Wes Clark & Robin Wright on Egypt

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13. Distorted the US role in history?

'We didn't like him (the shah.) He wasn't democratic enough. His secret police were really tough and they tortured people, and so we encouraged the emergence of a democratic movement.

The generals tried to warn the Americans, they said be careful, you're playing with fire and you're going to let Ayatollah Khomeini come back in. We sent in an American general over to tell the Iranian generals back off. So for about 60 days we kept the military from intervening in Iran.

During that period, the revolution coalesced, the military forces fell apart, extreme Islamists took over and at that point, the Carter administration said, oh my goodness, get the general to take control, don't let this happen. And the general said, we waited too long, we have no forces, and a few months later all the generals had been shot, and we have Iran today.'