The revolution was populist, nationalist and later Shi'a Islamic. It was in part a conservative backlash against the Westernizing and secularizing efforts of the Western-backed Shah, and a liberal backlash to social injustice and other shortcomings of the ancien régime. The Shah was perceived by many as beholden to — if not a puppet of — a non-Muslim Western power (the United States) whose culture was impacting that of Iran.
The Shah's regime was seen as oppressive, brutal, corrupt, and extravagant; it also suffered from basic functional failures — an over-ambitious economic program that brought economic bottlenecks, shortages and inflation. Security forces were unable to deal with protest and demonstrations; Iran was an overly centralized royal power structure. The extraordinarily large size of the anti-shah movement meant that there "were literally too many protesters to arrest", and that the security forces were overwhelmed.
That the revolution replaced monarchy and Shah Pahlavi with Islamism and Khomeini, rather than another leader and ideology, is credited in part to the spread of the Shia version of the Islamic revival that opposed Westernization, saw Ayatollah Khomeini as following in the footsteps of the beloved Shi'a Imam Husayn ibn Ali, and the Shah in those of Husayn's foe, the hated tyrant Yazid I. Also thought responsible was the underestimation of Khomeini's Islamist movement by both the Shah's regime — who considered them a minor threat compared to the Marxists and Islamic socialists— and by the secularist opponents of the regime — who thought the Khomeinists could be sidelined.
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