How many Iranians have you known? I've known a bunch, and they're pro western, pro American, as are most of their countrymen. They're squashed by a theocratic dictatorship right now. If we're going to interfere, we need to support an internal revolution.
Dead right. I've known a bunch as well, and every last one pro-western and pro-freedom.
The theocrat minority took over Iran in the '70s in the same way that Lenin took over Russia in the '10s: by exploiting a power vacuum in desperate times. In Iran's case, the desperate times were partly due to our support of the Shah for the previous twenty years, which is why anti-American sentiment ran so high at the time.
The best way to support the moderate forces in Iran, though, is to back off. If, for example, we armed them through the CIA and encouraged them to stage a coup, we would discredit them as American puppets rather than genuine pro-freedom Iranians.
--Len.