essay questions on iranian revolution

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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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Four decades later, did the Iranian revolution fulfill its promises?

Subscribe to the center for middle east policy newsletter, ali fathollah-nejad af ali fathollah-nejad former brookings expert @afathollahnejad.

July 11, 2019

• 12 min read

Content from the Brookings Doha Center is now archived . In September 2021, after 14 years of impactful partnership, Brookings and the Brookings Doha Center announced that they were ending their affiliation. The Brookings Doha Center is now the  Middle East Council on Global Affairs , a separate public policy institution based in Qatar.

If Iran were to hold a referendum on the Islamic Republic today, over 70% would clearly oppose it—among them the wealthy, academics, clerics, village, and city-dwellers. This remarkable hypothetical was not declared by an exiled Iranian dissident, but by the well-known Tehran political science professor, Sadegh Zibakalam, in an interview during the upheaval that took place in late 2017 and early 2018.

But how is it that even a formerly enthusiastic supporter of the Islamic Revolution has delivered such a devastating verdict? To understand this radical shift and the frustration behind it, we must revisit the promises that the revolution made four decades ago. The 1979 Iranian revolution promised three goals: social justice, freedom and democracy, and independence from great power tutelage.  

Iran’s paradoxical quest for social justice

Framed in a Marxist–Islamist mindset, the revolution was made on behalf of the mostazafin —the downtrodden—who were left behind by the monarchy’s uneven development model. In the following four decades, intense controversy has erupted over the Islamic Republic’s socio-economic performance. While some claim that under the Islamist regime remarkable progress has been made, others depict an entire country mired in misery. More nuance and contextualization is needed.

Iran has indeed experienced progress over the last 40 years. Whether these successes have been a result of post-revolutionary policies, societal pressures, or the foundations laid by the shah remains hotly debated.

The shift from the shah’s pro-urban, elite-centered policies to a pro-rural and pro-poor (populist) approach under the Islamic Republic included expanding infrastructure and basic services—such as electricity and clean water—from cities to the countryside. In short, the revolution sought to eliminate the rural-urban divide. In rural Iran, the expansion of health and education led to a clear reduction in poverty: The 1970s poverty rate of 25% dropped to less than 10% in 2014. These social policies, biased in favor of the poor, help explain why Iran’s Human Development Index (HDI) has been relatively positive.

Unlike before the revolution, most Iranians today enjoy access to basic services and infrastructure, while the population has almost doubled and most of the country is urbanized. Other measures of social development have similarly improved. Literacy has more than doubled , especially among women, and now encompasses almost all the population. Meanwhile, female students have outnumbered their male counterparts at universities for more than a decade.

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However, while statistics indicate that absolute poverty has declined sharply, a majority of Iranians continue to suffer from socio-economic precarity. Official sources state that 12 million live below the absolute poverty line and 25 to 30 million below the poverty line. Estimates suggest that one-third of Iranians, as well as 50 to 70% of workers, are in danger of falling into poverty. Fourteen percent of Iranians live in tents, according to the Statistical Center of Iran , and one-third of the urban population lives in slums. The living conditions of what anthropologist Shahram Khosravi calls Iran’s “other half,” or working-class poor , are striking: a 17-fold increase in the number of Iranians living in slums; 50% of the work force have only irregular employment; approximately 10 to 13 million Iranians “entirely excluded  from health, work or unemployment insurance.”

And Iran’s socio-economic challenges cannot be separated from its political economy that favors regime loyalists and is marked by mismanagement, cronyism, nepotism, corruption, and the absence of much-needed structural reforms. Although U.S. sanctions have undoubtedly had negative repercussions, their overall impact on Iran’s economic situation is often overstated. For instance, in the summer of 2018, Hossein Raghfar , an economist at Tehran’s Allameh Tabataba’i University, has suggested that as little as 15% of Iran’s economic problems can be attributed to sanctions. The “ illiberal neoliberalization ” in various Iranian economic policies since the 1990s, featuring clientalistic privatizations and de-regulated labor market, has helped form nouveaux riches on one hand and precarious social strata on the other.

A chief failure of the Islamic Republic has been the lack of job creation, with jobless growth even increasing during oil booms. Unemployment rates remain high, especially among the youth, university graduates, and women. Officially, every eighth Iranian is unemployed. According to the Iranian parliament’s research center, the unemployment rate will reach 16% by 2021 in an optimistic scenario, 26% if conditions are less auspicious. Among the youth, one in four is unemployed (but some estimates go as high as 40%). These figures rank Iran’s youth unemployment rate as among the highest worldwide.

