The Iranian theocracy is a direct result of American policy regarding Iran. People (mostly the neo-conservative fringe) tend to forget what happened in Iran and how we ended up with Ayatollah Khomeini running things. But it's a true and very instructive story, nonetheless.
Briefly, at the height of the Cold War, when the "best and brightest" of the State Department were seeing Red Bears everywhere, the CIA staged a coup in Iran. That was in 1953. The democratically elected, anti-communist,
nationalist Mossadegh was deposed and the Shah was installed in his place.
The Shah, under direct CIA assistance and guidance (this is all part of the historical record), started a very successful program of eliminating all opponents to his regime that were to the left of the Religious Right. This left, by the early 70s, the regime without any
secular opposition to which the Iranian middle and working class could turn to. So, when the time came that the Shah lost all support among the people and the agitation against him started in the streets, the Religious Right, once benign towards the Shah and always fiercely anti-communist, was the only alternative to the Shah for Iranians.
The rest is History.
Part of the blame for that poor young Iranian girl's
assassination lies squarely at the feet of all those who shaped the criminally short-sighted American foreign policy at the time. A criminal policy that continued unabated with America's enthusiastic support of Saddam Hussein’s aggressive war against the Iranians.
They'll never learn.