Jimmy Carter accomplished virtually nothing. He failed to handle the developing emergence of OPEC, which as an oil cartel began to restrict supply in the 1970's to create energy shocks that affected the U.S. economy and drove oil prices up to start creating the wealth tha the OPEC countries enjoy today. Iran was a debacle of Jimmy Carter's own making.
Much like Obama's insistence on overturning strongmen rule in the Middle East (Ghaddafi and Assad), leading to the rise of chaos and destruction and the rise of ISIS, based on leftist complaints of political unfairness and repression, Jimmy Carter hammered at the Shah of Iran's repressive rule. At that time Iran was a modern Western Arabic Muslim culture with American alliances. Jimmy Carter did everything from call out what he thought were rough civil justice practices to Iran's attempts to militarily intervene, as a regional military power, in militant disorder in the region. He made accusations of repression, brutality and withdrew support & funding from what at the time was our ally. Eventually, the Shah lost control over the militant factions that Carter was attacking him over and was overthrown. There has been an oppressive Islamist rogue state in Iran every since, that hates America.
The election of Mr. Carter as president of the United States in 1976, with his vocal emphasis on the importance of human rights in international affairs, was a turning point in US-Iran relations. The Shah of Iran was accused of torturing over 3000 prisoners. Under the banner of promoting human rights, Carter made excessive demands of the Shah, threatening to withhold military and social aid. Carter pressured the Shah to release "political prisoners", whose ranks included radical fundamentalists, communists and terrorists. Many of these individuals are now among the opponents we face in our "war on terrorism".
The Carter Administration insisted that the Shah disband military tribunals, demanding they be replaced by civil courts. The effect was to allow trials to serve as platforms for anti-government propaganda. Carter pressured Iran to permit "free assembly", which encouraged and fostered fundamentalist anti-government rallies. The British government and its MI6 intelligence agency also heightened the Shah's precariousness. The government-controlled BBC presented Iranians with a dossier of twenty hour newscasts detailing the location of all anti-Shah demonstrations and consistent interviews with the exiled outcast Ayatollah Khomeini, making a religious scholar few Iranians knew about into an overnight sensation.
When the Shah was unable to meet the Carter Administration and British demands, the Carter Administration reportedly ordered the Central Intelligence Agency to stop $4 million per year in funding to religious Mullahs who then became outspoken and vehement opponents of the Shah. Unfortunately, the Shah's efforts to defuse the volatile situation in Iran failed, despite the grant even of free and democratic elections. Confronted with lack of US support and unleashed Mullah fury, the Shah of Iran fled the country.
http://www.americanthinker.com/articles/2007/08/jimmy_carters_human_rights_dis.html
Jimmy Carter was a terrible, terrible President. His misguided, condescending and arrogant use of world leadership to impose simplistic Disneyland pacifist requirements on Middle Eastern leaders led to the disruption of stable governments there, much like John Kerry's tenure at the State Department has led to a meltdown of the secular states of the Middle East starting from almost the month he took over for Hillary Clinton.