I am one who believes history has something to teach us. But as Steve Turner said, “History repeats itself. Has to. No-one listens.”
The Iran Revolution of 1978 that brought down the Shah and elevated Khomeini was, as the subtitle of Scott Anderson’s King of Kings says so accurately, “A story of hubris, delusion, and catastrophic miscalculation.” Almost every player in this sad tale was either malicious or incompetent, and sometimes both.
Anderson interviewed many of the primary figures who are still alive, including Farah Palavi, the Shah’s queen. But he also looks back at the series of events over the last hundred years (and even 2500 years) which came to a head in 1977-79.
Delusion came from both sides. Zbigniew Brzezinski, Carter’s national security advisor, was so fixated on the Soviet Union that he couldn’t see the revolution had nothing to do with the Cold War.
Ebrahim Yazdi, a professor at Baylor College of Medicine, was convinced Khomeini would be a savior for Iran, and ultimately became Khomeini’s first foreign minister. He so wanted to believe Khomeini would be an enlightened leader, that he refused to see or could not see the harsh figure who would slaughter thousands of Iranians. Yazdi died regretting everything.
The Shah was both autocratic and indecisive. The CIA and State Department (while giving conflicting advice to the Shah) both refused to take seriously the few people who actually knew what was going on, that the Shah was in deep trouble.
I remember the nightly reports on television, counting each day the embassy hostages were held prisoner in 1979-80. So this whole episode was not easy to relive. But it was important to do so.
