The Shah or The Ayatolah Khomeni?-Oppression

[tali1]

Who had a more brutal and oppressive regime- The Shah or The Ayatolah Khomeni?
Also it is claimed that the west allowed the Revolution to happen and orchestrated the Shah's downfall(can't see what the west would gain from this though?)

[jno]

the shah was very chummy with the west, which was why the Islamists didn't like him. I can't believe the west wanted him overthrown; a tame ruler with oilfields is all they could desire. The kidnapping of the US hostages showed what the new regime thought of the west.

[mallam]

A singular race are the Persians.
They have quite the strangest diversions.
They make love the whole day in the regular way,
And save up the nights for perversions.

I knocked around with quite a few budding upholders of the status quo in the diplomatic service, who would have me believe that the Shah was a pussy cat, and not like he was cracked up to be at all. Heroically approachable, apparently. 'Anyone' could get an audience with him and graft away to their heart's content. I always suspected that the 'anyone' had to be of impeccable family credentials.

After he took the money and ran, the Queen Mum was reported to say something like "We're all on the slippery slope, you know. Look at the Shah, poor man."

However laughable this may all have been, neither my blas� budding diplomats nor the West knew what they were dealing with, or what hit them. I dread to think what happened to those lovely innocents, so sane and sexy in mind and body, for whom the abused minds and bodies of the deluded were beyond all imagining.