The shah wasn't booted simply because Carter said so. He was booted because his own people were tired enough of him and his gestapo to force a change.
None of what I say exonerates Carter...he was the worst POTUS in the 20th Century.
And, using the regime that the iranians got stuck with as an argument for why they should have kept the shah is a straw-man. They thought they would do better and got screwed. Nobody knew what was coming.
Finally, are you or your parents iranian ex-pats enjoying the freedoms that even California offers?
Come now former law enforcement. Carter refused to sell Iran rubber bullets and crowd control water gun engines. Try controlling a hostile crowd without them and without killing them.
He set up the Guadeloupe meeting to stymie any help for the Monarchy. Read Carter's Illegal demands on the Shah at http://www.antimullah.com and get a better picture of reality at the time.
Both Alan and I were there. Were you? Did you have a hands on role?
Or did you get your information locally from the Mass Media that was instigated to do a character assassination? Or were you influenced by the organized crowds in the USA which tried to prevent him getting medical treatment for his terminal cancer?
The late Shah was dethroned because the Soviets went all out to do so and their Tehran Embassy became the center of operations against the Shah and support base - including some dozen Soviet Urban Guerilla tactics psychologists who did all the tactical planning to put the Marxist-Islamists MEK and Fedayeen in power. The Mullahs stole the revolution from the Soviets and were not the intended recipients of it.
To know more about what you so readily comment, you would need to have seen in from inside the G2 of the Shah and been privy to all the daily tactics the Soviets were doing to depose him and through their Tudeh (Communist party) and MEK surrogates finally get access to warm waters via Iran.
The "people" to whom you refer as the major players were catspaws used to achieve an aim through these players.
Khomeini had to initially include a 10 Touman banknote (roughly a $10 equivalent in buying power) inside every sandwich his organizers provided to the rent a crowds to get them to come into the streets in any numbers. Later fervor took over when the Shah showed weakness in dealing with them.
Specially when Khomeini promised everyone who would follow and support him a free house, free color television, free refrigerator, free automobile and free utilities. PLUS a share in the country's oil revenues!!
Heck! With that as a reward and the lack of sophisitication to realize that this would exceed the annual world budget to produce, you still think people did it on principle? Or because they were fed up?
A very limited few did. The rest were inspired and whipped into frenzy by the Soviet tactics and the masses by the prospect of being paid to sit at home and pick their noses just for existing.
Do check your facts and get real. And remember some 60% of the population were under the age of 25 - idealistic but inexperience and politically actually ignorant. How hard is it to whip up a cross section like that? A tinder box in gunpowder, similar to any University campus let alone an unsophisticated people like those in Iran at the time and similar to what's there now.