https://www.thedailybeast.com/carters-one-regret
‘ . . . The first time I saw Jimmy Carter I was five years old. It was New Year’s Eve, 1977. Carter had come to Iran to spend the evening with Muhammad Reza Shah, Iran’s soon-to-be dethroned monarch. The response from the Iranian public to Carter’s visit was electric. Throngs of people lined the streets as his motorcade inched its way through Tehran en route to the royal palace. After the Nixon/Kissinger years, Iranians, and in particular the youth, pinned their hopes for change in Iran on a president who came to power promising to curb American involvement in the affairs of foreign countries, not unlike how many in the region are now looking to Obama to remake the relationship between the U.S. and the Muslim world. I watched the spectacle on TV, too young to understand the significance of what was happening. . . ’
‘ . . . including that New Year’s dinner,
in which he broke the hearts of many Iranians by toasting the Shah’s reign over Iran as “an island of stability in one of the more troubled areas of the world.” . . . ’