How The 1979 Revolution Transformed Iran

Summary

Fresh Air: How The 1979 Revolution Transformed Iran Hosted by NPR's Terry Gross and Tonya Mosley

Introduction In the August 4, 2025 episode of Fresh Air, host Dave Davies engages in an in-depth conversation with veteran journalist Scott Anderson about his latest book, King of the Iranian Revolution: A Story of Hubris, Delusion, and Catastrophic Miscalculation. Anderson provides a gripping narrative of the 1979 Iranian Revolution, exploring how it shifted Iran from a U.S. ally under the Shah to an Islamic Republic antagonistic toward the United States.

Background on the Shah of Iran Anderson begins by painting a vivid picture of Iran before the revolution, under the rule of Shah Mohammad Reza Pahlavi. The Shah sought to modernize Iran's economy and social structure while maintaining strict political control.

"He spent a long time early in his reign, from '41 to probably the mid-60s, first of all, really trying to cozy up to the Americans." (04:59)

Despite implementing progressive reforms—such as granting women the right to vote and initiating ambitious land reforms—the Shah's authoritarian regime fostered significant political repression. However, unlike some other Middle Eastern dictatorships, his government often opted to buy loyalty rather than brutally suppress dissent.

Economic Disparities and Social Tensions The Shah's ambitious economic plans led to considerable oil wealth, which starkly contrasted with the widespread poverty, especially outside Tehran.

"There was a tremendous disparity between the haves and the have nots." (07:47)

Rapid urbanization saw a flood of uneducated young men moving into cities, leading to social unrest as traditional values clashed with the cosmopolitan lifestyle promoted by the Shah.

Emergence and Role of Ayatollah Khomeini A pivotal figure in the revolution was Ayatollah Khomeini, a conservative cleric who became the symbol of resistance against the Shah's secular policies. Anderson recounts a personal anecdote involving George Braswell, an American evangelist in Iran, who inadvertently encountered Khomeini's revolutionary messages:

"George... met with the dean of the School of Religion at Tehran University... one of his graduate students... played a tape where the person on the tape was saying, we have to start organizing for the revolution... that voice was Ayatollah Khomeini." (07:58)

Khomeini's exile did not diminish his influence; instead, his image as an incorruptible leader grew, especially in contrast to other clerics who were seen as too closely tied to the Shah's regime.

U.S. Policy and Missteps Anderson criticizes the U.S. State Department and intelligence community for their shallow understanding of Iran, leading to disastrous policy decisions. He narrates the case of Mike Matrenko, the American consul in Tabriz, who accurately reported signs of impending revolution but was ignored by his superiors.

"The CIA was spying on the southern Soviet Union... they never were doing any sort of domestic intelligence gathering." (13:32)

This ignorance was epitomized when a trove of Khomeini's sermons, captured by U.S. intelligence, was never reviewed or acted upon, leaving policymakers blind to the severity of the situation.

The Catalyst: Shah's Medical Visit to the U.S. A critical miscalculation occurred when President Carter allowed the Shah to enter the United States for medical treatment, despite repeated warnings from embassy officials about potential repercussions.

"What are you guys gonna tell me to do when they attack our embassy and take our people there hostage?" (32:28)

This decision directly led to the hostage crisis, as militant factions seized the U.S. embassy, taking American diplomats hostage for over 400 days. The timing of the Shah's illness and subsequent entry into the U.S. was perceived by Iranian revolutionaries as a betrayal, fueling anti-American sentiment.

Aftermath and Legacy The revolution's success led to the establishment of an Islamic Republic, which not only severed ties with the U.S. but also fostered regions of Islamic extremism like Hezbollah. Anderson draws connections between the revolution and later U.S. missteps in the Middle East, including the invasion of Iraq and ongoing conflicts in Syria.

"If the Shah had taken a Saddam Hussein or an Assad approach... he might have lasted a bit longer." (35:05)

He emphasizes that the revolution was not inevitable; rather, it was the result of a series of missteps by both the Shah and American policymakers.

Prospects for Change in Modern Iran Addressing the current state of Iran, Anderson notes that while the regime remains repressive, there are small openings for change. However, foreign interventions, such as bombings by Israel and the U.S., have reinforced nationalistic sentiments, making substantial reforms more challenging.

"There’s an element of freedom. There are elections... They have been quite clever in giving people just enough so that things don't blow up a little bit." (36:53)

Conclusion Scott Anderson's King of the Iranian Revolution offers a nuanced exploration of the factors leading to one of the 20th century's most significant geopolitical upheavals. By highlighting the interplay of internal dynamics and external miscalculations, Anderson provides valuable insights into how the 1979 revolution reshaped not only Iran but also the broader Middle Eastern landscape, with lasting implications for U.S. foreign policy.

