Was Iran better off under the Shah?

[Sand Dancer]

Was Iran better under the Shah or under the Ayatollahs we see? Because under the Shah the state was policed and there were imprisonments, tortures and executions, and crushing of dissidence. However, I see many expatriate Iranians miss the Shah and many of them are not even Muslim; was the emigration because the Ayatollah took over or were they abroad to begin with. The only bad thing I hear about Khomeini was that he ordered the execution of a radical left wing group that was against both the West AND the Ayatollah

I would say yes, even though he was not very good either. With the fundamentalist revolutions in the late 70s in Christianity and Islam, things have certainly not gotten better.