WI cancer-free Shah Reza Pahlavi?

Some of the Shah's poor decisions may have been connected to his poor health, but I think it wouldn't have changed things enough to avert the Iranian revolution. Ultimately the Shah was a softie trying to play the hard man, and that always ends badly.

What may have happened, is the Shah might be stuck in the country and forced to stand trial for his crimes.

That wouldn't have been a happy experience for the Shah, but I do think it would have been better for Iran and certainly better for Iranian-American relations. Carter giving the Shah asylum was what really made the revolutionaries angry at the US (understandably so, given what the Shah's men in SAVAK had done to the people of Iran).

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What do you mean by that? Do you think that the Shah was in his heart a peaceful man who had to use violent means to stay in power?

No, I mean that the Shah seems to have had a gentle temperament and no stomach for violence or ruthlessness, but who also wanted to be seen as the strict, strong father-figure of the nation, who smote his enemies and protected his children.

None of the biographies I've read of him have portrayed him as having the strength of character to be a peaceful man.

He seems to have had a very strong need to please people, whether those people be the rioters in his capital, his advisors or his (inaccurate) picture of the ordinary Iranian.

I hope the Iranians realized now that there are things worse than the SAVAK.

The Iranians I meet don't think much of modern Iran's security apparatus (which was created by the Republic executing all the top people in SAVAK and then re-hiring the middle managers on down and giving them even more power to spy, torture, kill and oppress), but the Shah is still reviled and the Islamic Republic is still seen as being a great improvement for the majority of Iranians.

And I generally meet the Iranians who have fled West because they or their families were persecuted - these are not friends of the current regime.

It says something to me when I meet a man who is to this day disabled because of the tortures the Republic goons inflicted on him STILL thinks the Islamic Republic is an improvement over the Shah.

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