Notable Quotes

• "He spent a long time early in his reign... really trying to cozy up to the Americans." – Scott Anderson (04:59)
• "There was a tremendous disparity between the haves and the have nots." – Scott Anderson (07:47)
• "What are you guys gonna tell me to do when they attack our embassy and take our people there hostage?" – President Carter (32:28)

---

Timestamp Reference:

• [04:59] – Shah's Early Reign and Relationship with the U.S.
• [07:47] – Economic Disparities in Iran
• [07:58] – Introduction to Khomeini through George Braswell
• [13:32] – U.S. Intelligence Failures
• [32:28] – Carter's Decision on the Shah's Medical Visit
• [35:05] – Potential Alternative Strategies for the Shah
• [36:53] – Current State and Prospects for Change in Iran

Transcript

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[Dave Davies]

I'm Dave Davies. For decades, Iran has been a major preoccupation of U.S. policymakers for its nuclear program, its threats to Israel and its backing of armed extremist groups in the Middle East. But go back a half a century and Iran was a very different place. Our guest today, journalist Scott Anderson, has taken a close look at the Iranian Revolution of 1979, the violent upheaval that transformed the country from one of America's closest allies into the Islamic republic that regards the United States as the Great Satan. Before that, the country was governed by the Shah of Iran, Mohammad Reza Pahlavi, a monarch who ruled with political repression while seeking to modernize his nation's economy and social relations. In a new book, Anderson writes that the Iranian revolution had far reaching effects, contributing to the rise of Islamic extremism. He says it marked the modern world's first successful religious counter revolution against the forces of secularism and was in some ways as significant as the American, French and Russian revolutions. His gripping account of the conflict suggests that the outcome was far from inevitable and that many factors, including the shah's personal failings and the inattention and poor decisions of American policymakers, contributed to the victory of Ayatollah Khomeini. Scott Anderson is a veteran war correspondent who's reported from Lebanon, Israel, Egypt, Northern Ireland, Chechnya, Sudan, Bosnia and other countries. He's the author of seven previous books. His latest is King of the Iranian Revolution, a Story of Hubris, Delusion and Catastrophic Miscalculation. I spoke to Scott Anderson. Well, Scott Anderson, welcome back to FRESH air.

[Scott Anderson]

Thank you, Dave. It's good to be back.

[Dave Davies]

I have to congratulate you on this book. It really is just a terrific, gripping read. There is so much fascinating detail here and I just want to let the audience know there's more than we can get to, but there's plenty there. You know a lot about the Middle East. I mean, you traveled through it with your dad who worked for the States Department when you were a kid. And you opened this book with a scene from Washington, D.C. in late 1977 when the Shah of Iran, throne for decades, came to America's capitol for his first visit with the new president, Jimmy Carter. You happened to be there because you were a low level Treasury Department and You witnessed some events outside the White House. You want to just share this little scene with us?

[Scott Anderson]

Sure, yeah. So it was mid November of 1977. The Shah came on a state visit, and some 4,000 anti Shah demonstrators, mostly Iranian students studying in the United States, arrived in Washington to protest his visit. And meanwhile, the Iranian government had shipped in pro Shah demonstrators to kind of face off with him. And so when the Shah arrived and he had just reached the White House, all of a sudden there was a pitch battle on the Ellipse, the Ellipse being this great lawn just below the White House. And I happened to be there. I was kind of wandering around. I was stationed at the treasury headquarters, which is right next door to the White House. And I had just wandered over, and I was kind of in no man's land between these two groups, the anti Shah and the pro sh demonstrators. And all of a sudden, the two sides broke through the snow fencing that was keeping them back and charged each other. And I happened to be at ground zero. I got knocked to the ground. Well, a lot of people got knocked to the ground. It turned out to be the most violent day of civil unrest in Washington, D.C. in almost a decade. And the thing about this day was, unfortunately for the Shah, it was being shown on live TV back in Iran. And the way a lot of people interpreted this event, and there was tear gas. The Shah and President Carter were tear gassed on the South Lawn. A lot of Iranians saw this as a move by the Americans to distance themselves from the Shah. Because why else would they let the Shah be humiliated in the American capital?

[Dave Davies]

Right in their country? If something like that happened, surely the Shah would have organized it. So they assumed Jimmy Carter was sending a message here.

[Scott Anderson]

That's right.

[Dave Davies]

He was quite humiliated to have this tear gas flowing into his event.

[Scott Anderson]

Yeah, absolutely.

[Dave Davies]

So running the country in Iran in the 1970s was the Shah, who had been in power since 1941, installed by the British and the Soviets who were active then. This was during World War II. Give us a sense by the 1970s of what his style was like, how he ruled the country, kind of what powers he exercised, and what the country's economy and social norms were.

[Scott Anderson]

So he spent a long time early in his reign, from 41 to probably the mid-60s, first of all, really trying to cozy up to the Americans. He saw the Americans as the superpower that would protect him from the encroachment of the Soviet Union on his northern border. And he was always afraid of Communists within Iran. He tried to do something Very difficult, which was to be socially and economically progressive. He gave women the right to vote. He went on this very ambitious land reform program, but at the same time became more and more politically in control of the entire country. There was a parliament. It was a rubber stamp. It was really the Shah and his generals who ran the country. But I think it's important to note that the Shah's Iran was never as repressive or as brutal as, say, Saddam Hussein's Iraq or Assad father and son Syria. He tended to buy people. So within Iran, there was a political opposition. Occasionally some would be arrested, occasionally some would be exiled. Certainly the clerics didn't like him because they saw him secularizing the society. But a lot of them were on sinecures from the state also. So it was kind of a regime where if you had a certain amount of power, certain amount of clout, you were more likely to be bought off than thrown in prison.

