Bitter Rivals: Iran and Saudi Arabia, Part One (full film) | FRONTLINE

It’s a little more complicated than that. Back in the mid-50s a CIA/British Intel operation ousted the democratically elected Prime Minister (who was nationalizing oil) and elevated the Shah. Unfortunately, Reza Pahlavi might have been the least charismatic human ever born, which makes for an awful king and a worse dictator. And the lengths he went to to maintain power and quell dissent were as extreme as any dictator’s. Iran is the mess we make when we violate our own ideals.

SFC Marcus Belt - I agree the CIA screwed up in 1954. The idea America is responsible for the activities of the current A -holes is ridiculous. I remember Time magazine pushing the idea that the people who were going to take over after the Shah of Iran was gone were these western educated folks who were going to have a golden benign government with western enlightenment and Islamic over tones. It is my opinion that the end of World War One was the real start when the old Ottoman Turk empire was carved up. If you really want to blame some one start with the Ottoman Turks.

LTC David Brown - Not entirely to blame, but the fact is that the US did remove a democratically elected government. Iranians remember that. My Control Language was Persian Farsi, so I had to get hip deep in their culture, both pre- and post- Revolution. The main grievance against the Shah was his illegitimacy as an American puppet dictator--that and the fact that a jar of mayonnaise has more personality--and it was his own personal insecurity that caused him to send the Ayatollah into exile rather than...you know, getting rid of him...as he had other dissenters before.

Time magazine was clearly out to lunch in their prediction, which was probably mostly wishful thinking, but people who were up to date on Iranian internal politics were saying otherwise from the mid-60s, if I recall.