Tom Holland

Iran, because of the great leadership of the Shah, is an island of stability in one of the more troubled areas of the world.

This is a great tribute to you, Your Majesty, and to your leadership and to the respect and the admiration and love which your people give to you.

We in the United States have no other nation on earth who is closer to us in planning for our mutual military security.

And there is no leader with whom I have a deeper sense of personal gratitude and personal friendship.

On behalf of the people of the United States, I would like to offer a toast at this time to the great leaders of Iran, the Shah and the Shabanu, and to the people of Iran, and to the world peace that we hope together we can help to bring.

Now, people listening to that may think that that is an Englishman who can't do a good impression of someone from Georgia, but it isn't.

It was actually, Dominic, President Jimmy Carter, and he was toasting the last Shah of Iran, as Americans call it, or as we in Britain call it correctly, Iran, Mohammad Reza Pahlavi and his wife, Empress Farah, the Shah Banu,

at a banquet in Iran's capital, Tehran, on New Year's Eve 1977.

And Dominic, it is a moment ripe with irony, is it not?

Well, Dominic, you say that.

We are recording this in early January.

I mean, by the time this goes out, who knows what may have happened.

So it's an extraordinary story.

One of the things that brings Ronald Reagan to power, and one of the advantages of Reagan is he's much easier to do an impersonation of.

Which he sounded very like Shane Warne for a lot of the time.

And Dominic, again, just to say, we are recording this in the immediate aftermath of the US raid on Caracas, which was, in military terms, an incredible success.

And I guess what happens in Iran with Carter is the polar opposite.

I mean, it fires the starting gun on the kind of the wave of Islamic militancy that has shaken the world since 1979.

I would say that of all the cities I've ever been to, Tehran is the one that seems the least capable of coping, say, with traffic.

The traffic there, I mean, unbelievable.