[Dave Davies]

Right. And of course, there was a lot of oil money. I guess, starting in the 60s and 70s, they'd nationalized the oil production. So that had a lot of effects, major changes, dramatic contrasts, I guess, in wealth and poverty.

[Scott Anderson]

Oh, yes, absolutely. I was in, as you mentioned, I was traveling with my father through Iran in 1974. And what I remember from being in Tehran and in the countryside in Tehran, it was a modern, smoggy city, you saw women in miniskirts, clogged with traffic. And literally 10 miles outside of Tehran, people were living in mud huts and drying cow dung to use as fuel. So there was a tremendous disparity between the haves and the have nots. And what also happened with this huge influx of money in the early 70s, oil money. You had this huge movement of poor from the countryside moving into the city, mostly young men, largely uneducated, and if they could find work, they were working at these really menial jobs. But more significantly, significantly, they came from very religious backgrounds, and they were. I think a lot of them were just kind of stunned at what they saw as the cosmopolitan nature of Tehran and other Iranian cities. Right.

[Dave Davies]

You write about a guy, a minor character in the book, who was a religious missionary from the United States, George Braswell. But he revealed something really meaningful about the society.

[Scott Anderson]

Yes, George Braswell's fascinating. He went to Iran with his family, wife and three kids in 1968 as an evangelist, and he was the first Southern Baptist evangelist to go back into Iran after about 50 or 60 years. He quickly realized that the government was not going to let him proselytize, and he was really kind of at a loss of what to do until he met the dean of the School of Religion at Tehran University. And the dean hired him on to teach comparative religion at the University of Tehran. Everybody else on the faculty of religion were Muslim. George was the only Christian. But he was a very friendly guy, very affable, very curious about Iranian society. So people really opened up to him. And in particular, after he'd been there for a while, one of his graduate students said, would you like to seek a special kind of service? And George didn't know what that meant, but he said, well, sure, yeah, I'm fascinated by Islam. So the graduate student took him in the middle of the night to this hut out in the southern suburbs. And it was all these younger clerics, mullahs gathered around a tape cassette player. And they played this tape where the person on the tape was saying, we have to start organizing for the revolution. And that voice was Ayatollah Khomeini sending the tape in from exile in Iraq. George Braswell had never heard of Khomeini before. This was in 1968, and it would be another about seven years before he would even be mentioned in any State Department cables from Tehran, you know, back to the States. He was utterly invisible to the Americans. Braswell just assumed that the CIA, which had a very large station in Tehran, that they knew all about Khomeini and certainly people at the State Department. He tried to meet with people at the State Department and they just ignored him.

[Dave Davies]

Right. So there was this churning force among the poor of Iran that a lot of them, a lot of people just didn't know about. But it was, you know, led by Khomeini. The Shah faced a critical confrontation in 1963 with Khomeini, which was an important moment. Tell us about this.

[Scott Anderson]

Yeah, this. So in 1963, the Shah initiated what he called his White revolution. And it was a total of 19 reforms in his mind. And it was to sort of propel Iran into the 20th century. It was a real grab bag of things, everything from reforestation to collectivization to giving landless peasants of which a majority of Iran's rural population did not own their land, to break up the big land holdings in Iran, and also to give women the right to vote, to empower women. And this immediately caused a backlash among the conservative clergy in Iran, especially led by one of the most vehemently and arch conservative, Ayatollah Khomeini. The Shah made the mistake of arresting Khomeini, and that sparked riots throughout Iran. The Shah's prime minister then decided to declare martial law. There was shooting in the streets of a number of Iranian Cities. Probably about 150 people were killed, killed. They arrested, they again grabbed Khomeini. And Khomeini then was quiet for a little while, and he started up again with his agitation. And so the second time the Shah sent him into exile, he first went to Turkey and then ended up in Iraq in the Shiite holy city of Najaf in southern Iraq.

[Dave Davies]

Right. So for the next decades, couple of decades, Khomeini was active, but outside the country, sending cassette tapes of his sermons in and still a force.

[Scott Anderson]

That's right. And I think one of the things to understand about Khomeini's power over once the revolution started, you know, again, a lot of people had never heard of Khomeini within Iran. When the revolution started in 78, he'd been airbrushed out of history by the Shah's regime. But once the revolution sort of got started in earnest, he became this sort of symbol of incorruptibility. He was a man who could not be bought while he was in exile, so there's no way to buy him anyway. And so even though there's a lot of other ayatollahs who were in opposition to the Shah, none of them had quite the moral authority that Khomeini did because, you know, over the years, a lot of them had been on stipends from the regime. So Khomeini had this image of the pure, uncorrupted religious leader and that. That, I think, was really a source of a lot of his power.

[Dave Davies]

So, you know, back in the 70s, I mean, Iran was a critical ally for the United States. They had provided him with great weaponry, and thus it had a fairly large staff in its embassy in Tehran, as well as a significant CIA station. But you write that that these both, both the State Department and the intelligence community's knowledge of the country was shockingly shallow. How was this evident in your research?

