Welcome to the Arab Spring – A History. Episode 30 – The
Islamic Revolution. Following the White Revolution, Mohammed Reza felt
confident enough to have some controlled political debate. There would be two
parties who could compete for royal favour, but he was still the master of the
situation. In March 1964 the young and promising Hasan Ali Mansur came to the
office of Prime Minister, but he was assassinated in January of the next year
and replaced by Amir Abbas Huvaida, he would manage to hold on to the office
until 1977. Despite the new political party, there was no political debate in
these years, and opposition was forced underground into Islamic Socialist
groups, who did use terror tactics. These activities were not seen by the
outside world, instead they focused on Iran as the protégé of the United
States, while also having a good relationship with the Soviets and China, this
being partly due to US president Richard Nixon’s relationship with China. As
for the Soviets, they were more than happy to try and pry Iran away from the
United States. They had a desire for Iranian resources, particularly natural
gas. So a deal was made in 1966 and 1967 which saw Iran provide the USSR with
over $600M of natural gas in exchange for the Soviets building a steel complex
in Isfahan and providing about $110M of light arms. As the 1960s came to a
close Iran’s position in the region was growing, but there was one rather large
problem with all this.
It seems that the Shah actually began to believe his own
propaganda with how things turned as they entered the 1970s. While most in the
country languished in poverty, the Shah wasted money with the infamous
Persepolis Party of 1971 which celebrated 2,500 years of Iranian monarchy.
Meanwhile the shah became obsessed with making Iran the dominant military power
in the region, and heavily invested in its military, rather than in helping the
countries people. This really got underway in 1971 when the British pulled out
of the Persian Gulf.
This was a particularly unstable time period in the
region. Iran had close relations on its eastern flank with Pakistan, a state
which was greatly weakened by the secession of its eastern half which became
Bangladesh in 1971. This happened as Russia strengthened its relationship with
India, Pakistan’s great rival, and an independence movement began in the
North-Western provinces of Pakistan with the backing of Afghanistan. Meanwhile
Marxist revolutionaries were moving against the pro-Western governments of the
gulf, one centre of activity being southern Oman, the country on the
south-eastern tip of the Arabian Peninsula. This greatly worried the west, who
wanted a strong pro-Western force in the region, so Iran stepped in with the
backing of the United States.
Nixon and
Kissinger met the shah in Tehran in 1972 and it was agreed that with the
exception of nuclear weapons he would be allowed to buy American arms. This was
part of the Nixon Doctrine. The Nixon Doctrine was a theory which followed the
disaster of Vietnam. To quote the weekly compilation of Presidential documents from
23rd February 1970 it would “construct a world system in which the
United States, the central power, would help generate strong regional actors,
who would secure their own and American interest in their respective regions.”
The shah just needed to money to do this, which if you’ll
recall our previous episodes on Saudi Arabia and the Israeli-Palestinian
conflict, is right when the Arab oil boycott occurred, which was great news for
oil producing countries not involved in the boycott, such as Iran. Iran’s
position with the West strengthened as a reliable producer of oil, while it
also brought the Arab oil producers back into the fold. The Shah had big plans
for this oil, including a huge economic push for industrialisation and a
development of Iran’s military. His plan was that Iran would be a regional
superpower by 1981 and by the end of the 1980s be a global military power.
