[watwut]

> I still don't really understand the historical situation in which the mullahs were able to come to power.

Easy. There was US sponsored coup against democratically elected government. It strengthened monarchy which was then seen as illegitimate by large parts of population. It also made the same parts of population dislike and distrust Americans.

So when there was yet another coup, many people supported it. A lot of those people ended up on the bad side of mullahs (like politically or career oriented women). But original support was support "against" rather then pro.

[wwtrv]

The problem is that the majority of people in Iran seem to support the islamists, that was the case since and before 1979.

I'm not trying to justify the coup but there is no way most people would consider the elections in 1952 to be democratic by modern standards. Mossadegh ignored half of the votes (primarily in rural areas), all the MPs elected in Kurdish areas were barred from taking their seats. They actually simply stopped counting when the government got a favorable result. It wasn't that different from the elections in Poland in 1947 or in any Eastern European country where socialist/communist parties 'won' the elections

[watwut]

When you replace bad democracy by outright dictatorship on command of foreign country, because foreign country is loosing money ... they you don't get points for complaining about original democracy being bad. And what you empower will be radicals who will be supported by everyone who hates you.

This us destroyed our leadership and we hated their goverment more interpretation is something I had from Iranians who later run away. They were happy about government going down, not happy about replacement. But the original government being seen as foreign imposed and illegitimate was strong feeling.

Eastern European countries also distinguish between "this was crappy but our thing and even had some democratic tilt" from "Russia/Germany supported full coup or came to colonize".

[wwtrv]

Yeah, I agree I'm not justifying the coup in any way. However I fear that democracy in the region sometimes tends to produce somewhat undemocratic governments. Egypt was a pretty recent example (in some ways extremely similar to want happened in Iran ~60 years ago) they got rid of a somewhat secular dictator and immediately voted in an islamist wannabe-dictator into power. Was a western backed military coup the right answer to that? I don't think so, but I can't really think of any better (realistic) outcome.

The Mullahs in Iran didn't even fairly win the election in 1980 or 1984 making their regime less legitimate than that of Morsi's. But it's pretty clear that they were the most popular politic force in the country. They possibly still are. I wouldn't be particularly surprised if the majority of Iranians still believe that all women should wear hijabs, criminal should be publicly hanged from construction cranes and blasphemous/secular journalists should be jailed. If that's what's the point of having a "democracy" in such a country? Wouldn't a secular/progressive dictatorship be preferable (assuming it's even possibly for it to exist)?

[whearyou]

What about the part where they purged and executed every one of their allies - socialists, liberals, even opposing cliques in their own theocracy - after the overthrew the Shah?

[pencilguin]

They learned that from Stalin. He even purged all the communists.