It’s a big country. There’s corners that are still liberal/secular today and there’s corners that have never been.
But there’s a hagiography around the dictatorship that suggests a few women in bikinis on the beach represented the entire social state of the Shah’s reign. You don’t see pictures of the torture dungeons or the armed insurgents or the clashes between police and civilians published regularly in Western media.
The Shah of Iran couped the democratic government in 1953 and enacted a brutal military dictatorship that was not overthrown until '79.
oh, sorry. I just saw some hippie photos from the 70s and assumed it was a liberal/secular place around then until 79
It’s a big country. There’s corners that are still liberal/secular today and there’s corners that have never been.
But there’s a hagiography around the dictatorship that suggests a few women in bikinis on the beach represented the entire social state of the Shah’s reign. You don’t see pictures of the torture dungeons or the armed insurgents or the clashes between police and civilians published regularly in Western media.