Opinion of Mohammad Reza Shah Pahlavi

[TDAS04]

Well?

[TDAS04]

I understand the argument that a brutal dictator is an automatic HP (and Operation Ajax was wrong), but it was a plus that Iranian women in the 1970s had more social freedom than women in even some Western countries (which Iranian women certainly did not enjoy have after the 1979 revolution).  The Ayatollah was by far a greater HP.

[TDAS04]

Pure HP, I don't even see how he's a better alternative, only liberalism tells us that.

Under the Shah, people could generally live as they pleased, as long as they weren't seen as a threat to the government.  The same cannot be said of the the theocracy that followed.

That does not excuse the Shah's brutality.  He was bad, but the Ayatollah was unquestionably far worse.