I’m talking 1953 when we supported the Shah against a communist sympathizer. Do you think it would have been better for a leftist/communist friendly government to take over Iran rather than the Shah? And Reagan was elected after the Iranian revolution of 1979 which put the Islamists in power. Because Carter let the Shah get deposed. I put a lot of government actions as stupid rather than evil. There is a distinction.
Let the communist sympathizer win. Then Russia is the bad guys backing a secularist dictator that becomes unpopular with the people and eventually gets overthrown. They get to be the Great Satan still hated by the people, they get to be the favorite target of terrorists, we get to keep the WTC, we don’t get stuck invading Afghanistan and Iraq. The big punchline of the Cold War is that we didn’t need to back the scumbags we backed, we know this because we won the Cold War a decade AFTER most of our favorite pets got overthrown.
There was really no “let” when Iran flipped. All the analysts said they weren’t going to have a revolution, next thing you know the revolution won. Iran went scary fast.
Backing a guy that you KNOW is executing his people in droves is evil. Period. We backed evil people, we backed people we KNEW were evil, and we helped them remain in power where they got to do more evil. That’s evil. Our government performed evil acts by helping evil people stay in power.