637. Revolution in Iran: Rise of the Ayatollah (Part 2)

20:25Tom Holland:And the 12th imam, the Mahdi, is waiting to appear. There is also scope for independent reasoning. But this independent reasoning must be rooted in the kind of the classical texts of Shiite Islam. 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 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 beetle-browed conservative.

21:08Tom Holland: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 context of the Shah'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 the velayat which is the guardianship of the state so as in velayat efaki that was supposed to have perished with ali and hussein so we talked in the previous episode about how the attitude 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 mahti 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 course will come to be called an imam so you know one of the lines of these these imams i think also it reflects desperation a sense that if they're going to topple the Shah.

22:24Tom Holland:They need something else to put in his place because the Ayatollah is anxious that otherwise it will lead to a communist revolution or socialism, which 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 academic 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 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.

23:15So 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

23:37Dominic Sandbrook:why it's so potent yeah but really 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 Shah, I hate his corruption, 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? He seems, he's a holy man. He's obviously not corrupt. He's never been guilty of violence. what could possibly be bad about him.

24:13Tom Holland:But I think there's also something that specifically appeals to people on the left, and particularly the anti-colonialist left, because the Ayatollah is very keen on a Quranic phrase, the disinherited of the earth. And in translation, this echoes very famous post-colonial phrase, the wretched of the earth, which is the title of Frantz Fanon's book that came out in 1961, and is really the foundational text of kind of post-colonial theory. And he's against imperialism, right? He's against Western empiricism, so he's 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 reading.

24:49Dominic Sandbrook:There's a very famous example, a left-wing activist, Princeton professor called Richard Falk, who wrote about him in the New York Times. And he said, when the Ayatollah comes in, he may well provide a desperately needed model of humane governance for a third world country. Foucault 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 Khomeini 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 Muharram.

25:23Now, Muharram 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 episode,

25:38Tom Holland:which is the anniversary of the death of Hussein at the Battle of Kabbalah, which is seen as this kind of cosmic moment of disaster. Exactly. And so Khomeini 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 Shah. And this rhetoric is revolutionary, but it's also apocalyptic. The language of blood and sacrifice is hardwired into Shiite thinking.

26:15And it strikes a massive chord because for the next nine days, for the first nine days of mourning, there are thousands of people dressed in white mourning shrouds out on the streets. I mean, Western reporters watching this said they were like an army of the dead or something. It was an extraordinary scene. All of these people dressed in white chanting against the Shah. There are nightly confrontations with the Shah soldiers 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.

26:51And 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 Kabbalah in 680. and basically what happens is the shah's army seals off the kind of ceremonial core of the city

27:13Dominic Sandbrook: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 magba shah magba america death to the shah 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 shahs they're the embodiment of westernization and secularism they're the puppet masters but 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 u.s embassy and thinking this is a flipping nightmare it's all going to pieces we're gonna have to change horses we should find out what the ayatollah wants he doesn't like communism We don't like communism.

28:04Dominic Sandbrook:We could do a deal. Right. There's some middle ground. Let us build bridges with the Islamic clerics. We don't know anything about Khomeini. Come on. The window of time is closing. Let's sort this out. This goes down incredibly badly in Washington, especially with the hawkish national security advisor, Zbigniew Brzezinski. Brzezinski says to Carter, your bloke in Tehran has totally lost his marbles. But the Shah is our man. We should stick with the Shah, get the Shah 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.

28:39Cyrus Vance, the patrician kind of boarding school guy, he says, I think we should actually

28:44Dominic Sandbrook:listen to sullivan he knows what he's talking about he's you know my man from the state department prasinski says are you mad you'd plot with some mad medieval fanatic against our own close ally i've got to put this in the notes amazing story prasinski got an interview from le mans translated and gave it to carter and carter read it and he sent it back with one word written in the margin nutty he was this wasn't peanut diplomacy such a missed opportunity this was his psychiatric diagnosis of the ayatollah and so carter said is the ayatollah is obviously a madman like let's we can't do a deal with him now sullivan when he heard the news went mad in tehran 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 khomeini I cannot repeat, cannot understand the rationale.

29:40I'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 emissary to see Khomeini. Maybe Khomeini would still have ended up in power and it would still have the Islamic Republic of Iran or whatever. But the Americans missed a window there.

29:58Tom Holland: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 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 accept that, but I'm just sticking up for Jimmy Carter here, 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.

