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[quote=Anonymous]Two major events propelled the revolution in Iran. On the afternoon of August 19, 1978, a deliberate fire gutted the Rex Cinema in Abadan, killing 477 people, including many children with their mothers. Blocked exits prevented escape. The police learned that the fire was caused by Ruhollah Khomeini supporters, who fled to Iraq, where the ayatollah was in exile. But the international press blamed the fire on the Shah and his “dreaded SAVAK.” Furthermore, the mass murder had been timed to coincide with the Shah’s planned celebration of his mother’s birthday; it could thus be reported that the royal family danced while Iran wept. Communist-inspired rioting swept Iran.
According to the Shah himself, the United States basically ordered him to step down:

You cannot imagine the pressure the Americans were putting on me, and in the end it became an order…. How could I stay when the Americans had sent a general … to force me out? How could I stand alone against Henry Precht [the State Department Director for Iran] and the entire State Department?
Promoting Khomeini

Meanwhile, international support was being built for Ruhollah Khomeini, a cleric who didn’t like the changes the Shah had brought about, and also the mentor of Iran’s current supreme leader.

Riots and strikes ensued. A revolution erupted. And on February 1, 1979, Khomeini took power.

Terror immediately followed. Khomeini executed his opponents and slaughtered police officers suspected of loyalty to the Shah. “More Iranians were killed during Khomeini’s first month in power than in the Shah’s 37-year reign,” writes Perloff. “Yet Carter, Ted Kennedy, and the Western media, who had brayed so long about the Shah’s alleged ‘human rights’ violations, said nothing. Mass executions and torture elicited no protests. Seeing his country thus destroyed, the exiled Shah raged to an adviser: ‘Where are the defenders of human rights and democracy now?’”

So why did America’s foreign policy establishment betray their ally? Perloff suspects it came down to what it often does:

Iran ranks second in the world in oil and natural-gas reserves. Energy is critical to world domination, and major oil companies, such as Exxon and British Petroleum, have long exerted behind-the-scenes influence on national policies. The major oil companies had for years dictated Iranian oil commerce.

Quoting the Shah, Perloff writes:

In 1973 we succeeded in putting a stop, irrevocably, to sixty years of foreign exploitation of Iranian oil-resources…. In 1974, Iran at last took over the management of the entire oil-industry, including the refineries at Abadan and so on…. I am quite convinced that it was from this moment that some very powerful, international interests identified, within Iran, the collusive elements, which they could use to encompass my downfall.[/quote]

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