This week on 60 Minutes, correspondent Lesley Stahl traveled to Iran to interview President Ebrahim Raisi, who was elected in 2021. This is the latest interview with an Iranian head of state broadcast on the show, who has covered the geopolitical stage in Iran for nearly five decades.
From Mike Wallace’s memorable interview with Ayatollah Khomeini just days after the Iranian hostage crisis began, to President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad telling Scott Pelley that he “likes a CIA investigator,” here are some of the highlights of 60 Minutes’ Iranian coverage.
By early 1974, the Arab oil embargo had been causing fuel shortages in the United States for months. Arab and Iranian oil manufacturers had reduced exports to countries that had subsidized Israel in its 1973 war with Egypt and Syria, and the embargo increased costs and long lines of cars waiting to refuel at fuel stations.
In February 1974, 60 Minutes correspondent Mike Wallace traveled to Tehran to film his first interview with Shah Mohammed Reza Pahlavi. In a frank conversation, Wallace asked the Shah, or “king” in Farsi, about inflated oil prices. He noted that while cars in the U. S. were covered by miles, Iran’s oil profits needed to accumulate by 400 percent. Oil companies, the Shah replied, were getting rich because of manipulation, but for Iran, cash was equivalent to the country’s “natural wealth. “”
Wallace also asked Pahlavi about the corruption within the Iranian government and the visions of God the shah had as a child. When Wallace asked the Iranian leader why he was willing to speak so frankly, Pahlavi replied that he was not afraid of his people.
“This is not a political campaign,” Pahlavi said. “I’m not going to look at the polls to see if I’m two degrees above or below. . They accept as true to me, I accept as true to them. “
Mike Wallace returned to Iran to interview Shah Mohammed Reza Pahlavi every two years. In the 1976 conversation, Pahlavi’s characteristic frankness was exposed.
The shah told Wallace he was committed to a secure Israeli state, but insisted that the Israelis return to the Arab lands they had taken in 1967. That effort, Pahlavi said, has been hampered by “Jewish lobthrough” in the United States. which, according to him, has put pressure on newspapers, banks, even the president of the United States.
Wallace then asked the shah about his secret police force, SAVAK, an organization similar to the combination of the FBI and CIA, which had a reputation for brutality. Wallace asked if SAVAK tortured its detainees.
“Don’t torture in the old sense of torturing people, twisting their arms and doing this and that,” Pahlavi replied. “But now there are wise tactics. “
One year before the inauguration of the U. S. EmbassyMike Wallace returned to Iran in November 1978 to document the country’s troubling trajectory. opposition figure who came close to asking Pahlavi to leave Iran to make way for a democratic Islamic State.
“There is discontent on the spectrum of the Iranian population,” Wallace said.
As thousands of young Iranians marched through the streets, Wallace said, they shouted: “Down with the shah!Death to the shah!” Protesters set fire to the headquarters of Iran’s National Gas Company, but saved the U. S. Embassy from Iran. The U. S. military, which was protected by Iranian army police. It was one of the few buildings in Tehran that was heavily guarded, suggesting that the Shah was grateful for the president. Jimmy Carter had introduced it.
Although they had spoken many times before, Pahlavi this time turned down an interview with Wallace. Instead, Wallace spoke to other Iranians and added Javad Alamir, a wealthy businessman and politician. Alamir spoke about abuses through SAVAK and endemic corruption in the country’s economy.
“What’s wrong with the shah? This is the terrible thing that has happened in Iran for the last quarter century,” Alamir said. “We had the worst repression in history. “
In early 1979, the Shah left Iran and went into exile, and Ayatollah Ruhollah Khomeini took over the country. Although the Shah never officially abdicated, the other Iranians voted in a national referendum on April 1 to become an Islamic republic and make Khomeini the country’s ideal leader, replacing the Shah’s secular authoritarian monarchy with an anti-Western theocracy.
In October 1979, the Shah entered the United States for cancer treatment and, in response, Iranian militants seized the U. S. embassy on November 4 and took more than 50 Americans hostage. Exactly two weeks after the embassy was seized, Mike Wallace interviewed Ayatollah Khomeini of the holy city of Qom and asked Khomeini if the hostages would continue to be held if the shah did not return to Iran.
“The 35 million Iranians need it, and we will have to investigate why the population needs the Shah to return. And unless it is returned, the hostages will not be released,” Khomeini said.
To secure the interview, Wallace agreed to ask only the questions the ayatollah had accepted in the past. But when he sat across from Khomeini and the cameras rolled, Wallace bet on asking questions that hadn’t been approved.
For starters, Wallace quoted Egyptian President Anwar Sadat, who called Khomeini “crazy” and “an embarrassment to Islam. “Khomeini’s translator hesitated to repeat the question, so Wallace asked it again. “, referring to the 1978 Egyptian-Israeli peace accords, and called on the Egyptians to overthrow Sadat just as the Iranians had overthrown the Shah.
The ayatollah, however, refused to answer when Wallace asked what would happen if President Carter refused to send the shah back to Iran.
On March 2, 1980, U. S. Embassy staff were detained for 120 days, an amount that would eventually amount to 444 days. a 60-minute report to read about why many Iranians believe the United States is complicit in the misdeeds perceived by the shah. Why, Wallace tried to know, so many Iranians approve of taking 52 Americans hostage?