30:33And Cyrus Vance said to him, we actually need to keep an ambassador and we can't be sacking an ambassador at this crucial moment. Anyway, the next day, Sullivan goes to the palace to see the Shah. And it's an extraordinary scene, ghostly scene. The place is deserted. A lot of the Shah's courtiers have already fled abroad. They've been taking crates of furniture and jewellery and paintings and so on. They've been making bank transfers to the Cayman Islands, all their all-gotten gains, all of this. But the Shah 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 candlelight because of the power cuts.

31:11Sullivan goes in and he says to the Shah, look, we had a plan to contact Khomeini. I mean, you might not like it, but we did. And we've scrapped it. and the Shah is shocked

31:20Dominic Sandbrook:because 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 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

31:34Tom Holland:conspiracy theories are a comfort blanket. It reassures you that somebody knows what's going on. You mean the British aren't masterminding this?

31:40Dominic Sandbrook:It's a real disappointment. It is total anarchy. And Sullivan says in his memoirs, up to this point, the Shah 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 shah'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 shah 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.

32:18But on the 23rd of December, the most senior oil executive in Iran was a guy called Paul Grimm, 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 putting 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 callaghan not good news although britain is now of course about north sea oil is about to come on stream for Britain.

33:10So oddly, Britain is one country that wasn't massively affected. Oh, well, that's a positive. Yeah. So we're the rig winners and all this. And on the last day of 1978, the Shah 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 Shapur Bhaktiar. He's the kind of person who a few years earlier, he'd have been a nice progressive hero with his lovely moustache but now you know he's just a sort of shah crony and he's been left behind he's the kerensky of the iranian revolution now at this point the shah is already thinking i'm probably gonna have to get out the next time he meets sullivan he says i i'm i realize i'm gonna have

33:51Dominic Sandbrook:to go and sullivan says where do you want to go and the shah says a terrible thing actually the worst thing he ever did he says 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 Gallaghan, great friend of the rest is history, had already said he didn't want the Shah. 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?

34:21Would you like me to organize an invitation for you? And he said, the Shah leant 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 Annenberg. He's got a house in Palm Springs, California. And he says, you can have that.

34:39Tom Holland:I've been to it. Did you stay in it though, Tom? I didn't stay in it. I was, it was the Palm Springs Literary Festival, which I highly commend. We had a little tour. Well, the Shah, he says, I'm going to go to Egypt first to see my mate, President Sadat, and then I'll go from there to California. And Sullivan says, once they discussed this and once the Shah had reconciled himself to it, he seemed relieved, even excited. at the prospect. And 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.

35:09Tom Holland: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 Shah 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 that's going to take them to Tehran airport. It's a freezing cold and windy day. And as they look out to the helicopter, they can see these great lines of people waiting for emergency paraffin supplies and these huge queues 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.

35:46They get to the airport. It's totally deserted because the strikes have shut it down. There's just a row 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 shapo bakhtiar and the shah 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 shah 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.

36:24They are burning portraits. They're doing all this kind of thing The Shah gets to the plane steps and at this point one of his generals a very famous photograph Bends over to kiss his hand the general is crying Uncontrollably and the Shah looks away 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 it goes up into the sky and a few moments later he is gone the Shah of Shars has fallen and the stage is set for the

37:01Tom Holland:return of the Ayatollah and the exciting news Dominic is that the Ayatollah will be returning after a commercial break

37:14Tom Holland:hello welcome back to the rest is history and we left you at tehran airport on the 19th of january 1979 the shah was disappearing on a plane into the sky um but dominic let's pick the story up 16 days later and head back to tehran 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.

38:09and this is the Ayatollah Khomeini 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 Lenin at the Finland station,

38:26Dominic Sandbrook: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 farsi nothing i have no feelings and you know that's the ayatollah to a t right you're not playing the game you know defying the expectations of the western media preserving this formidable, imperturbable, unflappability. You know, I feel nothing.

39:07It's such a sort of powerful moment. Anyway, he gets into the airport building. There are a 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 Khomeini 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

39:34Dominic Sandbrook:all of their helpers.

39:35Tom Holland:I mean, that's a delightful way to pay back that French guy who'd helped him down the stairs.