However, things were not as rosy for the shah as first
appeared. If you think back to when we looked at the election of US President
Jimmy Carter, in the 1970s there was a fierce reaction to two events, Vietnam
and Watergate. Both had made the average American distrustful of Washington,
which we have discussed, but there were effects on the press too. Vietnam
greatly wearied the US to foreign adventure, and people began to look at Iran,
and for the first time asked just what America was doing. Were they really
propping up a tyrannical dictator? Was that really what they, the freedom
loving United States of America, were doing? Following Watergate the press
began to dig a little deeper, and the answer was, yes. That was exactly what
they were doing. Reports of the brutality of SAVAK came out and began to gain
traction for the first time. Amnesty International’s 1975 report on the
treatment of political prisoners gained much attention. P. Jacobson’s article
“Torture in Iran” in the Sunday Times in January 1975 included the line “no
country in the world has a worse record in human rights than Iran”. The shah
was losing his international credibility as the stark contrast between the
extravagance of the Persepolis Party and the grim realities of living in the
shanty towns of Tehran, such as malnutrition and illiteracy. Particularly
following Carter’s election it was unclear about whether the shah would have
his backing should there be trouble, despite that in November 1977 Carter
pledged his support to the Shah, calling him “a stabilising force in the world
at large”.
It was soon clear that there were problems with the
Shah’s plans. The military and industrialisation push was launched in 1974, and
by 1977 they were already failing to meet targets. He had failed to create an
economic base before the military push, which was heavily damaging Iranian
development. Just how powerless the shah really was shown in the Afghan coup of
April 1978 which saw the communists come to power, and the shah was able to do
nothing. Domestically Iran was suffering from the rise in the cost of consumer
goods from the west, an effect of the rising cost of oil. While the shah was
focused on his military reforms which were going nowhere, he was ignoring food
shortages, rising unemployment and essential services fell apart. The people
resented the shah, and resented the Americans who always seemed to get the best
jobs. The west sold goods to Iran which couldn’t properly be moved around as
there wasn’t the infrastructure. At the same time as Carter called Mohammed
Reza “a stabilising force in the world at large” he was ignoring the fact that
his country was starving. Land reform had failed, only causing disruption
without increasing productivity. The attempted political reform had been
dropped and Iran once again became a one party state, a one party state which
had the philosophy of ‘if you’re not with us, you’re against us’. He was unable
to relate to the people, and had no idea just how unpopular he was. He had no
idea about the religious sermons criticising the shah, and of the tapes
Khomeini was smuggling into the country. There were lots and lots of reason as
to why revolution was bubbling which we’ve covered, but it was the accelerated
development which the country couldn’t cope with which was the final straw. It
would take some time to come to fruition, but the revolution got underway on 7
January 1978.
On this date a daily newspaper in Tehran ran with an
article which attacked Ayatollah Khomeini, an article which of course came
directly from the administration. This article drew the ire of the crowds, and
the newspapers offices were attacked. On the 9th a crowd gathered at
a shrine in Qum, with demands for a move towards a more liberal constitution.
Once the crowd began to leave they found that the police were waiting for them,
and the crowd was fired upon. Ayatollah Shari’atmadari spoke out against this,
calling the government’s actions unIslamic. He called for protests, but that
the forty days of mourning be respected. This effectively created throughout
the year a pattern of riots every 40 days, once the mourning for the dead of
the previous riot had been completed. For instance in Tabriz there were attacks
on representations of Westernisation on 18th and 19th of
February, which led to deaths and a forty day mourning period.
As the year progressed the Shah’s government was
surprised by the size of the protests, which were much larger than previous ones
due to the flood of migrants form the countryside who were seeking work. These
crowds were alone in the city. Tehran was much different to the countryside,
but there was one thing which remained the same – the local mosque. It was a
movement which the west could not comprehend. To quote Bruce Riedel of the CIA,
“Our bosses couldn’t cope with the idea of an 80 year old Ayatollah, which they
didn’t even know what an Ayatollah was, who lived on garlic and onions and
yoghurt, directing a revolution that was about to topple America’s most
important ally.”
The crowds simply grew larger and larger in these cycles
of protests, despite the banning of public gatherings. In one protest in Tehran
over a hundred demonstrators were killed by the Shah’s forces. These crowds
were not leaderless, they were just awaiting instructions from Khomeini who had
been directing the revolution from Iraq. He told them to stay on the streets,
and keep up the pressure. Saddam Hussein was very uncomfortable with this, and
sent word to the Iranians in late 1978 that he would either exile or eliminate
Khomeini, it was there choice, but either way he would not stay in Iraq. The
Shah was fearful of created a martyr, so Khomeini was forced out of Iraq, going
to Kuwait, but was refused entry.
