Original subtitles

In December 1977,

President Carter visited his Cold War ally in the Middle East.

the Shah of Iran.

At the banquet held in his honour, he raised a toast.

"Iran, because of the great leadership of the Shah,

is an island of stability in one of the more troubled areas of the

world."

The Middle East was certainly troubled.

Through the 1970s, the region had become an ideological battleground.

On the one hand, there were those like the Shah, allied to the West.

We'll call them the liberalists.

On the other hand, were allies of the Soviet Union,

like the Baathists in Syria and Iraq, or the Communists in Afghanistan.

We'll call them the leftists.

The leadership of both camps was broadly authoritarian.

Both pursued a secularizing, modernizing agenda for their young,

rapidly growing populations,

as they flooded from the countryside to the cities to get a slice of the

Middle East's new wealth.

And in these cities flashed the signs of advancing technology and trade.

Shopping malls, neon lights and nightclubs.

Women were gaining new rights and going into new jobs.

Even in conservative countries like Saudi Arabia,

young women were becoming teachers and doctors.

There seemed to be little future for the religious conservatives, who

called for a return to the old ways,

or for revolutionary Islamists, who wanted to bring fundamentalist Islam

onto the world stage.

History was marching in another direction.

Yet by 2001, for many across the region, bin Laden was a hero.

And the ideology of political Islam, or Islamism,

had grabbed the imagination of the entire Middle East.

The meteoric rise of this ideology can be traced back to the events of

one explosive year.

We begin our story thirteen months after Carter's visit to Iran.

Just outside Paris,

acolytes have flocked to see a man who was busy changing history, the

Iranian ayatollah, Ruhollah Khomeini.

He'd been in exile for thirteen years.

During those years,

he had been coordinating with dissidents inside Iran.

And he had finally succeeded in igniting a revolution against the

Shah.

Now he was courting the media,

in preparation for the triumphal return that God might be granting

him.

In Iran, violent demonstrations had become an almost daily occurrence.

A flood of oil money had caused hyperinflation,

huge inequality and unprecedented corruption.

More profoundly, millions of people felt uneasy about the rapid change,

foreign change, foreign goods and decadent foreign ways.

Khomeini was a figurehead around which all groups opposed to the Shah had

coalesced.

Across the other side of the Gulf in Saudi Arabia,

another charismatic would-be revolutionary was plotting the

overthrow of his king.

Juhayman al-Otaybi had been on the run from the Saudi authorities for

nearly two years.

He was a fanatical conservative who longed for the days of jihad.

Hiding in Kassim and the Nejd with a small band of followers, he was now

writing a tax on the monarchy.

The rulers have used religion to justify their worldly interests.

We've put an end to jihad, paid allegiance to the Christians,

and brought Muslims to evil and corruption."

Over the next few months,

he would be finalizing his plans to overthrow the king.

In France, as the days ticked by, Khomeini continued to work with the

media,

encouraging the belief that he was a Gandhi-like old man, and keeping his

statements vague.

In fact, Khomeini's vision for the Muslim world,

the so-called "Velayat-e-Faqih", was radical.

Clerics traditionally stayed out of politics,

but he wanted a theocracy with himself as its pinnacle.

The Shah had just fled Tehran.

The traditional edifice of the monarchy with its capitalist,

liberalizing ideology had lost the trust of the people.

Islamists,

conservatives and leftists alike wanted to rethink how society should

be run.

There were a few who wept for what was to come.

That evening, U.S.

statesman Henry Kissinger pointed out the implications for the region on

American television.

I believe that the collapse of a pro-Western, pro-modern, and

pro-American government in in Iran, because that is what the Shah was,

will have a profound effect on Saudi Arabia, on the sheikhtans, on

Kuwait, and on areas further away.

But few people in Washington shared Kissinger's gloomy forecast for the

Middle East.

They were more excited by another radical development in the region.

We have no desire to be the world's policeman.

But America does want to be the world's peacemaker.

I am determined, as President,

to use the full beneficial influence of our country so that the

precious opportunity for lasting peace between Israel and Egypt will

not be lost.

Following the Camp David Accords the previous year,

peace talks between Israel and Egypt were progressing well, something

many never dreamed possible.

But there was still much this year that Carter

and his envoys needed to do.

At 7am, Ruhollah Khomeini returned home with a letter.

the hesitant steps of a man of 79.

His cavalcade was greeted by one of the largest crowds ever gathered.

[MUSIC]

In a few weeks,

these Iranians would be given a chance to vote on making Iran an

Islamic Republic.

And what was wrong with being Islamic or being a Republic?