Iran’s Gini index of income inequality has remained consistently high at above 0.40, pointing to the lack of inclusive economic growth. Studying levels of inequality in pre- and post-revolutionary Iran, Djavad Salehi-Isfahani found that inequality in 2002 was about the same as in 1972, adding:

The findings on inequality raise important questions about the nature of the Islamic Revolution. Did it significantly affect the power structure as a social revolution of its magnitude should have? This is particularly relevant in the case of Iran because, in addition to changes in the distribution of productivity, the distribution of access to oil rents also affects inequality. Since access is directly related to political power, inequality may reflect the distribution of power. Thus, the finding that inequality in 2002 was about the same as in 1972 raises questions about the significance of the Islamic Revolution as a social and political revolution.

In other words, the class character of Iranian society has remained unchanged , with one ruling class replaced by another only with another social composition. In political cartoons, this was reflected in pictures of the shah’s crown merely being replaced by the mullahs’ turban. Such continuity led some scholars to interpret the 1979 revolution as merely a “ passive revolution, a revolution without change ” in class relations. Today, there is a strong public perception of high income inequality, given the ostentatious display of wealth and nepotism by the offspring of regime affiliates, the so-called âghâzâdeh , that Iranians observe on the streets of Tehran or on their smartphones through Instagram accounts like “Rich Kids of Tehran.”

The Islamic Republic’s relative achievements in the fields of rural infrastructure, education, and literacy, along with its failure to create jobs, have produced a socio-economic paradox that is politically explosive. Iran’s job market can simply not absorb the hundreds of thousands of university graduates. This paradox has produced a stratum of “middle-class poor,” as described by sociologist Asef Bayat. Defined as those with middle-class qualifications and aspirations but suffering from socio-economic precarity, this group was considered the social base of the 2017-18 uprising and is widely expected to continue to voice its anger and frustration.

On the situation of Iran’s youth under the Islamic Republic, Bayat explained in a 2016 interview :

The youth not only want a secure future—that is reasonable jobs, a place to live, get married, and form a family in the future—they also want to reclaim their “youthfulness,” a desire to live the life of youth, to pursue their interests, their individuality, free from the watchful eyes of their elders, from moral and political authority. This dimension of young people’s lives adds to the existing social tensions in Iran.

As alluded to before, Iranians face another structural impediment to socio-economic opportunities. Regime “insiders” ( khodi ) or those with access to state resources and privileges also enjoy privileged access to jobs. These frustrations have led many young Iranians to vote with their feet. Even under the Rouhani administration, Iran has continued to experience world record-breaking levels of brain drain , losing an estimated $150 billion per year.

Political freedom and democracy

In addition to social justice, the architects of the 1979 revolution contended that the ouster of the monarchy would usher in greater freedom. However, the brief post-revolutionary euphoria and sense of liberation quickly gave way to the new rulers’ systemic Islamization of state and society. That one dictatorship was replaced by another, and by an even more brutal one, became apparent in the Islamic Republic’s first decade. Between 1981 and 1985, nearly 8,000 people were executed, and similar numbers were killed during the so-called “great massacre” in the final year of the 1980–88 war with Iraq. By contrast, in the eight years preceding the revolution (1971-79), fewer than 100 political prisoners were executed. The Islamic Republic became one of the most repressive systems on the globe, more recently with the world’s highest execution rate.

In this process, modern Iran’s three dominant politico-ideological formations , or political cultures—namely nationalism, socialism, and Islamism—were narrowed to heavy emphasis on the latter, which managed to incorporate elements of the others. Although there is some variety, the new political elite is largely limited to various stripes of Islamism. The revolutionary movement’s political pluralism has been suppressed, with no veritable opposition party allowed by the state.

Likewise, Iranian civil society’s constitutive movements—women, students, and labor—have faced systemic repression, undermining their organizational capacities and leaving Iran’s dynamic civil society weak compared to the state. State repression has also targeted dissidents of various ideological persuasions, non-Persian minorities, and journalists. Iran today is one of the world’s leading jailers of journalists, ranked 170th among 180 by Reporters Without Borders . While the Islamic Republic’s press landscape displays a remarkable degree of vibrancy and openness within the system’s redlines, the hardline-dominated judiciary has regularly banned publications and imprisoned journalists.

Overturning the existing monarchical order, the Islamic Republic established a peculiar political system that is conventionally understood to be based on two pillars: theocratic (with the supreme leader at the top as the head of state) and republican (with an elected parliament and president). However, the latter is at best semi-republican, as the Guardian Council only allows candidates deemed loyal to the Islamic Republic to run for office. This unique configuration has been a key impediment for the creation of democracy; non-elected institutions still dominate, while elected ones have remained faithful to the system. Most importantly, the Islamic Republic’s hybrid authoritarianism has shown remarkable resilience against meaningful political change, leading to widespread popular frustration today with both regime wings—the so-called moderates as well as the hardliners.

