Under the reign of the Shah, Mohammad Reza Pahlavi, Iran was a modern, secular state prior to the 1979 Revolution where the Shah was overthrown and the radical Mullahs took over, turning Iran into the theocratic, misogynistic, bastion of Islamic fundamentalism and sharia that it is today.
Business Insider In the decades before the Islamic revolution of 1979, Iran was ruled by the Shah, who pushed the country to adopt Western-oriented secular modernization, allowing some degree of cultural freedom. Under the Shah’s rule, Iran’s economy and educational opportunities expanded. Britain and the US counted Iran as their major ally in the Middle East, and the Shah forcefully industrialized large segments of the country.
For a period of almost 40 years, the Shah led Iran through a series of sweeping changes.
UPDATE: Brief interview with Reza Pahlavi from Israel:
Peter Hofman says
The 1953 Iranian coup d’état, known in Iran as the 28 Mordad coup d’état (Persian: کودتای ۲۸ مرداد), was the U.S.- and UK-instigated, Iranian army-led overthrow of the democratically elected Prime Minister Mohammad Mosaddegh in favor of strengthening the monarchical rule of the shah, Mohammad Reza Pahlavi,
Peter Hofman says
This debacle started with the coup organized by USA and England against Mosaddegh the nationalist who wanted full control over the Iranian oil .
Rebel Patriot says
I was serving on a U.S. navy ship in the Persian Gulf before the Shah was overthrown. On the way back across the Atlantic to the U.S. we on the ship heard on the radio that the Shah had been overthrown. A very sad day. The late 1970’s were a very tumultuous time and it never ends. The world is on a powder keg now and waiting for the fuse to be lit.
BareNakedIslam says
RP, I just added a clip from a short interview with Pahlavi in Israel now.
Ray Jarman says
In my humble opinion that so many lives lost around the world can be traced back to the day that Jimmy Carter pulled the rug from under the Shaw of Iran. There were no major conflicts in the Middle East until that point. With the US no longer protecting Iran, Iraq under Saddam Husein felt free to obtain Iranian territory via the military and when he failed so miserably, he invaded Kuwait to refill his coffers. The U.S. enters the conflict and then 9/11 with hundreds of thousands of lives taken as a result. North Africa had been relatively calm, Syria and its neighbors were without any major strife. Egypt would not have had to endure the so-called Arab Spring. There was no ISIS or Boko Haram and Turkey was a delightful place to visit. I was even able to drive from Diyarbakir to Aleppo in 1984 after having from Ankara to Diyarbakir while working for NATO in my own vehicle without any escort.
Had Carter not forced the Shaw off the thrown, the chances that little if none of the heartbreaking incidents of the past would ever have happened. To this day, I feel that Carter should be prosecuted for the destruction of once beautiful places and nice people slaughtered by his stupidity.
BareNakedIslam says
Ray, I never thought about it like that but I think you could be onto something there.
Reader says
It was Carter who approached the ayatollah’s people who were in exile in France, and not the ayatollah who approached him.
Carter said the US would not intervene on the Shah’s behalf should the ayatollah return to Iran, which led to the events that followed.
Why he did it has never been explained. I have sometimes thought it had nothing to do with Iran itself but the Iranians long friendship with Israel and Carter’s bitter lifelong hatred of Israel.
BareNakedIslam says
Carter used to be considered the worst US president since WWII, but Biden took that crown away from him.
sixlittlerabbits says
Ah, the Shah. He made major advances, but unfortunately one of our stupidest Presidents Jimmy Carter did not back the Shah when his regime was in danger. A very bad decision, because the Shah and his family fled and the vile Ayatollah Khomeini took over Iran and restored and reanimated the Caliphate, leading to all the barbarism we have today. SHAME, SHAME ON JIMMY CARTER. I was young at the time but had an inkling that Carter’s failure to back the Shah was a bad move.
In addiition, the Shah was a celebrity who entertained the “beautiful people” (socialites and royalty and celebs) of the Western World. For a while, the Shah’s marriage was a subject of gossip that was soap-opera-like. Eventually, he divorced his wife Soraya because she could not conceive. He then married Farah Diba, who gave him the children he needed, including the son who is participating in the remembrance of the Shoah.