Dominic

Oh, I didn't know that.

That bit I didn't know.

Yeah.

I mean, it could not have been a greater catastrophe.

And then you've got another image from the U.S.

Embassy, haven't you, where the hostages are being kept?

I think the reason the Iranian Revolution had such an impact on US domestic opinion was the otherness of it.

So it's men with beards.

We've got the forbidding-looking priests and clerics in the photo with the Ayatollahs.

And then this picture, it's the sort of frenzy of it that I think for people, if you're sitting in Wisconsin watching on TV or something or opening a newspaper, that's what people found unsettling because they didn't appreciate that the...

I guess the strength of feeling, the fervor against the Shah, but also the religious dimension.

Abbas specialized him.

Oh, well, I think their particular brand of Islam, so Shia, the fact that they're embattled and they're surrounded by Sunnis is obviously very important to explaining Iranian mentality.

And it's where I think religion and nationalism kind of fuse.

These protests, these enormous street demonstrations have been going while he was in exile.

So they've been building and building every 40 days in 1978 with the funerals of the last people who'd been shot.

Then there would be another 40 days later, huge crowds on the streets.

The Shah's secret police would shoot some more people.

And that meant that 40 days later, there will be another set of funerals and another of these enormous sort of outpourings of rage.

And I think some of the energy to me comes from the contrast between these people who are so fired up and are so there's such passion and such a sort of loss of control in a way.