TEHRAN – Writing an opinion piece in the Newsweek on July 18, Lisa Daftari naively credits Jimmy Carter for the victory of the Islamic Revolution in Iran and believes that the 98-year-old who served as the 39th president of the United States owes the Iranian people an “apology”.

The article claims Iranians (most of whom were born after the Islamic revolution) grimly reminisce about the past while wishing they could take back time to the good old days. People inside Iran, whom the U.S.-born writer has had no close contact with throughout her entire life, supposedly believe Carter’s lack of support for the Shah’s regime was the determining factor in the victory of the Islamic Revolution. In the article we will unearth the two claims made by Newsweek and talk about the actual things Carter and other American presidents must be sorry for.

The first illusion-based fact the writer uses to make arguments is that Carter’s policies were the main force that led to the success of the Islamic Revolution. The first person to make this erroneous claim was the Shah himself. In a memoir published in 1979, the deposed king absolves himself of responsibility for his own demise, saying: “Certainly, I had made mistakes in Iran. However, I cannot believe they formed the basis for my downfall. They were rectifiable with time. My country stood on the verge of being a Great Civilization”. Mohammad Reza Pahlavi then claims that a “strange confluence of interests—the international oil consortium, the British and American governments, the international media, reactionary religious circles in Iran, and the relentless drive of the Communists” came together to topple the Iranian monarchy. 

The shah chooses to completely ignore the oppressive, brutal, lavish, and corrupt system he had made of Iran. This narrative was later used by the shahs’ family living in the U.S. who took it a step further and claimed that Jimmy Carter did not show sufficient support for the dead king’s regime. 

 This too is a false conclusion. Carter showed an enormous amount of support for the Shah even when massive protests were taking place inside Iran and the regime was showing the first signs of its downfall. Carter sent millions of dollars’ worth of weapons to Iran and even stood against the Congress which did not like the idea of arming the shah further. The American president, who had claimed during his presidential campaign that he would make human rights considerations integral to U.S. foreign policy, might have urged the shah to change some of its oppressive policies but was never averse to his reign. In fact, Carter did not have a clue a revolution was taking place when he called Iran “an island of stability” during a speech in 1977, a year before the revolution, while he was in Tehran for Christmas celebrations.

The only correct claim by Lisa Daftari in her article in the Newsweek is that Carter needs to apologize to the people of Iran. In fact from Carter to Biden, all American presidents owe Iran an apology. The U.S. has a long list of what it should be sorry for when it comes to how it has treated the people of Iran:

-The U.S. tried to topple the newly-elected government of Iran in July 1980. It orchestrated a coup in the Nojeh Air Base near Hamadan which was only neutralized last minute.

-The U.S. provoked an 8-year war on Iran in the 1980s through the government of Iraqi dictator Saddam Hussein. The aggression resulted in the death of more than 200,000 Iranians and the injury of thousands more. 

-The U.S. has helped carry out sabotage attacks on the Iranian nuclear sites and colluded with Israel in assassinating several of the country’s nuclear scientists.

With Iran’s vast military achievements, Washington has now resorted to harsh and crippling sanctions. It even pulled out of the JCPOA because it has no other way of pressuring Iran. The thumping sanctions have had an impact on Iran’s economy and pushed millions of people into poverty. It has also led to the death of many patients with rare diseases as financial bans have made it impossible for Iran to import essential medicines.

So it seems that at least 8 American presidents, from Carter who took office in 1977 to Biden who took office in 2021, owe Iranians an apology; but for reasons completely different than what’s been mentioned in the Newsweek.