was that about half the folks agreed with the westernization efforts of the Shah and the other half or so, fundamentalists, did not. Had the Shah not become ill, there likely would have been no Khomeini return. Had the Shah had an heir of age when he became ill, a lot of turmoil might have been precluded. If a frog had wings...

So the Shah left, Khomeini arrived and he and the Ayatollahs killed more people in two years than the Shah and SAVAK had in twenty.

Carter's abysmal handling of the hostage situation allowed Khomeini to cement his power and almost certainly encouraged others to attack the Great Satan. Still, as you say, Carter is not responsible for all of what has happened in the ME since then.

That ball starts rolling with Nixon's post Munich anti-terror panel being ignored due to domestic politics; is followed by Carters gross malfeasance in Iraq and elsewhere -- he was a foreign policy disaster world wide and still is -- and that was followed by Reagan and DoD mishandling of the Beirut bombings and kidnappings which led to Bush 41's failure at the end of DS/DS. Clinton's foolish fly swats and wishy-washiness just exacerbated the problem all around.

Thus you have not Carter but five administrations from both parties you can blame for the ME debacles (plural). Could go back even further but, essentially, those five inherited a salvageable situation and proceeded to create a larger problem than would have otherwise existed. While there are certainly other factors (and other international players at fault), those failures are the biggest drivers of our involvement.

Most of those failures are attributable to domestic politics receiving more consideration than might have been merited IMO. Bush 43 may not have handled it a whole lot better but at least he figured that out and did something.

I think the problem is that those failures were consigned by some to a bird cage rather than being heeded and acted upon...