I saw yesterday a documentary about the last empress of Persia. I give it in French for MM and in German for Nielsen, as I didn't find it in English translation, but that documentary sparked a research first about the Empress and second about the causes that led to the religious revolution, as it was said that the Soviets worked via their supporters together with the religious factions to counter the Americans.
https://www.arte.tv/fr/videos/074558-000-A/farah-diba-pahlavi-la-derniere-imperatrice/
https://www.ardmediathek.de/tv/kulturmatin%C3%A9e/Farah-Diba-Pahlavi-Die-letzte-Kaiserin/SWR-Fernsehen/Video?bcastId=19396202&documentId=56776576

First as ever the first line Wikipedia:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Farah_Pahlavi
In the documentary she came over as described in the wiki. She was and still is an energetic woman, who is still active in Paris for "her" Persia via the computer.

But as the documentary reffers to the Persian history during the Shah period I did also research for that history and the causes of the Mollah revolution.
One of the best works seems to be "A history of modern Iran" by Ervand Abrahamian
http://assets.cambridge.org/97805218/21391/frontmatter/9780521821391_frontmatter.pdf
Nowadays it seems not possible anymore to read the books freely on the internet as before...also see freely the films as before...
Perhaps I will buy the book to read it if I have time...available for 23 Euro...

Perhaps a hint why it got wrong (wrong in my opinion, not in that of the Ajatollas (spelling?)) is the following testimony:
https://www.independent.co.uk/voices/iran-shah-regime-1979-revolution-protests-liberal-reform-hassan-rouhani-ayatollah-khomeini-a8141311.html


And a kind of conspiracy theory, although on the serious JStor...I have access via the grandson...but it is a difficult procedure to get there...
https://www.jstor.org/stable/25482569?seq=1#page_scan_tab_contents


But at the end I found the causes of the Shah's downfall at the many times denigrated Wiki
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Background_and_causes_of_the_Iranian_Revolution

And now is the American government working to undermine the in my opinion revival of what remained from the Shah period, the critical Western minded population that want change from the clerics...
And the Americans did it already in Afghanistan, supporting the muhaidjeen (spelling?) against the Soviets to try to let collapse the regime (Berzinsky...I think that I already made a thread about this on our forum) and now have to fight this same religious factions until today...

Kind regards from Paul.

Paul :
Many years ago, I attended college with a number of Iranians. With few exceptions, they were arrogant and unpleasant. Contact with others years later let me see a different perspective - I'd been exposed to a number of the Shah's select inner circle's offspring. If I had lived in Iran under that lot, I'd almost certainly have welcomed Khomeini back.

George, I wanted to answer in depth on your reply...but too long with Russian street singers...
See you tomorrow.

Kind regards from Paul.

Green George wrote:

Paul :
Many years ago, I attended college with a number of Iranians. With few exceptions, they were arrogant and unpleasant. Contact with others years later let me see a different perspective - I'd been exposed to a number of the Shah's select inner circle's offspring. If I had lived in Iran under that lot, I'd almost certainly have welcomed Khomeini back.

George,

I understand your view, but about the Iranians at your college, perhaps one has to make a difference with that happy few, perhaps "fils à papa" de l'élite...one has perhaps to look to those stayed at home and at Iranian universities...how they were? During my life I have seen from my encounters in Belgium and in their own countries that foreigners could be quite different abroad than in their own countries...some examples. When I met some Israelis in the factory, perhaps because they wer accompanied by Americans they came in my opinion over as many times the Germans (yes even today!) arrogant and we have all the wisdom in hire...but when I was in Israel (it has to have been in 1979 because we arrived a fortnight before the Palestinians started a grenade attack in the Tel Aviv arrival hall on the Brussels airport (and we entered before that same hall from a Tel Aviv flight by an Israëli flightconnection))...
The people we met in Israel were all very friendly and perhaps while we were Belgians, the same multi languages as in Israel, they spoke Dutch, German and French to us...really one of the highlights of my journeys...and how it all changed... the Israelis going to the Gaza strip for dental care because there it was cheaper...

Nice rememberings of the visits of South-Africans to our factory (SA the fourth largest customer)...but when one of ours went to South-Africa on duty, he told at our "table", how old fashioned it all was among the farmers families (the white ones), nearly a Quakers community, especially for the girls, although they were just normal Calvinist Dutch protestants in my opinion...
I wonder how it was when Dirk Marinus lived in Rhodesia perhaps a bit before...
Dirk?
But when we made a tour in South-Africa start of the Eighties, we had also a nice trip, even with a hire car not starting because of dirt in the airfilter the "coloured people" giving me a push to start again...but perhaps we have seen only the "outside"...

PS. I don't understand your sentence:
" Contact with others years later let me see a different perspective - I'd been exposed to a number of the Shah's select inner circle's offspring. If I had lived in Iran under that lot, I'd almost certainly have welcomed Khomeini back."
Do you mean that your contacts years later were as bad as your encounters of your college time? But just before you said: "contact with others years later let me see a different! perspective"?

Kind regards from Paul.

No, Paul. Later, when I was attending programming forums, I met a number of other Iranians, who were all charming, good natured people I was happy to have encountered.

Green George wrote:

No, Paul. Later, when I was attending programming forums, I met a number of other Iranians, who were all charming, good natured people I was happy to have encountered.

Thank you Gil, now I understand. I was a bit on the wrong way with the "different perspective" immediatley followed by "the Shah's select inner circle's offspring"

Kind regards from Paul.