>>>”The Middle East for all its intrigues is like a Abbott and Costello act.”<<<
>>>”even those educated in the Eu or here and are intelligent fold completely when it comes to their Islamic teachings and what the Mullahs demand of them. It can be no other way for those who take Islam seriously”<<<
The “Middle East” is a big place, involves many countries and people.
For Iranians (even muslim ones) specifically, the most notable & visible anti-Shah & pro-Khomeini demonstrations (to begin with and outside Iran), came from ex-pat Iranians in the U.S.; many sent to the U.S. on scholarship paid by the Shah’s govt.
Since then, more than several prominent pro-khomeini, pro-revolution Iranians have been disillusioned. The revolution killing and exiling its own, at one time, diehard proponents.
Islam now plays a secondary role for at least 50% of Iranians (my guesstimate). Two other key factors remain. One is money and the second is fear. And the Iranian mullahs are very good at using both as leverage with Iranians.
“pro-Khomeini demonstrations (to begin with and outside Iran), came from ex-pat Iranians in the U.S.; many sent to the U.S. on scholarship”
And very significantly, France. Long and strong relations between Persia and France. Iranians have even adopted some basic French words, like Merci , for thank you. When Khomeni came to Tehran after the overthrow of the Shah, he came from Paris on an Air France flight.
There is a significantly more widespread hard left culture in France than here. They are sometimes credited with originating much of that perverse culture and school of thought during the French Revolution, with the first of history’s many “Red Terrors”. It was to Paris that Karl Marx fled when he was first exiled for revolutionary coup activities, from Germany.
In the 1920’s, Ho Chi Mihn started his political career in the Fench Socialist Party. Michel Aflaq developed the philosophy of the Nazi-like Baath Party while a student in Paris (at the Sorbonne) in the 1920’s, but put his degree to work as a communist organizer for several years until Baathist “Arab Nationalism” became popular. In the 1930’s, socialism based on race rather than class (like the Baath) became popular indeed, when longtime communists like Benito Mussolini and many of the early founders of the National Socialist German Workers Party (Nazi) flocked to the new modern re-branding for collectivist dictatorship.
In the 1940’s, so many French were more sympathetic to their socialist brethren in the Nazi Party than to their own government, that many refused to fire their weapons at them, and the Nazis marched into Paris with unexpectedly few casualties and getting pretty good gas mileage. Vichy France tried to Out-Nazi the Nazis, instituting some racial and religious oppression laws in France even before Germany had them. French Nobel Prize winner Alexis Carrel, an early proponent of eugenics and euthanasia is sometimes cited as the originator of the proposal to use gas chambers for eliminating genetic undesirables, way back in the 30’s.
In the 1950’s, Paris was the hotbed for recruiting and training the cadre of the Khmer Rouge - including Pol Pot himself.
When the population of Iran rose up in widespread demonstrations after the mullahs stole the 2009 elections in Iran (The “Green Revolution”), French security launched coordinated raids on the offices of Iranian opposition groups in France, and seized their computers. The next week, the Iranians were rounding up the ringleaders and activists by the hundreds - lots were killed, imprisoned, tortured and raped.
If you are looking for external influences on politics around the world, don’t forget France. They have many areas of interest and influence. Lebanon, Syria and Iran are among them.