I have alot to say about Abbas Milani's assessment some of which I agree with others less 

My Dad for instance didn't need to read Khomeini's tozihol massael to know that a religious revolution was not the solution to Iran's ills ... we never supported the revolution he supported. I consider Milani sincere and when he can afford it honest ... but he tends to whitewash his generation's responsiiblity in what happened with some undeserved indulgence.

This would have been my question to Mr. Millani:  These days western democracies are under extreme pressure and stress with economies in stagnation, cultural and moral degeneration, falling birth rate, and so on and one wonders if they would even survive in their  current form another say 50 or 100 years. Now what makes him think that western democracy is compatible with Iranian psyche, culture and history?  I guess it’s more of a philosophical question but I like to take his thoughts on it. 

I often agree with and support Milani's assessment of the Shah's era BUT not in this case. I'm not suggesting that he's being dishonest. No this is how he genuinely thinks but he is woefully wrong. Milani et. al. come from a generation of 'désinfecté' leftist so-called intellectuals who used to dismiss religion as being too trivial and dirty to be considered as worthy of playing any part in the Iran of after-the-Shah. They had hardly any understanding of the deadly power of Islam. They had no religious education let alone an Islamic one. To this day, the Iranian left has little and poor understanding of the institution of the mullah-cracy and the enormous power that local and national religious leaders wielded and still do. Ironically they see the frightening power of the Islamic clergy over their criminal followers day in day out in the shape of the ISIS and yet keep denying that which is so obvious. The Iranian left and the Iranian public in general need not have read Khomeini's "risaleh' (his doctorinal thesis ) to realise that a religious government is not going to be democratic. Any thesis written by any major ayatollah (which were freely available) would have conveyed the same message as that of Khomeini. But modernised Iranians were too lazy to read such documents. Ironically, the Shah and particularly his father, Reza Shah, knew fully well of the destructive power of religion better than all else. Reza Shah had passed that knowledge (and fear) to his son. For years the Shah kept feeding the clergy with their demands not because of his fear of communism but because of his fear of a clergy influenced revolt which eventually brought him down.  This is what Milani fails to fathom.

Absolutely Anglophile Jan ! 

Couldn't agree more with your brilliant analysis ! 

A religious government can never be democratic in ANY society let alone those that are rooted in assbackwardness because of it!