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?