Independence inseparable from freedom

The revolution’s fervent opposition to both Cold War superpowers, the United States and the Soviet Union, was encapsulated in the revolutionary slogan “Neither West, nor East, [only] the Islamic Republic.” But it was the revolution’s animosity toward Washington that has dominated Iran’s international relations. And while Iran has found itself in a geopolitical confrontation with the West, it was never geopolitically integrated into the East. Instead, as the policies of Russia, China, and India during heightened U.S. sanctions have demonstrated, Iran has found itself forced to give concessions to Asian great powers that have consistently prioritized their ties with Washington over those with Tehran. As a result, Iran has experienced new patterns of dependency on those Eastern great powers, since confronting them is not an option so long as Tehran is at loggerheads with the international system’s most powerful state.

Iran has experienced new patterns of dependency on those Eastern great powers, since confronting them is not an option so long as Tehran is at loggerheads with the international system’s most powerful state.

Against this backdrop, how can Iranians safeguard their longstanding desire for independence in a 21st-century, interdependent world? Ruhollah Ramazani, the late doyen of Iranian foreign policy studies, rightly emphasized that in an interdependent world, there is no such thing as absolute independence, but rather degrees of dependence. In other words, Iran’s national development will suffer if today it tries to maintain a fervent, ideological adherence to an abstract notion of absolute independence.

Iran’s domestic authoritarian context poses another formidable challenge for safeguarding independence, as it favors close ties with authoritarian rather than democratic states. The hardline custodians of the Islamic Republic need not fear that like-minded authoritarian regimes, like China and Russia, will introduce issues like human rights and democracy in bilateral relations. The result is a geopolitical preference for a “Look to the East” policy, mostly favored by those forces who stand to benefit politically and economically from such an orientation. The shadow of Iran’s antagonism with the United States has sustained its conflictual relationship with the Western world. This has not only prevented it from developing its full potential by building robust ties with both the West and the East, but has pushed the country into the hands of the latter powers who have abused Iran’s isolation from the West and its need of the East. For this reason, Ramazani aptly noted that a democratic polity is a necessary precondition to prevent dependency, noting that “the breakdown of the rule of law and politicized judiciary will ultimately undercut Iran’s ability to maintain its independence in world politics.” He also emphasized that freedom and independence are inseparable.

A more open political climate, as in India for example, would allow for domestic debates about foreign policy choices and the stakes involved for the population. Hence, democratization would significantly improve Iran’s international image and potentially improve its bargaining power vis-à-vis great powers, especially given Western powers’ tendency towards instrumentalizing human rights in order to generate political pressure.

So did the Iranian revolution eventually deliver on its promises? Despite some achievements, the overall picture looks bleak, particularly when it comes to promises of democracy. Whether that is reversible is another difficult question. The acute triple crisis—socio-economic, political, and ecological—the Islamic Republic faces in its 40th year, a growing sense of popular disillusionment and frustration that forcefully erupted during the 2017-18 upheaval, and the ongoing confrontation with the world’s most powerful state leaves little hope that the same system that failed to deliver on these promises for decades will succeed in the future.

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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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Cultural Traditions and Modernization

Iranian revolution & islamic republic.

• What were the crucial turning points that led to the Iranian Revolution of 1979 and the formation of an Islamic Republic?

​KEY IDEA:  TENSIONS BETWEEN TRADITIONAL CULTURES AND MODERNIZATION: Tensions exist between traditional cultures and agents of modernization. Reactions for and against modernization depend on perspective and context.

CONCEPTUAL UNDERSTANDING:  Tensions between agents of modernization and traditional cultures have resulted in ongoing debates within affected societies regarding social norms, gender roles, and the role of authorities and institutions.

CONTENT SPECIFICATION:  Students will investigate, compare, and contrast tensions between modernization and traditional culture in Turkey under the rule of Kemal Atatürk and in Iran under the Pahlavis and the Ayatollahs.

Global History II

Iranian Revolution: Iranian Revolution & Islamic Republic

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• Students will examine an overview of the geography, history, and political context of Iran leading to the Iranian Revolution of 1979 and formation of the Islamic Republic.

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World politics explainer: the Iranian Revolution

Associate Professor in Islamic Studies, Director of The Centre for Islamic Studies and Civilisation and Executive Member of Public and Contextual Theology, Charles Sturt University

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This article is part of our series of explainers on key moments in the past 100 years of world political history. In it, our authors examine how and why an event unfolded, its impact at the time, and its relevance to politics today.

To understand what caused the Iranian Revolution, we must first consider the ongoing conflict between proponents of secular versus Islamic models of governance in Muslim societies.

It all began with the British colonisation of India in 1858, which precipitated the collapse of classic Islamic civilisation. By early 20th century, almost the entire Muslim world was colonised by European powers .

The Ottoman Empire, the last representative of the classic Islamic civilisation, collapsed after world war one in 1918. So, the first half of 20th century saw Muslim nations fight to regain their independence.

