Iran

On New Year’s Eve 1977, President Jimmy Carter toasted Shah Mohammad Reza Pahlavi, extolling Iran as “an island of stability” due to “your leadership and to the respect and the admiration and love which your people give to you.” The shah, known as the King of Kings, seemed invulnerable, and he was...

In 1979, a revolution in Iran swept aside a monarchy, fueled by the Iranian people’s dreams of social justice and political freedom. But in the years that followed, the movement’s leader, Ayatollah Khomeini, and his acolytes instead built a system that served their narrow faction and worsened beyond...