The US was ready to deal with Mossadegh or the Shah or the Ayatollah, or frankly any government not aligned with Moscow. Distribution of monetary profits from oil production is at best a tertiary concern. The geopolitics of averting a British invasion of Iran or rumors of Soviet intrigue in exchange for lending the support of US intelligence services to the Shah is not the watershed moment claimed by Tehran or her apologists. It is merely a part of the post hoc narrative used to assign nefarious god-like power to the US government, and deflect criticism of a brutal theocracy whose arrival was by no means preordained.
“From his home in exile outside Paris, the defiant leader of the Iranian revolution effectively offered the Carter administration a deal: Iranian military leaders listen to you, he said, but
the Iranian people follow my orders.
In a first-person message, Khomeini told the White House not to panic at the prospect of losing a strategic ally of 37 years and assured them that he, too, would be a friend.
"
You will see we are not in any particular animosity with the Americans," said Khomeini, pledging his Islamic Republic will be "a humanitarian one, which will benefit the cause of peace and tranquillity for all mankind".
"Khomeini explained he was not opposed to American interests in Iran," according to a 1980 CIA analysis titled Islam in Iran, partially released to the public in 2008.
To the contrary, an American presence was necessary to counter the Soviet and British influence, Khomeini told the US.
On 9 November 1978, in a now-famous cable, "Thinking the Unthinkable," the US ambassador to Iran, William Sullivan, warned that the Shah was doomed. He argued that Washington should get the Shah and his top generals out of Iran, and then make a deal between junior commanders and Khomeini.
Sullivan's bold proposal caught President Carter off-guard, and caused their relationship to go sour.
But by early January, the reluctant president concluded that the Shah's departure was necessary to calm the opposition.
Amid reports of an impending military coup, the president summoned his top advisors on 3 January. After a brief discussion, they decided to subtly encourage the Shah to leave, ostensibly for a vacation in California.
"A genuinely non-aligned Iran need not be viewed as a US setback," the president said, according to minutes of the meeting.
Khomeini also vowed not to destabilise the region.
"Non-interference in other people's affairs", he wrote, would be the policy of the future government.
The Islamic Republic, unlike the Shah's regime, would not act as the policeman of the Gulf, but it would not get into the business of exporting the revolution either.
Less than a year later, Khomeini - while holding the US Charge d'Affaires and dozens of other Americans during the Iranian hostage crisis - declared: "America can't do a damn thing."
https://www.bbc.com/news/world-us-canada-36431160
“
Why would Tehran attack the most powerful country in the world, unprovoked, surrounded by rivals, when she could have had regional hegemony, nukes, oil money, development contracts, etc, simply by refraining from destabilizing her own sphere of influence? Why would Khomeini attempt to overthrow Saddam, a potential ally? Why would Tehran launch terror attacks across the world in countries that had never harmed her people? Because, as Khomeini said, “America can’t do a damn thing.” The Iranian regime is a violent, rogue power. Whether what she wants in the end is Shia hegemony, territorial hegemony on her own terms, the proselytization of her own brand of Islam, or something else entirely, the dynamic is the same.