[Olog-hai]

I don’t “claim” your sources are left wing; they are left wing. I really would like to see some unbiased viewpoints here. The Shah was beset, ever since the Mossadegh debacle, by Islamists and communists; he was in a very precarious position and I do not know what else he could have done to defend it.

To exchange the Shah for the Mullahs is, again, not indicative of an alleged “pro-Western” majority of Iranians. I think you agree with me on that score; I’m not sure. It certainly is a chicken-egg reversal if anyone implies that the Shah instituted SAVAK when the country was not in danger—and it still speaks volumes that his fall came with the US pulling support out from under him.

[Old Teufel Hunden]

"To exchange the Shah for the Mullahs is, again, not indicative of an alleged “pro-Western” majority of Iranians. I think you agree with me on that score;"

I don't believe I said that they were pro western. If I did, what I meant was to say that they were more anti-Shah than anything else. I doubt most of them are pro Mullahs right now. It's just that they don't want to be carted off somewhere and never heard from again. For the Iranian people, they merely traded one form of totalitarism for another more religious form of it.