Henry Kissinger in Years of Upheaval in relation to the Shah and his fall wrote; “What overthrew the Shah was a coalition of legitimate grievances and an inchoate accumulation of resentment aimed at the very concept of modernity and at the Shah’s role as a moderate world leader. The Shah was despised less for what he did wrong than for what he did right. He was brought down by those who hated reform and the West; who were against absolute rule only if it was based on secular principles. The immediate victors were not enlightened dissidents of liberal democratic persuasion but the most regressive group in Iranian society: the religious ayatollahs who identified human dignity not with freedom and progress but with an ancient moral and religious code.”
And the Shah called these groups as Black Reactionary and Red Reactionary gangs... ((Referring to Marxists and Islamists who were trying to fight his reign and I think he was very true))