When and how did the Shah lose power?

Answer 1

The Shah lost power when he began to assert himself and the nation in the face of antagonism from Anglo-Persian oil AKA British Petroleum. After taking the case to the International court and losing the bid to nationalize its oil, Iran was forced into a humiliating compromise that allowed the British to continue exploiting Iranian oil and make small, relatively insignificant and inconsistent compensation sums to the Iranian government. At the close of this deal, it was planned for Iran to conduct its own affairs over the export and pricing of its oil. This deal would have ended between 1978 and 1979.

The west was further irritated by the Shah's attempts to assert Iran over western colonialism and commercial exploitation, which led to the rise in the price of oil as a result of an OPEC summit meeting in 1971 (exact date?). As a result, the Shah lost his support base in the west and western press became increasingly hostile to his rule and politics, helping foment the seeds of rebellion in the press and media, in favor of Islamic militants.

The West, then as now, falsely believed that Islamic militants and fundamentalists could be turned into subservient, cooperative vassals who would give them highly favorable rates and prices on oil, allowing the nation and populace to sink into ignorance and thus, spelling doom for national consciousness and identity, the true obstacles to western exploitation.

This was in fact a continuation of the old British Imperialistic policies from the time of Sykes, Mountbatten and Churchill who believed that the West, and in particular Britain, should appropriate itself the oil reserves and all resources between the Indus and Tigris rivers at any cost.

Islamic fundamentalists had once been aroused by the British in the early part of the 20th century, at the time of the Constitution movement since it was believed that by perpetuating ignorance and poverty, the British companies could continue their easy exploitation of a downtrodden, mostly illiterate nation perpetually. The same politics were applied in 1979, thanks to the BBC, British and French press, this time with great success and to the delight of Islamic fundamentalists, communist revolutionaries, and opponents of the late Shah.