The opening of “Who Would God Vote For?” a blog post about the intersection of religion and politics in America and Iran that began in earnest in the 1970s, by the BBC’s always provocative Adam Curtis:

“When you bring God into politics very strange things happen. You can see this now in both America and Iran –  in their elections and also in the growing confrontation between them. But it wasn’t always like this – in fact for most of the 20th century fundamentalist religion in both America and Iran had turned its back on the world of politics and power.

But in the 1970s everything changed. For that was the moment when religion was deliberately brought into politics in both countries with the aim of using it as a revolutionary force. And those who did this – Khomeini in Iran, and right-wing activists in America – were inspired by the revolutionary theories and organisations of the left and their ambition to transform society in a radical way.

I want to tell the forgotten story of how this happened – and how in the 1980s both the Americans and the Iranian idealists came together in a very odd way – with disastrous consequences.”