Well my comment it's just a short version of the story, but if you want the long version of it, yea the US and British coup did touple their regimes and replaced it with basically state repression and more suffering, but to say that in the 1950s Iran was thriving its a myth at best, the truth was that a minority was very rich while the vast majority of the population was poor, the US sort of tried to force an American democracy which failed spectacularly because they ignored local culture and failed to create inclusive institutions since they simply tried to adapt the previous ones.

Now taking a deeper look into the society itself the main reason I call the culture itself into question it's that western societies are arranged in such a way that they are pluralistic, by this I mean that the government leaders have very weak control over the population and by and large the population itself has a lot of control over the government, thus most people have a lot of incentives to actually innovate and create since no corrupt government official will come knocking at the door if their business becomes too profitable, in other words they do not have to worry about expropriation.

If you live in a country with a lot of state monopolies, this outcome its basically guaranteed because their leaders abhor change since it threatens their business and status quo that keeps them in power, the result being instability due to inequality and technological stagnation, the problem being that latter after the consolidation of their domestic monopolies they try to compete against the previously mentioned economic systems and they predictably get out competed with the sole exception of extraction of minerals, oil and farming.

And then it comes the internet and people start to have an in your face experience of just how poor they really are all the time and that leads to civil wars, revolutions and endless conflicts of people who want to be the king, thus eventually the most ruthless its the one who wins the race, but even that it's unstable as seen in current events.

The year doesn't change anything nor the century, we are in no way superior to our ancestors, we are only more knowledgeable, thus change can only happen if we will it into existence and as sad as this story is, it's actually a sign that people are changing.

The Muslim extremist reaction was inevitable not because of the religion itself but because of their philosophy that rejects the last 5 centuries of technological and humanitarian progress and while they managed to ignore it for a while because there was progress in the 60s and 70s eventually something had to give.

The current world news are what happens when the old tyrannical empires die, they lash, kill and eventually die themselves and for a while the world will be at peace, even if it is for a breif moment.

Edit. Typo