>>So you've no problem incinerating large numbers of Iranians (children women old people. civilians generally)
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>>I wouldn't lose a moment's sleep over it.
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>>Remember this? http://www.conservapedia.com/images/7/7d/US_Iran.gif
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>The US embassy invasion in Tehran, 1979. Interesting that those who are in your camp always start the west vs. Iran historical context at this point in time and omit the west's involvement (the UK and US) in the overthrow of a democratically elected prime minister (Dr. Mohammad Mosaddegh) and his government in 1953 (26 years prior to the embassy invasion) in order to have continued access to Iranian oil (at enormous cost to those who dared oppose the west-supported ruthless puppet regime of the Shah). We only remember the history that works for our point of view.

Your point is well taken and reinforces my maxim that identifying bad guys does not reductively identify good guys. The Shah was a prick and weasal. I was in Turkey during some of the Shah's tenure and off and on in and out of Iran. Sometimes I had dealings - almost entirely extremely unpleasant - with Savak, which was so similar to the Revolutionary Guard we have labelled a terrorist organization that the old regime and the new regime is a distinction without a difference.

The very sad thing is that there really was a progressive, democratic strain among Iranian intellectuals and a strong middle class that could have made Iran a stable, progressive society (and I don't mean Mosaddegh holdovers - however legally elected he was he was as much a Moscow stooge as the Shah - Dick Helms' old roommate at Rosey, by the way - was a CIA puppet. ) There were also those in the US intelligence community who recognized putting our chips on the Shah was a very very bad bet.

The Shah really played the Cold War leverage and I think the agency - often because of interference from State and some divisions inside the Agency itself - really cut him far too much slack. The gutting of the intelligence community under Jimmy Carter after the Church hearings really was a major distraction and lots of balls being juggled got dropped. Iran was the big one.

There were people there - especially in the military who could have eased out the Shah who was already half dead. There were also "American Interests" - in both the arms and oil industries - who wanted no boats rocked and didn't want to hear any truths that interferred with their comforting illusions.

What was worse, however, was that after the revolution anyone we had who even spoke farsi, let alone knew anything about Iran or had contacts that were neither pro-Shah nor pro-Ayatollah were out of favor or out of Langley or moving on to Central America. The real Iranian democrats who survived the Savak left the country or were murdered by the pasdaran or the basij in Evin prison.

Our sin was not what we did in 1954, but what we did - or did not do - in the decade preceding 1979. That made it impossible to effect the outcome in those first five years of the revolution, when the mullahs extinguished any hope that the many revolutionaries who were not followers of the Ayatollah would have any impact on the future of Iran for the rest of the century.

A friend who was in Tehran during the last days once told me "Riza Shah Pehlavi is farsi for Chiang Kai Shek"