essay about iranian revolution

• Iranian Revolution: Causes, Events, and Effects

In the late 1970s, the Pahlavi Dynasty was overthrown and replaced by a new Islamic Republic of Iran. The revolution was mostly non-violent, although there were incidents of armed struggle. Here is an overview of the events that led up to the Iranian revolution, as well as the events in the revolution and the aftermath. 

Before the Revolution

Western and secular influences on iranian society before the revolution.

Prior to the revolution, Iran was ruled by a monarchy headed by Mohammad Reza Shah Pahlavi. The Shah was heavily US-backed and promoted westernization which many Iranians believed was diluting their indigenous culture and values. Separation of sexes, which had been a traditional practice, had been banned. Women during this period wore western clothes in place of the hijab and could now go to school, vote, and work. The new rights to women were embraced by the elite society while Islam Puritans viewed it as secularization. A more secular take on religion was adopted, where religious minorities could hold office.

Discontent With the Pahlavi Dynasty

Due to the Shah’s economic reforms, Iran had ascended into the ranks as a globally formidable industrial economy. By late 1970s, the economy had stagnated, and inflation led to a higher cost of living. Iranians all over the country were dissatisfied with the regime and viewed it as having failed on its economic promise coupled with corruption and incompetence among public officials.

The regime of Mohammad Reza Shah Pahlavi was very oppressive, and used the SAVAK, who were the American-trained secret police, for mass murder, torture, and imprisonment of those against his government. The Shah’s ideology that westernization was the tool for Iran’s progress was seen as having failed, and the Iranians felt that they should turn back to Islam.

Student, Left-wing, and Conservative Shia Sentiments Against the Shah's Government

The government was heavily opposed by the Conservative Shia Muslims led by Ayatollah Khomeini. The basis of their arguments against the government took a cultural and religious approach. The Conservative Shia accused the Shah of destroying Islam through the popularization of Western values.

Iranian Muslim Students, who had been exposed to the ideas of Ayatollah Khomeini, increasingly began to support the idea of an Islamic State. The left-wing Islamist groups encouraged the use of armed struggle as the means to topple the Shah’s regime.

Setting the Revolution into Motion

The early 1970s brought with it inflation in Iran’s economy, and the Shah was criticized for his extravagance while most Iranians were suffering in poverty. The Shah’s government suppressed any form of resistance and had exiled Ayatollah Khomeini. By the start of 1977 however, Khomeini ideologies began to spread in Iran through smuggled audio cassettes. Khomeini called for strikes, refusal to pay tax, boycotts, and even martyrdom for the Islam religion. The death of Khomeini’s son in 1977, which was blamed on the SAVAK, increased Khomeini’s popularization. Organizations opposed to the government also cropped up in Iran which encouraged open resistance.

During the Revolution

Major events.

Demonstrations began in January of 1978 with religious students who were protesting a slanderous article with criticism against Khomeini published by a Tehran newspaper. Many students were killed by the government which sparked off nationwide protests concentrated in religious institutions. Protests surged after the 40 day customary mourning period in Shi’ite customs for the students. Institutions viewed as western such as cinemas and bars were razed to the ground. Deaths during protests served to fuel more demonstrations. The Shah attempted to institute reforms to quell down the protests, but he eventually fled Iran on January 16, 1979. Khomeini returned to Iran in February in 1979.

After the Revolution

A referendum was held in April of 1979, and Iranians voted overwhelmingly to establish an Islamic Republic. A new constitution was adopted, and Ayatollah Khomeini became the Supreme Leader of the Republic of Iran.

Global Versus Internal Perceptions of the Revolution

The Iranian Revolution shocked the world as it was not caused by economic issues, but rather cultural reform. The Economic crisis had been, up to that point, the leading cause of revolutions and Iran had been enjoying relative economic prosperity. Iranians viewed the revolution as the only way to block western influence in their country.

A conservative rule in Iran was enforced, and former nationalists, elites, and left-wing revolutionaries were sidelined in the new regime. Strict dress codes were implemented and rigorously enforced. Iraq felt threatened by Iran and, to avoid the possibility of a Shia revolution in Iraq, the country invaded Iran in 1980, a war that lasted for eight years. The war served to unite Iranians against the US-supported Iraq forces.

Geopolitical Outlook of Iran Following the Revolution and Today

The reign of Khomeini as Supreme spiritual leader ended in 1989 with his death, and he was succeeded by Hojatoleslam Seyed Ali Khamenei, who had been president since August of 1981. Khamenei led the wave of revolutionary purists who firmly believed in non-compromising on revolutionary ideals. The Revolutionary Guards in Iran have risen in status to be a political and economic force. Sanctions placed on Iran by the US increasingly isolated Iran, a situation which can still be seen today. While Iran’s economy remains largely reliant on oil, many Iranians are dissatisfied with the perceived inflation and corruption in the government. Iran remains an Islamic state to this day.

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Iranian revolution.

(Please note, encyclopedias/tertiary sources should NOT be cited in your assignment. Scroll down for primary and secondary sources) .

The Iranian Revolution, also called Islamic Revolution, Enelāb-e Eslāmī (in Farsi), was a popular uprising in the Muslim majority country of Iran in 1978–79 that resulted in the toppling of the authoritarian government led by the Shah of Iran, Mohammed Reza Pahlavi, on February 11, 1979. Islamist revolutionaries opposed the western secular policies of the Shah which led to the establishment of an Islamic republic after the revolution under the Leadership of Ayatollah Khomeini (also known as Imam Khomeini).

• Iranian Revolution [1978–1979] This link opens in a new window This Encyclopedia Britannica entry discusses the prelude to the Iranian Revolution, as well as the Revolution and its aftermath.

Primary Sources

Note: For help with citing primary sources properly, check out this FAQ and be sure to reach out to your instructor with any questions you may have.  For help citing interviews such as Reconstructed Lives (below), click here . 

This is a powerful gallery of photos and commentary by photographer David Burnett from his arrival in Iran on December 26, 1978, initially unaware of the degree of political unrest as he would go on to document protests, killings, confrontations between soldiers/police and protestors, funerals, departure of the Shah and his family and the arrival of Khomeini in Tehran. These photos also appear in his book, 44 Days: Iran and the Remaking of the World .

Burnett, D. 44 Days: The Iranian Revolution. David Burnett - Galleries.

This edited interview transcript by the Woodrow Wilson Center’s Dialogue radio program host and producer George Liston Seay with former Iranian journalist, Haleh Esfandiari, author of Reconstructed Lives: Women and Iran's Islamic Revolution, discusses the interviews she conducted with Iranian women “whose careers were either begun or redefined under the Islamic Republic” formed by the Iranian Revolution.

Seay, G. L. (1997). Reconstructed lives: Women and Iran's Islamic Revolution. Wilson Center.

Secondary Sources

Written by a professor at the University of St. Andrews, this fully illustrated and readable article describes the rise of the Ayatollah Khomeini and the fall of Mohammed Peza Pahlavi, Shah of Iran covering events beginning in 1953 through the Iranian Revolution.

Randjbar-Daemi, S. (2019). “Death to the Shah”. History Today , 69 (4), 28–45.

This article explains the role of the Iranian Revolution in inspiring Islamic activism by creating the first Islamic state. Established in Shia Iran it had the effect of encouraging Sunni Muslims to organize as they feared the Revolution was designed to strengthen Shiism at their expense. The authors explain how the Revolution antagonized problems within the Islamic world and with its relationship to the West.

Potočnik, D., & Plemenitaš, K. (2018). The Iran Revolution and its Influence on the revival of Islam. Annales: Series Historia et Sociologia , 28 (1), 29–40. https://doi-org.ezproxy.snhu.edu/10.19233/ASHS.2018.03

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A Revolution and A War: How Iran Transformed Today’s Middle East

How the 1979 Iranian Revolution and the eight-year Iran–Iraq War greatly and irreversibly influenced the geopolitics and regional dynamics of the Middle East

An Iranian girl carries a photo of the late leader of the Islamic revolution, Ayatollah Khomeini,  to mark the anniversary of the 1979 Islamic revolution, a week before parliamentary elections, Tehran, Feb. 11. Damir Sagolj/Reuters

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Since the Iranian 1979 Revolution, but also more recently, the geopolitics of the Arab World vis-à-vis Iran has undergone a significant transformation. Iran has strengthened its alliance with Russia and China and has remained a hostile force resisting U.S. hegemony. Its influence has only grown as a number of armed non-state or quasi-state groups spread across the region. Another development in favor of Iran has been the rise of sectarianism in the Islamic world, which—with the exception of Tunisia—has reached its pinnacle. Finally, the Arab Spring, which heralded democracy to people, failed to do particularly that in the end. These events and others require us to adjust the prism through which we examine the geopolitics of the region today.

Prior to the 1979 Revolution, what shaped the geopolitics of the region was the Nixon Doctrine . The doctrine influenced Nixon’s foreign policy decision to arm its allies, both Iran and Israel, to the teeth in the 1970s. The United States consistently sold the latest, most sophisticated, conventional weapons to Mohammad Reza Shah Pahlavi (the Shah of Iran). It is estimated that the Shah purchased a total of 15 billion dollars of the most-advanced U.S. arms—weapons that were technologically superior to most of those available to other US allies, except Israel. Adjusted for inflation, 15 billion dollars in 1970 amounts to almost 115 billion dollar s in 2022. This leaves analysts with no doubt that both Nixon and Henry Kissinger believed that strengthening Iran’s military would stabilize the Middle East; because the Shah was considered to be the “police” of the region, Iran was assigned the role of a buffer state whose function was to prevent the spread of communism and ensure a steady supply of oil.

The strategic support of the United States to the Shah was due to the geographic proximity of Iran to the former Soviet Union. As American analyst Gary Sick once said, Iran was the site for the United States to watch over the activities of the Soviet Union. By heavily arming Iran, the United States sought to build a shield against its rival, making sure that the Russians would never realize their dream “to reach the warm waters of the Persian Gulf”. Hence, the Shah of Iran was at the forefront of receiving the largest and most advanced U.S. military weapons such as the Airborne Warning and Control System (AWACS), which was then the most sophisticated and expensive radar that the United States and Iran used to conduct reconnaissance operations on the Soviet borders. Moreover, Washington decided to help Iran build its nuclear program as early as in the 1950s under the “ Atoms for Peace Program ”. It may be interesting to the reader to note that the CIA reported to then-President Gerald Ford that the Shah would have an atomic bomb by 1984.

Armed by the United States, Iran’s U.S.-assigned role as the police of the region manifested in many instances. One was during the Dhofar rebellion against the Sultan Qaboos of Oman from 1963 to 1976. The civil war began with the formation of the Dhofar Liberation Front—a communist group which aimed to create an independent state in the Dhofar area in the south of Oman. The Dhofar Liberation Front was heavily supported by the Soviet Union and had launched serious attacks on the central government in Qaboos. Were it not for the Shah of Iran ’ s intervention in sending troops to put down the Dhofar rebellion, the Dhofar Liberation Front would have continued to challenge the rule of Sultan Qaboos. The fact that Iran intervened in the so-called “Arab affairs” as it saw fit; that it sent troops to another sovereign country; and that no country opposed the Shah for his interventions in the domestic affairs of other countries clearly shows Iran’s political might in the region.

Another example is related to Bahrain. The Shah had claimed uninterrupted Persian sovereignty over Bahrain since the pre-Islamic era. Indeed, throughout the nineteenth century, the Shah expressed objections to London over the 1930 treaty to recognize the sovereignty of Bahrain. In fact, in 1927, Reza Pahlavi, the Shah’s father, took the dispute with Britain over Bahrain to the League of Nations, albeit with no resolution. In the end, in 1971, the Shah agreed with Britain to grant Bahrain independence from Iran, but insisted that the Greater and Lesser Tonb and Abu Musa islands would remain under the Iranian sovereignty .

With the onset of the 1979 Revolution, the regional affairs of the Middle East were the subject of tremendous change. The revolution brought about a completely different discourse by bringing down millennia of monarchical rule to an Islamic Republic. Iran, once an ally of the United States, turned into one of its avid foes, resisting its imperial tendencies. Although one could argue that the principles on which the Islamic Republic crafted it foreign policy have more or less remained the same particularly when it came to resisting U.S. presence in the Middle East region, bringing down millennia of monarchical rule through the transformations that led to the rise of an Islamic Republic as a result of the 1979 Iranian Revolution, and in particular, the effect of Iraq–Iran War, forces us to rethink the ways we look at the geopolitics of the region.

