Iran

Khomeini spent fifteen years exiled from Iran for opposing the Shah, then returned to build a state with far more centralised religious authority than the monarchy he replaced ever claimed.

Saddam Hussein ran Iraq for over three decades on a mixture of genuine modernisation and calculated terror, and the two are hard to separate in the record he left behind.

Both the Soviet Union and the West backed Iraq at once, and the United States kept supporting Saddam even after learning he was using chemical weapons on Iranian troops.

1970