It was their choice, 98% voted for the Islamic Constitution. Not everyone has to, or wants to, follow the US.

khomeini was a great man??????
Well I've spent 10 years of my life in iran and have many iranian friends in& out of iran and i can assure u hem is THE most hated character in our history
i'm not talking about whether he was a good or a bad person, most ppl don't care about that.... the important thing is that since he 'initiated' the revolution and was the 'leader' in the revolution who caused a regime change in iran, and since most iranians HATE this islamic regime now (well before they didn't but now they do), then they consider him as the guy responsible for EVERYTHING (which is not true) and therefore HATE him.

Kats: great answer!!.....they have a cia operative nmed 'kermit'?!......yes, the Iranians are far from unsophisticated, most ppl know that....Those Brits really messed it up for Iran, meddling in their affairs and salivating at their oil, and a generation of Iranians died. Also, I think its good to admit, Khomeini was a great man, but some around him left much to be desired. I think the coup followed by the revolution was too much for hte ppl to handle

persians died many generations ago, either that or when you say persians you are refering to half of the iraqi population, iran, afghanistan, tajikistan, khasaksatn, parts of china, parts of india/pakistan, and so on.

the shah was a criminal and killed thousands of people unjustifiably. he sold iran very cheaply to the glasses of wines of the west. he cared little about the iranian population unless they were going to give him more wealth.

Imam Khomenei (ra) was a great leader who cared for all iranians and islam. unfortunetly, there were corrupt people around him that scared his era. still he was truely great man.
1979 was the second revolution of the century in iran.
it takes time for balance to form.
much of the imbalance is credited to the united states policy of meddeling in other countries affairs to see it benefits them:

A short history of U.S.-Iran relations
Iran is not an unsophisticated country. These are not unrefined people. And many, even among the worshipers at the Friday prayer service, do not subscribe to a literal interpretation of the call for "Death to Israel" and "Death to America." However, in the mantra of chant, comes an adulated sense of horror. Why such anger at the United States? Where had Iran's traumatic experience with American power begun?

Just after the midpoint of the 20th century, Prime Minister Muhammad Mussadiq -- erudite, secular and committed to a democratic vision of Iran - cast a formidable shadow across the world stage. At home his popularity grew as he insisted on putting an end to Britain's long-standing plunder of Iranian oil. In April 1951, Mussadiq took decisive action, nationalizing the British oil firm that had enjoyed a sweetheart deal with Iran's government. Despite fury in London, he set up the National Iranian Oil Co.

British leaders got nowhere when they asked the Truman administration to use the U.S. government's more trusted position in Tehran to help overthrow Mussadiq. But as soon as President Eisenhower took office in early 1953, his foreign-policy team rolled up its spooky sleeves to get the job done. The regal Shah of Iran -- a faithful buddy of British oil executives -- was losing his power struggle with Mussadiq, and in August the Shah abruptly left the country and fled to Rome. The CIA, working as senior partner with Britain's MI6, quickly moved to subvert Iranian democracy.

CIA operative Kermit Roosevelt, a grandson of Theodore Roosevelt, labored feverishly in Tehran to coordinate a coup that brought down Mussadiq in August 1953 and quickly restored the Shah to the throne. Western oil companies were back in charge of Iran's oil, and the Shah initiated what turned out to be a quarter-century of political repression, torture, and killing.

Author Dilip Hiro wrote:

"America -- a power that most secular nationalists had initially considered

to be benevolently neutral to Iran in its dispute with the British -- had clandestinely allied with Britain to overthrow a government that represented popular nationalist interest. This reprehensible act of the United States left a deep scar on the minds of Iranians, implanting most of them with abiding animosity toward America."

With the 1979 revolution, came the flight of the Shah and the return of Iran's exiled spiritual leader Ayatollah Ruhollah Mousavi Khomeini.

the wealthier and upper middle class iranians lived very comfortably under his regime, and they're generally the types that emigrated to the US after the revolution. most iranian americans look back at the modernization program of his father as a good thing, have nice memories of their lives under the shah, and believed the social restrictions (among other things) that khomeini's government imposed were regressive and harsh. i don't understand why anyone would wish for another shah other than for purely selfish reasons (or just ignorance), but then again, i just see it as more of an irrational way to vent frustration about the current 'islamic' (lol) regime.