Only a few knew about Khomeini's Islamist vision.

It was a vision for the entire region,

and he was already forging some surprising foreign alliances.

Yasser Arafat, leftist leader of the PLO,

was the first foreign dignitary to to visit Khomeini.

Arafat had a long relationship with the Iranian revolutionaries.

He had let them use his terrorist training camps in Syria, Lebanon,

and Iraq.

Is the Palestinian resistance feeling stronger now

that it is backed by Iran?

Definitely it changed completely the whole strategic policy in this area,

upside down completely.

The Palestinian cause would be central to the Iranian

revolutionaries.

They now gave the looted Israeli embassy to the PLO.

Iran's Islamists were transforming a cause of the Arab nationalists of

the left into a religious duty.

It was part of their bid to lead all Muslims.

Iran's new foreign minister, Ebrahim Yazdi,

had barely said farewell to Arafat when he was hosting a new delegation.

And this time there were no cameras.

The visitors were given a tour of revolutionary Tehran.

These guests were Muslim Brotherhood and other

international Islamist leaders.

Despite being Sunnis, the visitors had much in common with the Shia

Islamist revolutionaries,

not least their admiration for the seminal Sayyid Qutub, who extolled

the use of violence against enemies of the religion.

They met Khomeini in private,

then they asked him to lead the whole Islamic world.

Khomeini,

reluctant to compromise his shia beliefs, refused to commit himself.

But Iran was messianic about its revolution,

and the delegation was pleased to learn that some were already

talking about spreading their revolution abroad.

And that Egypt was a target.

Even now,

Egypt's liberalist pro-Western President Sadat was hosting

President Carter to pursue peace with Israel.

It was a challenge to all who refused to engage with the Israelis.

The crowd may have been excited at the prospect of peace,

but Sadat was taking a huge gamble.

There were many Egyptians who hadn't turned out to

welcome President Carter.

Sadat was being attacked by both Arab nationalists,

who dreamed of a unified Arab nation across the Middle East, and by

Islamists, who dreamed of a unified Muslim nation across the Middle East.

Moreover,

Sadat was reversing the socialist policies of the past towards a free

market, and the economy was still in dire straits.

So it wasn't just to protect the American president that security was

so high.

At Cairo University,

there had recently been huge student demonstrations calling for an

Islamic government and protesting against the Carter visit.

US journalists had reported back home on the mood.

Already there have been some incidents.

A bomb went off at the nightclub here at the Sheraton Hotel last month,

a protest against what's seen as "Western immorality."

Other bombs have been found,

and all this has made the police extremely jittery.

But peace, Sadat felt, was in the best interests of Egypt.

He needed to turn around the economy,

regain land lost to Israel in the conflict, and stop the waste of

young lives caused by decades of war.

Much depended on his work with Carter.

"You are held here with the highest esteem as one of the greatest

statesmen of our time.

Your courage..."

And in trying to make peace,

Sadat also risked opposition from his Arab neighbours.

In Lebanon, where the PLO had its power base,

the organisation was holding a general strike against Carter's visit.

Offices and shops were shut.

We will continue our struggle,

even the military struggle, or the political struggle, against

agreement.

But in Cairo,

the discussions continued productively over the following

days.

Finally there was left only one matter of uncertainty.

How would Sadat's ally, Saudi Arabia, react to peace?

Construction projects across Egypt testified to its dependence on Saudi

economic support.

So Carter sent his National Security Advisor,

Zbigniew Brzezinski, to Riyadh for high-level talks.

They knew that their ally,

although increasingly liberal, was still conservative.

Saudi Arabia would be reluctant to move against the region's

anti-Israel consensus.

The peace process between the Israelis and the Egyptians, that was

something which we Iran sounded ready to support that,

minimally not to obstruct it, and we worked very hard to try to get their

assurances that they would give support to that effort.

At the meeting, Brzesinski talked frankly.

Undermining Sadat would help the Soviets.

None of us want to see a pro-Soviet regime in Egypt.

All of this is said as a friend.

We know that the peace treaty is causing you difficulties,

and that you face pressures.

The Saudi foreign minister, Prince Saud al-Faisal, was reassuring.

No country more than Saudi Arabia wants the success of President

Sadat.

No country would be more hurt by his failure.

He would like to see Egypt as the leader of the Arab world, with

moderate forces flourishing.

Saud went on to explain that his country would follow a circumspect

line.

It would punish Sadat only by supporting the consensus that wished

to suspend Egypt from the Arab League.

It now looked like the signing of the accords could take place in a matter

of days.