It was the secular-nationalist, western, educated elites who first led these movements, gaining political control and leadership of their respective countries. These leaders wanted to mimic Europe’s progressive leaps that took place after diminishing Christianity’s grip on society and politics . They believed Muslim societies would progress if the Islam was reformed and its influence on society reduced through separating religion and state.

A key reform enforced by the new secular Republic of Turkey, for example, was to remove the Ottoman Caliphate (the religious and political leader considered the successor to the Prophet Muhammad) from his position in 1924, sending shockwaves across the Muslim world.

This caused the emergence of alternative grassroots Islamic revivalist movements led by the ulama (Muslim scholars), who believed the very existence of Islam was in jeopardy.

These movements were non-political in their inception and gained mass support at a time when Muslim masses needed spiritual solace and social support. In time, they developed an Islamic vision for society and became increasingly active in the social and political landscape.

The impact of the Cold War

By the end of the second world war, Muslim countries had largely escaped from the constraints of western colonisation, only to fall victim to the Cold War.

Iran and Turkey were key countries where Soviet expansion efforts were intensified. In response, the United States, provided both countries with economic and political support in return for their membership in the democratic Western block. Turkey and Iran accepted this support and became democratic in 1950 and 1951 respectively.

Soon after, Mohammad Mosaddeq’s National Front became the first democratically-elected Iranian government in 1951. Mosaddeq was a modern, secular leaning, progressive leader who was able to gain the broad support of both the secular elite and the Iranian ulama.

He was helped by a growing disdain for Shah (king) Reza Pahlavi’s reigning monarchy and Iranian anger at the exploitation of their oil fields.

Whilst Persian oil was used by Britain and Russia to survive the Nazi onslaught during the second world war and greatly helped boost the British economy, Iranians were only receiving 20% of the profits.

Mosaddeq made the bold move to address this issue through nationalising the previously British-owned Anglo-Iranian Oil Company (AIOC). This did not work out in his favour, as it attracted British and US economic sanctions. This in turn crippled the Iranian economy.

In 1953, he was replaced in a military coup organised by the CIA and British Intelligence . The Shah was returned to power and the Anglo-Iranian Oil Company became BP, British Petroleum, with a 50-50 divide of profits.

Not only did this intervention leave Iranians with a sense of bitter humiliation, betrayal and impotence, its impact also reverberated within the wider Muslim world.

It sent the message that a democratically-elected government would be toppled if it did not fit with Western interests. This narrative continues to be the dominant discourse of Islamist activists to this day, used in explaining world events that affect the Muslim masses.

Looking more closely at the developments in Iran between 1953 and 1977, the Shah relied heavily on the US in his efforts to modernise the army, Iranian society and build the economy through what he called the White Revolution .

Though his economic program brought prosperity and industrialisation to Iran and educational initiatives increased literacy levels, this all came at a hefty cost. Wealth was unequally distributed , there was a development of an underclass of peasants migrating to urban centres and large scale political suppression of dissent . Disillusioned religious scholars were alarmed at the top-down imposition of a Western lifestyle, believing Islam was being completely removed from society.

The revolution - what happened?

Iranian dissidents responded finally to the Shah’s political suppression with violence. Two militant groups, Marxist Fadaiyan-e Khalq and Islamic leftist Mujahedin-e Khalq , started to mount attacks at government officials in the 1960s . More sustained and indirect opposition came from the religious circles led by Ayatollah Khomeini and intellectual circles led by Ali Shari’ati.

Shari’ati, a French-educated intellectual, was inspired by the Algerian and Cuban revolutions. He called for an active struggle for social justice and insisted on the prominence of Islamic cultural heritage instead of the Western model for society. He criticised the Shi’ite scholars for being stuck in their centuries-old doctrine of political quietism – seen as a significant barrier to the revolutionary fervour.

The barrier was broken by Ayatollah Khomeini, who rose to prominence for his outspoken role in the 1963 protests and was exiled as a result. His recorded sermons openly criticising the Shah were circulated widely in Iran .

Influenced by the new idea of an Islamic state in which Islam could be implemented fully, thus ending the imperialism of the colonial West, Khomeini argued it was incumbent on Muslims to establish an Islamic government based on the Qur’an and the example of the Prophet Muhammad.

In his book Wilayat-i Faqih : Hukumat-i Islami (Islamic Government: Guardianship of the Jurist), Khomeni insisted that in the absence of the true Imam (the only legitimate leader from the linage of Prophet Muhammad in Shi'ite theology) the scholars were their proxies charged to fulfil the obligation by virtue of their knowledge of Islamic scriptures. This idea was an important innovation that gave licence to scholars to become involved in politics.

With the conditions ripe, the persistent protests instigated by Khomeini’s followers swelled to include all major cities. This culminated in the revolution on February 1, 1979, when Khomeini triumphantly returned to Iran.

