No one should be blind to the sins of the Shah, but he was a flaming lib compared to those who followed him. One need only look up The White Revolution and see his was at the very least a mixed record, unlike those who followed him.
As for how the return of Khomeini from France was "popular" in Iran, that's incorrect. I know Iranians who fled their country immediately after Khomeini's take-over, and they said that the incoming, murderous regime gathered up illiterate peasants from all over the country and trucked them into Tehran, gave them banners and instructions about how to display their "wild enthusiasm" for the cut-throats who were taking over. It was all a set-up, very similar to what Lenin did with the Russian "revolution."
I'm so glad you wrote that. I used to know a lesbian who fled Iran, and separately a man who'd fled long ago, and without prompting from me both of them went on and on about how basically once the actual revolution was over, a TINY core of loyalists to Khomeini held the door open for the mullahs to sweep in and say "Thanks we'll take it from here" and filled the leadership void.
NBC is sickening.