[TheRealVille]

I was a UK student in 1979 and had many Iranian engineering students in my classes. The Iranian students at UK were deeply divided politically and it was not unusual to hear them arguing loudly in the halls (in Farsi). There was at least one instance where an anti-Shah student stabbed a pro-Shah student.

One of my best friends was an Iranian political exile who ran a large Iranian TV station before he fled the country. Massoud was quite a bit older than the rest of our friends and hated both the Shah and the fanatics who overthrew him. We often discussed politics over shots of tequila, in part because if was the biggest news story of the time, and in part because Massoud had left his wife and young daughter behind when he came to this country a few years earlier.

I remember Massoud telling me that part of the foreign aid that the US sent to Iran during the Shah's reign was used to modernize their farms. He said that many farmers traded in their beasts of burden for shiny new tractors. The problem, he explained, was that when the tractors broke down, there were no spare parts available in Iran. He said that the fields were full of relatively new tractors rusting away. This was one factor that he cited as creating anti-American sentiment among the uneducated rural Iranians who eventually revolted against the Shah's government.

What deep knowledge of Iran did you have as a 15 year old high school kid? Or were you still in middle school when Carter was both undermining the Shah's government and mismanaging the hostage situation?

Ok, so you've got me by 4 years.