Except for the mullahs, no one wanted a theocratic state. During the Shah's reign you could buy Playboy at the newsstands, drink alcohol, and women could dress in a Western style, which most in Tehran did. There was an Israeli trade mission in Tehran. There were over 70,000 private sector Americans living and working there. We had over 1,000 people attached to our Embassy, consulates, and military facilities. It all changed overnight.
Anyone who knows anything about the Iranian Revolution understands how Khomeini hijacked the Revolution. I know firsthand what happened based on the communications between our Embassy and Washington. I have no idea what your source of information is, but it is bogus. Robin Wright has probably written the most accurate account of what happened along with Amb Bill Sullivan's and John Limbert's (hostage) books.
But there’s no competition, right? That sort of thing just doesn’t happen. Riiiight.
How dense are you? The "competition" was between the mulllahs and the other elements of the coalition, many of them secular. It was a power struggle. The mullahs won.
Robin Wright wrote: "For the first presidential election in January 1980, a full year after the revolution, Ayatollah Khomeini decreed that no clerics could run for president -- further proof that he still didn't intend to establish a total theocracy. Over the next 18 months, however, Iran was wracked by bloodshed as the ruling clergy and their adjutants gradually eliminated former partners -- leftists, nationalists and intellectuals--from any claim to power."
Iran became fully Islamist in October 1981, when the cleric Ali Khamanei won the third presidential election -- the first election in which clerics were allowed to run. "As of October 1981," Wright wrote, "the mullahs were no longer only the supervisors and shadows of the state. They now dominated all its branches."
It really is a fact that Carter helped topple the Shah.
Sorry that or any other facts presented.
Say, how about post 77, or theorias links?
I also don’t see your thread laying out point by point showing that Christianity and Islam are comparable.
http://www.freerepublic.com/tag/religion-forum/index
Can you point it out?
At the time, a senior Iranian diplomat in Washington observed, "President Carter betrayed the Shah and helped create the vacuum that will soon be filled by Soviet-trained agents and religious fanatics who hate America." Under the guise of promoting" human rights," Carter made demands on the Shah while blackmailing him with the threat that if the demands weren't fulfilled, vital military aid and training would be withheld. This strange policy, carried out against a staunch, 20 year Middle East ally, was a repeat of similar policies applied in the past by US governments to other allies such as pre Mao China and pre Castro Cuba.
Legacy of the Shah haunts the Carter Administration
He was in the habit of accusing Mohammad Reza - and even issuing "polite reminders" on the matter - of human rights violations, allegations which have been made morally suspect by recent American history. While the Shah did use the powers of a king to imprison those opposed to him, his favored targets for this action were communist sympathizers during the cold war and Islamic fundamentalists in a religiously turbulent region. Islamic Fundamentalists, it should be said, who were responsible for terrorist bombings in Iran, and Communists who, left unchecked, threatened to topple the Shah. Carter seemed unsympathetic to these realities, demanding that the Shah release imprisoned terrorists.
Jimmy Carter Created Islamic Iran, Why Isn't He Speaking out Against its Abuses ?
Carter viewed Khomeini as more of a religious holy man in a grassroots revolution than a founding father of modern terrorism. Carter's ambassador to the UN, Andrew Young, said "Khomeini will eventually be hailed as a saint." Carter's Iranian ambassador, William Sullivan, said, "Khomeini is a Gandhi-like figure." Carter adviser James Bill proclaimed in a Newsweek interview on February 12, 1979 that Khomeini was not a mad mujahid, but a man of "impeccable integrity and honesty."
What Really Happened to the Shah of Iran? [Carter + British]
"In November 1978, President Carter named the Bilderberg group's George Ball, another member of the Trilateral Commission, to head a special White House Iran task force under the National Security Council's Brzezinski. Ball recommended that Washington drop support for the Shah of Iran and support the fundamentalistic Islamic opposition of Ayatollah Khomeini. Robert Bowie from the CIA was one of the lead 'case officers' in the new CIA-led coup against the man their covert actions had placed into power 25 years earlier.