Carter visited and toasted Shah of Iran Dec. 31, 1977, in order to make trip schedule "work" ? ?

The Carter Administration and the Fall of Iran’s Pahlavi Dynasty: US-Iran Relations on the Brink of the 1979 Revolution

Javier Gil Guerrero, 2016.

https://books.google.com/books?id=v...sident of the United States to visit"&f=false

" . . . It was extraordinarily uncommon for a president of the United States to visit a country whose leader had been received at the White House just a few weeks before [Nov. 15-16, 1977]. . . Schedulers had prepared for Carter an ambitious tour across Europe and Asia . . . To give the Carters one day to rest and avoid the long trip between Poland and India, they decided it would be best for them to spend a night in Tehran. . . "
Jimmy Carter indeed ran a clumsy administration.
 
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.” . . . ’
Carter clearly went too far with his toast.

All the same, many of these regular, average Iranians who lined the streets seemed to be expecting more than any president could possibly deliver. We in the U.S. are going to decide we need the govt. of Iran for geopolitical strategic reasons, and that is that. We’ll probably even give weapons in order to maintain the relationship.

Now, a really skillful president might have a senior member of his or her staff encourage members of Congress to publicly criticize the human rights situation in Iran. And then a diplomatic official, perhaps even the Secretary of State, might say to Iranian officials, hey, we’re getting some heat, you guys need to improve things. Good luck waiting for this to happen, and I mean on both our sides. This kind of “quiet diplomacy” is talked about on a fairly regular basis, but how often does it actually happen? I have my doubts.
 
I've read that Carter had two options: pressure the Shah to make reforms in order to stave off revolution, or pressure the Shah to crack down against dissent. Carter chose the second option, and this exacerbated the situation in Iran - helping to cause the revolution and the hostage crisis. Had Carter chosen the first option perhaps things might've been better, at least for a while, but the Shah is still unpopular and a tyrant. That said if the revolution and the hostage crisis do still happen, albiet later, then Carter or Reagan would be in a much better negotiating position with the new government of Iran.
 
. . . or pressure the Shah to crack down against dissent. Carter chose the second option, . . .
So, we continued to give a lot of weapons to Iran, as Carter made pious statements about human rights.

Carter invented triangulation before anyone had heard of the word! (or at least he rather energetically re-discovered it)
 
So, we continued to give a lot of weapons to Iran, as Carter made pious statements about human rights.

Carter invented triangulation before anyone had heard of the word! (or at least he rather energetically re-discovered it)

I remember that one thing people didn't like about Carter, going back to 1976, is his hypocrisy. As an ex-president, there's no doubting the great work he's done for human rights and charity. But as President he paid lip service to humanitarianism while supporting some of the worst regimes in the world, and in 1976 his appeals to morality and Evangelical values were undercut by his own "lust" comments in Playboy. By 1980 Ted Kennedy - no paragon of virtue - looked better by comparison when he slammed Carter for supporting the Shah. IMO, Carter is a good man but he is better off in the private sector than in politics.
 
. . . as President he paid lip service to humanitarianism while supporting some of the worst . . .
The cold war was ugly and stupid on both the U.S. and Soviet side. I wish to heck it had been different.

And it hardly seemed to matter whether a Democrat or Republican was in office
 
I have heard rumors President carter knew about Reza’s illness and was trying to smooth the way for a regency under the shahbou.
 
I have always been under the impression that the US really had no choice but to support the Shah simply because there was no else available. Comments?
 
There might have been a faction within the military supporting a regency. The so called national front of mm time could have brought into the government but couldn’t handle total control.
 
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