A year before the revolution, in April 1978, then Conservative opposition leader, Margaret Thatcher, visited Tehran and described the Shah as “one of the world’s most far-sighted statesmen” who had given Iran “dynamic leadership” and is “leading Iran through a twentieth century renaissance”.
A few months later, James Callaghan’s Labour government secretly agreed to the Shah’s request to supply 175,000 CS gas canisters and up to 360 armoured personnel carriers to Iran to help the regime put down growing demonstrations against it.
By October 1978, with unrest in Tehran threatening the regime, Callaghan wrote: “I would not give much for the Shah’s chances,” and told his foreign secretary, David Owen, to “start thinking about reinsuring”, meaning to develop contacts with opposition figures.
By December, officials concluded that the Shah’s survival was unlikely and that Iran seemed on the verge of a revolution. Foreign Office officials then argued for Britain to completely switch its support to the Iranian opposition, though the declassified files do not state which figures.