Before that, it is important to examine Iran’s current standing in the region in comparison to similar countries in the region including Saudi Arabia, Turkey, and Pakistan.

Iran’s Standing in the Region as U.S. Ally In the 1960s, Turkey’s Gross Domestic Product (GDP) was greater than that of both Iran and Pakistan, but in the 1970s, this trend changed. This can largely be attributed to the fact that the price of oil dramatically increased, which gave the Shah a large inflow of foreign exchange, which also led to a staggering growth in the relative size of capital. As the price of oil increased right after the 1973 oil crisis, Iran’s GDP became greater than that of Turkey. Iran under the Shah also spent twice as much as Turkey and Pakistan. In 1975, Turkey and Pakistan spent 4 and 6 percent of their GDP on military expenditure whereas Iran spent 12 percent.

These figures clearly demonstrate Iran’s weight and significance as the most influential ally of the United States in the Middle East region. Indeed, as the most powerful U.S. military ally in the Middle East at the time, the Shah pursued a policy that minimized the risk of confrontation with the Soviet Union, and this “zero-problem” approach with the Soviet Union is one of the success stories of its foreign policy.

Buttressed by its role as an ally of the United States, Iran was also able to exhibit regional superiority in terms of sheer exhibition of power. Take, for example, the 1975 Algiers Agreement between Iran and Iraq to settle any disputes and conflicts concerning their common maritime border on Shatt Al-Arab River . In exchange for the Shah’s withdrawal of support to the Iraqi Kurdish rebellion, Iran’s borders were to be respected. However, following an eight-year war with Iran, the Algiers Agreement was abandoned, not to be revisited again, and Iraq stood to lose the most from the treaty abrogation, losing benefits it had once acquired from the border river.

The Geopolitics of the Middle East and the 1979 Revolution The popular demonstrations in Iran led by Ayatollah Khomeini against the dictatorship of the Shah and the U.S. domination of the region gave rise to the “ last of great revolutions ”. The 1979 Revolution was accompanied by certain events that altered the geopolitics of the Middle East region as Iranian-U.S. relations faltered. The occupation of the U.S. embassy in Tehran on November 4, 1979, and the hostage-taking of U.S. diplomats that lasted for 444 days, was among the first major post-revolutionary shocks after the 1979 Revolution. Although it was a reaction to twenty-five years of U.S. dominance of Iran (1953–1979), to this day, this very event looms over Iran’s relations with the West, and in particular the United States. Iran became the flag-bearer of hostile countries to the United States to the extent that none of the Soviet allies in the region were as threatening to the United States the way Iran was.

The second event that altered Iran’s position in relation to the region and the United States was the severance of diplomatic ties with Israel, following which the Israeli embassy in Iran was closed. Iran went from a country that was friendly to Israel to one of its stubborn foes. The severing of ties with Israel and the subsequent hostilities between Iran and Israel had—and continues to have—consequences for Iranian-U.S. relations.

The third event was the promotion of revolutionary political culture. The most telling example of this was Khomeini’s slogan of “exporting the Islamic Revolution” to other countries in the Islamic world. The transformation of the political culture of the region under the influence of the 1979 Revolution frightened the Petro-Arab monarchies in the region, because their regimes were similar to that of the Shah’s dictatorship, which meant that they feared popular uprisings the most. It is crucial to note that both the United States and the Soviet Union feared the possibility of the 1979 Revolution being exported to countries in the Middle East, but also to the satellite states of eastern Europe. Exporting a revolution based on the Iranian model meant that developing countries that were dependent on either of the superpowers would demand independence.

The 1979 Revolution brought many consequences for the broader region. First, it produced a state that had an anti-imperial ideology and identity, one that purported that resisting U.S. hegemony was the only way to liberate the “oppressed” nations in the post-colonial world. Due to the spread of this ideology, the Iranian state has actively opposed U.S. imperialism in the region for the past four decades. Second, it caused Iran to support the freedom and/or resistance movements across the region, from Hezbollah in Lebanon to the Popular Mobilization Forces in Iraq. Third, during the 1980s, when Iraq had launched a protracted war against Iran, including launching hundreds of missiles and chemical weapons on civilians, the state faced tremendous shortages in military equipment due to the embargo imposed by the United States. This caused military generals to start manufacturing missiles and other heavy artillery equipment by the mid-1980s. Largely due to the United States’ economic sanctions on Iran, coupled with an arms embargo by all world powers, Iran was forced to develop domestic technical capabilities in the production of heavy artillery and missiles.

Despite economic sanctions and the arms embargo, Iran developed significant industrial and manufacturing sectors in steel, rubber, cement, and iron that other countries in the region lacked, as well as cutting-edge sectors such as auto aerospace, nanotechnology, and stem cells. In the later decades, particularly after the fall of Saddam Hossein, Iran emerged as a country that exerted power and influence in the region, and developed a rivalry particularly with Saudi Arabia, which has greatly influenced the geopolitical dynamics of the region. On the political front, Riyadh has continuously tried to check the growing role of Iran in the Arab World, but the Kingdom’s attempts at doing so have all but failed. Saudi attempts to curtail the power of Iran’s ally Hezbollah in Lebanon, to contain the role of Iran in Iraq, to stop its support for the Houthis have fallen short. These failures offer enough incentive for the Saudis to be obsessed with Iran as a legitimate geopolitical competitor.

Yet, another watershed event that would have even greater influence on the geo-politics of the region is the Iran–Iraq War.

The Iran–Iran War’s Role in Shaping the Geopolitics of the Region In September 1980, Iraqi forces launched a full-scale invasion of Iran—a conflict that lasted for eight years, killing at least a half million lives, injuring over a million, and displacing millions more. The Iran–Iraq war remains one of the largest and longest conventional interstate wars since World War II. Throughout the 1980s as Iraq invaded parts of Iran’s territory, it continued to enjoy the full support of the Arab World. The economic cost of the war is estimated to have been over a trillion dollars. After eight years of warfare, the armies ended in virtually the same positions in which they had started in September 1980. It was also the only war in modern times in which chemical weapons were used on a massive scale along with ballistic missiles to attack cities. It was the most extensive use of weapons of mass destruction since the atomic bombing of Hiroshima and Nagasaki in Japan in 1945.

On January 15, 1991, Reuters quoted King Fahd of Saudi Arabia saying that the sum of Saudi Arabia’s financial support to Iraq topped 27 billion dollars while estimates of support from the Gulf Cooperation Council (GCC) to Saddam reached up to 80 billion dollars in the 1980s.The tremendous physical and human cost that Saddam Hussein inflicted on Iran is one thing, but the consequences of this destructive war on the geopolitics of the region are quite another.  In fact, the Iran–Iraq War set the trajectory for the future geopolitics of the region, and remains one of the most critical junctures in contemporary history of the Middle East region.

First, the Iraq–Iran War and the subsequent embargoes imposed on Iran gave Iran a strong incentive to develop an indigenous military complex after it had been one of the largest buyers of sophisticated conventional weapons in the region. Indeed, securing conventional weapons in order to defend its people against the aggression of Saddam’s regime was one of the major challenges of the Iranian government. Virtually no country was willing to sell conventional weapons (i.e., Scud missiles) to Iran to be used in defense when its cities were showered with the same missiles by the Iraqi army. It is now well-documented that hundreds of Russian missiles were launched by the Iraqi forces on Iran’s civilian populations and tens of thousands of Iranians were either wounded or martyred.

The massive cost of the war forced Iran to establish an independent local missile industry. As a result, Iran went from being a major purchaser of missiles to one of its major producers by the late 1990s. Today, Iran’s ability to produce long-range missiles is on par with those of global powers. Missiles are not the only conventional weapons that Iran manufactures. Fighter jets, tanks, artillery, submarine, drones, and speedboats are among the other high-tech military equipment it also manufactures. Groups like Hezbollah in Lebanon, Hamas in Palestine, and the Houthis in Yemen have been able to achieve considerable missile power with the help of Iranian knowhow and have played a decisive role in confronting Israel, Saudi Arabia, and UAE, the three countries that are actively united against Iran.

Second, Saddam’s use of unconventional weapons such as chemical weapons against Iran was a sheer violation of the Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty and all treaties on weapons of mass destruction. The Western world not only turned a blind eye from Saddam’s extensive and comparatively greater use of  chemical weapons against Iran’s civilian population, but also s upplied and sold his Baath Party more of them. Additionally, the failure of negotiations with the West (1980–1995) to operate Tehran Research Reactor, built by the United States in 1967 and to complete the Bushehr Nuclear Power Plant whose construction began in 1975 by German companies but was not completed, was another major reason that Iran sought to produce its own nuclear power. In 2003, Iran achieved enrichment and heavy water technology, and its access to these two technologies meant that it could build a nuclear bomb if decided to. Although Iran could now challenge Israel’s monopoly over possessing a nuclear weapon in the Middle East, its nuclear capability has become the biggest political and security issue between Iran and world powers in the last fifteen years. The fact that Iran does have such technical capacities in the nuclear field—and other countries in the region (except Israel) do not—gives Iran a competitive edge.

Third, Iran’s relations with the Arab states of the Persian Gulf fundamentally worsened after the Iraq–Iran War due to their one-sided support of Saddam Hussein’s regime. The GCC states moved toward purchasing the latest and most sophisticated weapons from the United States. To them, the first and biggest threat in the region came from Iran. The United States has increased its military presence to support its allies, establishing 46 military bases in eleven Middle Eastern countries, which is considered to be a staggering number of military bases in one region.

Fourth, the Iran-Iraq War demonstrated to Iranian officials that countries in the region are willing to do whatever it takes to bring regime change in Iran. From uniting themselves with Israel to using non-conventional weapons against civilians, the aim for the Arab states was to change the revolutionary governing system in Iran. Iranian officials knew that they needed to transcend their national borders to resist the aggression of the neighboring countries including Israel. Hezbollah of Lebanon is a telling example of the proxies Iran propped up to project its influence in the region. Over time, Hezbollah acquired significant power and remains a strong force to this day. It defeated Israel in its 2006 invasion of Lebanon. In fact, Arab countries lost all military wars against Israel, but Hezbollah prevented Israel from advancing onto Lebanese territory. Today, Hezbollah’s increasing power is a major source of concern for the United States and Israel. It remains a military force with tens of thousands of missiles and 100,000 troops and has political representation in the Lebanese parliament and government.

Fifth, one of the most crucial geopolitical transformations has been the emergence of armed non-governmental or quasi-governmental groups in the Middle East. Hezbollah in Lebanon, the Houthis in Yemen, the Popular Mobilization Forces in Iraq, and the Fatimids of Afghanistan are among the major Shiite groups that have been supported by Iran. Iran built alliances with these groups in response to the security situation in the region. For example, when ISIS conquered Iraq in 2014, occupying 40 percent of the country within two years and capturing the large and oil-rich cities of Mosul and Kirkuk, the Iraqi cities Baghdad and Erbil were on the verge of collapse. In response, Ayatollah Sistani issued a fatwa to form the Popular Mobilization Forces, which is reminiscent of the Iranian Basij Forces , established in 1979 as a volunteer paramilitary organization operating under Islamic Revolutionary Guards Corps (IRGC) and later formed a “people’s militia” to aid in the war against Iran (The Quds Force of Iran used its experiences of forming the Basij popular force in countering Saddam’s aggression to help the Lebanese Hezbollah with its popular mobilization). The Popular Mobilization Forces militia, with the help of the Iraqi army, eventually defeated ISIS and cleared Iraqi territory of terrorists, and as a result, new influential political-security-military dynamic entered the balance of power in Iraq. During the Syrian crisis, the Shiite group “Fatimids of Afghanistan” with the support of Iran, played an important role in Syria and in the fight against ISIS and Al-Qaeda. To be sure, Iran’s alliance with organized groups is not limited to the Shiite ones, but also Sunni groups such as Hamas. This clearly shows that the alliance that Iran has built is not organized around sectarian lines.

