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Now it's time for the second programme in our series, Iran and the West.

I went to see for myself from afar our soldiers looked alive and ready to fight.

When we got closer we found they were dead.

Where these chemical shells landed they froze everyone instantly.

One was fossilised, leaning through a window.

Generals Razayee and Rafig Duest, commanders of Iran's revolutionary guard,

inspecting the battleground of the Iran-Iraq war in the 1980s.

Saddam, whose sayings use of chemical weapons in that war, went unchecked by the international community.

It's a very hard balance to using chemical weapons.

So you want them to stop using the chemical weapons.

At the same time you don't want to see Iran win the war.

George Schultz, their US Secretary of State.

The Islamic Revolution of 1979 which saw the fall of the Shah and the rise of Ayatollah Khameini

meant that the West had lost a powerful ally in the region.

This programme, the second in our BBC series Iran and the West,

looks at how the battle for regional influence was played out through successive Iranian and US presidencies

over the next two decades.

It began with Iran's decision to get involved in Lebanon after Israel's invasion in 1982.

...