Wallace began by explaining that the CIA orchestrated the 1953 coup in Iran that overthrew democratically elected Prime Minister Mohammad Mosaddegh and reinstated Mohammad Reza Pahlavi as Shah. In addition, a classified report from the Senate Foreign Relations Committee showed that the CIA had helped the Shah establish his secret police, SAVAK. The CIA had provided the Shah with cash and education for SAVAK.
Wallace spoke with Max McCarthy, a former three-term Democratic congressman who served as press secretary at the U. S. Embassy. When McCarthy saw the indifference to the U. S. diplomatic status quo, McCarthy saw the indifference to the U. S. diplomatic status quo. The U. S. military in Iran in the face of torture committed through SAVAK resigned in protest.
“It’s not an unusual idea to give the shah what he wants,” McCarthy said. “He is our pillar in the Persian Gulf and we built all our security into this man. “
In 1997, Mike Wallace visited Iran to report on the situation in the Persian Gulf country. He interviewed President Hashemi Rafsanjani, who had been on the job for 8 years and rarely spoke to Western journalists.
At the time, President Clinton imposed a U. S. industrial embargo on Iran. The White House believed Iran was deliberately ruining the Middle East peace process, and then-House Speaker Newt Gingrich called Iran the most damaging country on Earth.
For U. S. officials, the biggest fear is that Iran’s nuclear program is aimed at building a nuclear bomb. Rafsanjani insisted, in a chorus that would be repeated through Iran’s leaders in the future, that his country was only pursuing nuclear power.
Wallace asked Rafsanjani to swear by Allah that his country would not seek a nuclear weapon.
“No need to swear. Those who swear are the ones who need to lie,” Rafsanjani said. “We are not going after the nuclear bomb, biological weapons or chemical weapons. “
In September 2007, 60 Minutes correspondent Scott Pelley traveled to Tehran to interview President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad ahead of schedule for the United Nations General Assembly in New York. York.
In the interview, Pelley pressed Ahmadinejad on his country’s nuclear program, which seemed determined to continue uranium enrichment, even though the United Nations Security Council had demanded it stop. Ahmadinejad claimed that Iran only sought nuclear power, but the White House under President George W. Bush said Ahmadinejad was chasing a bomb.
“In politics right now, the nuclear bomb is useless,” Ahmadinejad said. “If it had been useful, it would have prevented the fall of the Soviet Union. If it had been helpful, it would have solved the messes Americans have in Iraq. The time for the bomb is over.
When Pelley continued to ask Ahmadinejad in particular if he would pursue not testing a nuclear weapon, Ahmadinejad became defensive and told Pelley that he was acting as a CIA interrogator.
“This is Guantanamo Bay,” Ahmadinejad said. This is a criminal from Baghdad. This is a secret criminal in Europe. This is Iran. I am the president of this country!”
In the summer of 2015, Iran signed a landmark agreement with six world powers: the United States, Russia, China, Britain, France and Germany. The deal, officially known as the Joint Comprehensive Plan of Action (JCPOA), curtailed Iran’s nuclear program. in exchange for the lifting of some economic sanctions. In September, 60 Minutes correspondent Steve Kroft traveled to Tehran to brief Iranian President Hassan Rouhani on the deal.
“Some teams and political parties would possibly oppose it, but the governments of the world, all together, welcomed this agreement,” Rouhani said.
Through the JCPOA, Iran must ship 98% of its enriched uranium out of the country, block thousands of centrifuges, shut down its bomb-proof enrichment facility at Fordow, shut down its heavy water reactor at Arak, and undergo rigorous foreign inspections. Opponents of the pact in the U. S. U. S. officials have argued that the U. S. has argued that the U. S. The US has given too little for too little to return Iran. Opposition in Iran is also intense, the head of the Revolutionary Guards added.
Since the deal, Ayatollah Ali Khamanei had continued to label the United States a “Great Satan,” a throwback to the days of the Iran hostage crisis. Kroft asked Rouhani if he had the U. S. view.
“The enmity that has existed between the U. S. and the United States. The U. S. and Iran for decades — the distance, the disagreements, the lack of acceptance — is not going away anytime soon,” Rouhani told Kroft. “What is vital is where we are headed. Are we moving toward amplifying enmity or diminishing this enmity?We have taken the first steps to end this enmity. “
President Trump then withdrew the United States from the agreement in 2018.
In early January 2020, Iran and the United States reached the breaking point of the war. The standoff began when President Trump ordered a U. S. drone strike that killed Iran’s toughest general, Qasem Soleimani. That ended six days later with an Iranian ballistic missile. CBS News national security correspondent David Martin reported on the tense weather for 60 minutes the following February.
As Martin reported, Soleimani orchestrated attacks that killed more than six hundred American infantrymen in the American profession of Iraq. According to Navy Gen. Frank McKenzie, commander of U. S. forces in the Middle East, Soleimani planned to do it again. Until then, EE. se has been reluctant to prosecute Soleimani for fear that killing him will provoke more Iranian strikes.
In reaction to Soleimani’s death, Iran introduced 16 ballistic missiles from 3 locations. Five failed, but 11 landed at al-Assad air base in Iraq, where 2,000 U. S. troops were stationed. Before the attack, the base had rushed to evacuate more than 50 aircraft. and 1,000 before the missiles hit. But the base had yet to be inhabited.
Surprisingly, no Americans died.
Martin asked General McKenzie what would have happened if the base had not been evacuated. General McKenzie estimated that the base could have lost only 20 or 30 aircraft and between a hundred and 150 American personnel. This situation, he said, would have been very different: “David, we had a plan to retaliate if the Americans died. “