Sixth, Iran’s pivot to the East was a result of the world powers’ support of d Saddam’s aggression in the Iraq war.  After the war, Eastern powers, namely Russia and China, pursued a form of rapprochement with Iran, whereas those of the West—particularly the United States and Western Europe—pursued a hostile approach to Iran. The upshot was that after Trump’s withdrawal from the JCPOA and Europe’s unremitting compliance and subservience to Trump’s maximum pressure strategy, Iran’s Supreme Leader officially declared that Iran no longer trusts Europe and that Iran should count on the East. Hence, the continuity of Western powers’ hostility toward Iran after the war has provided the strongest incentives for Iran to turn toward the East. The twenty-year strategic agreement with China and the twenty-year strategic agreement with Russia are two clear examples of Iran’s lack of mistrust of the West. Today, China and Russia are Iran’s main trade partners, whereas in the early 2000s, it was Germany.

Back to Diplomacy For Iranians, it is not easy to forget the magnitude and the scale of death and destruction of the Iraq–Iran War. However, massive death and destruction aside, the long-term consequences of that war shaped in many ways the geopolitics of the region. Indeed, many of the hard problems of today’s Middle East have originated in those eight years.

The Iraq–Iran War set the political trajectory of the region in some important ways for the decades to come. But that is not the only war the Middle East has witnessed. If one war has that many pernicious consequences for peace and stability in the region as I examined above, one might ask in horror, what would be the long-term consequences of the invasion of Iraq and Afghanistan by the United States in early 2000s and the Saudi-led war on Yemen for the future of the region? These questions are hard to even contemplate. But they give us enough reason to believe that exhibition of power in the form of warfare is doomed to failure. Sooner or later, the United States will have to realize that its policy of domination has led to disastrous outcomes for the region and beyond. To fill the vacuum left behind by the United States when it leaves the region is an invitation to create a regional security and cooperation system among the countries of the region. A regional security and cooperation system in the Persian Gulf engulfing Iran, Saudi Arabia, Iraq, and the other GCC member states would be the first vital achievement. To move toward such a strategy, we need an end to war and to choose diplomacy as the only choice.

No doubt the 1979 Revolution shaped the geopolitics of the region. However, Iraq’s aggression against Iran and the support of regional countries and international powers was the most important factors shaping Iran’s foreign policy strategy and its geopolitical shift. The Iran–Iraq War bolstered the resistance discourse against hegemony and neo-imperial forms of domination by the world powers, including and most importantly by the United States. Iranian officials remember when Saddam enjoyed the support of powers from both the West and the East, from both the United States and Soviet Union. If the Iranian leaders are suspicious of the United States when it comes to holding its end of the bargain on any negotiation table, the suspicion almost entirely can be attributed to the hard lessons they learned during the Iraq–Iran War. The experience of the war shows that the terrible consequences of a war remain a stumbling block to peace efforts. To achieve a lasting peace, belligerent thinking must be thrown into the dustbin of history, focusing only on the option of diplomacy.

Seyed Hossein Mousavian is a Middle East Security and Nuclear Policy specialist at the Program on Science and Global Security in the Woodrow Wilson School of Public and International Affairs at Princeton University. He previously served as Iranian ambassador to Germany (1990−97) and spokesman for Iran’s team in nuclear negotiations with the European Union and the International Atomic Energy Agency (2003–05).  From 2005 to 2007, he served as foreign policy advisor to Ali Larijani, then secretary of the Supreme National Security Council and chief nuclear negotiator.  Mousavian was head of the Foreign Relations Committee of Iran’s National Security Council from 1997 to 2005 and served as the vice president of the Center for Strategic Research for International Affairs between 2005 and 2009 and as general director of Foreign Ministry for West Europe between 1987 and 1990. He is the author of  The Iranian Nuclear Crisis: A Memoir , Iran-Europe Relations: Challenges and Opportunities , and his forthcoming book,  Iran and the United States: An Insider’s View on the Failed Past and the Road to Peace .

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Muddling through the Iranian Revolution

Naghmeh Sohrabi | Nov 1, 2015

R evolutions are epic events that shape both what comes after them and narratives of what came before them. The Iranian Revolution of 1979 is no exception. The postrevolutionary state in Iran has engaged in an extensive project of memory making through public commemorations and the production of written documents and oral histories. And individual figures of the revolutionary movement and of the ancien régime alike have been publishing their memoirs or recording their memories in oral history archives such as Harvard University's Iranian Oral History Project and the Berlin-based Research Association for Iranian Oral History.

As a result, there is a vast scholarship on the Iranian Revolution, published both inside and outside Iran, much of which focuses on the political, economic, social, and ideological reasons for the revolution. But what does the unfolding of a revolution feel like to those living through it? Do people's experiences of the revolution (inevitably remembered as fractured and muddled) line up with historians' later tidying up of the narrative, or do they deviate from it? Is it even possible to get at something as elusive as the experience of a revolution decades later? These questions have been at the core of my research in the 2014–15 academic year when, as a Mellon New Directions fellow, I set out to both train in ethnographic methods and conduct research on the experience of the 1979 revolution.

But why ethnography?

Capturing a revolution as it unfolded, rather than analyzing the reasons for it, necessitates interviewing a wide swath of people about the fabric of their everyday lives in the lead-up to the historic event. Many took part in the revolution for reasons that often are not included in archives and formal analyses, such as youthful idealism and rebellion against social norms, curiosity, or even love. For many, if they had ever told their stories, it was within intimate circles of friends, and rarely in a linear fashion. Unlike the polished and oft-told narratives of the revolution's leaders, these stories require time, patience, and sometimes persuasion to be elicited. One of the sentences I heard frequently from people I interviewed was "I'm not sure this is interesting to you."

As a historian, was I not merely conducting oral histories, to be used alongside written records? Oral history and ethnography share several crucial traits—such as accounting for the subjectivity of sources, the significance of the interplay of the researcher and her subjects to the information collected, the kinds of questions asked, and the focus on the meaning of events versus the event itself. Additionally, many oral histories contain ethnographic data, and ethnographic interviews are undoubtedly at times oral histories. Nonetheless, as I conducted more and more interviews, I recognized that the biggest obstacle to my project was the filtering of people's memories of the 1970s through their postrevolutionary experience of persecution (especially if they were from leftist or religious-nationalist groups), immigration, and even disappointment at what they themselves saw as youthful indiscretions. To push through the wall of postrevolutionary memory (and forgetting), ethnography provided a better path for three major reasons.

The first is the form of ethnographic interviews. My interviews are anonymous and semi-structured, and they often rely on the "grand tour" question that asks subjects to take me through a day; focusing on the material aspects of their story is a way of steering them away from a postrevolutionary analysis. Thus, I don't ask, "How did you feel on February 11, 1979?" I ask if they remember where they were that morning and if they could take me through it: did they turn on the radio, read a newspaper, visit a friend, go into the street? This makes the interviews more intimate, and triggering memory through specific people, places, and things, as opposed to asking their impressions, allows me to get closer to the chaos and the amorphousness of a day whose significance mainly arises from the declaration on radio and television that the revolution was victorious.

Second, ethnographers examine their subjects within a larger web of meanings that, while not part of the formal interview, constitute an important part of the ethnographer's research notes. Over the year, I was constantly invited to various talks and events organized by the diaspora communities that somehow touched on the revolution. These occasions, while not part of the formal interview process, provided important opportunities for me to deepen my relationships with the communities and to gain insight into my subjects' younger and often more political selves. One interviewee invited me to her professional association's election, held at a restaurant in Paris. Most of the association's members are Iranians who had been active in the revolution. As I watched them campaign, it was clear that I was watching them reenact the political behavior they had engaged in as young student activists in the 1970s. Their gentle and not-so-gentle joking with each other about speechifying or ideological posturing would sometimes lead to stories of their days in Iran, particularly in the fall of 1978, when leftist activity came into the open. It also allowed me to understand their connections to each other in the prerevolutionary period. Even though I didn't record these events per se, I used my observations (which I wrote down afterward) to deepen and contextualize my later interviews. For example, these "extra-interview" occasions allowed me to identify interviewees who had been in the same prison together in the 1970s (to preserve the anonymity of the people I was interviewing, I could not ask direct questions about this). Having this information allowed me both to fact-check some of the information I was receiving and also to further investigate certain topics, such as the communal arrangements of the prisons and the flow of information into and out of the prison system.

The third reason is the ways the interviews are used. A variety of factors—the anonymity of the interviewees, the unrepresentative sample, and the wandering nature of the interviews, some conducted over month-long periods, some in two-hour sessions—create the impression of unwieldy source material. So how to use them in writing a history of the experience of the Iranian Revolution?

Here, the difference between ethnography and oral history becomes more pronounced. Oral history as a general rule discourages anonymous interviews for a variety of reasons. But in this project, my focus is less on recovering individual voices and more on observing patterns and threads that run through the interviews, such as words, events, or objects that repeat from one person to another, regardless of their demographic or ideological background. These shared memories are what pull my interviews together and point the way toward what can be called the "revolutionary experience." My interviewees' shared memories include, for example, hand-copying books and pamphlets, hiking in the mountains (where clearly they felt freer to exchange ideas and books), and having family members who were partisans of a spectrum of revolutionary ideologies (religious families had leftist and Islamist children, and vice versa). As such, the ideological divisions historians have identified between the Khomeini faction, the religious-nationalists, and the left in the lead-up to the revolution do not reflect the muddled experience of people's lives at the time.

Rare is the historian today who reads a document purely for the information it contains. The provenance of the document, the context in which it was created, the identity of the author—all are crucial to the ways in which we read historical documents. The same applies to my interviews. In trying to understand the experience of the revolution, the who, when, and why of the interviews themselves crucially come into play. In other words, I interpret the interviews by incorporating the bias of the "sample," just as one should with any written document.

In the end, though, this project is not an ethnography of the 1979 revolution but rather an attempt to bring together ethnographic and historical research methods to understand the granular texture of a revolutionary experience. Because of its temporal position—old enough to be archived and historicized, young enough to give us access to living memory—the Iranian Revolution provides historians of all revolutions great insight into the minutiae of how a social upheaval is imagined and experienced before and after it is named a revolution.

Naghmeh Sohrabi is the Charles (Corky) Goodman Professor of Middle East History and the associate director for research at the Crown Center for Middle East Studies at Brandeis University. She is the author of Taken for Wonder: 19th-Century Travel Accounts from Iran to Europe (Oxford Univ. Press, 2012). She was a Mellon New Directions fellow during the 2014–15 academic year.

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Heilbrunn Timeline of Art History Essays

Years leading to the iranian revolution, 1960–79.

Sohrab Sepehri

Nahid Hagigat

Calligraphic Drawing 1 and 2, Untitled

Faramarz Pilaram

Untitled, 2013

Nasrollah Afjei

Maryam Ekhtiar Department of Islamic Art, The Metropolitan Museum of Art

Julia Rooney Department of Islamic Art, The Metropolitan Museum of Art

The artistic flowering in Iran that began in the 1950s continued through the 1960s and early ’70s, as artists from the Saqqakhana School gained international prominence. These decades saw the opening of Iran to the international art scene, as local artists participated in art fairs, including five Tehran Biennials (1958–66), founded galleries (the Apadana, the Seyhoun, and the Borghese), courted local supporters (the Pahlavi Foundation and the Ministry of Art and Culture), and eventually foreign collectors (Abby Weed Grey and the Iran American Society). The Shiraz Arts Festival at Persepolis , largely backed by the government, was inaugurated in 1967. The festival hosted a roster of international musicians, artists, dancers, and otherwise cutting-edge performers, and for the next eleven years represented Iran’s vibrant art scene to the world. All of this paved the way in 1977 for the opening of the Tehran Museum of Contemporary Art, which would come to hold an important collection of works by both Western and Iranian artists.

In these years, Faramarz Pilaram (1937-1982) and Hossein Zenderoudi (born 1937) continued their experiments with calligraphy , abstracting letters and introducing techniques of modern painting. Master of the tradition Seyed Mohammad Ehsaey (born 1939), for instance, pioneered the use of media not traditionally used in calligraphy (oil paint and canvas) to produce works that focus on the composition and forms of the letters rather than content. His contemporary Nasrollah Afjei (born 1933) further abstracted the words through repetition, creating wavelike compositions. Some artists used text less as a visual component than a springboard of inspiration. Sohrab Sepehri (1928–1980) was both a poet and painter, studying first in Tehran and then traveling to Japan and India, where he developed a strong understanding of Eastern aesthetics and thought. His abstract paintings feature simple brushstrokes and colors that embody his appreciation of nature and of  Zen philosophy .