39:41Dominic Sandbrook:I think you would probably make an exception for him. Well, you know, does he mean it? I mean, actually, as we'll see later on, Khomeini was not always, you know, incredibly unfriendly to foreigners in Tehran. But a kind of nativism, 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 Persepolis, 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 Islamic Republic that I think is possibly sometimes overlooked by Western observers.

40:24They see it purely in terms of the Islamism of it. But the Iranian nationalism is, I think, a really important element.

40:32Tom Holland:Well, the Shiite character of Iranian Islam, in a way, enables the nationalism and the Islamism 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 le monde 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 tehran the biggest cemetery in the city and he gave another ferocious speech the shah 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 robust there's robust now he's talking about what the shah's government khomini is returning to a country in total and utter chaos with a complete vacuum at the top the shah's last prime minister Mr.

41:40Bakhtiar is still supposedly running the country. Now Bakhtiar had tried to contact Khomeini in Paris and Khomeini had completely ignored him. Khomeini had said your government is illegal you're appointed by the Shah who's a bad man you should quit I don't care what you think about anything. When Khomeini announced that he was coming back Bakhtiar 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 Bakhtiar basically tarnished forever because he just looks like the Shah's puppet and another version of the Shah.

42:13Dominic Sandbrook:So now when Khomeini returns, Khomeini 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 Khomeini thought that he would end up being a kind of figurehead a guardian for a 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 lots 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 shiite 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 girls school in the city center now funny enough this is exactly what the bolsheviks did in 1917 at the smolny institute in petrograd another girls educational establishment so maybe this is an argument for outlawing girls schools because they become hotbeds of revolution i don't know and he appoints his own rival prime minister who actually is very like Mr.

43:37Dominic Sandbrook:Bakhtiar he's a man called Medhi Barzagan does he have a moustache he does he's got a moustache and a kind of little very it's an intellectuals moustache and beer sort of goatee combination so not not a full-throated one oh no he's another liberal dissident kind of democratic dissident and Medhi 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 a right to 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 Shah's government,

44:15Tom Holland: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 will be swallowed up by it. There's a sort of, perhaps, an ominous hint for Mr. Barsigan at this press conference, because Khomeini is there, and Khomeini 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.

44:46You know, people can't say they weren't warned. And in Michael Axworthy'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

45:05Dominic Sandbrook:idealism but on the other hand it's the 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 thing i mean one of the amazing

45:24Tom Holland:illustrations of the way in which 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 it's a really weird thing, isn't it? Now, there is a potential threat to Khomeini's 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 Haiza, to encourage the Iranian generals to stand firm and to make plans for a coup.

45:59But they couldn't trust their own men. They've got thousands of conscripts who are precisely the kind of young working-class men who have been attracted to Khomeini's message. These men start deserting. On a 10th of February, so we're just less than two weeks after Khomeini's return, crowds of Khomeini's supporters invade the police stations and barracks to find weapons. there are two prime ministers remember there's bakhtiar with his moustache and barzagan moustache and goatee beard bakhtiar 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 is the moment the revolution basically reached its apotheosis the army issued a statement they said we're going to stay neutral all troops must remain in their barracks and for khomeini 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 advisors 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 advisor zbigniew brzynski he wants you

47:16Dominic Sandbrook:to organize an army coup against komini 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 advisors have been captured i'm negotiating with komini's men 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 bleak this out please tell braczynski 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 listened to the rate you know

47:56Tom Holland:what's going on in iran with shah's gone government's collapsed um karmini's 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 night the end of 1978 most americans had probably never ever thought about iran at all the first time it really made front page news is when the shah left and most american papers said oh the shah'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 shah's old friend kissinger said do-gooders and liberals and human rights people have undermined the shah 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 shah going on you 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's not entirely wrong right No, I mean, it's not wrong at all.

48:58The other people who are very alarmed are US businesses. So some American businesses had invested very heavily in Iran in the 1970s. I'll give you an example. The Starrett 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.

49:18Dominic Sandbrook:Imagine Trump Tower in Tehran. Well, they were going to build a housing complex on the edge of Tehran, half a billion dollars the contract was worth and they are now facing 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 gonna lose a lot of money so in the 50s an ayatollah had actually

49:46Tom Holland:issued a fatwa against pepsi um but that was because it was owned by a bahai industrialist The franchise, the local franchise? The local franchise, yeah. Wow. I think not because he was particularly opposed to Pepsi per se. Yeah, these are going to be dark days for Pepsi drinkers in Iran, I think, 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 producers.

