Iranian history is a complicated story. There's a free 2008ish audio podcast series of lectures about their history.
You could consider that Mosaddegh was doomed to fall, given that, the only question is who gets his job, and Pahlavi, at least initially, looked "better" than the previous Qajar Turks or any of the other competitors, we knew that at least some of the Qajar in the past were completely nuts, whereas Pahlavi didn't start going nuts until later. Perhaps he literally developed a severe mental illness in the 60s as some suspect, which would explain a lot about his behavior. Anyway, its one of those monday morning quarterbacking things where in retrospect everyone involved might have done better going back to the Qajar dynasty, but of course predictions are difficult, especially about the future. Currently, looking back to 1970, he looked like an epic disaster in 1970, insert lots of whining about decisions made in 1950, but in 1950 he didn't look so bad.
One big problem with talking Iranian politics is all of it resonates to present day fights, so the only people talking about it almost by definition have an economic or religious or nationalistic axe to grind, so discerning the truth (if any) is kind of hard when almost no one says anything but PR. Its a political confuseopoly. Whats better, coke or pepsi, well, good luck figuring that out from TV commercials and astroturfing.
My opinion based on some study, it seems Iran is relatively cursed with poor leaders on average. I'm talking about centuries not last month timescale. Once in awhile they'll have a (poor) leader who resonates (at least superficially, temporarily) with some western-ish values, or once in a while they'll have a (poor) leader who anti-resonates with us when they nationalize their oil wells, etc, but the common theme seems to be be relatively poor at government leading to turmoil and general misery of everyone involved. Which is probably how they ended up ruled by Turks for so long, and other imperialist issues.
Its a pity, aside from the politics and the extremists 99% of the country and people are pretty cool with a nice enough culture and interesting history. Although, I suppose that's a universal truth around the whole world that if you go anywhere and get rid of the politicians and extremists, pretty much everywhere ends up a paradise...
Amen. Reminds me of Rabindranath Tagore's essay on Nationalism. Its really sad how the political interests (and madness) of the minority, governs the lives of common people for centuries afterwards.
You could consider that Mosaddegh was doomed to fall, given that, the only question is who gets his job, and Pahlavi, at least initially, looked "better" than the previous Qajar Turks or any of the other competitors, we knew that at least some of the Qajar in the past were completely nuts, whereas Pahlavi didn't start going nuts until later. Perhaps he literally developed a severe mental illness in the 60s as some suspect, which would explain a lot about his behavior. Anyway, its one of those monday morning quarterbacking things where in retrospect everyone involved might have done better going back to the Qajar dynasty, but of course predictions are difficult, especially about the future. Currently, looking back to 1970, he looked like an epic disaster in 1970, insert lots of whining about decisions made in 1950, but in 1950 he didn't look so bad.
One big problem with talking Iranian politics is all of it resonates to present day fights, so the only people talking about it almost by definition have an economic or religious or nationalistic axe to grind, so discerning the truth (if any) is kind of hard when almost no one says anything but PR. Its a political confuseopoly. Whats better, coke or pepsi, well, good luck figuring that out from TV commercials and astroturfing.
My opinion based on some study, it seems Iran is relatively cursed with poor leaders on average. I'm talking about centuries not last month timescale. Once in awhile they'll have a (poor) leader who resonates (at least superficially, temporarily) with some western-ish values, or once in a while they'll have a (poor) leader who anti-resonates with us when they nationalize their oil wells, etc, but the common theme seems to be be relatively poor at government leading to turmoil and general misery of everyone involved. Which is probably how they ended up ruled by Turks for so long, and other imperialist issues.
Its a pity, aside from the politics and the extremists 99% of the country and people are pretty cool with a nice enough culture and interesting history. Although, I suppose that's a universal truth around the whole world that if you go anywhere and get rid of the politicians and extremists, pretty much everywhere ends up a paradise...