Oon yaroo who gave him the watch Shazde Asdola Mirza nabood? I hear he lives in Toronto!

is he talking about "that" shah or the current shah?

or george lopez shah?

The most interesting to see Milani attack Shahbanou's friends : Shayegan, Hossein Nasr ( who never had a degree) Ehsan Naraghi in spreading their religious propaganda. 

Much of these guys or their children are today NIAC members ( you know JJ's Friends ;) ) pushing for the Obama nuclear deal ! 

No wonder Shahrvand RP was recuperated by this lot as their useful idiot and converted to becoming a "Pro Green reformist"  and "Pro Democracy" advocate  instead of remaining loyal to the 1906 Constitution. 

All that said Milani has a total misunderstanding of the monarchy as an institution

Clearly his American mindset doesn't grasp what the monarchy is. You cannot as a Monarch dissociate the Monarchy from Faith. The King is by definition the guardian of the faith so to have expected him to be Secular ( although he was in terms of governing) is absurd.

Is the Queen of England Secular ? Absolutely Not. 

Yet British Society and the political establishment are !

But like in his Book on the Shah Milani as always takes many shortcuts when it comes to explaining the revolution and the Shah's so called "mistakes". 

A few observations:

Hossein Nasr and his son Vali who is been running around in 'expert' circles for years along with many like them were foxes in the chicken coop and were/are the definition of vatan foroush. They propagated (along with Shariati, Soroush, A. Ganji...) this sinister idea that Iranians wanted to become Moslims (Torquoise Bridge) and Arab invasion facilitated it. I met that slimeball Nasr senior many years ago and could smell the stench despite a fancy suit and tie.

Milani is far from having an American mindset; In circles he hangs our around Stanford U. he needs to speak nicer of Shah but in all fairness his research and understanding has improved over the years from Anti-Shah to pro-Shah as evidenced in evolution of his writings.

Your understanding of Monarchy can be classified as misunderstood as well. Ala, first point, that guardianship of faith cannot be be guardianship of a faith that is diametrically at odds with Iranian character. In that sense Shah was certainly in the wrong and that one point alone was the pivotal reason that slimist finally succeeded in upending him.

The "The guardianship of a faith that is diametrically at odds with Iranian character" ...

The Shah did not choose the country's religion ... it was decided 14 centuries earlier by the Arab Invadors and ALL Persian Dynasties had to abide to the new faith.

To have expected the heir of a the young Pahlavi Dynasty (which had barely replaced the Qajar Dynasty ( many of whom became loyal ministers of the new Mondernizing Dynasty)) to change that perception by decree is simplistic.

Religion and Monarchy are mingled by definition ... it just happens that Iran's official state relgion became Shi'a Islam for reasons which I am sure you know better.

But if you look at even the PRe Islamic Persian rulers considered themselves as monarchs "anointed" by God. Hence why in Persepolis you see the Zoroastrian Fravahar above the Monarch's sepultures and Bas Reliefs. 

Milani loves to whitewash his own intellectual likeminds responsibility by falsely claiming that the revolution was "highjacked" but he overlooks all the opportunities the Shah used to reaffirm Iran's Pre Islamic Past as "cosmetics".

To name a few : The Persepolis Celebrations, the Change of the Persian Calender from Islamic to Shahanshahi, the Choice of "Arya Mehr" as title ( very much like the British Royals chose "Windsor" to reaffirm their "Britishness" as opposed to their German Roots). All one has to do is look at the  Shah's  photos in Uniform and notice that the Sword he has displays the Persian Zoroastrian Fravahar even if he wore the Zolfaghar Breastplate Medals. All these symbolic gestures were aimed at giving coherence to the Monarch's role as not only guardian of the Islamic Faith ( which was deeply rooted in IRanian Society and still is ) but also Iran's Pre Islamic Past and Royal Heritage. Why because Monarchy is about CONTINUITY ... as such  the Monarch who is the living embodiement of this  institution has to also embody this Continuity. This is what the Shah perfectly understood but Shahrvand Reza never did and why by jumping on the notion of Secularism he  has undermined his own legitimacy and become the laughing stock he is and unable to rally anyone of substance to revive the monarchical ideal he has inherited from his peers only to see it highjacked by the Velayeteh Fagih who very wisely has become the Zahak King of Iran under the cloak of the Islamic Republic which today appears as so difficult to uproot given the abscence of a serious ideological alternative to the new theocratical dynasty Abbas Milani's own "secular" Likeminds albeit themselves brought to existence.  

If the Shah's synthesis to combine his duties as a Mondernizing Monarch and guarantee the saveguarding of the state religion  ( as all his precessors did ... including the Qajars and  in accordance to the 1906 Constitution ) did not work it was not because the Shah made "Mistakes" or acted inaccordingly to his duties as Monarch but because the society he was ruling over and voluntarily pulling out of the middle ages and into the modern age was  exposed to western thought and expectations which were at odds with the notion of Monarchy as we know it.

The fact that most Iranian students like Milani himself were educated in American Universities at the time of the Vietnam War  and rebellious hypie youth culture didn't help (On a side note Milani used to have a girlfriend who belonged to the Black Panthers ). 

The Shah was faced with the impossible balancing act between offering a conservative and nationalistic justification for the  prevailance of monarchy and allowing Society to evolve along progressive thoughts and ideas necessary to his modernizing ambitions. Where Milani is correct is that the Shah's inner circle ( actually the Shahbanou's) were working against the system rather than for it. The Shah found himself having to promote liberal ideas which could satisfy his powerful ally the United States upon whose support he had to rely on in the face of the Soviet Threat ( the invasion of Afghanistan and the attack by Saddam's Pro Soviet Regime a year after the revolution prove that his concerns were justified) but at the same time maintain the authoritative nature of the monarchy while liberalizing ( far too quickly) society. Historians like Houshang Nahavandi are right when they claim that It was actually the Shah's liberalization of the political forces which caused his end because he proceeded too quickly and particularly at a time where economic problems were starting to loom in society. Had he kept a right balance and not given in to foreign demands and pressures to liberalize and free political prisoners, he probably would have died in power very much like the King of Thailand only to leave his Son "Shahrvand" Reza face an inevitable revolution of his own making ( which given his incompetence and political clumsiness would certainly have occured).

So it is not modernization which put an end to the Shah's rule but rather Westernization ( which was inevitable given that we depended on Western goods and services) which the Shah was actually trying to avoid by bidding on using the Oil Revenues to make Iran's economically self sufficient. Hence his investing in Eurodif's nuclear program and his bid to export medication and cars by building Iranian industrial infrastructures which he hoped would have turned Iran into the equivalent South Korean economic model for the Middle East. Had the revolution not happened he would have achieved that goal of Modernizing without Westernizing society and bring back the element of nationalism necessary to guarantee Iran's independence from Foreign powers. 

The West saw that and that is why they conspired to topple him and ultimately did ... with some help from the Shah's own inner circle. Shayegan, Nasr and Reza Gotbi influencing the Shah's last speech hint in retrospect that what happened in IRan ressembled not a revolution but a Palace Consiracy to uproot the monarch.  

As Amir Aslan Afshar's testimony reveals in how the Shahbanou's inner circle undermined the ailing and undecisive Shah too ill and depressed to make the right decisions:

So no Milani may be more indulgent towards the Shah  but he is in no way indulgent towards the concept of Monarchy which again he misunderstands both in terms of what the duties of the monarch are as well as his misinterpretations of the parameters under which a monarch can operate and manoeuvre without jeopardizing his own legitimacy.

Food for Thought :

Monarchy and religion: is now the time for such reform? (guardian, 2008)