Popular reform that improves citizens lives are not the kind of thing that leads to popular unrest.

Dissidents were jailed, and torture was used on prisoners until 1977 after pressure from Jimmy Carter. There were also executions of political prisoners, but the treatment of prisoners deteriorated and political executions increased after the Revolution.

What the revolutionaries did was exaggerate the death toll to an absurd degree changing the Shah’s reputation, but then they immediately went further as soon as they got power.