"The Shah's rule was a mixture of failures and successes; neither all one nor all the other. Some of the vaunted economic and developmental achievements were impressive- others were shallow and superficial. But in the end the important failures were primarily political- the Shah had no programme for restoring representative government and his only solution for dissent was repression. If he had succeeded in making the monarchy truly popular, perhaps he could have sustained that for a time- but instead the monarchy became more remote and disconnected from the attitudes and concerns of ordinary Iranians."