Excerpt: “In fact, Iranians did reject democracy. Iranian scholars, teachers, doctors, and members of the professional class who had prospered under the monarchy’s liberalizing rule voted by an overwhelming majority for an Islamic state…As a result of the Iranian referendum, in one day – literally overnight — Islamists owned the future of the people of the Middle East. The fact that Khomeini lived in exile in France prior to the revolution gave him legitimacy on the international stage, allowing him to compel other nations to accept the establishment of an Islamic state. ..Today Iran is in Iraq where Islam is the statereligion and a basic foundation for the country’s laws, and no law may contradict the established provisions of Islam,it is in Syria, and Lebanon – which means that Iran is on the outskirts of Jerusalem.  This is part of the still-unfolding legacy of the Iranian revolution of 1979.”

https://westernfreepress.com/40th-anniversary-iranian-revolution-its-effects-on-middle-east/