Brzezinski flew to Cairo to let Sadat know the good news.

He took the opportunity to give a press conference.

America wanted doubters in the region to understand why peace with Israel

was so important.

A peace treaty which will open the doors to greater prosperity,

more progress, more stability in the entire region.

We feel that we are on the eve of an important new era in this part of

the world.

But some wanted a very different, new era for this part of the world.

A few days earlier,

Islamist revolutionaries shared exciting news from

Peshawar in Pakistan.

They were announcing the escalation of their uprising in neighboring

Afghanistan, and events in Iran gave them hope.

Afghan Islamists were using the mountainous tribal areas on the

border with Pakistan as as a base to attack communist government targets.

As in Iran,

the Islamists were fighting alongside conservative Afghans.

They had united to oppose the reforms pushed through by the hardline

communist government in Kabul.

The government had upset many by passing new laws to abolish the

veil, child marriage, and the selling of brides.

They had promoted women's rights,

and forced through a radical program of land redistribution.

But the brutal enforcement of their policies won the government no

friends.

By spring 1979,

townspeople and villagers across Afghanistan

had lost trust in the government.

And as in Iran, the links to foreign governments, in this case the

Soviets,

allow traditionalists and Islamists to stir up further animosity against

change.

In Moscow, the government's Soviet allies were highly concerned.

The Politburo listened to a report from Foreign Minister Gromyko.

The situation in Afghanistan has deteriorated sharply.

The insurgents infiltrating from Pakistan and Iran have joined forces

with a domestic counter-revolution.

The latter is dominated by religious fanatics.

Under no circumstances should we lose Afghanistan.

Soviet divisions were put in a state of battle readiness,

and orders were given to start a huge delivery of military vehicles and

equipment, and to send in hundreds of additional advisors.

They were gratefully received by desperate Afghan commanders.

No one knew whether this additional support would be enough to tip the

balance in the fighting.

Now President Sadat and Prime Minister Begin will sign three

copies of the Treaty of Peace in English, Arabic and Hebrew.

Egyptians watch the news.

Despite Sadat's fears,

the general reaction, for the moment, was encouraging.

"It's a very great, important event

for the Middle East,

and it's all right, very good."

Moreover,

the response to the peace treaty from the rest of the Arab world was more

muted than expected.

In Syria,

President Assad and the Soviet Foreign Minister Gromyko were in

talks.

Together they reaffirmed their opposition.

In Paris, a Jewish restaurant was bombed, probably on Syrian orders.

and in Iran, a demonstration was organised.

In West Beirut,

the PLO leader Yasser Arafat was still against any negotiation with

Israel.

He held a press conference and accused Sadat of betraying the

Egyptian people.

"The Arab League would suspend Egypt and move its headquarters away from

Cairo.

But that was as expected.

The regional response to Sadat had been little more than noise,

and Sadat arranged for celebrations on his return to Cairo.

The crowd were delighted.

Sadat's success made the old ideology of leftism irrelevant.

On that very same day in Iran,

although few knew it yet, the leftists were also being made irrelevant.

They had agreed to a referendum called by Khomeini.

Iranians were asked,

"Should Iran become an Islamic Republic?" But they were given no

details of what it involved, and no alternative options.

But in accepting a referendum, the left were agreeing to exactly that.

It was an overwhelming victory for Khomeini.

He still needed to push through his doctrine a velayat-e-faqih

into the constitution.

But that would come later.

For now, Iran was an Islamic republic.

The government of God had officially begun.

Across the Middle East, Islamists were delighted.

In Jordan,

a Palestinian lecturer in Sharia at Amman University was also energized

by the news from Iran.

This was Abdullah Azzam, the future father of jihad,

someone who will play an important part later in our story.

Over in Riyadh,

King Khalid of Saudi Arabia was trying to get the measure of this

new Islamic Republic.

Was Iran, he wondered,

trying to compete for leadership of the Muslim world?

He sent Khomeini a telegram.

I am happy to express my sincere congratulations as you announce the

establishment of the Islamic Republic in Iran.

Certainly this announcement has been warmly received in Saudi Arabia,

being committed to the ideology, the method and the application of

Islamic principles.

A few days later,

he sent a high-level delegation to meet Khomeini and present him with a

Koran.

But Khomeini responded with veiled criticism of Saudi Arabia's

relationship with the arrogant West.

The meeting was recorded.

It was an ominous sign.

In suggesting that Saudi Arabia was insufficiently Islamic,

Khomeini seemed to be offering his own leadership to the Muslim world.

The supreme leader was becoming bolder.