[Scott Anderson]

I'll tell a great story about that. When the first major riots happened, the anti Shah riots happened, and it was in February of 1978, and it was in a provincial city called Tabriz in northwestern Iran. And there was an American consul there, a man named Mike Matrenko. They gutted the city center. There was a path of destruction about 8 miles long and about 5 miles wide. They just completely gutted the new kind of commercial center of Tabriz, which is a major city. This was such big news, by far the biggest Civil disturbance in decades, that even if the regime had tried to downplay it, it was impossible. So it was the Tabriz riots, in which probably over 100 people were killed. They were the headlines on every Iranian newspaper for days. It was, of course, the lead story on the national news, the television. And so Matrenko had been the only American there. He reported back what was happening to the embassy. And after about four or five days after the riots, he hears that a CIA officer is coming up to and wants to meet with him. He's coming up to Debriz. And Matrenko's was, wow, great. Finally, you know, the CIA has done such a horrible job reporting on this country, but, you know, now finally somebody is coming to take a look on the ground of what's really happening. So the CIA officer arrives. Matrenko picks him up at the airport, and they start driving into the city center. And all of a sudden, the CIA officer kind of sits up and looks out at the destruction and goes, what the hell happened here? He was coming to see Matrenko on a completely different matter. So even though the riots were. He was stationed at the. He was in the CIA station in Tehran. Even though it was a lead story on national news for four or five days, he hadn't even heard of it. You know, just. And that, to me, is. Just personifies what the CIA was doing there. They were under. What their whole focus was, the CIA in Iran was spying on southern Soviet Union. So they had listening posts along the Iranian border. They never were doing any sort of domestic intelligence gathering. Even more remarkably, anything they were getting from domestically was handed to them by the Shah's secret police, savak. And, you know, Savak said, everything's going great. So there was no intelligence gathering. And this was, as you said, this was one of our United States most important allies anywhere in the world, and nobody was paying any attention to what was happening internally.

[Dave Davies]

Yeah, it's really remarkable how this mandated group think that this is our ally and everything's great and he's got it under control reigned. This guy that you mentioned, Michael Matrenko, is a fascinating character. And there are two other cases in the book where you point out that he had. He gave reports about stuff that should have been very troubling, signs of the Shah's weakness. In one case, a lot of people that he knew were, like, cashing in their life savings and leaving the country because things were bad. In another case, there was a kind of a mutiny happening among some Air Force pilots. And when he sends this and it in some cases actually gets passed along to the State Department headquarters. What's the reaction of his superiors?

[Scott Anderson]

The reaction of his superiors is not only to ignore it, but to reprimand him for it. That, you know, he's seeing problems where problems don't exist. He's the hysteric out in the provinces. And it just roundly ignored significantly. Matrenko was one of the only people at the embassy who actually spoke Farsi, who could understand what was happening locally. Virtually everybody else did not speak Farsi. And he had a very wide social circle, a very gregarious guy. And so he saw disaster coming long before anybody else. He had served in Iran in the early 70s. He came back in 1977 when the revolution was just starting to kind of perk up a little bit. And this is when he saw people just bailing out of the country, including the wealthy class and people saying, this place is going down the tubes. And when he tried to tell people that, he was completely ignored. Most incredibly with Matrenko, after the revolution, the revolution, Khomeini came to power in February of 1979. And so for the next year or nine months, the Carter administration tried to make nice with the Khomeini regime, tried to repair this anti American feeling. And the people at the embassy were kind of replicating what they had said with the Shah. They said, yeah, everything's going good. You know, they're not really anti American. They know they have to be allies with us because of all their weaponry as American. And again, Matrenko was the one person who was saying, no, this place is about to blow up. And so In September of 79, this is about six weeks before the American hostages are taken, Matrenko takes a brief home vacation. He comes back to the States, and somebody at the State Department hears he's in town and says, look, Mike, I've been reading your reports from the field, and they're different from what everybody else is saying, and you're really painting a very grim picture of what's happening. Will you come in and talk to the senior policy people in the State Department about what you see? And so Matrenko agrees to do that. They arrange to have they take over a conference room on the seventh floor of the State Department. The next afternoon, Matrenko arrives a bit early and is going over his notes, and a State Department security officer comes into the conference room, kind of taps him on the shoulder and leads him outside and says, yeah, you know, this meeting has been given a security classification higher than your clearance to attend. And Matrenko says, do you realize that this meeting is being held because of what I've been reporting in the field? And the guy says, yeah, doesn't matter. So the meeting doesn't take place. Matrenko goes back to Iran a couple weeks later, and a month after that, he and everybody else in the embassy are taken hostage.

[Dave Davies]

Let's take another break. Here we are speaking with Scott Anderson. His new book is King of the Iranian Revolution, a story of hubris, delusion and catastrophic miscalculation. We'll hear more of our conversation after this short break. I'm Dave Davies, and this is FRESH air.

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To everyone free of charge. Make your [e-mail] and thank you. This summer on Planet Money Summer School, we're learning about political economy. We're getting into the nitty gritty of what government does with things like trade, taxes, immigration and health care care. So politics and economics, which are taught.

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Separately, they shouldn't be separated at all.

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I think you have to understand one.

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To really appreciate the other.

