I attended JC with Iranian students.Kids from well to do families-mostly high level govermental officials.They’d listen to tapes made by Khomeni(in exile in France at the time).They claimed the Shah and SAVAK were opressive,and Khomeni would change all that.Looks like reality is far different.
They had HOPE, they wanted CHANGE.
Khomeini DID change all that. He made it 10,000 times WORSE and made the Shah and his SAVAK look like choirboys.
Islam and Communism are very similar in structure where you kow-tow to a supreme leader and the regime provides for you. Unlike in a democracy where the people empower and provide for the government and in theory pay for the services they receive.
In Islamic Iran, the Mullahs clearly consider the oil, natural gas and other national revenues as their personal income and share some of it with the populace. Without any real accountability for what they steal into their private bank accounts or divert to terrorist groups outside the country.
Because Iran did not reach a level of political maturity from generations of democratic principles, the Shah was obliged to “run things” in a form of benevolant dictatorship. While he set up elections for Provincial Governors, City Mayors and councils, all the way down to village headmen so the people could practice and learn how to vote politically.
All this in the face of unrelenting attacks from the Tudeh Communists and affilialted groups like the National Front, who were probably the ones you met at JC. These were the groups that the Shah’s SAVAK dealt with, not the NJOe Six Pack who wanted to voice his opinion. Or did so without promoting the overthrow of the regime - mostly egged on by the Communists.
These admitted later that they wanted political freedom - NOT for the populace - but to be able to impose their “imported” philosophies, specially from the Soviet Union.
Even their hero Mossadegh was about to hand Iran and its oil to the Soviets to restore the previous Qajar dynasty of which he was a prominent family member.
He HATED the young Shah, who had appointed him his Prime Minister and was no “nationalist” as claimed and even his own family called him a totalitarian dictator in some of their memoirs, who would brook no advice nor any dissent. He courted the Soviets to gain strnegth against the Western powers who were not favorable to him as they feared the country falling into Soviet hands.
The CIA could not stand by and let him throw Iran into the Soviet sphere of influence and a path to warm waters. They restored the Shah, who was America’s best ally and another Soviet influenced leader, some say Soviet mole, Jimmuh the idiot Carter, destroyed this ally and created the terrorist environment in which we live.
Had the Shah remained in place it is highly unlikely that the Middle East would ever have faced the current disasters. The coviets would not have invaded Afghanistan, Saddam Hussein woul dnot have dared invade Kuwait with the Shah at his flank and Islamist would not have the support and operational bases they have now.