy our longing for meaning. Piling up material goods cannot fill the emptiness of lives which have no confidence and no purpose. It's very Sunday school.

It's very Sunday school and it's good stuff from a Sunday. If you're in a Sunday school, imagine you're a truck driver from Cleveland.

Yeah, I can see that not going down well with with that. doesn't also he begins the speech by listing all the things that people have been telling him why he's terrible.

Yeah. Which is not a great way, is it? He lists his own faults. I mean, yeah. This girl says I'm rubbish. This bloke says I'm terrible. It's really odd. And then he says, you know, you probably want some practical things to do. You know, first of all, you should look into your hearts and stop being so consumerist. And secondly, um, stop driving your car, take the bus, nothing. Obey the speed limit, set your thermostats to save fuel, all this kind of thing. And then he ends with the Sunday school again. With God's help and the sake of our nation, it's time for us to join hands and commit ourselves to a rebirth of the American spirit. I have to say I cannot imagine Jim Callahan saying something like this to the uh to the British people in 1978. Maybe he should have done.

He should have done, I think. Anyway, to the people watching this speech, 65 million people, this is bonkers. First of all, Americans are not used to being lectured about crisis of confidence, moral failings.

They don't like downbeat speeches, do they? They like to be told everything's great. And if it's not, then it's the fault of other people.

Correct. For a US president to be denouncing consumerism is unheard of in the postwar era. I mean, it's unimaginable to think of JFK telling people off in 1962 for owning their enormous cars with tail fins and gigantic fridges the size of a house or something. and also Carter's spiritual themes. You know, presidents don't talk about this kind of thing. For him to be talking so earnestly about faith and rebirth and, you know, what what life's all about and whatnot. I mean, this is mad stuff to a lot of people. Now, you know, I mean, Americans and Iranians are both, you know, they're getting lectures from from moral leaders. Yeah. From spiritual leaders. And then Carter follows it up by purging his own administration. And so he sacks his Treasury Secretary, his attorney general, his energy secretary, and so on. And at this point, people just think, "This bloke's lost the plot." So the dollar plummets, his approval

ratings go down to 23%. And this speech becomes, it's hung around his neck forever as a sign of his perceived weirdness and failure. So it's called the Malaise speech. And Tom, I know you're a big fan of The Simpsons. When a statue of Jimmy Carter is unveiled in Springfield, the place where The Simpsons is set, it is inscribed with the words malaise forever. And people in the crowd are shouting, "Look, it's history's greatest monster, Jimmy Carter. Poor Jimmy." But worse is to come, isn't it? Cuz we now move on, and we're approaching the moment that I'm sure all our listeners have been waiting for. The fishing trip to a swamp. So I think what's unprecedented now in the 20th century is the degree of contempt for Carter in the press corp and in the kind of Washington establishment. So you mentioned he that he starting to look very haggarded. He he's actually very fit because he's into jogging and he

does a run near Camp David. It is a 10k run and collapses unfortunately. Do you know I remember it so vividly on the front page of the newspapers. It was kind of when I was first starting to read newspapers and he just looked like I always felt when I had to go on a run. I felt enormous sympathy and fellow feeling for him. He goes on this run and he looks like this tottering gray figure. He collapses and has to be held to his feet. And his press secretary Jodie Powell said, "If Carter had been set upon by a pack of wild dogs, the press would have sided with the dogs."

And actually, is he is he then set upon by a wild animal? This is what happens.

No. Great. Come on. tell us about this, but not a dog. So, in August 1979, so a month later, the Washington Post broke the news with the excellent headline, "Rabbit attacks President." It's the biggest moment in 20th century American history, isn't it?