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So what is the right amount of government in our lives? Tune into Planet Money Summer School from npr, wherever you get your podcasts. Recent research shows that psychedelics can help with a range of mental health conditions, including PTSD and depression. Therapeutic effects can last for weeks to months after just a single dose. On the Sunday story, the neuroscience behind a growing psychedelics industry and how at home, ketamine therapy may be the industry's new frontier.

[Dave Davies]

Listen now to the Sunday story on the up first podcast from NPR. As 1978 unfolded, there was increasing chaos in the country, riots, strikes and such, a lot of it supported by Khomeini. There were a group of men around Khomeini, and one of them was a pharmacology professor living in Texas, an Iranian fellow who had spent a lot of years in the opposition movement. His name was Ibrahim Yazdi, right? That's right. He realized that it was important for Khomeini to convince the United States that his ascent to leadership in Iran should be welcomed and not feared. How did he do this?

[Scott Anderson]

One thing that really surprised me when I started looking at this story was how much of the focus of even the Carter administration was still on the Cold War, was still about the Soviet Union. And so the mindset of the Cold War was that everything was a zero sum game. If we lose, then the Soviets win and vice versa. So at first when the revolution started, of course the Americans were kind of panicking, but what Yazdi managed to figure out was what their biggest fear wasn't losing the Shah, but was losing Iran to the Soviets. And of course, that kind of absurd when you look at Khomeini, because he was a rabid anti communist. At the same time, he kind of moderated Khomeini's speeches and what he would say in press conferences. Well, first of all, he was instrumental in moving Khomeini from Iraq to Paris in October of 78. So all of a sudden, Khomeini is available to the entire world's media. And again, because very few journalists speak Farsi, Yazdi was acting as his interpreter and he would modify and moderate what Khomeini was saying to make him sound like more reasonable. At the same time this was going on, Yazdi was sending out the message that you have nothing to fear about a communist takeover if Khomeini comes to power. It's anathema to Khomeini communism. So what you start seeing about October, November within the Carter administration is of course they want the Shah to stay on, but all of a sudden they're looking at Khomeini and going, well, you know, if he comes in, that's not the worst thing. The worst thing would be if the Reds take over. And really by about November of 79, about two months before the Shah went into exile, the Americans were kind of already distancing themselves from him because it wasn't, you know, Khomeini wasn't going to be the worst thing.

[Dave Davies]

What's fascinating about it is this guy Yazdi is they're translating Khomeini's words to Western journalists, but he's deliberately getting them wrong. I mean, didn't some people around them realize the same, hey, wait a minute, do you know what this guy's saying?

[Scott Anderson]

You know, it goes back to this thing about, you know, the level of communications at the time. Even some of the people who were in Khomeini's camp, some of the kind of Westerners who rallied around and were congregating around him in Paris, a few journalists who did speak Farsi or were translating stuff and they would show things that Khomeini had written back in the 50s and 60s, that all governments in the world are illegitimate except that one's appointed by God. And when they saw these writings, they assumed they were SAVAK forgeries. They said, no, no one can actually believe this. These are forgeries. And that happened even in Paris. There was a couple of journalists who said, you know, what he's saying is really incendiary, and he's talking about rivers of blood to flow and people like Yazdi who were around him going, no, no, no, he didn't say that. That's not what that means. This is disinformation.

[Dave Davies]

And what is striking about this, I mean, I remember this moment in the book where this Representative Yazidi would say, no, no, he never said torrents of blood. It turns out the State Department had all countless cassettes of Khomeini's sermons in their possession, which were filled with rhetoric that would have cast him in a very different light. But they somehow never listened to them.

[Scott Anderson]

That's right. That's right. When the embassy was taken over by the hostage takers In November of 79, they were going all, you know, they were ripp rifling all through the embassy safes and file cabinets looking for incriminating information. And they just found stacks and stacks and stacks of cassettes of Khomeini's sermons. They had been collected both by the CIA and by the State Department. Nobody had listened to them. Nobody who spoke Farsi had listened to them. Nobody transcribed them. So you're absolutely right. It was a roadmap to what Khomeini was going to do if he took over. And they never listened to him. They didn't even have one of the local workers at the embassy listen to. To them.

[Dave Davies]

Yeah. So they were kind of flying by in terms of what was going to happen. You know, there's a fascinating period as the end approached and it was clear that the Shah was in deep trouble. And at this point, I mean, the State Department had dispensed with this idea that the Shah is in control and everything's fine. But you say that they pursued, the Carter administration pursued a dual track approach to the crisis, whose incoherence and guaranteed futility had few parallels in modern diplomatic history. This is quite something. So what were these two approaches carried out by different people?

[Scott Anderson]

So one idea was that we should continue to support the Shah, or at least his caretaker regime behind it. And then the second was to make overtures to Khomeini and the people around him. Where it really became quite bizarre was in the very last days when the Shah was there, they sent an American general to Iran to meet with the Shah's. Generals. And at this point, the shah's generals were about they wanted to bail out of the country right along with the Shah. This general convinced them to stay, but they had this very complicated.

[Dave Davies]

The American general convinced them to stay.

