Postscript: Jimmy Carter's Iran
He betrayed one of America's closest allies. He gave us the Ayatollah. We’re still trying to clean up his mess.
Don’t miss our Independence Day essay, “The Christian Worldview of ‘Life, Liberty and the Pursuit of Happiness”. It’s not what you’ve been taught, and it’s FREE.
NOTE: The Shah was America’s best friend in the Middle East, bar none. He was also a liberalizing force in Iran, albeit a gradualist: he believed too much change too fast would result in…exactly what resulted.
Jimmy Carter betrayed him, and Iran, and in doing so America, in much the same way that he let countless other countries fall to Communism and other totalitarians. It may be that his one term is the darkest period in American history. And the consequences keep rolling on. — RDM
by Paul Kengor
July 5, 2025
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.”
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 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.
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