The Brits and the Soviets made him king. The Brits and the CIA engineered the coup against his pro-Soviet PM, Mossadegh. That made the Shah more of a dictator.
“The Brits and the CIA engineered the coup against his pro-Soviet PM, Mossadegh”
Mossadegh had a decades long nationalist background along the lines of Ghandi. His only goal was to break Iran away from British rule. There isn’t a single episode in his life that indicates any affiliation with communism or the USSR.
He was quoted as saying he wasn’t wresting control away from England to invite in Russia to do the same thing. His crime was seeing that regaining control of the nations oil from the British seizure was critical to political independence. The Brits flatly refused to negotiate the return of what they claimed by force. So he nationalized the oil. Incidently, this is precisely what the UK does at home! The Crown owns all minerals, not the private landowner. And there is no way a foreign company can own british oil or minerals without permission and a lease.
He was not a pro-soviet at all. That was the 1953 CIA cover story.