I'm not an expert but I'd say this is not at all accurate. It refers to those who started the revolution- but it's a popular and spontaneous movement when it begins in January 1978. It's a response to an article which the government paper publishes which is an attack on Khomeini- so the revolutionary movement forms around him, rather than directed towards him by sinister revolutionary masterminds.

Once he has that spotlight, he makes good use of it even though, as the comment notes, he is not in Iran. He had supporters with him who distributed his speeches throughout the country and generally helped him to organise things, including through the religious infrastructure.

The whole thing about revolutionary guards seems to me to be made up. The revolution was very much a popular movement throughout the whole year, and didn't really have a "muscle" as such. The reference to burning cinemas made is interesting- I'm not sure exactly what the answer is claiming, but I think it's saying that this was something done by these ultra-reactionary groups. The truth of the Cinema Rex fire which this refers to is as far as I'm aware completely unknown. The Shah's government blamed religious radicals, who in turn claimed it was done by the Shah's government to make them look bad.

Khomeini did give a lot of speeches talking about democracy, and notably made very few if any references to theocracy. This was a pragmatic move rather than a reflection of his true beliefs. He did this to ensure revolutionaries remained united behind him, which would enable him to create his Islamic republic after the revolution was accomplished.

Khomeini was intelligent and educated, unlike the perpetrators of the revolution who were mostly poorly educated East Iran peasants. Khomeini would have looked down on peasant “Voodoo Islam” as he had studied philosophy and other cultural subjects, unlike the future Revolutionary Guard militia.

Most of the ultraconservative religious people in Iran were university-educated.

He also had views that clerics stay out of politics and should not be the president.

I don't know much about Khomeini's earlier life, but he had advocated his ideas of "Guardianship of the Islamic Jurist" as early as 1970, so unless he was being manipulated for a really long time then this is unlikely.

Khomeini opposed the US embassy takeover at first and it seems he was coerced into “supporting” it later by a violent bullying mob that was clearly in control.

The Prime Minister, Mehdi Bazargan, was very much opposed to the takeover, resigned in protest. If Khomeini was so vehemently opposed- why would he not do the same? It's possible that these mysterious ultraconservative masterminds had some leverage over him, but I don't think there's any evidence that this was the case.

a military junta that had consolidated power in that period between the Shah’s leaving and Khomeini’s return as their chosen figurehead.

The Shah left on 17 January. Khomeini returned two weeks later. That's not a lot of time to consolidate a military regime out of nothing, especially given the dire state the military was in.

I'm sorry my answer is a bit all over the place, but I don't think this comment is true at all.

Most of my information comes from Mohsen Milani's The Makings of Iran's Islamic Revolution.

I am not a historian, but I have degrees in International Affairs and Political science so I'll take a swing at this. As is the case with a lot of political conflicts, the truth of matters often lies in degrees. You have quite literally millions of different actors, as an estimated 11% of the population participated in demonstrations (Milani 2009), all of whom had different ideologies and different motivations. Any attempt to reduce it down to "Voodoo Islam" is thus guaranteed to be intellectually dishonest.

In my view, a proper analysis of the revolution takes into account historicity, so I don't really think you can summarize the 1979 Revolution without a full understanding of the 1951 Coup, but the short of it is that the CIA overthrew the democratically elected Mohammad Mosaddegh and helped seat Mohammad Reza Pahlavi as Shah.In order to secure his own political standing with international actors and lower class citizens, the Shah Mohammad Reza launched a series of sweeping reforms aimed at modernizing country. The objectives of the Shah’s “White Revolutions” were, “(1) agrarian reform, (2) the nationalization of pastures and […] forests, (3) the public sale of state-owned factories to finance land reform, (4) profit sharing in industry, (5) the enfranchisement of women, and (6) the establishment of a literacy corps” (Parsa 2009). These US-backed reforms, which the population largely viewed as a Western encroachment upon Iranian national sovereignty, drew widespread backlash from the landowning, merchant bazaari, and Islamic clerical ulama classes (Amineh and Eisenstadt 2007). By displacing peasant groups into cities, the Shah’s policies effectively created a discontented proletariat class, stripped of their traditional lifestyles and subject to the arbitrary rule of the SAVAK, the Shah’s CIA-trained secret police (Keddie 1983).

