[odds]

The short and simple reason is because he ran a totalitarian oppressive regime and under those conditions, anyone else is not such a bad option. Just because he was our allay does not mean he wasn't a dictator.

You know what my regret is? That he wasn't a true enough dictator by your definition or any other definition. Had he been a real totalitarian dictator, there would've been no Islamist today in Iran, and we would not be having this discussion.

IOW, my regret is that Islamists mostly, and the Communists secondarily were not annihilated in Iran. They should have been, completely. No too bits given what others think.

One more point, an "ally" works two ways. I personally have no time for an ally that pretends to be an ally, then topples you at the earliest chance it gets. Alliance is fleeting, isn't it.

[Old Teufel Hunden]

"Alliance is fleeting, isn't it."

Yes, it is. I suspect that if five or ten years before his fall, the Shah would have submitted to a constitutional monarchy the Pahlavi dynasty would have continued. Of course we could have possibly kept him propped up. There would have been a lot of bloodshed there. The problem is that it wasnt' just the commies and islamists he was killing/torturing. It was the actual people who wanted some form of liberal democracy. A very similar situation to Egypt. There was a group of young students who wanted liberal western style rights and democracy, the movement got hijacked by the Islamist and we got the Muslim Brotherhood. The Islamists in Iran were more organized than the students. I suspect that a lot of the true revolutionists were killed of by Khomenie's cronies...