This surge of artistic activity was largely a result of Iran’s economic prosperity and the policies of the Shah Muhammad Reza Pahlavi and the Empress Farah Diba. The White Revolution attempted to expand women’s rights, improve education in outlying provinces, and privatize business. This, coupled with the oil boom, catapulted Iran into a period of unprecedented financial prosperity. However, the distribution of wealth was uneven, leaving the vast majority of Iranian citizens marginalized and alienated by the country’s Western-leaning regime. As much as the court supported artistic exploration, many artists resented the shah’s economic and social program and the surveillance and repression of those who opposed the regime. Ardeshir Mohassess (1938–2008), for instance, made scathing political cartoons during the 1960s and ’70s that deftly illustrated the corruption and extravagance of monarchical leadership, both in Iran and more generally. In 1976, after his work was banned by the Shah, Mohassess left Iran for Paris and then the United States, where he continued to produce biting caricatures and political cartoons.

Nahid Hagigat (born 1943) was one of the few artists to express the concerns of women during the years leading to the Revolution. In her prints, she captured the feeling of tension and fear in a male-dominated society under government scrutiny. Beyond the unique perspective she offered, printmaking was a rare medium in Iran at this time, yet an appropriate one for her subject. The paintings of Nicky Nodjoumi (born 1942) also conveyed this climate of secrecy, often depicting figures under pressure or restraint.

The 1979 Revolution changed the dynamics of the arts scene. After the Islamic takeover, museums and galleries enjoyed less latitude. The Revolution itself was documented by the photographer Abbas (born 1944), who had just returned to Iran for a project to examine changes in society brought about by the oil boom. Caught in the moment, he recorded both the fervent demonstrations of the masses and the dealings of the higher-level politicians. Other notable photographers who captured footage of the Revolution were Kaveh Golestan (1950-2003) and the couple Bahman Jalali (1944-2010) and Rana Javadi (born 1953).

Although officially censored, photography and film became some of the most effective mediums used during this period, overshadowing painting and sculpture. Most paintings of the early 1980s were idealized portraits of Ayatollah Khomeini and other religiously inspired themes. Stylistically, the work became literal and narrative, showing a linear progression of ideas and clear ideological themes. Both the Iran-Iraq War (1980–88) and the Revolution prompted development in the graphic arts, as powerful posters were created to galvanize national support and to commemorate the lives lost. This combination of broad religious appeal and more directed nationalism made posters a particularly effective medium in the late 1970s and ’80s.

The art coming out of Iran from the 1960s to the 1980s is one of transition. Its heterogeneity reflects the range of societal conditions at the time: political discontent coupled with patriotism; secularism contrasted to religious fervor; the increasing disparity between rich and poor. As the country moved into another mode, artists struggled to defend, discover, and re-create their own identities both at home and abroad. In their work, we see a diversity of concerns that continue to preoccupy contemporary artists today.

Ekhtiar, Maryam, and Julia Rooney. “Years Leading to the Iranian Revolution, 1960–79.” In Heilbrunn Timeline of Art History . New York: The Metropolitan Museum of Art, 2000–. http://www.metmuseum.org/toah/hd/irnv/hd_irnv.htm (May 2016)

Further Reading

Amirsadeghi, Hossein, ed. Different Sames: New Perspectives in Contemporary Iranian Art . London: Thames & Hudson in association with TransGlobe Publishing Limited, 2009.

Bardaouil, Sam. Iran Inside Out: Influences of Homeland and Diaspora on the Artistic Language of Contemporary Iranian Artists . New York: Chelsea Art Museum, 2009.

Daftari, Fereshteh. Without Boundary: Seventeen Ways of Looking . New York: Museum of Modern Art, 2006.

Daftari, Fereshteh and Layla S. Diba, eds. Iran Modern . Exh. cat. New York: Asia Society in association with Yale University Press, 2013.

Issa, Rose, Ruyin Pakbaz, and Daryush Shayegan. Iranian Contemporary Art . London: Booth-Clibborn Editions, 2001.

Keshmirshekan, Hamid, ed. Amidst Shadow and Light: Contemporary Iranian Art and Artists . Hong Kong: Liaoning Creative Press Ltd., 2011.

Porter, Venetia. Word into Art: Artists of the Modern Middle East . London: The British Museum Press, 2006.

Yar-Shater, Ehsan. Iran Faces the Seventies . New York: Praeger Publishers, 1971.

Additional Essays by Maryam Ekhtiar

• Ekhtiar, Maryam. “ Modern and Contemporary Art in Iran .” (October 2004)
• Ekhtiar, Maryam. “ Artists of the Saqqakhana Movement .” (April 2014)
• Ekhtiar, Maryam. “ Early Qur’ans (8th–Early 13th Century) .” (May 2014)
• Ekhtiar, Maryam. “ Tiraz : Inscribed Textiles from the Early Islamic Period .” (July 2015)
• Ekhtiar, Maryam. “ Nineteenth-Century Iran: Art and the Advent of Modernity .” (October 2004)
• Ekhtiar, Maryam. “ Nineteenth-Century Iran: Continuity and Revivalism .” (October 2004)

Additional Essays by Julia Rooney

• Rooney, Julia. “ Artists of the Saqqakhana Movement .” (April 2014)

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Artist or Maker

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The Anglo-Iranian Oil company and the Islamic Revolution

An essay about colonies and dynasties.

• A staff writer National Library of Scotland

With the hostile relations between the UK, USA, and Iran prominently in the news once again, it is timely to revisit some of the fundamental causes of the 1979 revolution in Iran and its consequences.

During the 1980s and since, Anglo-American relations with the Islamic Republic of Iran (founded in 1979 following the Iranian Revolution led by Ayatollah Khomeini) have been tense, with moments of dangerous rhetoric and violent engagement. But things weren't always so. How did the United States go from being a long-standing friend of Iran to the 'Great Satan'? The causes date back to at least the turn of the century, with their roots in British colonial exploitation, anti-democratic, monarchical rule and foreign interference.

'Exclusive privilege'

In 1901 British geologist William Knox D'Arcy discovered huge oil reserves in Iran and purchased the rights for a bargain price with the 'exclusive privilege to search for, obtain, exploit, develop, render suitable for trade, carry away and sell natural gas, petroleum, asphalt and ozokerite throughout the whole extent of the Persian Empire for a term of sixty years'. The so-called D'Arcy Concession enabled the site at Abadan to become the largest oil refinery in the world. The Anglo-Iranian Oil Company (AIOC) — later called British Petroleum (BP) — paid royalties and tax to Iran, but was wholly British controlled. Britain's investment in Iran included supplying equipment and training for military purposes, building roads and improving infrastructure; in fact, this was all paid for by Iran with a British loan of £2 million secured by 'customs revenue' (i.e. from oil), thereby consolidating Britain's grip over Iran.

For centuries Persia/Iran had been a monarchy, with various dynasties vying for supremacy. By the time of the D'Arcy Concession, pressure for reform was building and in 1906 the ruler, Ahmad Shah Qajar, bowed to popular pressure for reform and made the country a constitutional monarchy, with its first Majlis (parliament). By 1925 the Pahlavi dynasty had usurped the Qajar dynasty as rulers. During the Second World War, Iran declared neutrality; however, the British and Russians, fearing the Germans would seize oil supplies, invaded in 1941. The British ejected the Shah and installed his more compliant son, Mohammed Reza Pahlavi.

After the war there was a call for social and political change, as well as a desire to be free from outside interference. The nationalist and left/liberal forces, namely the Communist Tudeh Party and the National Front Party (NF), led the movement. In 1950 Haj Ali Razmara was appointed Prime Minister by the Shah (with the urging of the British Government and the Company — significantly, Razmara was opposed to the nationalisation of AIOC). Razmara's tenure was short. He was assassinated in March 1951 by a member of a nationalist/Islamist group, and with the threat of more political violence, by May that year the Shah was obliged to accept the NF leader Mohammed Mossadegh as Prime Minister. Mossadegh was a liberal, nationalist politician who immediately set about achieving his main aims, namely the restoration of democracy in Iran through the Majlis (parliament), and control over the country's oil reserves through nationalisation.

The AIOC's annual reports and accounts during these turbulent years contain interesting, albeit biased, descriptions of the events surrounding the assassination of President Razmara, the appointment of Mossadegh, the attempted nationalisation of the oil industry, the take-over of the refinery by Iranian Government officials, and the expelling of non-Iranian staff (mainly British and Indian). The company's reports also complained that the Mossadegh Government had broken a 1933 convention (basically revoking the D'Arcy Concession) ratified by the League of Nations: '… Article 21 provided that the Convention shall not be annulled by the (Iranian) Government …' However, the company was being selective; the convention also enshrined improvements to the company's payments to the Iranian Government, as well as raising standards of employment conditions for its Iranian employees. But 20 years after this agreement an American emissary was appalled at the slum housing of the company's Iranian employees, and condemned the colonial attitude of the British.

The AIOC chairman, Scot Sir William Fraser, wished to keep politics and business separate (though with the British Government holding by far the largest share of the AOIC's holdings, this was more of a hope than a reality). He was therefore disinclined to involve officialdom in this crisis, but despite this the matter was presented before the International Court of Justice (ICJ) at The Hague. The Court's recommendations for co-operation were dismissed by the Iranian Government as interference in its internal affairs (in fact, the ICJ declared it had no jurisdiction over the matter).

'Eisenhower … agreed to help the British with "regime change"

After threats to expel all British AIOC staff, the matter was escalated to the UN Security Council by the British Government; again, Iran rejected the validity of the Council and proceeded with its aim of nationalisation. The AIOC responded by renaming the company The British Petroleum Company Ltd., and formed a consortium (The Iranian Oil Participants Ltd.) to deal with the new National Iranian Oil Company. The British Government, and the company, had underestimated the determination of Mossadegh and his supporters: … No imperial business leader could have failed to observe the Iranian nationalization in 1951 as an example of worldwide failure of British governments to protect commercial interests from the predatory instincts of determined post-war economic nationalists' (from 'Narrative reporting and crises: British Petroleum and Shell, 1950-1958').

Mossadegh's determination to nationalise AIOC through negotiations with the company failed due to entrenched positions on both sides. The British Government, appalled at the loss of control over Iran's rich oil reserves, imposed economic sanctions and conducted military manoeuvres in the area. Ultimately they contrived a plot (Operation Boot) to oust Mossadegh. President Truman's government, on friendly terms with Iran, had been reluctant to commit the USA to any intervention in support of the British except as mediators. In fact, worried about Iranian instability, they sent financial and military aid to the Iranian Government and dissuaded the British from military intervention. Despite friendly relations between Iran and the USA, the latter continued with their covert operations there, which post-Second World War had concentrated on planting anti-Soviet propaganda to guard against the spread of communism.

Events escalated with the expulsion from Iran of British diplomats as well as AIOC employees from the country, and oil operations ceased. The Shah, in panic at the hostile atmosphere, fled to Rome. Truman's successor, Eisenhower, had no qualms. In the midst of the Cold War and fearing a Communist take-over in Iran (and with one eye on the oil reserves), he agreed to help the British with 'regime change'. In 1953 the British-supported, CIA-led coup (Operation Ajax) unseated the government of Prime Minister Mossadegh. Mohammed Reza Pahlavi was restored to the throne and, of course, was thereafter indebted to the USA. Iran's struggle for democracy was snuffed out. The company's annual report from 1953 blandly states that there had been a 'change of government'.

'The Great Satan'

The Shah's repressive grip on Iran was consolidated with USA support and the use of the hated SAVAK (secret police). There were attempts to overthrow him, including an assassination attempt, but the disparate anti-Shah groupings, a weakened secular leftist movement and a disorganised liberal middle class meant they came to nothing. When the extent of the USA involvement in the 1953 coup had emerged, Iranian public opinion hardened. Once a friend of Iran, the USA had overthrown a liberal and democratic, secular government and in so doing alienated all classes of society living under Pahlavi's repressive dictatorship. It was the first time the USA had overthrown a foreign government (in peacetime), and was not to be the last. America was now considered a traitorous enemy — the 'Great Satan'.