[Scott Anderson]

I'm sorry. The American general. Yeah. Convinced them to stay, but they had this very complicated program that they were supposed to follow. Number one, they were supposed to stay loyal to the interim government, the caretaker government that the shah was leaving behind. And two, if that proved impossible, they were to stage a military coup. The military was supposed to take over. The problem was that you were dealing with a group of generals who had never worked with each other. The general worked with four generals and one admiral in the Iranian armed forces. Those were the five who were supposed to be in control of everything. Some of those men had never met each other because the shah was so paranoid of losing power that he met with his generals individually. He never met with them as a group. He didn't want one to know the other. And so he would send different messages, different orders to different people. So these generals had spent a whole career, their careers just following orders and not having an original thought of their own. So the idea that these men were going to somehow organize a coup, you know, Mike Matrenko famously said he knew a lot of these generals. He said these guys couldn't maneuver their way through a grocery checkout line, let alone stage a coup. And of course, they didn't. And they by staying behind, most of them were executed by the Khomeini regime.

[Dave Davies]

We are speaking with Scott Anderson. He's a veteran journalist. His new book is King of the Iranian Revolution, a story of hubris, delusion and catastrophic miscalculation. We'll continue our conversation after this short break. This is FRESH air. If you're a robot, this might not be the show for you.

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[Dave Davies]

Give politics a chance with the NPR Politics podcast, available wherever you get your podcasts. So in the end, the country's military declares its neutrality. You know, discipline falls apart. A lot of soldiers desert, militants break into bases, they get weapons, and the country is taken over by these semi organized forces loyal to the Ayatollah. President Carter immediately recognizes the Islamic Republic, hoping for a friendly relationship and some moderation. But as it all takes shape, there are hundreds, thousands of executions, eventually without trials. A new constitution gives the Ayatollah complete control, affirming that the Supreme Leader's views and actions are guided by God. And of course, hostages are eventually taken from the US embassy and held for over 400 days. Death to the US becomes the mantra of the regime. Exactly what the US had hoped to avoid, wasn't it?

[Scott Anderson]

Right. Yeah. And there's another little detail to this that I think is really remarkable. So in the run up to the hostages being taken, what really precipitated the catalyst for the hostages being taken was when the Carter administration allowed the Shah to come to the United States for medical treatment. And he'd been trying to get into the States for months and months, ever since he'd gone into exile. David Rockefeller and Henry Kissinger were lobbying on his behalf and telling Carter, you have to do this. It's a matter of national honor. Then all of a sudden, the Shah becomes deathly ill. And doctors around him saying, oh, he can only be treated in the United States. And the Carter administration's first reaction is, what convenient timing. He's been trying to get here forever, and now all of a sudden, he has a life or death thing. But it looked like he was very seriously ill. And famously, in late October, October, Carter convened all his closest foreign policy advisors in the Oval Office. Vice President Mondale, National Security Advisor, Secretary of State. And as Carter often did, he went around the room and asked each person in the room what they should do, should they let the Shah in? And everybody in the room said, yeah, we have to let him in. It's a matter of national honor. We have to stand by a former ally. And. And Carter looked at him and said, what are you guys gonna tell me to do when they attack our embassy and take our people there hostage? And nobody said a thing. And then Carter said, yeah, that's what I thought you were gonna say. So he saw it coming, and it was just kind of powerless to stop it.

[Dave Davies]

That is quite a moment. And I think the officials at the embassy in Tehran had warned them, look, if you let the Shah into the country, they're Gonna send us back in boxes.

[Scott Anderson]

That's right. They warned him again and again. And Carter had listened to them. October of 79. And then when all of a sudden it looked like the Shah was close to death and needed to be seen by American doctors, that's when he finally relented and disaster unfolded.

[Dave Davies]

You say that this revolution led directly to some of America's greatest missteps in the region. Which one? And what's the connection?

[Scott Anderson]

So, I mean, starting kind of right off the bat with the Khomeini regime, they immediately started to militarize their allies throughout the region, famously Hezbollah and Amal in Lebanon. So when Lebanon blew up again in 82, 83, it was Hezbollah units that blew up the American Embassy and then blew up the American marine compound in 1983, started taking Americans hostage. And then going forward from that, I mean, if you look at the invasion of Iraq, who benefited from that were the Iranians. Because in the power vacuum that that created, they now have enormous influence over, certainly over southern Iraq, which the Shiite heartland, and throughout the region. These groups that have been kind of squashed in the last year or so by the Israelis, these were all the regime's kind of mischief makers out in the region. And, I mean, ISIS was Sunni, but by Iran supporting Bashar al Assad in Syria, an absolutely murderous regime. If you look at what was happening in the Middle east four, five, six years ago, you would have to say that the Iranians had far more influence than the Americans had. They were, you know, the Americans had, as their want to do, they had involved themselves in a region, you know, come in, they were going to be the peacekeepers, they had the liberators. And then things went south and they jumped out. And that has only changed very recently.

[Dave Davies]

You raised the question in the book that this was not inevitable, that there were a lot of missteps that made this come out the way it did. And you say, some officials say that if the Shah were just more decisive, if he hadn't failed to act at critical junctures, he could have survived. And I think a lot of people would say then and probably now, that's not exactly a desirable outcome to have this absolute monarch there. I mean, what about that?