The impact of the revolution

The Iranian revolution was a cataclysmic event that not only transformed Iran completely, but also had far-reaching consequences for the world.

It caused a deep shift in Cold War and global geopolitics. The US not only lost a key strategic ally against the communist threat, but it also gained a new enemy.

Emboldened by developments in Iran, the Soviet Union invaded Afghanistan in 1979. This was followed by the eruption of the Iran-Iraq war of 1980, designed to bring down the new Iranian theocratic regime. The US supported Saddam Hussein with weapons and training, helping him clinch his grip on power in Iraq.

Contemporary relevance

These two conflicts and the series of events that followed – Saddam Hussein’s invasion of Kuwait in 1991, two Gulf-Wars , the emergence of Al-Qaeda, and the 9/11 terrorist attacks on World Trade Centre and subsequent war on terror – defined geo-politics for the last three decades and continues to do so today.

The Iranian revolution also dramatically altered Middle Eastern politics. It flamed a regional sectarian cold war between Iran and Saudi Arabia. The revolution challenged Saudi Arabia’s monarchy and its claim for leadership of the Muslim world.

The religious and ideological cold war between Iran and Saudi Arabia continues to this day with their involvement in the Syrian and Yemeni conflicts .

Another impact of the revolution is the resurgence of political Islam throughout the Muslim world. Iran’s success showed that establishing an Islamic state was not just a dream. It was possible to take on the West, their collaborating monarchs/dictators and win.

Throughout the 1980s and 90s, Islamic political parties popped up in almost all Muslim countries, aiming to Islamise societies through the instruments of state. They declared the secular model had failed to deliver progress and full independence, and the Islamic model was the only alternative. For them, the Iranian revolution was proof it could be a reality.

Was the revolution a success?

From the perspective of longevity, the revolution still stands. It has managed to survive four decades, including the eight-year Iran-Iraq war as well as decades of economic sanctions . Comparatively, the Taliban’s attempt at establishing an Islamic state only lasted five years.

On the other hand, Khomeini and his supporters promised to end the gap between the rich and the poor, and deliver economic and social progress. Today, the Iranian economy is in poor shape, despite the oil revenues that holds back the economy from the brink of collapse. People are dissatisfied with high unemployment rates and hyper-inflation. They have little hope for the economic fortunes to turn.

The most important premise of Islamism – making society more religious through political power – has also failed to produce the desired results. Even though 63% of Iranians were born after the revolution , they are no more religious than before the revolution.

Although there is still significant support for the current regime, a significant proportion of Iranians want more freedoms, and disdain religion being forced from above. There are growing protests demanding economic, social and political reforms as well as an end to the Islamic republic.

Most Iranians blame the failures of the revolution on the never-ending US sanctions. Even though Iran trades with European powers, China and Russia, they believe the West does not want Iran to succeed at all costs.

Ultimately, the world geopolitics is a competitive business driven by national interests. The challenge before Muslim societies is to develop models that harmonises Islam and the modern world in a way that is appealing and contributory to humanity rather than seen as a threat.

Hard social and political conditions and forces of time have an uncanny ability to test and smooth ideologies. While the struggle between secular and Islamic models for society continues in Iran and the greater Muslim world, it is likely that Iran will evolve as a moderate society in the 21st century.

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The Iranian Revolution of 1979, also known as the Islamic Revolution, involved the overthrow and exile of the country’s Pahlavi-dynasty monarch, Mohammad Reza Shah. Led by Ayatollah Ruhollah Khomeini, the revolution gave rise to the founding of the Islamic Republic of Iran, with Khomeini assuming the role of Supreme Leader, the most powerful religious and political figure in Iran.

The Iranian Revolution of 1979 was a defining moment in modern Iranian history. It was a precursor to bringing Islam and Shi’a clerics into the center of political authority, an unprecedented notion in the Middle East and the Islamic world of modern times. (Shi’a Muslims are the branch of Islam comprising sects that believe Ali and the prayer leaders as the only rightful successors of the Prophet Muhammad.) The Iranian Revolution had its origins in several preconditions that were intertwined with other issues: political oppression, modernization/Westernization of Iran, and foreign dependency, eventually leading to the collapse of Mohammad Reza Shah’s political order and its replacement by an Islamic republic.

Political Oppression

Political oppression in Iran can be traced to Reza Shah, founder of the Pahlavi dynasty. His autocratic role, particularly after 1930, is readily identifiable as an undermining of the constitution, especially when one notes how the deputies of the Majles (Parliament) were handpicked and how the appointments of the ministers were based upon personal loyalty to the shah (sovereign), not to the general public. In addition, events brought about changes to the political atmosphere of Iran during World War II. Germany invaded the Soviet Union, and Iran, having already declared neutrality, refused the Soviet and British request that the allied forces be allowed to transport lend-lease material through its territory to the Russians. This refusal by Iran turned the request into an ultimatum and eventually led to invasions and occupation by England and Russia. Reza Shah was forced into exile and replaced with his twenty-two-year-old son, Mohammad Reza Shah.