A movement to re-establish Iranian culture, as opposed to the Shah's imposed western-inspired culture, included the resurgence of Shia Islam. This was led by the charismatic Ayatollah Khomeini, a senior cleric who had long opposed the Shah's 'decadent' westernising ways and had been exiled for it. Formerly left-leaning and pro-democracy clerics eventually supported Khomeini's bid for power, either swayed by his proclamations of support for social justice, or by the ruthless force of his supporters. The 1979 Iranian Revolution was also greeted with enthusiasm by some international left-wing groups: 'If anyone tried to substitute this code [extreme sharia law] for the democratic and social demands of the masses they would get short shrift' (from 'Iran: the unfolding revolution' by Saber Nickbin). Khomeini's establishment of an Islamic theocracy showed that such optimism was misplaced.

Formerly left-leaning and pro-democracy clerics eventually supported Khomeini's bid for power

Since 1979, the diplomatic relationship between both the UK and the USA with Iran has remained volatile. Throughout the 1980s, Anglo-American support for Iraq in the Iran-Iraq war, positive trade and diplomatic relations with Iran's regional rival Saudi Arabia, and a pro-Israel stance from both western nations only served to intensify the ill feeling between Iran and the United Kingdom and the United States. This was at its most deadly during the Iran hostage crisis, when 52 American diplomats and citizens were held hostage from 4 November, 1979, to 20 January, 1981. Student supporters of the revolution had staged a takeover of the USA embassy building in Tehran. Rescue attempts ordered by President Jimmy Carter failed spectacularly and resulted in eight deaths, which arguably contributed to his defeat in the 1980 presidential election.

The decade also ended with a notable expression of the ideological and cultural differences between Iran and the United Kingdom. In 1989 — in response to the publication in the UK the year before of Salman Rushdie's book 'The Satanic Verses'— Ayatollah Khomeini issued a call for the author's death. The Rushdie controversy extended far beyond Iran of course, but Khomeini's fatwa (which was in place until 1998) was a further example of the intense dislike and estrangement that had grown between Iran and both the UK and the USA. The tension between these nations remains.

• '1979 and the birth of the 21st century' essay
• Essay about the Romanian Revolution
• 'The Velvet Revolution' essay

Further reading

• 'Abadan: A first-hand account of the Persian oil crisis' by Norman Kemp (London: Wingate, 1953) [National Library of Scotland shelfmark: NE.85.c.5].
• 'All the Shah's men: An American coup and the roots of Middle East terror' by Stephen Kinzer (New York, NY: Wiley, 2003) [shelfmark: Q4.204.0086].
• 'Anglo-Iranian relations since 1800' edited by Vanessa Martin (London: Routledge, 2005) [shelfmark: HB2.206.11.541].
• 'Annual Report and Accounts as at 31st December 1950' Anglo-Iranian Oil Company Limited (London: The Company, 1950) [shelfmark: 5.1555].
• 'Dispute between His Majesty's government in the United Kingdom and the Imperial government of Persia' (Geneva: League of Nations, 1933) [shelfmark: LN.VII.2/1.(27)].
• 'Dynamics of the Iranian Revolution: the Pahlavi's' triumph and tragedy' by Jahangir Amuzegar. (Albany, NY: University of New York Press, 1991).
• 'Empire and nationhood: the United States, Great Britain, and Iranian oil, 1950-1954' by Mary Ann Heiss (New York, NY: Columbia University Press, 1997) [shelfmark: Q3.98.1361].
• 'Insurrection in Teheran: an eye-witness report' by Brian Grogan (London : The Other Press, 1979) [shelfmark: QP2.80.291].
• 'Iran no. 1 (1952). Correspondence between Her Majesty's Government in the United Kingdom and the Iranian Government, and related documents, concerning the joint Anglo-American proposals for the settlement of the oil dispute, [1951-52]' [Cmd. 8677] (London: Stationery Office, 1951-52) [available as a National Library eResource].
• 'Iran: the unfolding revolution' by Saber Nickbin; foreword by Tariq Ali (London: International Marxist Group, 1979) [shelfmark: QP2.80.356].
• 'Narrative reporting and crises: British Petroleum and Shell, 1950-1958' by N Abdelrehim, J Maltby and J S Toms, in 'Accounting History', vol 20 (2.) pages 138-157 [available as a National Library e-journal article].
• 'Oil is flammable!: The Persian crisis' by Harold Davies (London: Union of Democratic Control, 1951) [shelfmark: 1973.116].
• 'Patriot of Persia: Muhammad Mossadegh and a very British coup' by Christopher de Bellaigue (London: Vintage, 2013 [shelfmark: PB5.213.189/2].
• 'The Scottish nation at Empire's end' by Bryan S Glass (Edinburgh: University Press, 2014) [shelfmark: HB2.214.6.986].
• 'The Turban for the crown: The Islamic revolution in Iran' by Said Amir Arjomand (Oxford: University Press, 1988) [shelfmark: Q4.88.424].

Iran: Poverty and Inequality Since the Revolution

Subscribe to global connection, djavad salehi isfahani djavad salehi isfahani professor of economics - virginia tech.

January 29, 2009

Editor’s Note: This piece was originally published in the Middle East Institute’s Viewpoints Special Edition: The Iranian Revolution at 30 (January 2009).

Thirty years ago, Ayatollah Khomeini proclaimed equity and social justice as the Revolution’s main objective. His successor, Ayatollah Khamene’i, continues to refer to social justice as the Revolution’s defining theme. Similarly, Presidents Khatami and Ahmadinejad, though they are from very different political persuasions, placed heavy emphasis on social justice in their political rhetoric. Yet the very fact that 30 years after the Revolution social justice continues to occupy the highest place in Iran’s political discourse implies that this goal of the Revolution remains as elusive as ever.

Inside Iran the facts regarding the evolution of equality are hotly debated. However, data from the Statistical Center of Iran offer evidence of how inequality has changed in terms of household expenditures, education attainment, and access to health and basic services. The picture that emerges is a mixed one: success in improving the standard of living and the quality of life for the poor, and failure in improving the overall distribution of income.

The most obvious, if not quantitatively most important, source of inequality in Iran is the rural-urban differential.  Figure 1 shows that during the great economic downturn of 1984-88, average expenditures in rural and urban areas fell by 20% and 33%, respectively, narrowing the rural-urban gap in expenditures. Rural incomes continued to grow faster than urban, raising the rural-urban ratio to a historic high of 69% in 1990, before falling back to 53% in 2006. The widening rural-urban gap in the last 15 years has contributed significantly to the resilience of measured inequality in the country as a whole.

Immediately following the Revolution, overall inequality fell substantially, by about 10 Gini points, from 0.56 to 0.46, [1] but has since remained fairly stable at levels well above those observed in countries such as Egypt ( see Figure 2 ). It is nonetheless much lower than in Latin America. Rural inequality, which was much lower than urban inequality during the war years (1980-88), increased sharply after the war, reaching the urban level, most likely because of government policies such as ending the rationing (that had protected the poor from inflation during the war) and permitting a greater role for markets in setting prices.

Significantly, during the first two years of the Ahmadinejad Administration (2005-06) inequality worsened in both rural and urban areas, possibly because higher inflation hurt those below the median income level more than those above it. This is not so much an indication that Ahmadinejad was insincere in promising redistribution but how difficult it is to redistribute income without fundamental changes in the country’s distribution of earning power (wealth and human capital) and political power, which determines access to government transfers from oil rent.

Despite a lack of improvement in inequality, poverty has declined steadily in the last ten years.  Figure 3 shows the proportion of individuals who were poor (the Headcount ratio) during 1984-2006 using separate rural and urban poverty lines. [2] Poverty rates increased sharply during 1984-88 but, contrary to popular belief, fell during the economic reconstruction and market reforms. Poverty rose again briefly when the economy had to adjust to the balance of payments crisis of 1994-95. Since then, poverty has declined steadily to an enviable level for middle-income developing countries. [3] Despite claims to the contrary, during the eight years of the Khatami Administration, poverty fell by more than 2 percentage points each year. Significantly, in the first two years of the Ahmadinejad government, urban poverty appears to have increased by 1.5 percentage points, or about 680,000 individuals (rural poverty remained unchanged). Given the huge inflow of resources into the economy in 2006 and the Ahmadinejad government’s active redistributive efforts, the increase in urban poverty is quite striking. The data for 2007 and 2008 are not available to reach a definitive conclusion on the current administration’s efforts at redistribution and poverty reduction, but the available evidence on inequality and urban poverty does not bode well for his re-election.

Perhaps the greatest achievement of the Revolution during its 30-year history is the expansion of educational opportunities, especially for women and rural families.  Figure 4 shows the impressive gain in education by the least educated group — rural women. Their average years of schooling increased from about 40% of their male counterparts for women born in the 1960s (who started school during the Shah’s White Revolution) to about 90% for those born in the late 1980s (who started school after the war with Iraq). Urban women have now surpassed urban men in average years of schooling, a phenomenon that led Iran’s Parliament to seriously consider and partially implement affirmative action for men in entering university! [4]

Increased access to free education from primary to university has equalized educational attainment between individuals. The Gini index of inequality of years of schooling for adults born in the 1950s was in excess of 0.60, compared to 0.35 for cohorts born 20 years later, which is a substantial decrease in education inequality in just one generation. However, there is evidence that educational attainment still depends greatly on family resources. [5] Education inequality is likely to worsen as private education, both at the university and high school levels, continues to expand.

Health and basic services

Another major equalizing achievement of the country in the last 30 years is reduced fertility, especially in rural areas, thanks mainly to increased education and improved access to health and other basic services (electricity and piped water). Together with women’s gains in education, family planning has substantially advanced gender equality in Iran, bringing social pressure to improve women’s status in law. In rural areas the average number of births per woman fell from about eight in the mid-1980s to about two in 2006. The poor’s access to basic services has substantially increased: during 1984-2004 access to electricity by the poorest quintile (bottom 25%) in rural areas increased from 37% to 94% and to piped water from 31% to 79%. [6] Remarkably, as a result of the extension of these services, by 2004, 80% of these households owned a refrigerator, 77% a television, and 76% a gas stove.

Populist politics

There are very few countries (e.g., South Korea) that have combined economic growth with increased equity. Iran is not one of them. Nevertheless, much has been achieved in terms of improving the lot of the poorest section of the population. Even so, many Iranians seem disappointed with the material improvements of the last 30 years. There are good reasons why. In the last ten years, a huge inflow of oil revenues has taken place without any improvement in income inequality. Added to this is a lack of government transparency, which has fueled suspicion about how the oil riches are being spent. Ahmadinejad’s populist rhetoric has intensified fears of corruption and distrust of the rich in a country where wealth accumulation is held in low esteem, no matter its sources. Indeed, the proper purpose of politics and governance in Iran is considered to be redistribution much more so than promoting economic growth. As the Revolution enters its fourth decade, with oil prices down for the foreseeable future and the disappointing results of the latest experience with populist politics already evident, it would be interesting to speculate if this narrow view of politics is likely to change. The June 2009 presidential election is a good time to find out.

[1] Djavad Salehi-Isfahani, “Poverty, Inequality, and Populist Politics in Iran,” Journal of Economic Inequality, published online February 21, 2008, http://www.springerlink.com/content/67k71t441vk54ml3/fulltext.pdf

[2] In 2005 Purchasing Power Parity dollars these lines were $2.7 per person per day for rural and $3.8 for urban individuals. See Djavad Salehi-Isfahani, “Poverty, Inequality, and Populist Politics in Iran.”

[3] Based on the international two-dollars-per-day poverty line ($3 in 2006), Iran’s poverty rate in 2006 was only 6%, which is very low by the standards of developing regions. See Shaohua Chen and Martin Ravallion, “The Developing World is Poorer Than We Thought, But No Less Successful in the Fight Against Poverty,” The World Bank Development Research Group, Policy Research Working Paper 4703 (2008), http://www-wds.worldbank.org/external/default/WDSContentServer/IW3P/IB/2008/08/26/000158349_20080826113239/Rendered/PDF/WPS4703.pdf

[4] See Djavad Saleh-Isfahani, “Are Iranian Women Overeducated?” The Brookings Institution (2008), https://www.brookings.edu/opinions/2008/0305_education_salehi_isfahani.aspx .

