Regime change No. 1:  In 1953, our CIA helped overthrow a democratically elected government in Iran because that government wasn’t sufficiently anti-Communist. That regime change placed the brutal dictatorship of the Shah in power until a religiously led revolution in 1979 put the first Ayatollah in charge. Because the Iranian people understandably blamed the U.S. for much of their suffering under the Shah, we were viewed as the Great Satan. Our embassy was overrun and the staff was taken hostage.

President Carter could not free them and lost the presidential election to Ronald Reagan. They were freed under Reagan, who secretly sold weapons to the Ayatollah to fund a secret war in Nicaragua — but I digress. 

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