Saint? Those aren’t usually appointed to be leaders of a country; very rare when that ever happened.
The Shah was fighting to keep the terrorists from taking over his country and using the only means that would work, but the liberal west kept telling him to stop. That’s the truth.
There’s also a difference between a king and a dictator. The last Shah was no dictator, but the same cannot be said for people in his parliament (such as the Islamic socialist Mohammed Mossadegh, the darling of the left who was not elected no matter how they lie that he was).
I’m not saying that Mossadegh was some type of saint either. I’m not like the left, going to prop up the guy who was on my side and overlook his transgressions. Mossadegh was a communist who was going to ensure that was the last election held. He was going to ally himself with the USSR. They were both bastards, it’s just that the Shah was our bastard and he won out. It didn’t hurt that he was “royalty” and had a claim to the mantle.
I’m not ripping on the USA by saying this. I’m just stating truth. We had no viable choices to support back then and we couldn’t let Iran go commie. People that don’t understand that either never lived through the cold war or were cheering for the other side. They were strange times as far as cold war relationships.