[Scott Anderson]

No, I think that's true. I think that people always say, you know, he would be hard for a while, then he'd go soft and back and forth, he'd oscillate. But in fact, he did even worse than that. He did both simultaneously. So he declares martial law, but then tells the generals that Only under the most dire circumstances. There are soldiers to, to fire live ammunition. So he kind of tries to do both things at the same time. I think if the Shah had, if he had taken a Saddam Hussein or an Assad approach, if he had just machine gunned his people in the streets, he might have lasted a bit longer. Conversely, I think that there was a time when, if he had pushed for reform and agreed to lose a lot of his power and to have more of a parliamentary democracy where he had very limited power, I think he might have survived. But I think by trying to do both at the same time, it was kind of impossible. And, you know, it's curious now, now his son, Crown Prince Reza, amidst the disturbances or the bombings lately, he's gone around to the media and kind of presented himself as the alternative. And supposedly there's this royalist resurgence in restoring the monarchy. And I just find it a bit laughable. You know, 80% of Iranians have been now have been born after the revolution. So there's very little memory of the Shah's time. What memory there is is probably quite hostile under the education system of the Islamic Republic. I don't think that there's any chance that the monarchy is reinstated.

[Dave Davies]

You know, I know from notice from the acknowledgment section of the book that you spoke to people who are still in Iran as part of your research. The current regime is, I think, known to be unpopular. Do you see prospects for change?

[Scott Anderson]

You know, that's a great question. And I actually, since the Israeli and American bombing of Iran, I've talked to several of the people that I know in Iran. Most of them, frankly, are not fans of the regime. But what they've all said is that the bombings gave the regime just a new lease on life. It's produced this rallying around the flag effect inside Iran. You know, as a general rule, people don't like being bombed by foreign armies. And they feel the idea of this regime getting toppled or reformed in a significant way have just been pushed off a lot by the actions of the Israelis and the Americans at this point, I think something else to keep in mind about Iran, yes, it's a brutal regime, it's a repressive regime, but there's certain openings in it. There's an element of freedom. There's elections. And sometimes the elections are honest. You're allowed a certain degree of dispute. You know, not all women now, you know, wear veils. And I think they've been quite clever in giving people just enough so that things don't blow up a little bit. It kind of reminds me of say, you know, late day Soviet Union or late day East Germany that, you know, certainly they weren't as repressive as they had been 20 years before. But again, it's the question of when you start opening the little, you know, how can you control it? How do you keep the lid just slightly ajar and keep it from coming off completely? But I think thus far one of the reasons the regime is very selective of who they crush and they do allow sort of a degree of freedom that creates a hope that maybe some more will come.

[Dave Davies]

Well, Scott Anderson, it's an interesting book. Thank you so much for speaking with us.

[Scott Anderson]

Thank you, Dave. I really appreciate you. Appreciate it.

[Dave Davies]

Scott Anderson is a veteran war correspondent. His new book is King of the Iranian Revolution, a story of hubris, delusion and catastrophic miscalculation. Coming up, David B. And Cooley reviews the new two part HBO documentary Billy Joel and so it Goes. This is FRESH air.

[Scott Anderson]

On the Throughline podcast, you have the.

[Dave Davies]

Right to remain silent.

[Scott Anderson]

It's a staple of copyright shows.

[Dave Davies]

When I think of Miranda today, I think it's so misshapen now that it's.

[Scott Anderson]

Really lost its ability to do much good.

[Dave Davies]

The Fifth Amendment and the right to remain silent.

[Scott Anderson]

Listen to Throughline in the NPR app or wherever you get your podcasts.

[Dave Davies]

There's a lot of news happening. You want to understand it better.

[Scott Anderson]

But let's be honest, you don't want it to be your entire life either.

[Dave Davies]

Well, that's sort of like our show.

[Scott Anderson]

Here and now Any every weekday on our podcast, we talk to people all over the country about everything from political analysis to climate resilience, video games. We even talk about dumpster diving on this show. Check out here and now anytime. A daily podcast from NPR and wbur.

[Dave Davies]

Singer songwriter Billy Joel is the subject of a new two part five hour documentary on hbo. It's called Billy Joel and so it Goes. And it looks at his life and career to date in a way our TV critic David Biancooley says is both insightful and unflinching. Lynching. Here's his review.

[Scott Anderson]

When I was young, I worked on an oyster boat. I used to look up at this mansion on the hill, wonder what would it be like to live in a house like that. I used to think they're rich. They never had to work a day in their life. Well, I own that house now. It's not finished yet, but neither am I.

