In the absence of civil institutions, you can’t expect the general public to understand the intricacies of a democratic society and behavior, hence the need to a benovelant autocrat to facilitate the transition into a democratic society. Pretty much what was happening in Iran prior to the revolution. What baffles the hell out of me is seeing considerable members of diaspora being alienated to democratic behavior even though they have exposure to it courtesy of the host societies they live in. 40 years on and many still double and triple down on the single dimensional evaluation of events. Weird!

Only if I may... At best His Majesty the Great AryaMehr, King of Kings(and the rest of that funny stuff) was a reluctant dictator betrayed by His own imperial court which included his promiscuous twin sister, and at worst he was a wretched schizophrenic who was delusional about his own grandiosity... Now... May I cordially beg our learned Shahollahies/ Shahologists to point out the specific paragraph in the Persian Constitution of 1906 which permitted him to do whatever he did. Thanks...

Our last monarch was a good, benevolent man who did what he thought was best to do as a king for a backward shithole country to bring it into the fold of the modern, civilized ones. But he failed. That's all... He gets credit for trying, though, that's for sure...

Piyalechi, it was the ppl who failed. Not the Shah. He tried to drag a nation of dumbass dahatis to the 20th century. Ppl have to have liyaqat for an advanced modern society. They didn’t have the liyaqat for Shah. They deserve these akhonds instead. They deserve reesh and pashm and smelly socks in masjed. They deserve aftabeh, dampayee, and marqad-e mottahar. This country and its ppl got what they deserved.

Dude, your comment here is spot on. The poor Shah wanted--and succeeded to a consdierable degree-- to transform Iran from an Afghanistan type feudal state into a modern one. His whole "White Revolution" intiative (which the paid off mullahs and clueless communists opposed) transformed Iran's feudal economy into a modern, nationwide, and world class economy. And let's not forget a modern military, poilce system, banking system, airline, roads, electrical grid, etc. Also, let's not forget his emphasis on education, where he spent hundreds of millions of dollars not just on education inside the country, but also on sending a bunch of undeserving olaghs to the U.S. and Europe to become his enemies (due to their low IQs and utter stupidity), ruin the country, and then put their tails behind their legs, run away from the revolutionary utopia that they created, return to the West, become "college professors," and still badmouth him 40 years later.

But as you have said before, "khalayegh har cheh layegh." One other point is that Iranians (mainly due to their backwardness) are always a decade or so behnind in everyting. The sad/funny thing in the whole 1979 Devolution was that what you saw play out in the streets of Iran in 1979 was actually a mimicking of the 1960's leftist protests in the West. But by the late 1970's the world had moved on from that fad, but Iranian "an-tellectuals" had just disovered it and, well, the rest is history. Idiots!

I'm also curious on what has happened to the 7.5 olaghs in this picture. Probably all dead or in exile now.

AO,

Several interesting points here you bring up:

1. About "the Olaghs": I remember reading somewhere (was it Frye's 'Greater Iran' book maybe?) that people like Jalal Al Ahmad were actually part of a Fulbright exchange program or something? The dude actually toured all the great places of America (Boston, D.C., NY, Syracuse University, Washington University St Louis, ...). He even wrote a travel diary on his US visit which has been published as a book. 

2. You said: "what you saw play out in the streets of Iran in 1979 was actually a mimicking of the 1960's leftist protests in the West". Dude, I have been thinking about this for a long time. What interests me is not the delay of 10 years, but that it was virtually the leftist liberal contrarian anti-establishment movement in the 60s US that served as a role model for these dimwits in Iran. That, and the fact that Jimmy Carter gave the Shah a cold shoulder in the late 70s, always will stick in my mind as a sore wound. Effectively, if you think about it, the fucking Democrats played a pretty big role in the demise of the Pahlavi era. And it pisses me off. If the GOP wasnt so in the pocket of Evangelicals and so hell bent on anti-environmentalism, I'd be voting Republican.

3. In the past 10 years, I did some deep digging on the Shah's legacy specifically on higher education. What I found was that Iran's entire higher education system is almost completely indebted to Shah and his dad. They literally built the entire fucking modern university system of Iran. People do not remember, and it is now largely forgotten, but in almost every large American university, there were scholarships set up by the Shah for Iranian students. Numerous colleges in America had some gift from the Shah, either in the form of million dollar endowments (USC, GWU, Penn, etc) or even as simple as the rug under the president's office (U of Tennessee). The Shah spent vast amounts of money to create a lasting relation between American higher education and Iran. We're talking hundreds of universities. That alone made me a Shah fan. Even Empress Farah was so generous as to fund Seyed Hosein Nasr and Allameh Tabatabaei to write publicity works on Islam, islamic architecture and history, etc. Look at their book "Shia Islam". In the first pages it even mentions how they wrote the book in collaboration with Colgate University and Empress Farah's willingness to help advertise Iranian culture on multiple fronts! That's why I say ppl didnt (and dont) have Liyaqat!

4. I can still remember you telling me: "Iranians are not as smart as they think they are, but actually pretty dumb". Initially I was resistant to such blasphemy. But after years now, Ive come to the conclusion that we, as a people, are indeed very dumb. Analyzing myself, I realized that my experience was merely based on the interactions I had with Iran's elite when I went to school at U Tehran. Naturally, I was interacting with the top 1% of Iran's smartest people. And yes, they were smart as hell. All of my peers ended up either in silicon valley or have become professors at Ivy League or Stanford etc. (I was at the bottom 10% of my class at U-Teh, and even I got the job offer as Assistant Prof at Yale :-) ). But now, I have finally come to accept that statisctically speaking, overall, Iranians on a whole are dumb as fuck. How else can you explain the history of Iran in the past 40 years? The apathy. The fatalism. The backstabbing. The lies and moral/cultural degradation. The stupidity of what happened and happens. I mean, if this is not stupidity, then I dont know what is.

Your negativity about Iranians flies into the face of what we have been observing for the past 40 years of Rule of Islamist Fascism in our country. Tens of thousands of brightest and best of two generations of Iranians have sacrificed their  lives to free Iran from the yoke of Islamist Fascism. Yet the resistance to the rule of Islamist Fascism has not only been broken, but also is getting more organised and stronger. As we speak, thousands of students, workers , intelectuals, women, people of all walks of lives are challenging the Fascist Regime on the streets, at the factories and colleges. The  Islamist Fascists are badly shaken and can see the deadly storm on the horizon. I am surprised you dont see it.

40 years is a lifetime. This storm has been arriving for 40 years now. Not everyone has the patience to wait for people to overthrow the regime. 

The stupid mule will not obey unless the wet stick is used.

What have you done for your community?

Hey man - sorry for the delayed response. I've been out and about and have not been checking this site. Dude, we're f**ked. One other factor in this whole mess is the extreme success of the IR in eliminating all internal and external opposition, and to also gooz-peach (as my father puts it) the overwhelming majority of the Iranians inside --and especially outside-- of the country defend its positions whether they like it or not. That alone should go down in history books as one of IR's great successes. And no, Iranians are not smart. Look at it this way: 2500 years of history and all we have to show for is a half dozen poetry books! Innovations is a sign of high IQ, and we pretty much have had none. Surely, just like in any other population, statistically you will find variations; hence, the successful ones. But that's not the whole population. Plus, Iranians (like Indians) have a tendency to study and memorize a lot. That's not high IQ. It's just repetition. Think about it this way: if Iranians are as smart as they think they are, why would they be the only country in the world that is ruled by an official theocracy? Who in its right mind goes through a whole revolution and then creates the abomination that is "velayat faghih?" Seriously....smart my rear end!