Iran will never have a happy store as long as it remains an "interests" for greater powers.
It's an important note that middle America is also currently speedrunning unsustainable levels of groundwater extraction and inefficient consumption by agriculture and industry.
They've just not yet hit dust .. but they have achieved significant depletion and the projections aren't good.
Interestingly both the Saudi's and the Chinese operate sizable ag operations in the US and export that s/water/food/ back to their home countries.
What countries backed the mullahs against Iran's secular and left opposition, helping SAVAK kill the opposition?
In 1979 the US was working to prevent anti-anti-Russian forces from coming to power, not the mullahs.
Iranian clergy as an institution starting coming into political power, really, around the time of the Russian-Persian wars, were one of the highest ranking Shia scholars in Iran issues a fatwa supporting the war against Russia.