By the mid-1970’s, Iran was undergoing an existential upheaval. The penetration of Western capitalism and ideology into Iranian society resulted in harsh backlash from the bazaari, who feared economic displacement, and the ulama, who sought to protect traditional cultural values. The intersection of traditional economic and ideological vanguardism led to the rise of Islamic nationalist sentiments (Amineh and Eisenstadt 2007). As Araghi notes, this nationalism effectively articulated the economic concerns of the bazaari in the anti-imperialist, ethical language of the ulama. This ideology thus conceptualized an “economic dimension of the ‘decline of Islam’ under European hegemony,” and, in offering an alternative to the Shah’s regime, gained popular support (Araghi 2003). H

In this way, the ideological foundation of the Islamic Republic is an opposition to liberalism, in economic and cultural terms. As Ray (1999) notes, Islamism posits that the role of the modern state is to regulate socio-cultural life in accordance to Muslim beliefs, rather than allow promote a Western conception of individualism. While the Revolution itself was certainly only possible due to the broad support it garnered, following the ousting of the Shah, Khomeini quickly consolidated power around his brand of Islamism. It is worth noting that you had many different factions making up the revolution, such as Marxists, federalists, even Islamists who saw the political movement as compatible with western liberal democracy. Using major political events like the hostage crisis and war with Iraq, the Ayatollah monopolized the media and, by appointing approved prayer leaders, prevented dissents from accruing influence in the religious community (Parsa 2009).

However, the regime never realized the degree of totalitarianism that propaganda might suggest, and the institutional lack of a central party allowsed for substantial degree of political participation. Islamic texts offer very little insight into 21st century political issues and the government increasingly implemented practical policies before bothering to find some ex post facto religious justification (Chehabi 2001). To Taheri (2004), much of the political maneuvering under Khomeini’s rule was merely an exercise in giving policy advocacy an Islamic spin. Following a pyrrhic war with Iraq and the death of Khomeini, the government began using increasing pragmatic policies to build state capacity. As the post-Revolutionary period illustrates, Khomeini’s own pluralist institutional structure prevented Iran from ever fulfilling its totalitarian aspirations (Chehabi 2001).

So to sum everything up:

Most sources depict Khomenei as having masterminded the revolution, pulling the strings while living in exile, then coming back and having near-absolute power to implement his vision.

I think most sources present Khomeini as an ideological leader who offered a compelling alternative to what Iranians viewed as an encroachment on their sovereignty by the West. He was first and foremost a thinker, and by all accounts lacked "near-absolute" power. His own form of government was largely pluralistic.

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Khomeini opposed the US embassy takeover at first and it seems he was coerced into “supporting” it later by a violent bullying mob that was clearly in control.

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The embassy was indeed stormed by student activists rather than Khomeini's agents, but scholars tend to agree that Khomeini used this crisis as part of his own consolidation of power. Writes Rieffer-Flanagan "Khomeini, who had little respect for inter national law,13 used the hostage crisis to build support for his allies and to solidify their power. He offered his support to the students by saying, "I have said repeatedly that the taking of hostages by our militant, committed Muslim students was a natural reaction to the blows our nation suffered at the hands of America."14 While Khomeini genuinely hated "The Great Satan"15 there was domestic capital to be had by continuing to hold the hostages. As Takeyh notes, "Khomeini exploited them [the hostages] as a means of radicalizing the populace, claiming that the revolution was in danger from the manipulations of America and its internal accomplices."16 This enhanced the status of Khomeini's followers who were taking a direct stance on the great imperialist?United States?relative to the left-leaning factions. Holding Americans hostage had little to do with Islamic tenets (and actually violated Islamic traditions of protecting visitors) and more to do with enhancing the appeal of a specific political faction." (2009)