[5] Djavad Salehi-Isfahani and Daniel Egel, “Youth Exclusion in Iran: The State of Education, Employment and Family Formation,” Working Paper, The Brookings Institution (2007), https://www.brookings.edu/papers/2007/09_youth_exclusion_salehi_isfahani.aspx .

[6] Djavad Salehi-Isfahani, “Revolution and redistribution in Iran: poverty and inequality 25 years later,” Department of Economics Working Paper, Virginia Tech University (2006), http://www.filebox.vt.edu/users/salehi/Iran_poverty_trend.pdf .

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What Are the Iranians Dreaming About?

Michel foucault.

"They will never let go of us of their own will. No more than they did in Vietnam." I wanted to respond that they are even less ready to let go of you than Vietnam because of oil, because of the Middle East. Today they seem ready, after Camp David, to concede Lebanon to Syrian domination and therefore to Soviet influence, but would the United States be ready to deprive itself of a position that, according to circumstance, would allow them to intervene from the East or to monitor the peace?

Will the Americans push the shah toward a new trial of strength, a second "Black Friday"? The recommencement of classes at the university, the recent strikes, the disturbances that are beginning once again, and next month's religious festivals, could create such an opportunity. The man with the iron hand is Moghadam, the current leader of the SAVAK.

This is the backup plan, which for the moment is neither the most desirable nor the most likely. It would be uncertain: While some generals could be counted on, it is not clear if the army could be. From a certain point of view, it would be useless, for there is no "communist threat": not from outside, since it has been agreed for the past twenty-five years that the USSR would not lay a hand on Iran; not from inside, because hatred for the Americans is equaled only by fear of the Soviets.

Whether advisers to the shah, American experts, regime technocrats, or groups from the political opposition (be they the National Front or more "socialist-oriented" men), during these last weeks everyone has agreed with more or less good grace to attempt an "accelerated internal liberalization," or to let it occur. At present, the Spanish model is the favorite of the political leadership. Is it adaptable to Iran? There are many technical problems. There are questions concerning the date: Now, or later, after another violent incident? There are questions concerning individual persons: With or without the shah? Maybe with the son, the wife? Is not former prime minister Amini, the old diplomat pegged to lead the operation, already worn out?

The King and the Saint

There are substantial differences between Iran and Spain, however. The failure of economic development in Iran prevented the laying of a basis for a liberal, modern, westernized regime. Instead, there arose an immense movement from below, which exploded this year, shaking up the political parties that were being slowly reconstituted. This movement has just thrown half a million men into the streets of Tehran, up against machine guns and tanks.

Not only did they shout, "Death to the Shah," but also "Islam, Islam, Khomeini, We Will Follow You," and even "Khomeini for King."

The situation in Iran can be understood as a great joust under traditional emblems, those of the king and the saint, the armed ruler and the destitute exile, the despot faced with the man who stands up bare-handed and is acclaimed by a people. This image has its own power, but it also speaks to a reality to which millions of dead have just subscribed.

The notion of a rapid liberalization without a rupture in the power structure presupposes that the movement from below is being integrated into the system, or that it is being neutralized. Here, one must first discern where and how far the movement intends to go. However, yesterday in Paris, where he had sought refuge, and in spite of many pressures, Ayatollah Khomeini "ruined it all."

He sent out an appeal to the students, but he was also addressing the Muslim community and the army, asking that they oppose in the name of the Quran and in the name of nationalism these compromises concerning elections, a constitution, and so forth.

Is a long-foreseen split taking place within the opposition to the shah? The "politicians" of the opposition try to be reassuring: "It is good," they say. "Khomeini, by raising the stakes, reinforces us in the face of the shah and the Americans. Anyway, his name is only a rallying cry, for he has no program. Do not forget that, since 1963, political parties have been muzzled. At the moment, we are rallying to Khomeini, but once the dictatorship is abolished, all this mist will dissipate. Authentic politics will take command, and we will soon forget the old preacher." But all the agitation this weekend around the hardly clandestine residence of the ayatollah in the suburbs of Paris, as well as the coming and going of "important" Iranians, all of this contradicted this somewhat hasty optimism. It all proved that people believed in the power of the mysterious current that flowed between an old man who had been exiled for fifteen years and his people, who invoke his name.

The nature of this current has intrigued me since I learned about it a few months ago, and I was a little weary, I must confess, of hearing so many clever experts repeating: "We know what they don't want, but they still do not know what they want."

"What do you want?" It is with this single question in mind that I walked the streets of Tehran and Qom in the days immediately following the disturbances. I was careful not to ask professional politicians this question. I chose instead to hold sometimes-lengthy conversations with religious leaders, students, intellectuals interested in the problems of Islam, and also with former guerilla fighters who had abandoned the armed struggle in 1976 and had decided to work in a totally different fashion, inside the traditional society.

"What do you want?" During my entire stay in Iran, I did not hear even once the word "revolution," but four out of five times, someone would answer, "An Islamic government." This was not a surprise. Ayatollah Khomeini had already given this as his pithy response to journalists and the response remained at that point.

What precisely does this mean in a country like Iran, which has a large Muslim majority but is neither Arab nor Sunni and which is therefore less susceptible than some to Pan-Islamism or Pan-Arabism?

Indeed, Shiite Islam exhibits a number of characteristics that are likely to give the desire for an "Islamic government" a particular coloration. Concerning its organization, there is an absence of hierarchy in the clergy, a certain independence of the religious leaders from one another, but a dependence (even a financial one) on those who listen to them, and an importance given to purely spiritual authority. The role, both echoing and guiding, that the clergy must play in order to sustain its influence-this is what the organization is all about. As for Shi'ite doctrine, there is the principle that truth was not completed and sealed by the last prophet. After Muhammad, another cycle of revelation begins, the unfinished cycle of the imams, who, through their words, their example, as well as their martyrdom, carry a light, always the same and always changing. It is this light that is capable of illuminating the law from the inside. The latter is made not only to be conserved, but also to release over time the spiritual meaning that it holds. Although invisible before his promised return, the Twelfth Imam is neither radically nor fatally absent. It is the people themselves who make him come back, insofar as the truth to which they awaken further enlightens them.

It is often said that for Shi'ism, all power is bad if it is not the power of the Imam. As we can see, things are much more complex. This is what Ayatollah Shariatmadari told me in the first few minutes of our meeting: "We are waiting for the return of the Imam, which does not mean that we are giving up on the possibility of a good government. This is also what you Christians are endeavoring to achieve, although you are waiting for Judgment Day." As if to lend a greater authenticity to his words, the ayatollah was surrounded by several members of the Committee on Human Rights in Iran when he received me.

One thing must be clear. By "Islamic government," nobody in Iran means a political regime in which the clerics would have a role of supervision or control. To me, the phrase "Islamic government" seemed to point to two orders of things.

"A utopia," some told me without any pejorative implication. "An ideal," most of them said to me. At any rate, it is something very old and also very far into the future, a notion of coming back to what Islam was at the time of the Prophet, but also of advancing toward a luminous and distant point where it would be possible to renew fidelity rather than maintain obedience. In pursuit of this ideal, the distrust of legalism seemed to me to be essential, along with a faith in the creativity of Islam.

A religious authority explained to me that it would require long work by civil and religious experts, scholars, and believers in order to shed light on all the problems to which the Quran never claimed to give a precise response. But one can find some general directions here: Islam values work; no one can be deprived of the fruits of his labor; what must belong to all (water, the subsoil) shall not be appropriated by anyone. With respect to liberties, they will be respected to the extent that their exercise will not harm others; minorities will be protected and free to live as they please on the condition that they do not injure the majority; between men and women there will not be inequality with respect to rights, but difference, since there is a natural difference. With respect to politics, decisions should be made by the majority, the leaders should be responsible to the people, and each person, as it is laid out in the Quran, should be able to stand up and hold accountable he who governs.

It is often said that the definitions of an Islamic government are imprecise. On the contrary, they seemed to me to have a familiar but, I must say, not too reassuring clarity. "These are basic formulas for democracy, whether bourgeois or revolutionary," I said. "Since the eighteenth century now, we have not ceased to repeat them, and you know where they have led." But I immediately received the following reply: "The Quran had enunciated them way before your philosophers, and if the Christian and industrialized West lost their meaning, Islam will know how to preserve their value and their efficacy."

When Iranians speak of Islamic government; when, under the threat of bullets, they transform it into a slogan of the streets; when they reject in its name, perhaps at the risk of a bloodbath, deals arranged by parties and politicians, they have other things on their minds than these formulas from everywhere and nowhere. They also have other things in their hearts. I believe that they are thinking about a reality that is very near to them, since they themselves are its active agents.

It is first and foremost about a movement that aims to give a permanent role in political life to the traditional structures of Islamic society. An Islamic government is what will allow the continuing activity of the thousands of political centers that have been spawned in mosques and religious communities in order to resist the shah's regime. I was given an example. Ten years ago, an earthquake hit Ferdows. The entire city had to be reconstructed, but since the plan that had been selected was not to the satisfaction of most of the peasants and the small artisans, they seceded. Under the guidance of a religious leader, they went on to found their city a little further away. They had collected funds in the entire region. They had collectively chosen places to settle, arranged a water supply, and organized cooperatives. They had called their city Islamiyeh. The earthquake had been an opportunity to use religious structures not only as centers of resistance, but also as sources for political creation. This is what one dreams about [ songe ] when one speaks of Islamic government.

The Invisible Present

But one dreams [ songe ] also of another movement, which is the inverse and the converse of the first. This is one that would allow the introduction of a spiritual dimension into political life, in order that it would not be, as always, the obstacle to spirituality, but rather its receptacle, its opportunity, and its ferment. This is where we encounter a shadow that haunts all political and religious life in Iran today: that of Ali Shariati, whose death two years ago gave him the position, so privileged in Shi'ism, of the invisible Present, of the ever-present Absent.

During his studies in Europe, Shariati, who came from a religious milieu, had been in contact with leaders of the Algerian Revolution, with various left-wing Christian movements, with an entire current of non-Marxist socialism. (He had attended Gurvitch's classes.) He knew the work of Fanon and Massignon. He came back to Mashhad, where he taught that the true meaning of Shi'ism should not be sought in a religion that had been institutionalized since the seventeenth century, but in the sermons of social justice and equality that had already been preached by the first imam. His "luck" was that persecution forced him to go to Tehran and to have to teach outside of the university, in a room prepared for him under the protection of a mosque. There, he addressed a public that was his, and that could soon be counted in the thousands: students, mullahs, intellectuals, modest people from the neighborhood of the bazaar, and people passing through from the provinces. Shariati died like a martyr, hunted and with his books banned. He gave himself up when his father was arrested instead of him. After a year in prison, shortly after having gone into exile, he died in a manner that very few accept as having stemmed from natural causes. The other day, at the big protest in Tehran, Shariati's name was the only one that was called out, besides that of Khomeini.

The Inventors of the State

I do not feel comfortable speaking of Islamic government as an "idea" or even as an "ideal." Rather, it impressed me as a form of "political will." It impressed me in its effort to politicize structures that are inseparably social and religious in response to current problems. It also impressed me in its attempt to open a spiritual dimension in politics.

In the short term, this political will raises two questions:

1. Is it sufficiently intense now, and is its determination clear enough to prevent an "Amini solution," which has in its favor (or against it, if one prefers) the fact that it is acceptable to the shah, that it is recommended by the foreign powers, that it aims at a Western-style parliamentary regime, and that it would undoubtedly privilege the Islamic religion?

2. Is this political will rooted deeply enough to become a permanent factor in the political life of Iran, or will it dissipate like a cloud when the sky of political reality will have finally cleared, and when we will be able to talk about programs, parties, a constitution, plans, and so forth?

Politicians might say that the answers to these two questions determine much of their tactics today.

With respect to this "political will," however, there are also two questions that concern me even more deeply.

