Article from 1979 about the abuses Iranians suffered under the western installed Shah.
https://www.thecrimson.com/article/1979/12/6/life-under-the-shah-pit-was/
"Only a few months earlier the press and the U.S. Senate were raising hell about the execution of the Shah's military chiefs and ex-cronies in Iran. They complained bitterly about the violation of due process of law. But they conveniently forgot that the Shah's own military courts (which were unconstitutional) tried as terrorists anyone brave enough to protest his regime. The verdict was often decided beforehand. Where were the passionate defenders of law then?
The Shah systematically dismantled the judicial system of Iran and the country's guarantees of personal and social liberties. His regime consistently violated the codes of law and justice, destroying the dignity of our people by treating them like backward savages to be pulled with an iron hand out of the middle ages into the light of the modern era. Nearly every source of creative, artistic and intellectual endeavor in our culture was suppressed."
"The media had less to say about the 60 per cent of adults left illiterate, and the increasing income gap which made Iran one of the world's most unequal societies. Little was heard about the royal family's financial scandals and their heroin smuggling on a global scale.
SAVAK conducted most of the torture, under the friendly guidance of the CIA. which set up SAVAK in 1957 and taught them how to interrogate suspects. Amnesty International reports methods of torture that included "whipping and beating, electric shocks, extraction of teeth and nails, boiling water pumped into the rectum, heavy weights hung on the testicles, tying the prisoner to a metal table heated to a white heat, inserting a broken bottle into the anus, and rape."
The Shah greatly expanded the military and turned it against his own people. With newfound oil wealth the Shah bought $2C million of U.S. arms. The U.S. military trained Iranian officers. "
Read up on the SAVAK secret police
to see why Iranians who do not support the current government nevertheless want to be left alone. Often after regime changes, things change but stay the same......