You know, the Ayatollah utterly sucks and has set Iran back 200 years. But the Shah was a dictator, installed in a CIA coup marked with murder, beatings, bribery and mass violence. A pretty decent guy was overthrown, but the British were in an oil dispute with him.
We -created- Savak which was right in the top tier of brutal intelligence agencies, torturing and murdering dissenters with no limits to what was allowed.
The problem in Iran wasn’t when the Shah was overthrown. The future misery of todays Iran was written in stone when we installed a brutal dictator to replace a popular Prime Minister on behalf of the Brits. It was totally predictable that the brutal killer that was our friend would be replaced by someone just as evil who wasn’t our friend.
Pretty sick.
Mosaddegh was and indeed still remains popular in Iran, but reading the history I think it’s pretty clear that he was setting himself up to replace the Shah as the strongman of Persia. He had emergency powers that allowed him to pass any law he saw fit. It is highly likely he would have driven Iran into the Soviet sphere of influence.
Mosaddegh’s removal only became possible when the Mullahs withdrew support. There’s no doubt in my mind that had he survived in power, he or someone who would follow Mosaddegh would have been overthrown just as the Shah was.
As for SAVAK, it was replaced by the worse SAVAMA. The head of SAVAK spared Ayatollah Khomeini when he was arrested, the bastard Khomeini repaid him by executing the former general when the clerics took over. Comparing the two regimes is like comparing Franco to Stalin.