Jimmy Carter’s IranHe gave us the Ayatollah. We’re still trying to clean up his mess.by Paul Kengor
June 23, 2025, 10:03 PMOn 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 DidLaying 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.
<..snip..>
https://spectator.org/jimmy-carters-iran/
