All you hear about from mainstream sources is how brutal the Shah’s regime was. I am sure there were a lot of autocratic aspects of the regime, and that political opponents were jailed-—but look what the guy was up against. Now compare Iran under the mullahs to when it was under the Shah-—a paradise compared to today.I remember speaking to one fellow who was a young teen living in Iran because his father worked for an American company. He said it was free like the US, but it wasn’t so repessive. When I spoke to him the Shah was still in power.
It was (and is) naive to expect a developing country in the islamic world to be perfect on matters like press freedom or political participation. But Iran was without a doubt ahead for it’s time and place, and most importantly it was allied with the West and attempting to become a Western country. What more to expect? Especially as you said the Shah was facing a constant threat of Communist and Islamist Extremism.
When I lived in Iran during the latter years of the Shah, he argueably was most autocratic (1974-78), and it was a wonderful place to live in with freedoms you can’t imagine in Iran today.
The Shah was a true Renaissance man...
but the leftists in the West preferred to support instead a savage barbarian mullah lunatic.