Try being a dissident in the Syria of Hafez al-Assad, or the Iran if Saddam Hussein, Nasser's Egypt or even King Hussein's Jordan and King Faisal's Saudi Arabia! In short, any Middle Eastern country!
The Shah was conciliatory\weak when he should have been strong, strong when he should have been conciliatory, so he ended up being contemptible. He wasn't his grandfather, who was a tough old cavalry man! the Shah and his family were always a step out of touch with the population. His family's first language was French not Farsi; stories about them remind me of stories of the last Romanov.
That's not to say they should have been allowed to fall! It's all on Carter. It set the stage for the rise of Islamic fundamentalism!
Typo
“.. the Iran if Saddam Hussein...”
Should read
“.. the Iraq of Saddam Hussein ..”
I guess I am more sensitive to that because they killed the fathers of some classmates during the revolution. The Mullahs killed some too.
To an 18 year old kid who “believed” that governments we were in bed with would not kill their military leaders…it left a mark. Other classmates killed in the Iran/Iraq war made “more sense.”
I heard some pretty scary stories of people being disappeared and tortured that were pretty close to first hand.
That whole part of the world is messed up.