Dominic Sandbrook

In 1972, Nixon went to Tehran, and he explicitly said to the Shah, you're going to hear a lot of whinging from weedy liberals.

Please do not listen to this.

You are our man, and if you want weapons, we will give you weapons.

And the Shah said, brilliant, this is what I'm going to spend my oil money on.

And in the next six years, he spent $12 billion on all these jet fighters and destroyers and submarines.

It was one of the biggest arms sprees in history.

He bought more chieftain tanks from the British than the British themselves had in their own army.

Just this colossal amount.

Now, other American regional allies thought this was mad.

The Saudi oil minister said to the Americans in 1975, the Shah is a megalomaniac, he's highly unstable, and if you don't recognise this, there must be something wrong with your powers of observation.

Yeah.

So the Shah has very much come to believe his own publicity.

There was an observer journalist called Gavin Young who went to interview him in the mid-70s.

He was shocked how arrogant the Shah had become.

The Shah said to him, you know, we're going to be top nation.

We're going to be such a great country.

In 20 years, we'll be ahead of the United States.

Now we are the masters with our own money and our former masters are our slaves.

Well, the Shah and Shah, king of kings.

Yeah.