Dominic Sandbrook

It is indeed.

It's one of the great ironic moments, not just of the 1970s, but the late 20th century.

So this moment when Jimmy Carter is toasting the Shah and the Shah Banu, the friendship between Iran and the United States,

And the stability and the security that Iran offers in the Middle East, this comes just days before the outbreak of a violent revolution that sweeps the Shah from power and it kicks off the rule of the Ayatollahs, who still govern Iran today.

That's true, because Iran is once again engulfed in street protests, demonstrations, violent repression, and so on.

The storm clouds of counter-revolution are gathering.

They are indeed.

But to go back to the revolution itself, Jimmy Carter, the man who's standing there giving that toast, he is one of the first and most prominent political victims of this revolution.

Because his presidency, pretty extraordinary and strange presidency, even by American standards, is consumed...

by the fires of the Iranian revolution.

He is.

So just to give people a little sense of the way the rest of history works, I think that was about the 24th take, was it?

And if you have any question marks about Tom's rendition of Jimmy Carter there, let me just emphasise, it was a lot better than the previous 23 takes.

He did.

So what we're going to be telling in this series is the story of the fall of the Shah and the rise of the Ayatollahs, the capture of the US embassy in Tehran, this extraordinary moment when 66 Americans were held hostage for 444 days, and Jimmy Carter's disastrous attempt, Operation Eagle Claw, to rescue them, which ended in disaster and tragedy.

Absolute disaster.

It is.

So it's an incredibly dramatic story, but one that has really, really serious repercussions.

So first of all, this story, what happens in Iran in the late 1970s, completely overturns the diplomatic chessboard of the Middle East.

It turns Iran from one of America's closest regional allies into an implacable opponent, an opponent that today is making drones used by the Russians in Ukraine, for example.