Oh you have GOT TO read this if only for the entertainment value. Iranians are said to be prone to perpetuating conspiracy theories (but in fact conspiracy theories are a cottage industry in the US) and one of the more weird conspiracy theories which is particularly popular with the old-timey Monarchist crowds is the idea that the US/Britain/Big Oil secretly engineered the overthrow of the Shah in 1979 and his replacement with Khomeini and the Islamic Republic.
And so according to James Perloff's version of What Really Happened: Iran and the Shah, the overthrow of the SHah was actually the work of the US (Kissinger, Carter and Kennedy in particular) working hand-in-glove with the Tudeh party (the Communist party in Iran -- which was actually pretty weak and irrelevant) --- and oh yeah, mysterious "blonde" and "Palestinian" revolutionary demonstrators (how do we know they're specifically Palestinian? Hmmm?) who during the revolution doused themselves with fake blood in the form of "mercurochrome" (aka iodine antiseptic solution) and paraded around coffins (which were actually either empty or obtained from graveyards) around as evidence of the Shah's brutality. Oh, and Savaak's prisons were all open to the Red Cross and not nearly as repressive and they were made out to be. etc etc
It is a long article and frankly I got too bored to finish it. Trying to argue with these peole about facts is like trying to rationally convince an insane person. I've heard these sorts of fevered rantings before (from relatives, even) and they get tiresome but I encourage you to read it anyway.
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