His father was an unelected tyrant though. Just because he was OUR puppet unelected tyrant doesn’t change that. The SAVAK was something you’d expect from an Islamic country. A dictator is a dictator, regardless of the fact he was preferable to the Mullahcracy.
Unelected, yes. He was King (Shah han Shahi: King of Kings), the last to sit the Peacock Throne.
Tyrant, hardly. He, as all monarchs, had political enemies. His tended to be a bit more ruthless and violent. From what I could see, he was introducing great reforms that brought his people out of the dark ages. Women held professional jobs (doctors, dentists, junior executives, etc.); they were even permitted to wear western attire and many abandoned the chadora.
I met the Shah at the Tehran Hilton shortly after we first arrived in Tehran. He was very kind, grandfatherly in fact. And spoke the most elequent english. Even as a kid I was impressed by him.
He was the Constitutional King, per the Constitution of 1908 and 1925 with powers increased in 1950, 3 years before the 1953 coup that returned him to power.
Just because he was OUR puppet unelected tyrant doesn’t change that.
I haven't anyone ever claim that he was a democratically elected leader.
The SAVAK was something you’d expect from an Islamic country.
You mean like the Soviet KGB, German GeStaPo or Stasi or the Romanian Securitate? What has this to do with "Islamic Country"? All these non-islamic organizations were considerably worse than SAVAK. Iran was the champion of progressive secularism (short of Turkey) in the Middle East then. SAVAK was needed exactly to keep down the Communist and Islamists terrorists, which are plagueing the world. If anything they weren't hard enough on these groups, although their sniffing around among ordinary Iranians was certainly counterproductive.
But it would do SAVAK injustice to reduce it to the third Bureau (interior). The SAVAK had several bureaus, the foreign espionage was EXCELLENT and in close cooperation with Israel and Turkey. The SAVAK knew of Saddam's WMD program since 1976 and warned the West on a Soviet Invasion in Afghanistan long before any other service.
A dictator is a dictator, regardless of the fact he was preferable to the Mullahcracy.
He was a democratic minded, constitutional Monarch 1941-1953 and an authoritarian Monarch 1953-1975. In the years 1975-1977 argueably he had adopted dictatorial tendencies. He wasn't a tyrant or bloodthirsty madman though, although the liberal/leftists and islamist propaganda loved to caricature him that way. Compared to any other dictator/tyrant, especially in the region, he was a saint. A pro-Western, enlightened, patriotic, modernist strongman who continued his father's legacy of dragging his country out of medieval torpor, ignorance and apathy towards a modern society with unprecedented social and economic freedoms, fending off Soviet encroachment and Islamist terror, sure as heck beats a Soviet or Mullah Iran.