The young shah’s lack of political experience inaugurated a period of political freedom that subsequently produced organized political parties with the authorization to publish their own newspapers, naturally giving birth to a new era of ideological rivalry between political contenders. This rivalry ultimately underwent a series of internal conflicts among the nationalists who dominated the Majles under the leadership of Dr. Mohammad Mosaddeq and the pro-shah faction. To consolidate the nationalists’ position in the government, Dr. Mosaddeq in 1949 created the National Front, a coalition representing different groups and political parties. Its primary goal was to restrict foreign interests, particularly the British domination and exploitation of the Iranian oil industry, as well as to safeguard the 1906 constitution that restricted the power of the monarch. The National Front’s popularity reached great heights when Dr. Mosaddeq gained the approval of the Majles to nationalize the Anglo-Iranian Oil Company in 1951 and soon thereafter became the prime minister of Iran. British officials called for a boycott of Iranian oil, and through worldwide diplomatic maneuvers, major oil companies agreed to boycott Iranian oil. This boycott nearly brought the Iranian economy to a standstill. The economic hardship of the early 1950s caused a severe strain on the implementation of all of Mosaddeq’s promised domestic reforms and, in turn, precipitated a decline in his popularity.

Fearing the spread of nationalization of domestic industries throughout the Middle East, along with the spread of Communist ideology in Iran, particularly through the popularity of the Tudeh (the masses) Party, the U.S. CIA and British intelligence executed a military coup d’etat against Dr. Mosaddeq’s government in August of 1953. After the coup the shah was returned to Iran from his self-exile and resumed control over the nation. He also settled the oil dispute through a consortium of eight European and U.S. companies by agreeing to fifty-fifty profit sharing by the Anglo-Iranian Oil Company. With the throne restored and the support of the United States, the shah began to take extreme measures to ensure the longevity of his dynasty. The first step toward this goal was the creation of an internal security force, with the help of the U.S. CIA and FBI, known as “SAVAK” (Sazeman-e Amniyyat va Ettela’at-e Keshvar or Organization for State Intelligence and Security). Its aim, for all intents and purposes, was to crush and demoralize opposition of any political nature, manipulate the behavior of citizens, and control and redirect public opinion in the interest of the regime.

In 1958, in response to mounting pressure for democracy, the shah created a two-party system consisting of the Melliyun (Nationalist) and Mardom (People) parties, neither of which constituted a worthy opposition party. However, in 1975 the two-party system merged into a single-party system known as “Rastakhiz” (resurgence), with membership required for all government employees and other people who were eligible to vote. Elections to the Majles were held; however, candidates had to have approval of SAVAK. Therefore, true representation of the people, via parliament, never emerged under the shah’s regime. Mass censorship of television broadcasting, newspaper circulation, books, and journals and imprisonment of intellectuals, students, and trade unionists boiled over into total political frustration, resulting in mass demonstrations, strikes, and armed resistance against the shah’s regime by the late 1970s.

Modernization/Westernization

The oil settlement of 1953 gave the shah the revenue to continue his father’s aspirations of modernization. Since the First Seven-Year Plan (1948–1955) did not achieve its expectation, the shah initiated a second Seven-Year Plan which began in 1955. However, due to corruption and mismanagement, the plan did not achieve its expected goals. To demonstrate his popularity among Iranians and decrease the pressure for reforms from the administration of U.S. president John F. Kennedy, the shah announced his six-point program popularly known as the “White Revolution” (or the “Revolution of the Shah and the People”) in 1963. It encompassed land reform, the sale of government- owned factories to finance land reform, women’s suffrage, the nationalization of forests, a national literacy corps, and profit-sharing plans for recruits in industry.

The goals of land reform were twofold: to gain support from the peasants living in agricultural villages of Iran and to eliminate the big landlords as an influential class. Although some big landlords lost their prominence, many retained their large holdings and became modernized commercial farmers and eventually were incorporated into the shah’s political elite. Land reform also failed to give sufficient amounts of land and resources to the majority of peasants; thus, a massive migration to the cities began, but the cities were not equipped to cope with the massive influx.

The national literacy corps was another important component of the White Revolution. The shah realized that for Iran to become modernized, the people of Iran would have to become better educated. Thus, high school graduate conscripts were recruited to spend fifteen months, in lieu of their compulsory military service of two years, in rural villages or small towns teaching in primary or adult literacy schools. With the help of the literacy corps and the opening of more schools, technical colleges, and universities, the shah succeeded in increasing the national literacy rate from 14.9 percent in 1956 to 74.1 percent by 1976. This increase was a major accomplishment by any standards. Nonetheless, these reforms undermined the religious schools and were resented by the cleric class, who had until then held the monopoly on education through their parochial schools. In addition, a higher literacy rate meant that political awareness in the cities, rural areas, and small towns would not be uncommon.

