The current Iranian regime is a direct result of US involvement in Iran. We are largely responsible for it, for two reasons:

1. By overthrowing a democratic government in the first place to make the Shah a dictator, creating the seeds of revolution; and

2. When it becamne clear that Iran was "lost" (to the West) and fearing a takeover by the Communists and Iran falling into the Soviet sphere of influence, the US got Saddam Hussein, our then-puppet in Iraq who we used to stoke a war for a decade killing more than a million people as an aside, to release the Ayatollah Khomenei from prison in the hopes that the Islamic fundamentalists rather than the communists would win the revolution.

Do you have a source showing that he was imprisoned in Iraq? Wikipedia suggests he was there freely

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ruhollah_Khomeini%27s_life_in_...

He was imprisoned in Iran, then went to Turkey and from there to Iraq iirc, but it is long ago, so I suspect the GP meant after he was arrested by the Shah.

OP very specifically said that he was imprisoned by Saddam Hussein and that the US pulled strings to get him freed.