I will try to explain it as clearly as I can, but it is somewhat complex. Here's a link to another person relating the same events.
Carter's big thing was "human rights." The Shah routinely used his secret police to round up troublemakers in Iran. Generally they would toss them in prison, often torture them into revealing their contacts and plans, and sometimes exile or execute them.
Jimmy Carter went on the Warpath against the Shah's perceived "Human Rights" abuses, and called him out on the World Stage. He also made policy decisions regarding imports and exports to Iran on the basis of his feelings about the Shah's "Human Rights" abuses.
The Shah responded to Jimmy Carter's constant harangues about how evil of a ruler he was by loosening restrictions on dissidents and trouble makers. The Shah did not want to be seen world wide as "the bad guy", so the Shah relaxed his control.
What Jimmy Carter didn't realize is that these people whom the Shah was controlling were the religious nut jobs who regarded the Shah's efforts to Westernize the nation as decadent and evil.
By relaxing his grip, and allowing these religious nutjobs to freely meet and plan against him, he placed his own authority at risk. One of the ways in which the Shah relaxed control, Again thanks to the constant demand he do so from Jimmy Carter, was to allow the Religious Nutjob exile "Ayatollah Khomeini" back into the country, and to allow him to resume preaching to his followers.
When the entirely predictable Islamic revolution commenced, Jimmy Carter urged that the Iranian Military take no action against the revolutionaries, and he strongly urged the Shah not to use lethal force to stop them. He denied all requests for assistance from the Shah in stopping the revolutionaries from seizing power in Iran, and basically cheered on the Revolution at every stage of the game.
Before it was over, the Shah was fleeing the country, and Iran was in the hands of the most vile religious kook fanatics that the world had ever seen. But Jimmy Carter was okay with it, because it represented "Democracy in action." The Will of the people had spoken, and they chose these leaders and that form of government.
That "the people" consisted of religious fanatics did not seem to make a dent in Jimmy Carter's naive world view. That the consequence of him more or less urging the toppling of the Shah of Iran would result in a million deaths just a few years later was beyond his ability to understand.
What stupid Jimmy Carter didn't grasp was that in a Muslim society, the only thing that matters is strength. Vicious suppression of dissidents is absolutely necessary in order to maintain power in a Muslim dominated society, because the Muslims only respect a man who kills and is willing to kill to stay in power.
By tolerating dissent, the Shah was perceived as "weak" and "unfit" to rule a Muslim nation. Jimmy Carter did not understand that you can't apply Christianity based sensibilities to a society that does not share those sensibilities or even respect them.
That is a more or less quick synopsis of what Jimmy Carter did, and I have read articles that go into far more detail and depth regarding his bungling of Foreign policy in relation to Iran. Needless to say, he has let a very evil force into the world, and I dare say it won't be dealt with until after millions of innocent people are dead.
As for the Shah's execution of dissidents. In a thirty year period, the Shah's secret police killed around three thousand to four thousand dissidents.
In the First year, the Ayatollah Khomeini's Islamic nut jobs killed nearly ten thousand. All of those Iranian Military officers which the Jimmy Carter government advised to cooperate with the new government were executed. Following Jimmy Carter's advice cost them their lives.
The subsequent executions and oppressions dwarf anything the Shah ever did. And now we are facing a Nuclear Iran led by religious fanatics. This is only going to get worse.
that is the most disgusting thing i’ve heard in a while.
he needs to just go away.
imagine, I was 8 years old when the seeds of a nuclear armed religious fanatic run Iran were being planted,
i knew he was bad. I didn’t know he was a traitor and evil
A more generous soul might be tempted to call them idiots who failed to learn from history, but I don't think this is correct. I think that they know exactly what they're doing, and that their goal is to have a morass of sectarian strife or Islamists running the Middle East, as both suit their purposes.
If Ike simply didn’t listen to Churchhill in 1953, all of the drama you described could have been avoided.
Western intervention in the ME going back to WW1 (WTF was Kuwait before WW1? Syria? Iraq?) has been a complete disaster