The women’s suffrage component of the White Revolution changed the political status of Iranian woman forever. Clerics and conservative families who did not like the emancipation of Iranian women opposed this suffrage. Consequently, uprisings occurred in the theological seminaries and among shopkeepers in major cities. Clashes between the government and the opposition resulted in imprisonment and exile of the opposition leaders, including a less-prominent clergyman, Ruhollah Khomeini (1902–1989), who would go on to play a major role and become the leader of the 1979 revolution.

Along with the aforementioned reforms, other social and economic reforms were undertaken to further modernize the country. Among the most notable reforms was improvement of the infrastructure of Iran, including the construction of better medical facilities, improvement in the accessibility to health care, reforms in family laws, and expansion of women’s rights. The modernization and secularization of Iran made the shah’s leadership powerful and secure; however, at the same time his autocratic rule disassociated him from an important segment of society. Although the economic and social reforms brought many improvements, they also alienated many groups, such as the Bazaaris (traditional merchants), who consisted of hundreds of thousands of major merchants, shopkeepers, and artisans who could not compete in a Western-style economy. Lack of a viable political platform also alienated many intellectuals and students.

Foreign Dependency

The British and Soviets had dominated Iranian politics until the early 1950s, but the United States began to alter the role of the two competing powers in Iran after the 1953 military coup. The Truman Doctrine aimed to impede the spread of Communism in Southeast Asia and the Middle East. Because Iran had an extensive border with the Soviet Union, successive U.S. administrations saw Iran as a candidate for being influenced by Communist ideology. The first sign of the U.S. administration’s curbing Soviet influence came in October 1955 when Iran signed and joined the Baghdad Pact along with Iraq, Turkey, Pakistan, and Great Britain. Creation of this pact would ensure Iran of the U.S. military and economic assistance that it badly needed. This pact, along with an earlier U.S.-Iran mutual defense agreement, set up Iran to receive great quantities of military equipment.

During 1972 the tide turned in favor of the shah. Great Britain had pulled out of the Persian Gulf due to worldwide military cutbacks, and this vacuum was soon filled when the administration of U.S. president Richard Nixon underwrote the shah as the policeman of the Persian Gulf. This underwriting gave Iran carte blanche to purchase up-to-date non-nuclear weapons from the United States. During the 1973 meeting of the Organization of Petroleum Exporting Countries (OPEC), when the shah pushed to increase oil prices, in light of the 1973 Arab–Israeli War and an ongoing oil embargo, the timing was right for him to strengthen his presence as a leader in the region. With increased OPEC oil prices, the Iranian oil revenue augmented from $2.3 billion in 1972 to $20.5 billion in 1977, dispersing any monetary obstacle that might have prevented the shah from strengthening his military forces.

With the increase in oil revenue, Iran’s annual military budget increased from $1.8 billion in 1973 to $9.5 billion in 1977, and the size of the military increased to 410,000 troops. The purchase of arms from the United States alone totaled $6 billion by 1977. In 1976 the two countries signed a bilateral agreement that anticipated that non-oil and nonmilitary trade between the two countries would reach $15 billion by 1981. By 1978 more than fifty thousand U.S. military advisors and civilians were residing in Iran with extraterritorial rights (a privilege of immunity from local law enforcement of the host country). Ironically, the shah had now reinstated the same extraterritoriality act that his father had so fervently abolished in 1928. In general, the Iranian people never forgave Mohammad Reza Shah for that reinstatement.

Other factors leading to the Iranian Revolution included inflation, widespread corruption, inequities in income distribution, and the failure of political reforms. Hence, by 1978 a rapidly growing and resounding discontent existed among a majority of Iranians. Strikes and demonstrations became daily occurrences throughout 1978 and as a result hundreds died in clashes with riot police forces. The shah’s inability to curb the situation encouraged the opposition to become more vigorous in their demand to end the monarchy. With the hope that a new government may be able to solve the political problems, the shah appointed one prime minister after another. They were, however, either old acquaintances or army generals who were already despised or mistrusted by the opposition. His final attempt was to ask Dr. Shahpur Bakhtiar, an opposition figure that had gone to jail for his anti-shah activities, to form a new government. Even though, on 3 January 1979, the parliament gave its approval to the new government, it was too late for Bakhtiar to gain the trust of the people and to remedy the situation. As a result, the shah realized that his departure from the country might help ease the discord, so on January 13, 1979, he named a Regency Council to take his place while he was out of the country. His departure on 16 January 1979, however, marked the end of the Pahlavi era and the monarchy in Iran.