And to read the story, "A killer rabbit attacked President Carter on a recent trip to Plains, Georgia, penetrating Secret Service security and forcing the chief executive to beat back the beast with a canoe paddle. The rabbit swam towards a canoe from which Carter was fishing in a pond. It was hissing menacingly, its teeth flashing and nostrils flurred and making straight for the president. So this rabbit, this aquatic killer rabbit attacked Carter in a swamp. And the mad thing is what happened next, which is wildlife charities attacks Carter and they said he shouldn't have hit the rabbit with a paddle and Carter was forced to issue a statement which he said I didn't hit it with a paddle. I just splashed water towards it. Ladies and gentlemen, the leader of the free world to try to try to deter the rabbit. And at that point when he said, "Oh, I didn't hit it with the battle. It would just splash water." The

Republicans and indeed more hogish Democrats said, "Okay, that's it. I'm finished with this guy." What an absolute wimp. He can't even stand up. He wouldn't even hit a rabbit. No wonder we are losing Iran. And actually, this takes us back to Iran finally from the rabbit. So, in the last few months, while the Americans have been going mad, what's been going on in Iran? The streets have been taken over by various paramilitary groups loyal to the Islamic Revolutionary Guard. Most famously, revolutionary courts have been set up under Sharia law. They have been holding trials in secret. They have been executing officials who are loyal to the sha. They have started to reverse what they see as symbols of westernization, most obviously women's rights. So, they brought back the veil. By spring of 1979, women have already lost some of their divorce and child custody rights, though not interestingly the right to

vote. There are new censorship laws. So liberal newspapers have been shut down and Iran has adopted its new constitution which explicitly pledges to export the revolution and unite the entire Islamic world. So it's kind of troskyite Islamism.

Exactly. So but for supporters the struggle is not over. As so often in revolutions they are very anxious about enemies without and within. And by the late summer of 1979, so precisely the point when Jimmy Carter is giving his sort of breastbeating speeches, they are focused on two threats in particular. First of all, the sha the sha has not gone away. He has not yet gone to the United States. He's been wandering the earth, as we will discover next time, from Morocco to Mexico. And of course, the sha still sees himself as the rightful emperor of Iran. And he still has people who support him. And secondly, Kmen supporters are becoming fixated on something in the heart of Tehran, the ultimate symbol of Western imperialism.

The place they call the den of spies. The place from which the CIA they believe plotted its coup in 1953 and might do again the United States Embassy. And even as Jimmy Carter is fending off accusations that he hit this rabbit with a paddle, a group of Iranian students are meeting to discuss what they're going to do about the US embassy. And what follows is the defining episode in the Iranian revolution and one of the greatest humiliations in American history.

Well, thank you Dominic. Really set up for, as you say, I mean, just one of the defining moments of 20th century history. And our rest is history club members can hear the next two episodes in the series. So that is the story of the seizure of the US embassy which will be in the next episode and then the final episode which will be about Jimmy Carter's disastrous attempt to rescue the hostages being held in Thran right now. If you want to join the club then please do so at the restis.com. But for now goodbye. Goodbye.

Questions about this episode

Who speaks in "How the Iranian Revolution Was Hijacked | EP 2"?

Dominic Sandbrook (Host), Tom Holland (Host).

What is "How the Iranian Revolution Was Hijacked | EP 2" about?

The discussion centers on the Iranian Revolution, detailing the turmoil faced by U.S. President Jimmy Carter as the Shah of Iran is overthrown and replaced by Ayatollah Khomeini, who establishes an Islamic regime. The narrative also hints at a peculiar backdrop involving a "killer rabbit" in America, adding a layer of intrigue to the historical events unfolding.

What is mentioned in this The Rest Is History episode?

11 people, works and ideas are mentioned, including Iranian Revolution, 1979 Islamic Revolution, Islamic Republic, Sharia law, J. D. Vance, Muharram. Each one on this page links to its own page with every episode that mentions it.

How long is "How the Iranian Revolution Was Hijacked | EP 2"?

The episode runs 1 h 8 min; the transcript is about 12,348 words in 114 timestamped sections.

More from The Rest Is History

About this transcript: the episode's spoken words as captioned on YouTube, split into timestamped sections. Reclip.Me locates every person, work and idea in the text, keeps the time it is first named, and quotes the words around it verbatim. Last updated January 30, 2026.