One bears on Iran and its peculiar destiny. At the dawn of history, Persia invented the state and conferred its models on Islam. Its administrators staffed the caliphate. But from this same Islam, it derived a religion that gave to its people infinite resources to resist state power. In this will for an "Islamic government," should one see a reconciliation, a contradiction, or the threshold of something new?

The other question concerns this little corner of the earth whose land, both above and below the surface, has strategic importance at a global level. For the people who inhabit this land, what is the point of searching, even at the cost of their own lives, for this thing whose possibility we have forgotten since the Renaissance and the great crisis of Christianity, a political spirituality. I can already hear the French laughing, but I know that they are wrong.

First published in Le Nouvel Observateur, October 16-22, 1978.

Copyright notice: Excerpt from pages 203-9 of Foucault and the Iranian Revolution: Gender and the Seductions of Islamism by Janet Afary and Kevin B. Anderson, published by the University of Chicago Press. ©2005 by the University of Chicago. All rights reserved. This text may be used and shared in accordance with the fair-use provisions of U.S. copyright law, and it may be archived and redistributed in electronic form, provided that this entire notice, including copyright information, is carried and provided that the University of Chicago Press is notified and no fee is charged for access. Archiving, redistribution, or republication of this text on other terms, in any medium, requires the consent of the University of Chicago Press. Janet Afary and Kevin B. Anderson Foucault and the Iranian Revolution: Gender and the Seductions of Islamism ©2005, 312 pages Cloth $60.00 ISBN: 0-226-00785-5 Paper $24.00 ISBN: 0-226-00786-3 For information on purchasing the book—from bookstores or here online—please go to the webpage for Foucault and the Iranian Revolution . See also: A catalog of books in Mideast studies A catalog of books in philosophy A catalog of books in religion Other excerpts and online essays from University of Chicago Press titles Sign up for e-mail notification of new books in this and other subjects

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The Iranian Revolution Causes Essay

Introduction.

The impact of the Iranian revolution cannot be underrated as it has not only influenced Iran and the Middle East as a whole but also had a great impact on the Western world and its leaders. Although the revolution itself happened in the year 1979, the events that happened several years earlier were of utter importance as well.

The regime of Muhammad Reza Shah became more powerful in 1975 and tried to gain more control over the political groups that stayed more or less independent of the government. The religious establishment in Iran was also attacked; the Shah also replaced the Islamic calendar, which could not go unnoticed by the public. The real problem of the government was its inefficient economic management. While the Shah’s family enjoyed the luxury that was illegally financed by the national wealth, representatives of the urban middle classes were hit by inflation and feared for their economic livelihood.

The Shah’s dependence on the West was also discouraged by many members of society. Slowly, the opposition began to form: it consisted of Westernized urban professionals, students from secular universities and theological seminaries, and bazaar merchants. Their views based on the ideologies and beliefs of prominent oppositionists, such as Mehdi Bazargan and Ali Shariati. Another wing of protesters existed whose views were influenced by Ayatollah Ruhollah Khomeini.

According to him, an Islamic state, controlled by the ulama, should have been created instead of a monarchy. His activism was based on religion, and he believed that the government ruled by the laws of Islam as possible. His ideas gained more support as the revolution approached. One of his key statements addressed the Shah’s subordinate position to the West; he did not approve the Westernized, secular Iran that the government had created.

In 1978, the revolution took its shape. What began as a movement, ended as a revolution after the Shah had decided to pressure the protesters with brutal force. The protests continued, but during the next two participants were killed. On February 18, 1978, another set of demonstrations took place. Although they were peaceful, 100 protesters were killed in Tabriz where the government sent army forces to break up the demonstrations. Other demonstrations that followed brought more deaths. In summer 1978, the government had implemented a new economic policy that led to unemployment among urban workers who eventually joined the protests. Street demonstrations were banned; however, on September 8 of the same year, other protests in Tehran took place. This time, hundreds of people died.

Anti-regime protests continued during the ritual mourning of Imam Husayn. On this day, 700 hundred protesters were killed. Nevertheless, the protests continued and soon two million people took part in them on December 2. On February 1, Khomeini returned to Iran where the crowd of protesters met him with joy. Shapour Bakhtiar suggested his candidature, but Khomeini declared that it would be illegal. Hence, Shapour Bakhtiar was denounced by the Freedom Movement.

The Shah had left the country on January 16, 1979. Later it was stated that Shah had terminal cancer; eventually, he died in 1980. Although the revolution was successful, the economy and the country needed to be rebuilt. There was no consensus between the political parties, and a new prime minister was needed to restore Iran.

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The Iranian Revolution of 1979 essay

In 1979, a popular mass revolution in the name of Islam overthrew the Shah, the autocratic ruler of Iran, and sought to establish a theological republic in place of a secular monarchy. The Iranian revolution disrupted the Iranian society and changed the nature of the Iranian regime radically. Liberals, Marxists, and Islamists all came together in their opposition to the Shah and his Western allies. The revolution had been so effective simply because the opposition against Shah was massive and presented a solid united front.

Furthermore, the Islamic revolution of 1979 was not just a rebellion against the Shah of Iran, who was perceived to have compromised Iranian interests by allowing the United States to dominate its domestic and foreign agenda; it was also a rejection of both western capitalist liberalism and the Soviet’s communist totalitarianism. The revolution sought systemic, cultural, ideological, and institutional transformation of Iran into an ideal Islamic republic. In this ultimate goal, however, it had much more limited success. In Iran, the position of Shah (Persian for King) was that of an absolute dictator who had no check on his authority.

The previous shah, Riza Pehlavi, decreed many laws against Islam, for instance, a law prohibiting the wearing of head scarves by Muslim women. His son, Muhammed Riza, began his rule in 1941 and embarked on an ambitious program to modernize the country. Although his original intentions may have been laudable, his approach was unfortunately any thing but. Although he endeavored to bring Iran into the twentieth century, he relied on old-fashioned repression to quell any dissent. There was a profound self-contradiction in Shah’s policy and actions, which finally proved to be his undoing.

On the one hand, he was trying to liberalize and modernize the country, and on the other, he was ruthlessly suppressing the voice of its people, with his secret police routinely arresting and torturing hundreds of civilians. In addition, Shah did something much more unforgivable, he turned over control of the country’s resources to the Americans and the British. The abnegation of sovereignty created a severe dent in the pride of the nation for decades. Over this time, the rift between the shah and the Iranian people continuously widened.

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The shah led a lavish lifestyle while many of his subjects lived in abject poverty. He had absolutely no qualms, and no notion of fairness, equality and democracy. Resentment festered in the Iranian populace, until it finally burst. In 1978-1979, within a short span of three months, protests, demonstrations and strikes brought about the downfall of the Iranian monarchy (Kurzman 1). Decades earlier, in 1952, the people of Iran had carried out a successful revolution against the Shah and tried to establish a democratic republic, the Shah had to flee the country.

But in 1953 the American CIA backed a coup d’etat of the charismatic Mohammed Mosaddeq, the new prime minister, and reinstated the despotic shah. The shah, instead of trying to become more popular at least now, become even more ruthless in his ways, almost wreaking vengeance against his own populace. Subsequently there had been another popular uprising which was also efficiently crushed. In the early 1960s, a then little-known cleric named Ayatollah Khomeni led a movement of opposition to the despotic Shah. But Khomeini ended up being banished from the country and the shah once again managed to successfully consolidate his power.

He went on to pursue his plans for modernization, in his own despotic and arbitrary manner. … Muhammed Reza Pahlavi, the last shah, who began as a weak monarch both politically and temperamentally, ended up thinking he was God’s gift to earth before this intricate system of personal rule crumbled in a hurry. (Akbarzadeh, Saeed 51) Understandably, the widespread dissatisfaction and resentment against his rule took ever deeper roots. In the 1970’s, however, his stance softened a little, as he grew physically weak from lack of health.

Also there was pressure from Carter administration, making him reconsider his approach. In this climate, secular intellectual liberals launched demands for the end of the Pahlavi regime and called for widespread reform. However, the movement of opposition to Shah’s rule soon began to be led by not these secular intellectuals but by Ayatollah Khomeini still in exile. When the excesses of the Shah’s regime could not be tolerated by the populace any further, the exiled Shi’a cleric Ayatollah Khomeini came to the forefront of the movement to the topple the Shah.

He used smuggled cassette tapes and booklets to rally ordinary Iranians against heir king. Student-led protests began to swell into general strikes, and people all over Iran declared their desire for freedom from dictatorship. Iran under the Shah Pahlavi was one of the richest of Third World Countries. But the Iranian revolution was out to reverse the modernizing autocracy of the Shah. The revolution in Iran was in search of a new Islamic theocracy. It was led by the fanatic mullah. Yet, at the same time, it was a spontaneous revolution of unarmed civilians. The opposition to Shah’s rule was nearly universal.

The Iranian revolution was opposed to Stalinist totalitarian style of the shah’s rule, as well as the Anglo-Saxon cultural imperialism. The Shah did attempt repeatedly to appease the calls for political change, as the opposition grew stronger and more united against him. However, the rapid series of concessions by the Shah were not sufficient to satisfy an opposition that now seemed to settle for nothing less than his complete fall. The shah in his last days had tried to brutally squash the revolution and the Iranians believe that the United States was not only advising the Shah but also helping him in oppressing his own people.

Such suspicions were not groundless because the Shah’s notorious security forces, the dreaded SAVAK, were in fact trained in America by the CIA. In one last desperate move, in late December 1978, the Shah appointed one of the leaders of the National Front (his primary opposition for more than twenty-five years) as the new prime minister. However, the newly appointed Prime Minister Bakhtiar was considered too moderate by followers of Khomeini and was unsuccessful in calling off a strike by civil servants and oil workers.

Bakhtiar was also unsuccessful in persuading fundamentalists to favor a more secularized form of political leadership. In January 1979, the Shah was forced to leave the country on an “extended vacation” and never returned to Iran. Within days, the Regency council, designed to preserve the monarchy, was dissolved. With the Shah officially being the commander-in-chief of the armed forces, the loyalty of the powerful Iranian military was uncertain. It was left leaderless and largely unable to follow the mercurial, ever-shifting political situation.

On February 9, 1979, the military proclaimed itself neutral in the domestic power for struggle. Within forty-eight hours after that, Ayatollah Khomeini was back in Iran ending his fifteen-year exile. His prime minister, Mahdi Bazargan, formed a new government. The rebellion against the modernizing Pahlavi monarchy in Iran arose from numerous other complex and deep reasons, at grass root level. For instance, the tensions generated by the expanding modern economy were a crucial factor. The values and practices of the secular elite and its centralized capitalism ran against the traditional merchant class and the Shi’a clergy.

As a consequence, they wanted to see the shah overthrown. In the end, the shah was overthrown by a populist coalition that included students, businessmen, Islamic traditionalists, Islamic modernists, Marxists, and Islamic liberals, among others, but it was the militant Shi’a clergy led by Grand Ayatollah Khomeini that emerged as the most dynamic force. The success of the Iranian revolution in securing power can be attributable in part to the force of leadership provided by the ayatollah and in part to the overwhelmingly broad base of support it had in the population.

For example, about 8 million people, or one fifth of the population, demonstrated against the shah and his regime on one single religious holiday in December 1978 (Zahedi 1). There was political unrest within Iran’s student radicals, middle classes, and urban poor. Underneath the glitter of modernization that the shah had projected and promoted, Iranian society developed serious flaws. Shah encouraged the growth of an educated urban middle class, mainly through developing a relatively superior system of education, but absolutely denied this growing middle class any political voice. Free speech and free press were prohibited.

Student radicalism was one of the elements that spearheaded the Islamic revolution. Paradoxically, these students were Marxists and Islamists at the same time, they called themselves socialist Shiites. Rapid modernization also destabilized another important social group. The masses of young immigrants from the countryside who had been drawn to town by the promise of prosperity, only ended up in the packed slums of Tehran. Although the immigrants from the countryside and the ordinary working people of the cities were doing better than before, the economic uncertainty and dreadful living conditions contributed to unrest among this population.

Certain sections made huge profits, while income inequalities, high inflation, and corruption ran rampant in the society. There was a growing awareness of government failure in meeting its promises of greater economic and social equity. The discontent among the factory workers was rapidly aggravated (Keddie 161). In the end, loyal Shah’s supporters were in minority and in the wake of the revolution they had to bear the brunt of violent reprisals.