Meanwhile, Ayatollah Ruhollah Khomeini who was unceremoniously forced out of Iraq, where he had been in exile since 1963, was given permission to go to Paris. Suddenly the world’s major media personalities discovered a simple religious man who opposed the tyrannical leadership of his native country. Khomeini’s message was broadcast to the world and specifically to Iranians via various media outlets. His message was very simple: abdication of the shah and reinstatement of the Iranian Constitution of 1906. In Paris, Ayatollah Khomeini set up an Islamic Revolutionary Council with the task of establishing a transitional government, and a few days after his arrival in Iran on 1 February 1979, he appointed Mehdi Bazargan, a devout Muslim and supporter of Dr. Mossadeq and an anti-shah activist, as the prime minister of a provisional government, even though Dr. Bakhtiar’s government was still in power. Dr. Bakhtiar and his government became increasingly unpopular to the point that he was forced underground and eventually fled the country on 10 February 1979.

As with any other political revolution, in Iran a period of uncertainty and political chaos ensued. Almost overnight, and continuing throughout the month of February, hundreds of Islamic Revolutionary courts headed by clerics were set up throughout the country to deal with the former regime’s loyalists. High-ranking military officers, former prime ministers, ministers, and any who opposed the new government were summarily tried and executed without having any legal representation. Along with the Islamic courts, the formation of a Revolutionary Guard Corps with recruits drawn primarily from the lower classes and those loyal to Ayatollah Khomeini and Islam, was set up to defend the revolution against any possible military coup or civilian opposition. In order to abolish any sign of the old regime, on 30 and 31 March 1979, Ayatollah Khomeini declared a national referendum to choose the future form of the Iranian government. The choice was either monarchy or an Islamic republic. With this limited choice, after the people had just gotten rid of the monarchical system, they overwhelmingly approved the formation of an Islamic republic over a monarchy. Soon after, the Council of Experts, mostly composed of clergy, was set up by Ayatollah Khomeini to draft a new constitution. The most debatable aspect of forming the new constitution was the principle of Velayat-e Fqih (the rule of jurist consult). In Shiism, it is believed that in the absence of the twelfth Imam—who was the direct descendant of prophet Muhammad through his daughter, Fatima, and his son-in-law and cousin Ali, and went into occultation and will return as the Mahdi or Messiah—the most learned jurist, one who knows the divine law and the will of the Mahdi, should be the supreme head of the government. With the approval of the new constitution, Ayatollah Khomeini was declared as such a jurist and as head of the new government was given more power than any other previous leader in modern Iran.

By November 1979, it was Ayatollah Khomeini through his mouthpiece, the Islamic Revolutionary Council, who was running the country, not Prime Minister Bazargan and his cabinet. The final showdown between the two political rivals came to a head with the seizure of the American Embassy by so-called “Students Following the Line of the Imam [Khomeini].” Bazargan and his moderate supporters adamantly opposed and condemned this act and demanded an end to the seizure of the embassy and the release of American Embassy personnel. But Ayatollah Khomeini eventually supported the students and called it Iran’s second revolution. Two days after the takeover of the American Embassy, Prime Minister Bazargan resigned and Ayatollah Khomeini and his high-ranking clerics began to consolidate their political, economic, and social power in Iran.

In an attempt to take advantage of instability following the revolution, in September 1980, neighboring Iraq went to war with Iran seeking to end the revolution before it could take firm hold. Despite some early gains, Iran managed to recapture most of its lost territory by mid 1982, but the war dragged on at great cost to both sides until August 1988. In effect, the war served to shore up support for the new government and the Islamic Revolution more generally.

The legitimacy of the Iranian government and the role of the Supreme Leader and the Guardian Council have not really come under serious challenge until the disputed presidential election of June 2009. Marred by claims of fraud, the disputed election result triggered mass demonstrations against the conservative incumbent, Mahmoud Ahmadinejad, and in support of opposition reform candidate, Mir- Hossein Mousavi. The protests met with a violent response from authorities and resulted in an unconfirmed number of deaths. While the election result is likely to stand, thirty years after the revolution and the establishment of the Islamic republic, the legitimacy of the government is seriously being called into question.

Bibliography:

• Abrahamian, E. (1982). Iran between two revolutions. Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press.
• Amir Arjomand, S. (1988). The turban for the crown: The Islamic revolution in Iran. New York: Oxford University Press.
• Keddie, R. N. (1981). Roots of revolution: An interpretive history of modern Iran. New Haven, CT: Yale University Press.
• Milani, M. (1988). The making of Iran’s Islamic revolution: From monarchy to Islamic republic. Boulder, CO: Westview Press.
• Saikal A. (2009). The rise and fall of the Shah: Iran from autocracy to religious rule. Princeton: Princeton University Press.
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