Brzezinski and Yazdi spoke to Newsweek’s Christopher Dickey via conference call earlier this month to address the current state of Iranian-American relations: In late October, 1979, U.S. National Security Advisor Zbigniew Brzezinski met with Iran’s Foreign Minister, Ebrahim Yazdi in Algiers to discuss how to improve relations between their countries. The Iranians wanted the U.S. to extradite Iran’s monarch, Shah Mohammad Reza Pahlavi who had been overthrown by the Islamic Revolution in February and was in exile in New York while being treated for cancer. Under the Shah, Iran was a chief ally and oil supplier to the United States, but many Iranians regarded him as a corrupt dictator and pawn of the West. At that meeting, according to notes taken by Robert Gates, now the Secretary of Defense, Brzezinski offered to recognize the revolutionary Islamic government and restore normal relations if Iran would abandon its demands for the U.S. to extradite the Shah