50:23countries to kuwait people that 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 all you know i'm going to never let it go below three quarters full because I don't want to have to pay more for my petrol. So you get queues at pumps, the demand rises, the price rises, you get a massive inflationary spiral.

51:00And 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 re-election 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 u.s inflation rate was nine percent now carter had been confident he'll 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 new 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 a couple of years later and his everyman character in the rabbit novels harry angstrom is always whinging about inflation.

52:10I mean, he puts his money into South African Krugerrands 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 Kamala Harris lost to Trump, how much prices matter. You know, this is the classic bread and butter issue that American voters and all Western voters really care about.

52:34Tom Holland: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 you're kind of guy yeah so basically if you timmy if you ask

52:55Dominic Sandbrook:jimmy carter for his ideal evening he's putting on his cardigan tv address to the nation unveiling a 73 point 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 gonna have to pay more for your gas i would like you i mean this is unbelievable an american i mean imagine this unimaginable 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 weren't close enough to home walk the thought of the commander-in-chief of the United States telling people to get the bus.

53:36Dominic Sandbrook:This is not what they were used to hearing from John F. Kennedy or Richard Nixon. And obviously, if you live in quite a cold part of the United States, 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 eating down?

54:17Dominic Sandbrook: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. that's not a deal breaker anymore if he's going to get the petrol prices down that 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 page if your license page 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 moonbeam yeah governor jerry brown and that might sound mad but actually lots of other states copied that that um rationing even an odd number 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 show 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 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 Or posters, people make posters showing GIs standing over kind of dying Arabs with nuclear mushroom clouds in the background.

56:20And 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 two thirds of the gas stations in 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 symbolic because this is your classic post-war planned suburban community. It was built by Levitt and Sons for returning GIs after the Second World War.

57:00A symbol of the American dream, a symbol of their dependence on the car. There's rioting outside a service station. It spreads. There are 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 u.s 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 rosaline and his opinion poll guru who's a 29 year old wonk called pat cadel 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 u.s 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 again such a weird kind of distorted echo

58:07Tom Holland:of what's happening in Iran. Right. Except I 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 of this kind of thing his vice president walter mondale thought the carter had lost his marbles and actually wanted to resign 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-re-education 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 worried about oil prices but we are suffering from a national crisis of confidence too many of us worship self-indulgence and consumption

59:15Dominic Sandbrook: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 it's good stuff from a sunday if 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 that.

59:37Tom Holland: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. I'm really odd.

59:50Dominic Sandbrook: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. humorist 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 carahan 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.

1:00:30First 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 post-war 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.

1:00:57Dominic Sandbrook: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 life's all about and whatnot. I mean, this is mad stuff to a lot of people.

1:01:14Tom Holland:But again, 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 so he sacks his treasury secretary as 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 percent 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 because 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 corps and in the kind a Washington establishment.

1:02:20So you mentioned that he's starting to look very haggard. He's

1:02:25Dominic Sandbrook:actually very fit because he's into jogging. And he does a run near Camp David. It is a 10K run and collapses, unfortunately.

1:02:33Tom Holland: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.

1:02:45Dominic Sandbrook: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 jody 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 happened yeah great come on but tell us about this but another dog so in august 1979 so a month later the washington price broke the news with the excellent headline

1:03:14Tom Holland:rabbit attacks president it's the biggest moment in 20th century american history isn't it to read

1:03:20Dominic Sandbrook: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 flared 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 attacked Carter. Now, they said he shouldn't have hit the rabbit with a paddle. And Carter was forced to issue a statement.

1:04:05Dominic Sandbrook: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 paddle they were just splashed water the republicans and indeed more hawkish 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 khomeini 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 shah they have started to reverse what they see as symbols of westernization, most obviously women's rights.

1:05:03So they brought back the veil. By the 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 Trotskyite Islamism. exactly so but for Khomeini's 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 breast-beating speeches they are focused on two

1:05:47Dominic Sandbrook:threats in particular first of all the Shah the Shah 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 Shah still sees himself as the rightful emperor of Iran, and he still has people who support him. And secondly, Khomeini's 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.

1:06:28And 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.

1:06:50Tom Holland: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 Restless 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 Tehran right now. if you want to join the club then please do so at the rest is history.com but for now goodbye goodbye