"The White House is seething, and they want everyone to know it."

[BlueMTexpat]

114. It's too easy to blame Carter for letting the Shah into the US.

There is plenty of blame to go around for that one, mostly from the traditional GOP suspects and their allies. They were every bit as powerful - if not more so - than AIPAC and its allies today.

For some interesting background, see http://www.unc.edu/depts/diplomat/archives_roll/2003_01-03/dauherty_shah/dauherty_shah.html

From the link:

When the shah left Iran on 16 January 1979, it was expected that he would quickly seek asylum in America, the nation that had been his strongest supporter and stalwart friend. Even Khomeini had "expressed no objections" to the shah’s exile in the United States at this time. To this end Sunnylands, the sprawling Palms Springs estate of Walter Annenberg, was offered and readied as a place of haven for his royal friend. But the shah "proved to be as indecisive in exile as he had been in power, and this presented a disagreeable problem for the United States government." Without consulting with the Americans, the shah first made a quick one-week stopover in Cairo at the invitation of Egyptian president Anwar Sadat, and then flew on to the household of another monarch, King Hassan II of Morocco, for an indefinite stay. To Brzezinski, this "pause" in his peregrinations "proved to be disastrous," and "generated an issue where none should have existed." As February rolled along the shah’s invitation remained valid, but the shah preferred to remain as Hassan’s guest.

But just two weeks after his arrival in Rabat, circumstances reversed for the shah. If he had been loitering in the Near East region hoping that there would be a reversal of fortunes in Iran which would result in an opportunity (or call) to return to the Peacock Throne, he was destined for disappointment. Chances were dimming that the Provisional Government of Iran (PGOI) would collapse; nor had Khomeini’s support among the masses of Iranians waned. And, in a case of rather unfortunate timing, revolutionary militants stormed the United States embassy in Tehran on 14 February, holding the mission personnel hostage for several hours and generating fear for the safety of the remaining Americans in Iran. The final blow for the former monarch landed when King Hassan decided he had had sufficient time with the depressed and dispirited shah; he asked his guest to leave. The shah now sent word to Washington that he was ready to accept the U.S. government’s invitation.

and

During the ensuing months, the Carter administration worked to construct at least a stable, if not immediately productive, relationship with the new revolutionary regime in Iran. As a practical matter, for the health of this relationship the greater the American distance from the shah, the better, and vice versa. ... renewed pressures on President Carter to admit him were openly and unrelentingly applied by a handful of powerful people inside and outside of the government.

Particularly intense were National Security Adviser Zbigniew Brzezinski, banking magnate David Rockefeller, former Secretary of State Henry Kissinger, and the esteemed elder statesman John J. McCloy, a coterie which Brzezinski labeled "influential friends of the shah." In their collective opinion, the admission of the shah, whenever it was to occur, was "a matter of both principle and tactics." ...

... While understanding of and grateful for the past benefits to the United States which flowed from the shah’s friendship, senior administration foreign policy officials — the president, Secretary of State Cyrus Vance, Deputy Secretary of State Warren Christopher, and Undersecretary of State David Newsom, among others — balanced the shah’s wishes against the hope that relations with the new government of Iran would improve given sufficient time and came down on the side of the promoting the political ties to the PGOI. They continued to hold firm against the shah’s admission.

There is much, much more at the link. Very few sources and fewer "experts" have taken the time to explain this chaotic period in the detail it deserves or even to note that there had been a previous but short-lived takeover at the US Embassy in Tehran earlier in 1979.