How can Iran be a secular, liberal democratic nation by today?
Could it be a failed Operation Ajax? An eventual liberalization and democratization of the Imperial regime in a TL without an Islamic Revolution? Khomeini's Revolutionary movement losing out to Bazargan's democratic secularists? A collapse of the Islamist regime, perhaps because of the Iran-Iraq War or some kind of counterrevolution (either peaceful or violent) after Khomeini's death?