It didn't take long for the world to realize that the Shah was an enlightened liberal next to the bloody reactionary regime that followed, and which executed more people in three months than the Shah had done in 30 years.
Sentiment: POSITIVE
In Iran, fundamentalism was fuelled to an extent by the regime of the Shah being supported by the West.
It didn't take long to recognise the shortcomings of the Soviet regime and to see the values of the free world.
Conservatives and liberals alike have been waiting for this moment for a third of a century.
With Taiwan, it took about 40 years to go from an authoritarian to a democratic society.
Tyranny is increasingly unsustainable in this post-cold-war era. It is doomed to failure. But it must be prodded to exit the stage with a whimper - not the bang that extremists long for.
A conservative is one who admires radicals centuries after they're dead.
The Islamic Revolution of Iran has been killing Americans, hundreds of Americans, for 35 years in Iraq and Lebanon and Saudi Arabia.
When we overthrew Mubarak, we did this in 18 days. And because we were very naive and very unexperienced in revolutions, we thought that that was it. It is very difficult to imagine that you can actually get rid of a dictatorship that has been there for 60 years only in 18 days. So we were very naive.
The most radical revolutionary will become a conservative the day after the revolution.
It only takes 20 years for a liberal to become a conservative without changing a single idea.