Both Reza Shah and Mohammad Reza Shah took much inspiration from the post-revolutionary French and Classical American political schools of thought which advocate separation of religion and state, and both blamed the British for the rise of Islamism and radical Islam in Iran and the Middle East. For this reason Pahlavi Iran vigorously pursued close relations with France and the United States. In 1979, after the deposition of the government of Prime Minister Shapour Bakhtiar in February of that year, an interim government was established under Prime Minister Mehdi Bazargan which sought to establish a nationalist Islamic democratic government with pro-free market economic policy, in opposition to the wishes of Ayatollah Ruhollah Khomeini and his pro-Islamic Republic faction. Bazargan's government resigned "en masse" in November 1979 immediately after the US Embassy takeover by radicalist students.