Jimmy Carter has the Inverted Midas Touch. In fact, he is the product of this Touch. Everything with his fingerprints even remotely associated with it inevitably turns out to be a disaster.
US President Jimmy Carter attempted to demand financial favors for his political friends from the Shah of Iran. The rejection of this demand by the Shah could well have led to Pres. Carter's resolve to remove the Iranian Emperor from office.
The linkage between the destruction of the Shah's Government - directly attributable to Carter's actions - and the Iran-Iraq war which cost millions of dead and injured on both sides, and to the subsequent rise of radical Islamist terrorism makes the new information of considerable significance.
Pres. Carter's anti-Shah feelings appeared to have ignited after he sent a group of several of his friends from his home state, Georgia, to Tehran with an audience arranged with His Majesty directly by the Oval Office and in Carter's name. At this meeting, as reported by Prime Minister Amir Abbas Hoveyda to some confidantes, these businessmen told the Shah that Pres. Carter wanted a contract. previously awarded to Brown & Root to build a huge port complex at Bandar Mahshahr, to be cancelled and as a personal favor to him to be awarded to the visiting group at 10 percent above the cost quoted by Brown & Root.