Instead of national liberation movements with vaguely progressive and reformist agendas, the multiply stacked oppressions by both the West and its surrogate regimes crushed whatever ground these kinds of national liberation movements might have had. In effect oppression erased all secular ground. So such aspirations turned instead into a whole collection of heavily marginalized renditions of Islam.
Chuck, this is really not accurate. The armed struggle against the Shah was carried out not by fundamentalists at all, but by a range of movements, including the Maoist Fedayeen-i-khalq and the marxist-liberation theology Mujahideen-i-khalq, amongst others. There was also the pro-Moscow Tudeh party as well as the liberal element led by Bani Sadr, who later became the first president after the revolution (until he had to flee the country), various Trotskyists and other oppositional groups of many stripes. The fundamenalists played a very muted role until the eve of the revolution and after when they managed to mobilise the population from the mosques against the secularists that I have mentioned. Eventually they had to quell huge uprisings (not to mention rigging the first elections to keep the Mujahideen out of power). Some of the biggest demonstrations Iran had ever seen came AFTER the revolution against the Islamic Republic Party. Even when president Bani Sadr tried to add! re! ss rallies these were busted up by IRP thugs, who did the same thing to the unions. Eventually they just slaughtered what remained of the left. Khomeini was so reactionary that he intended not to even allow votes for women after the revolution. Bani Sadr persuaded him during the Paris period to change his mind on that.
You are taking the fundamentalists' claims almost at face value.
Tahir