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Iran & the West Season 1 Episodes
Season 1 Episode Guide
3 Episodes 2009 - 2009
Episode 1
The Man Who Changed The World
60 mins
Militant Islam enjoyed its first modern triumph with the arrival in power of Ayatollah Khomeini in Iran in 1979. In this series of three programs, key figures tell the inside story. Former US president Jimmy Carter talks on television for the first time about the event that, more than any other, led American voters to eject him from the presidency. Iran's seizure of the US embassy in Tehran and the holding of its staff for 444 days took more and more of Carter's time and energy. His final days in office were dominated by desperate attempts to secure the release of the embassy hostages. Those who sat in the White House with him, planning how to rescue the hostages, how to negotiate their release and, finally, wondering whether anything could be rescued from the disaster, all tell their part in the story. Other contributors include former vice president Walter Mondale, ex-deputy secretary of state Warren Christopher and former national security adviser Zbigniew Brzezinski. The other side of the story is told by top Iranians: Ayatollah Khomeini's close adviser, Grand Ayatollah Montazeri; his first foreign minister, Ebrahim Yazdi; his negotiator with the US, Sadeq Tabatabai; and the founder of Iran's Revolutionary Guard, Mohsen Rafiqdoust.
Episode 2
The Pariah State
60 mins
Second episode in the documentary series marking the 30th anniversary of the Iranian Revolution. Inside stories are told by two ex-presidents of Iran, Hashemi Rafsanjani and Mohammad Khatami, by two founders of Iran's Revolutionary Guard, and by leading westerners including Secretaries of State George Shultz, Warren Christopher and Madeleine Albright.
Episode 3
Nuclear Confrontation
60 mins
In part three of this landmark series from Norma Percy and the team that made the multi-award winning documentaries The Death of Yugoslavia and Elusive Peace: Israel and the Arabs, contributors including Iran's President Khatami tell the inside story of the West's continuing nuclear confrontation with Iran. The film also shows a rare moment when they worked together. US State Department insiders tell how, after 9/11, Iran played a key role in helping America to topple the Taliban in Afghanistan - only for President Bush to put Iran into his 'axis of evil' immediately afterwards. Jack Straw, then foreign secretary, and President Khatami describe how Iran offered to help the US and its allies in their war against Saddam Hussein - help that, given Iran's powerful contacts in Iraq and the West's subsequent difficulties there, might have made a crucial difference. Jack Straw, his successor Margaret Beckett, and Joschka Fischer of Germany describe how they struggled to find a compromise between Iran and President Bush's hardliners over Iran's nuclear program. John Sawers at the UN reveals an extraordinary secret deal that Iran proposed a few years later.