Trying to work out just where to go, his advisors
recommended Paris. They would not need visas to travel there and Paris was the
centre of European politics. Khomeini agreed and set up a base about 18 miles
from Paris in October 1978, but never actually visited the city. From there he
could reach his supporters who gathered to him from all over the world, as well
as having easy access to western media allowing him to defend the actions of
his supporters in Iran. It was very embarrassing for the French President
Valery Giscard d’Estaing, who felt the need to publically say, and I quote,
“Ayatollah Khomeini has not come to France as a political refugee. He is a
foreign resident in France.” Khomeini was warned by the French government that
his actions were not appropriate on French soil, and he responded by saying he
was merely sending letters to Iran, and that whatever people chose to do with
those letters was of no concern to France.
Strikes began, organised by the left, which grew once
they received Khomeini’s support and ground the country to a halt. The Shah’s
advisors urged military action, but he refused to go against the constitution.
By 4th November BBC News reported that there was almost daily
fighting on the streets of Tehran. Though, when questioned by American
diplomats, the Shah’s generals would refuse to admit that the regime was
crumbling. The American ambassador wrote to Washington with a clear message,
Iran was in peril. Carter was unnerved, as were his advisors. What they wanted
more than anything was stability, and that was what the Shah had brought to the
table for the last 20 years. They did not want to introduce yet another
unstable element into the region. But they were divided as to how to fix the
problem. Reforms, or to use an iron fist? That was the question. What resulted
has to be one of the most unhelpful pieces of advice in history, as the shah
was encouraged to clamp down on the protestors while at the same time to make a
deal with them. Confused, the Shah summoned Ambassador Sullivan and asked
whether America wanted him to take a hard line, and Sullivan replied that he
had no instructions on that.
The Shah decided to go on television and embrace the
revolutionaries, saying that he was an Iranian and respected his people’s
revolution. He would build a better Iran. But, he said he would take an
extended holiday from Iran with his family. The Americans were not keen on
this, and so sort assurances that the army would enforce the Shah’s rule in his
absence. The generals replied that they would. When asked how they would do
this, they could not give a response. As you will have noticed through the
shah’s relationship with his various prime ministers he was a paranoid man, and
so would not allow the army to make such plans out of a fear they would
overthrow him. The Shah was furious with the Americans for going behind his
back in this. Before he left, Shapour Bakhitar was appointed Prime Minister. He
was a moderate and a former opponent of the regime, and it was hoped that this
would be enough to calm the situation down, but it was far too little, far too
late. The Shah left the country on the 16th January 1979. He would
never return, and would soon die in exile as he fought a losing battle with
cancer.
It was clear to the west that the Shah was of no use to
them, and so they set their hopes with Bakhitar, and asked Khomeini to remain
in France rather than returning to Iran so that Bakhitar could have a chance to
get the situation under control. Should Bakhitar fall, Khomeini could end up
facing the army. Khomeini took this as a threat, and told Carter that he needed
to stop supporting forces which opposed the people’s will. He told his
supporters to give flowers to the soldiers, which they did, along with chants
such as, “Brothers, we give you flowers, you give us bullets!” Many of the
soldiers had been conscripts and actually supported Khomeini, so with this many
deserted and joined the revolutionaries. There was though a small group which
was determined to prevent him returning to the country. His advisors debated
over when the right time to depart was, though one day Khomeini just told them
it was time. They may not want to follow him as it might be dangerous, the
plane might be shot down, but it was time for him to return to Iran.
On 1st February 1979 Ayatollah Khomeini finally
arrived in Iran, to mass popular support, whereupon he pronounced the creation of
the Islamic Republic, bringing to an end two and a half thousand years of
Iranian monarchy. This was the Islamic Revolution.
