Compared to other Middle Eastern rulers the Shah was moderate. He & his family were mostly incompetent (Some members of his family spoke better French then Farsi, and somewhat corrupt BUT again compared to the other ME rulers ..its not even close. In fact I think if the Shah was truly the tyrant you think it was then he would probably still be in power. Rememebr he merely jailed Khomeni then exiled him(What would Saddam, Assad or Nasser have done ?) and of course let Carter talk him into letting Khomeni return. His military advisors asked him to crack down HARD but he didn't he lost his nerve. He thought Uncle Sam wouldn't let him down...but we did !
The Shah's greatest failing was not that he was a stong ruthless despot, his greatest failing was he was a weak, vacillating despot. He ended up not be feard but held in contempt.
Now I am no fan of tyranny BUT compared to REAL tyrants of that time period the Shah was nothing in the tyrant department.
He should have read Machivelli and taken to heart the maxims about what a prince should do who was not of a ancient lineage. (Aside: The Shah's grandfather was the one who seized the state from a weak prince. He adopted the Pavlavi surname to give his essentially nothing family instant respectabilty. The Pavlavi are an ancient familiy name.) Machivelli says,' A prince who is not of an ancient lineage will have trouble maintaining his rule. Since the people are not in the habit of obeying him & his family. prince must be harsh but fair until the people acquire the habit of obeying him & his family. (Meaning crack down HARD when challenged BUT deal fairly with the people) He proved to weak to do either! He relied too much on a outside power (the USA) to keep him safe. According to Machivelli always a foolish thing to do !
I am very well read on the history of modern Iran. The shah was out of power and out of the country until Ike decided to put him back in. We orchestrated a coup against a legally elected government. It was communist in its leanings but the real sin it committed was to win in the Haague against GB in the case regarding who owns iran's oil.
A CIA AAR on this coup has been declassified (google operation Ajax or just Iran-coup-1953). It states in very clear language that the shah was an unwilling player who was "pathologically afraid". He was so reluctant that his sister was enlisted to shame him into action. When the first days of the coup went bad he fled to Italy and had to be dragged back. That is the unadulterated fact.
You suggest that the shah was soft compared to Saddam, Assad or Nasser, but what does that have to do with anything? These three pale in comparison to Hitler, Stalin, Amin or Pol Pot. I certainly don't imagine the SAVAK's victims and their families saying "well, let's put up with the torture and killings - it could always be worse."
The inescapable truths are that the shah was a coward and a puppet, and that his own people risked death (a gamble many of them lost) to throw him out. Carter might have made it easier after the fact but no content, respected, safe from their own government populace ever revolted because some foreign leader wanted them to do so.
The efforts here by a small cadre of iranians in safe exile to change history and elicit through lies freeper support for "our beloved shah", as one of them states frequently, pisses me off. Too many freepers know nothing about the true history and swallow this propaganda without a thought. The last thing I will ever endorse would be to risk even one American life to re-instate some cartoon dynasty.
The iranians threw out one despot. When they (not us - they) have had enough of the mullahs they'll do it again. I hope they do but I don't see any honest evidence that they are close to that day.
Did I say Merry Christmas?