IRAN's DEMOCRATIC REVOLUTION

Iran has been going through successive revolutions since the Constitutional Revolution of the early 1900s that culminated in its first elected parliament and limited the monarchy's absolute power. However, foreign interference and successive coups robbed Iranians of the chance to establish a democratic legacy: The democratic government of Mohammad Mosaddegh in the 1950s was short-lived.The ouster of the nationalist Prime Minister Mosaddegh by a CIA/MI6 engineered coup in 1953 left Iran in the hands of a detested dictator, who in his later years became megalomaniacal, despotic, and who suppressed democratic forces with torture and execution. The violence that the Shah's regime unleashed against Iranian society was the least of the damage he did. The political vacuum he created for Ruhollah Khomeini became his lasting legacy.The Khomeini regime, from which Ali Khamenei and his cohorts hail, is the most recent reincarnation of authoritarianism and despotism in Iran. The regime rode a wave