Throughout May,

he escalated anti-American and anti-Israeli demonstrations.

These demonstrations helped spread revolutionary fervor across the

region.

In Iraq, the Dawa party, old allies of Khomeini, took to the streets.

Violent clashes erupted every Friday in Najaf,

outside the home of Mohammed Bakr al-Sadr, known as the Iraqi

Ayatollah Khomeini.

But the ruthlessness of the Iraqi Ba' athists

soon stopped Shia Iraq following the Iranian model.

The revolution in Iran also affected Syria.

In Aleppo,

a cadet school was attacked by the militant wing of

the Muslim Brotherhood.

They killed 60. Many more were hospitalized.

It marked the start of a three-year terrorist campaign to overthrow the

Ba'athist government.

And again, the Islamists would be met with ruthless oppression.

An estimated 30,000 people would die.

To return to our year of 1979,

in Egypt the summer temperatures were kicking in.

A new session of Parliament was opening.

Sadat was bolstering support for his peace deal,

reassuring disappointed Arab nationalists.

He needed their applause.

As in Afghanistan, Iraq, and Syria,

Islamists had begun to threaten the government.

The CIA's internal analysis,

written a few weeks previously, summed up the danger.

Sadats decision to allow the Muslim Brotherhood a significant degree of

freedom to operate may contain the seeds of future trouble.

There are obvious parallels between the devout Muslim fundamentalism

exhibited by the Brotherhood in Egypt and the emotional following

commanded by the Ayatollah Khomeini in Iran.

Many Muslim Brotherhood members were getting restive.

Fiery preachers like Omar Abdul Rahman, the blind sheikh,

who would later become involved in terrorism against America, denounced

Sadat as an infidel.

But Sadat primarily feared the country's 400,000 students,

where the Muslim Brotherhood had been growing.

Student action soon reached beyond the campuses.

The student Islamists would also organize events featuring

counterculture figures like Sheikh Imam, who sang songs praising the

Iranian Revolution.

And that summer,

a medical student published "Humayni, the Islamic and Alternative

Solution."

In just two days, it sold 10,000 copies.

The author was a young Fatih Shakaki.

Like Azzam,

he had been a disillusioned Palestinian leftist who had joined

the Muslim Brotherhood.

Now travelling back and forth across Cairo, anonymous among its vast

crowds,

he secretly began to establish the infamous Palestinian Islamic Jihad.

At the same time,

a group of young men were secretly meeting to establish Egyptian

Islamic Jihad.

Their goal was to overthrow Sadat's government and replace it with an

Islamic state.

Among the members was a 26-year-old Ayman al-Zawahiri, the future

ideologue for al-Qaeda.

As Sadat left Parliament that summer.

He felt he now had to make a difficult choice.

Faced with this Islamist discontent,

he could hope it dies away, or become more autocratic and clamped down.

Meanwhile, over in Afghanistan,

despite their extra Soviet equipment and help from Soviet advisors,

morale in the Afghan army was plummeting.

Afghan army brutality against the rebel collaborators only

strengthened their resolve.

Afghanistan was stepping closer and closer to collapse.

In light of the news from Afghanistan, Egypt, and Iran,

the Saudi government started to think about the mood of its own people.

Was the gradual liberalization sustainable?

Was there a threat of rebellion?

Their foreign minister remained outwardly confident.

Do you think what's happened in Iran could ever happen here?

Not on the same reasons.

We believe that we have a cohesiveness in here, that the

stresses and strains of development and both economic and all the

fields, economic,

social or political, we have enough of a cohesion between the leadership

in this country and the government in this country and the people to be

able to absorb the stresses and strains of development without

violent change.

But U.S.

Ambassador to Saudi Arabia, John West,

found out the real mood of their ally.

He visited Abdul Rahman Mansouri, Deputy Foreign Minister,

and was told that Saudi foreign policy was under top-secret review.

He said that he felt the first priority should be to concentrate on

the Saudi government's internal situation to ensure maximum stability.

I told him that I thought that was indeed wise and that the most

frequently asked question in the U.S. during my consultations was,

"Will Saudi Arabia go the way of Iran?" Mansouri, in what I thought

was an unusual burst of candor, said, "The highest priority within

Saudi Arabia was to ensure that such did not happen.

He said the next two years were going to be most critical,

and the actions taken or not taken would probably determine the

survival of the monarchy.

But events were already overtaking the Saudi government.

Juhayman and his band of fanatical conservatives now had a plan.

They would seize the Holy Mosque of Mecca,

proclaim the arrival of the Mahdi, and overthrow the government.