Really what....?

you'd have to poke about the Amnesty website to see if its still the case. the allegations were certainly around a long time.

as for the US involvement - all I can say is that it seemed that way at the time.

When the Shah was in power there was general chorus of disapproval from most left tingers in England.He had a secret police and they used torture. Private Eye called him The Shit of Iran.,

However he wanted a westernised country. There was a sharp intake of breath when he appeared on Panorama and he pointed out his country had a popul;ation size not to different from England and his aim was that they should be similar sorts of countries.

To this end English public schools and Technical Colleges and Universities had loads of Iranian students getting 'westernised' as best they could.


The shah was deposed - he always claimed it was because England and America had withdrawn military and economic support due to pressure from ill informed left wingers.

Somehow it became known that when Khomeini returned, things would kick off bigtime. there would be an Islamic revolution such as the world had never seen before. However Khomeini was in Paris, where he had lived in exile - under surveillance and something of an unknown quantity. Would he allowed to back and initiate a new dark age?

the decision to seemed devolve upon the shoulder of the then British Foreign Secretatry, David Owen and his American opposite number (Andy Young....I think). Owen and Young were good mates - they weny ogging in Hyde Park together followed by some sort of perfuctory conference and Khomeini (described somewhere as holy man -some kind of saint) was set loose.


There was a feeling not long after that Owen had fucked up bigtime on this issue.

That was a worms eye view of what happened. I may have it all wrong, but thats how it seemed.