[Capital One Ad]

The full title of HBO's new Billy Joel documentary reveals a lot about the approach that co directors Susan Lacey and Jessica Levin, who also collaborated on Jane Fonda in Five Acts Are taking. The program is called Billy Joel and so It Goes, and the subtitle refers to one of the singer songwriter's most introspective and intricate compositions. Structurally, and so It Goes taps into Joel's lifelong love of classical music. It's a challenging piece, intentionally sprinkled with dissonant notes and unresolved chords. Joel sees his life that way. That's why I wrote it, he says of the song. And Lacey and Levin present their artistic biography of Billy Joel the same way. A lot of attention is paid to process what inspired certain songs and how they were written and recorded. But the dissonance of Joel's personal life is not Shied away from multiple marriages and divorces, repeated visits to rehab centers for alcoholism, serious conflicts with managers and fellow musicians. It's all included, not just from Joel's point of view, either. We hear from his sister and stepbrother, his now grown daughter, his ex wives, his former bandmates and managers, and even from a series of rock critics whose career assessment of Joel's musical output often was less than kind. And we also hear from such musical peers as Paul McCartney, Garth Brooks and Sting. All of those interviews are anything but perfunctory and certainly aren't presented just to make Joel look better. In retrospect. How he met and eventually married his first wife, Elizabeth, is a story dramatic enough for a daytime soap opera. She provides her account of their relationship in honest, direct, and ultimately fond terms, and so does he. His second wife, supermodel Christie Brinkley, is similarly candid, so much so that at several points she fights back tears. Joel, though, tells his own story with a certain emotional distance, acknowledging his own mistakes but also noting and often forgetting the mistakes of others. His biggest unresolved issue has to do with his own father, a classical musician who abandoned the family early, leaving Billy and his sister to be raised by a single mom. But before he left, Billy's father did notice young Billy's creative approach to piano lessons.

[Scott Anderson]

One thing I remember, I was supposed to be playing the Moonlight Sonata. Must have been about 8 years old, and I rock and roll was around at that point, and I started playing. Instead of playing, I started playing. He came down the stairs. Bam. I got whacked, and I got whacked so hard he knocked me out. I was unconscious for like a minute. And I remember waking up going, well, that got his attention.

[Capital One Ad]

Susan Lacey, whose other credits include running the outstanding PBS Arts biography series American Masters knows a good story when she sees one and as producers, knows how to tell it. Some parts of the narrative are built around his biggest hits. For example, a dispute with his first manager led Billy Joel to book himself into a piano bar under an assumed name, Bill Martin, because Martin was Billy's middle name. That experience led directly to the early breakout hit Piano Man, a song that became so familiar that in his later concert days he could stop singing it at any point point and the audience would take over. We learn the inspirations for New York State of Mind, Just the Way youy Are, Vienna, Baby grand and others. The Billboard sales of songs and albums is charted, but so is the often lukewarm or dismissive critical response. We see him fighting back from near bankruptcy after being swindled by his manager and establishing long running concert runs with Elton John on and as a solo act at Madison Square Garden. We're shown his creative bursts and his destructive behaviors and watch as he retires from writing lyrics, then performing before he's lured back to appear at a benefit concert after Hurricane Sandy, which devastated his beloved community of Long Island. The reception to that 2012 appearance led Billy Joel on a new path and more than a decade of concert appearances for followed. So did such awards as the Gershwin Prize for Songwriting and the Kennedy Center Honors and the record setting Madison Square Garden residency that ran off and on for 10 years. The documentary ends with Joel performing Piano man at one of those concerts, but that footage is interspersed with film from 1973 of Joel at the piano singing the same song the day he signed his recording contract at Columbia Record Records. As Joel says in this documentary of his life to date, it is not a finished story. But as told in Billy Joel and so it Goes, it is a very revealing one.

[Dave Davies]

David Biancooli is professor of Television studies at Rowan University. He reviewed the new HBO documentary Billy Joel and so it goes. On tomorrow's show, comic, actor and writer Sarah Silverman. Whether it's talking about sex, abortion, being Jewish, racism or just daily life, she's willing to take risks to make a point and make it funny. We'll talk about her comedy special Postmortem, which is funny and emotional. It's about the death of her father and stepmother nine days apart. I hope you can join us to keep up with what's on the show and get highlights of our interviews. Follow us on Instagram NPRFresh Air Fresh Air's executive producer is Danny Miller. Our technical director and engineer is Audrey Bentham. Our managing producer is Sam Brigger Our interviews and reviews are produced and edited by Phyllis Myers, Roberto Schwartz, Ann Marie Baldonado, Lauren Krenzel, Teresa Madden, Monique Nazareth, Thaya Challoner, Anna Bauman and John Sheehan. Our digital media producer is Molly Seavey Nesper. Our consulting visual producer is Hope Wilson. Susan Yakundi directed today's show for Terry Gross and Tonya Moseley. I'm Dave Davies.

[Scott Anderson]

This message comes from Synchrony Bank. Who's on your team when it comes to building a brighter tomorrow, Open a High Yield savings account and start saving for a fantastic Future today. Visit synchrony.com NPR Member FDIC Federal funding.

[Dave Davies]

For public media has been eliminated. That means decades of bipartisan support for public radio and television is ending. To be clear, NPR isn't going anywhere. But we do need your support.

[Scott Anderson]

Please give today to help keep rigorous.

[Dave Davies]

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[Scott Anderson]

Every free of charge.

[Dave Davies]

You can make your [e-mail] and thank you.

[Scott Anderson]

All over social media, people are using the hashtag joyisresistance. And that got us wondering. Is joy actually a form of resistance?

[Dave Davies]

If they're not doing anything else but having the best bath ever, there might.

[Scott Anderson]

Need to be some consideration of, like, well, what else can I pick up? You can hear more on code switch from npr. Wherever you get your podcasts.