Ayatollah Khomeini’s success in overthrowing the Pahlavi regime derived fundamentally from his acceptance among the important ulama and intelligentsia as well as from the various strata of Iranian society. Khomeini’s religious organization captured the urban enthusiasm for change and eventually enabled it to win the battle on the streets. During and after the revolution, in a protracted struggle for power from 1979 to 1983, the clergy eliminated their colleagues in the rebellion against the shah and went to on to construct an Islamic state that enforced a socially conservative Islam.

The revolution in Iran entrenched the power of the militant clergy in a constitution that included the institution of the velayet-e-faqih (theocracy). The most senior Islamic expert was to hold almost absolute political and religious authority and had the last world in worldly rule. Khomeini himself became the Supreme Leader. The revolution also sought to dismantle exploitative capitalism, achieve social equality, and resist Western culture and economic penetration. The new order, however, did not mean completely narrow-minded traditionalism.

To some extent, the Revolution tried to promote a mix of both traditional and modern elements. Nonetheless, it was predominantly theocratic. The charismatic leader of the revolution, Ayatollah Ruhollah Musavi Khomeini, sought to create a theocratic state to preside over a religiously guided polity. At the helm of this state he envisioned a wise and pious Islamic jurist, the custodian of a true and sacred worldview, leading the faithful and supportive community toward salvation. (Siavoshi 125) On February 23, 1979, the Iranian Revolution ushered in a new phase in Iran’s political and cultural history.

Iran’s revolution was the world’s first televised revolution, and its inflammatory passion and cold brutality was brought into people’s living rooms in “living color. “It transformed Iran and impinged upon the lives of Muslims everywhere by influencing the policies of Muslim states throughout the region and beyond (including countries not typically considered Muslim, such as India). The revolution presented a symbolic beginning of a vigorous sense of Islamic self-assurance (Schulze 226). The Iranian revolution of 1979 raised tremendous hopes among Islamists in Malaysia, Africa and throughout the Islamic world.

Iran was to be the showpiece of the Islamist movement. For the first time since the seventh century, a truly Islamic society was to be constructed. (Rubin 197) It was a truly a popular revolution, though its impact and legacy remain contentious. It gave rise to a new phase of militant Islamism. During the period of over two and a half decades since the Islamic revolution, Iran has stood out as a state that utilizes terror in order to facilitate and achieve its goals in the international arena.

Works Cited:

Akbarzadeh, Shahram; Saeed, Abdullah. “Islam and Political Legitimacy.” New York : RoutledgeCurzon, 2003 Arjomand, Said Amir. “The Turban for the Crown: The Islamic Revolution in Iran. ” New York : Oxford University Press, 1988 Keddie, Nikki R. “Modern Iran: Roots and Results of Revolution. ” Yale University, 2003 Kurzman, Charles. “The Unthinkable Revolution in Iran. ” Harvard University Press, 2004 Rubin, Barry M. “Revolutionaries and Reformers: Contemporary Islamist Movements in the Middle East. ” Albany, NY : University of New York Press, 2003 Schulze, Reinhard. “A Modern History of the Islamic World. ” London : I. B. Tauris & Co Ltd, 2002

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The Morning

Iran’s axis of resistance.

We examine what could push Iran and Israel toward a confrontation.

By David Leonhardt

Its members refer to it as the Axis of Resistance.

It is the network of Iran-backed groups across the Middle East dedicated to reducing U.S. influence in the region and ultimately eliminating the state of Israel. The network’s name is a play on former President George W. Bush’s 2002 claim that Iran, Iraq and North Korea made up an Axis of Evil.

The Axis of Resistance includes Hamas, Hezbollah, the Houthis and other groups, and both its strategy and its tactics have long been radical. The official slogan of the Houthis — the Yemen-based group that has attacked commercial ships in the Red Sea — includes “death to America, death to Israel, a curse upon the Jews,” for example.

Nonetheless, the conflict between the Axis and its enemies had remained limited for years. Even though Iran funds and supports the Axis, other countries have often treated its member groups as distinct from Iran. Attacks by Hamas or Hezbollah usually did not lead to reprisals against Iran.

The events of the past few months threaten to change this dynamic. In today’s newsletter, I’ll explain why.

A murky distinction

The main turning point, of course, was Oct. 7. Hamas conducted the deadliest terrorist attack in Israel’s history and said it would repeat the attacks until Israel was destroyed. Israel has responded by vowing to destroy Hamas, and its war in Gaza has flattened neighborhoods and killed tens of thousands of Palestinians. In solidarity with Hamas, Hezbollah has fired missiles into Israel, while the Houthis have disrupted global commerce .

Initially, Iran remained somewhat removed from the fighting. Although its leaders praised the Oct. 7 attack as a step toward the end of Israel, they privately said they did not help plan the attack — and U.S. officials agree they did not. All three countries took steps to avoid a wider war.

All have good reasons. Iran’s economy is weak, and its fundamentalist government worries about pro-democracy activism. A war could destabilize the country. Israel eventually hopes to sign a diplomatic agreement with Saudi Arabia, as it already has with Bahrain, Morocco and the U.A.E., which would reduce the long-term risks to Israel’s existence. A bloody war could make it harder for the Saudis to do so (much as the war in Gaza has put the Saudi talks on hold ). And President Biden very much wants to avoid a wider war.

Despite these factors, a basic reality may push Iran and Israel toward confrontation: The distinction between Iran and the Axis of Resistance has always been murky.

Hamas, Hezbollah and the Houthis could not exist as they do without the money and weapons they receive from Iran. Hezbollah is especially close with Iranian leaders. Iran, in short, makes possible an alliance that routinely attacks another country and calls for its demise.

This situation helps explain Israel’s bombing of an Iranian Embassy building in Syria on Monday, which killed several Iranian officials who helped oversee the relationship with the Axis of Resistance. The Oct. 7 attack left Israel feeling newly vulnerable, and it has become more aggressive in attacking Iranian officials ( This Times article catalogs other recent Israeli attacks.) Monday’s was the starkest: Countries rarely attack embassies, even those of their enemies.

Iran has promised to retaliate, and U.S. officials are concerned that Americans may be targeted as well as Israelis, as my colleague Eric Schmitt notes . Experts are also worried that an Axis group could go further than its Iranian sponsors prefer.

The Suleimani case

I want to emphasize that escalation isn’t the only possible outcome. Iran and Israel both still have the same incentives to avoid a full-scale war, and officials from both countries are carefully calibrating their actions, according to Julian Barnes, a Times reporter who covers intelligence.

Recent history offers an example of an audacious attack that didn’t lead to spiraling violence. In 2020, a U.S. drone killed Maj. Gen. Qassim Suleimani, one of Iran’s most powerful officials, in Baghdad. The Trump administration said the assassination was punishment for Suleimani’s work with Axis of Resistance groups that had killed American troops in Iraq.

Afterward, many experts warned of a cycle of escalation. Instead, Iran retaliated in a limited way, and the U.S. did not respond. Today, though, the tensions between Iran and Israel are sharper than they have been in a long time.

More on the Middle East

Can Israel bomb an embassy? In The Times’s Interpreter newsletter, Amanda Taub examines the legality .

Israel’s military can hit with precision. But its strike on an aid convoy showed the difficulties of picking targets in war , experts say.

One of the aid workers’ brothers kept calling him after the strike. Finally, a stranger answered .

The White House invited Muslim community leaders to a dinner celebrating Ramadan. Many declined because of Biden’s position on Israel .

Biden privately said that Jill Biden, the first lady, had urged him to stop the war . The White House denied any difference between their positions.

THE LATEST NEWS

International.

More than 200 aftershocks followed Taiwan’s strongest earthquake in 25 years. At least nine people died and more than 1,000 others were injured. Many are trapped in rubble .

In South Korea, a doctors’ strike is testing the public’s patience .

2024 Election

Biden and Donald Trump get to decide what they share about their health. Voters are asking questions .

Trump claimed he’d spoken with the family of a Michigan woman allegedly killed by an undocumented man. Her sister said Trump never contacted the family .

A political strategist forecast the Democrats’ surprising strength in 2022. His next prediction? A Biden victory .

Trump Trials

The judge overseeing Trump’s Manhattan criminal trial denied Trump’s request to postpone the start date.

Federal prosecutors, frustrated by the pace of Trump’s classified documents case, pressed the judge overseeing it to move faster .

The billionaire whose company gave Trump a $175 million bond got rich by offering high-interest car loans to people with bad credit.

Investors have so far lost tens of millions of dollars betting against Trump’s social media company.

Disney shareholders, endorsing chief executive Bob Iger’s leadership, rejected an activist investor’s bid to win two board seats.

The first patient to receive a transplanted kidney from a genetically modified pig is doing so well that he left the hospital for home .

Once rivals, Biden and Senator Bernie Sanders are together pushing for lower prescription prices , CNN reports.

A drug similar to Ozempic and Wegovy modestly slowed Parkinson’s disease in a study.

Other Big Stories

About 100,000 live salmon spilled off a truck in Oregon , but most survived by flopping into a nearby creek. They are heading toward the ocean.

The police arrested a member of the Texas Army National Guard and charged him with migrant smuggling .

Wildfires are destroying forests faster than trees can grow back . Governments and companies are trying to plant more.

Have you been paying attention to politics? Take this quiz from Gail Collins .

A new law in Scotland that criminalizes some public speech is a threat to free expression, Ross Douthat writes.

With a new country album, Beyoncé is clear: She wants to be legendary , Tressie McMillan Cottom writes.

Here are columns by Pamela Paul on Maryland’s devotion to community service and Charles Blow on the “ Jerrod Carmichael Reality Show. ”

MORNING READS

Carefluencers : Some young people are supporting their older relatives — and making them TikTok stars .

Soccer: Muslim players once faced pressure to avoid fasting during Ramadan. Many teams now provide support for fasting .

Brand logo: Some runners are not happy with the Boston Marathon’s new medal design .

Social Q’s: “How can our friends choose a Realtor other than my husband ?”

Big purchase : Should you buy a second home? Read these tips to decide .

Lives Lived: Christopher Durang was a playwright who mixed high art with lowbrow jokes. He died at 75 .

College basketball: The L.S.U. star Angel Reese declared for the W.N.B.A. draft two days after Iowa eliminated her team in the Elite Eight.

N.F.L.: The Houston Texans acquired the star wide receiver Stefon Diggs from the Buffalo Bills, a big swing for a young Houston team now expected to compete for a Super Bowl.

Sports gambling: Louisiana is banning prop bets on college athletes .

ARTS AND IDEAS

The seat of modernism: An exhibition at the Museum of Modern Art, “Crafting Modernity,” explores modernism and domestic design in Latin America. It focuses on 1940 through 1980, a time of industrial expansion.

“I can’t recall the last time I coveted so many beautiful chairs,” Michael Kimmelman writes about the show . “The photographs give you some idea.”

More on culture

The Chicago Symphony orchestra announced a 28-year-old Finnish conductor as its next music director.

A 32-year-old from South Korea has become a rising star as a violin maker in Italy .

The Cut has put together an encyclopedia of celebrities who have launched beauty brands.

Beyoncé has been sending flowers to artists whose work she admires. See her signature bouquets .

Lizzo clarified that she was not leaving the music industry , days after a social media post saying, “I QUIT.”

Late night hosts joked about Trump’s call for a “ Christian Visibility Day .”

THE MORNING RECOMMENDS …

Make a midnight pasta with roasted garlic, anchovies, capers and red pepper.

Visit a hotel with a good pool .

Photograph the solar eclipse .

Choose the best tampon .

Here is today’s Spelling Bee . Yesterday’s pangram was puppylike .

And here are today’s Mini Crossword , Wordle , Sudoku and Connections .

Thanks for spending part of your morning with The Times. See you tomorrow. — David

Sign up here to get this newsletter in your inbox . Reach our team at [email protected] .

David Leonhardt runs The Morning , The Times’s flagship daily newsletter. Since joining The Times in 1999, he has been an economics columnist, opinion columnist, head of the Washington bureau and founding editor of the Upshot section, among other roles. More about David Leonhardt