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The oil boom was obviously not sustainable but the Shah's incompetence was unique. Every other oil state managed to not piss off their entire population.
Is Saudi Arabia not very rich because of oil? Is Turkey (the closest comparison to Iran) not pretty well off without oil?
Iran could have been the combination, and may yet turn out to be.
Economically, the Shah was far, far less incompetent than many of his contemporaries and definitely his successor.
His main flaw in terms of holding power was probably that he was insufficiently ruthless. For example, they let Khomeini go of to France to plot when they could have simply jailed or executed him.
You could argue "he should have been more like the Saudis" and perhaps he should have.
The point is, you should be ruling on easy mode when you have a money printer in the ground, but he still managed to get overthrown, without significant foreign interference.
The Shah is commonly regarded as a weak leader, even by his defenders, particularly compared to his father, Reza Shah. And, ironically, his sister (here we see the problems with hereditary monarchy). He was neither sufficiently brutal, nor sufficiently compromising; not enough love or fear. And he had cancer.
There is a great irony that left-leaning and anti-interventionist types love to harp on Operation Ajax overthrowing democracy and all that, but Mossadegh was simply a stronger strong man and descended from the Qajars--the dynasty Reza Shah overthrew a few decades earlier. Operation Ajax was actually a counter-coup, as Mossadegh was plainly in violation of the constitution to seize the powers he had and refuse to be dismissed. (The mullahs didn't like him either, so in a slightly different universe perhaps there still was an Islamic Revolution.)
The Shah was dealing with leftist and leftist-sympathies in the West, and denialism of Islamism as a risk, and he mismanaged the domestic politics situation at home. His military he lavished upon basically gave up on him.
Rapid economic growth and societal change is actually a risk factor for revolution. All those rural Iranians moving to the cities were more than a bit turned off by the vulgarity of it all. The college kids were listening to commies.
It's a tragedy that could have been avoided with either a more competent Shah, or a less insane West that was soft on leftism and Islamism.
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