The protesters adopted the name and image of Ayatollah Khomeini, still in exile, as the leader of their movement; for his part, Khomeini issued calls for the overthrow of the Shah. Nor would it make sense for almost the entire intellectual community and modern educated groups to rally behind Khomeini and his call for Islamic government. In the words of one Western scholar, the revolution was “deviant” because it established an Islamic republic and also since “according to social-scientific explanations for revolution, it should not have happened at all, or when it did.” That is why large numbers of disillusioned Iranians began to add their voice to the Shah and the small remnants of his regime in putting forward conspiracy theories — chiefly and plainly that America (and / or Britain) had been behind the revolution in order to stop the shah pushing for higher oil prices. In a revolt against an arbitrary state, whoever wants anything short of its removal is branded a traitor. Szczepanski, Kallie. In 1978 the Shah declared martial law, with protestors being killed by police across the nation. On Feb. 11, the pro-Shah forces collapsed, and the Islamic Revolution declared victory over the Pahlavi dynasty. He appointed a prime minister and cabinet of his own. Similarly, it would make no sense by Western criteria for the entire state apparatus (except the military, which quit in the end) to go on an indefinite general strike, providing the most potent weapon for the success of the revolution. A look at the events that triggered the Khomeini movement and led to Iran’s Islamic revolution in 1979. On September 8, thousands of mostly peaceful protesters turned out in Jaleh Square, Tehran against the Shah's new declaration of martial law. The Iranian revolution sparked the world’s second oil shock in five years. But the outcome would have been significantly different if the commercial and financial classes, which had reaped such great benefits from the oil bonanza, had not financed the revolution; or especially if the National Iranian Oil Company employees, high and low civil servants, judges, lawyers, university professors, intellectuals, journalists, school teachers, students, etc., had not joined in a general strike; or if the masses of young and old, modern and traditional, men and women, had not manned the huge street columns; or if the military had united and resolved to crush the movement. The opposition started a rumor that the SAVAK had started the fire, rather than the protesters, and anti-government feeling reached a fever pitch. With issues about sanctions in the news, many people are once again asking questions about the Islamic Republic of Iran and just why it matters so much. The Islamic Revolution of 1979 brought seismic changes to Iran, not least for women. Yet they were quite similar with regard to some of their basic characteristics, which may also help explain many of the divergences between them. To conciliate the millions of protesters, he freed more than 1000 political prisoners and allowed the arrest of 132 former government officials, including the hated former chief of the SAVAK. Anywhere from 88 to 300 people died; opposition leaders claimed that the death toll was in the thousands. Iran’s Islamic Revolution shook the world in 1979, with currents that continue to be felt today. Throughout most of 1979 the Revolutionary Guards —then an informal religious militia formed by Khomeini to forestall another CIA-backed coup as in the days of Mosaddegh—engaged in similar activity, aimed at intimidating and repressing political groups not under the control of the ruling Revolutionary Council and its sister Islamic Republican Party, both clerical organizations loyal to Khomeini. "The Iranian Revolution of 1979." Iranian Revolution, also called Islamic Revolution, Persian Enqelāb-e Eslāmī, popular uprising in Iran in 1978–79 that resulted in the toppling of the monarchy on February 11, 1979, and led to the establishment of an Islamic republic. However, explanations of Iranian revolutions that are based on the application of such tools and methods to Western history inevitably result in confusion, contradiction, and bewilderment. This cataclysmic event led to the creation of the first modern Islamic Republic and has served as a model for other Islamic fundamentalists. The Iranian Revolution is a thorough history of the Iranian Revolution Two artciles, one by Moojan Momen, The Religious Background of the 1979 Revolution in Iran, and another by Satya J. Gabriel, Class Analysis of the Iranian Revolution of 1979, are useful. All the signs had been there, but they were largely eclipsed by the massive peaceful processions, the solidarity and virtual unanimity of the society to overthrow the state, and the blood sacrifice. Iran since the 1979 Islamic Revolution is viewed as a serious enemy of the US. The next day, theology students in the city of Qom exploded in angry protests; security forces put down the demonstrations but killed at least seventy students in just two days. The Shah was a modernizer in many ways, promoting the growth of a modern economy and a middle class, and championing women's rights. The Iranian Revolution of 1979. A multiclass opposition overthrew an autocratic ruler, leading to the establishment of a theocratic state. Katie Hayes The recent unrest in Iran harkens back to the 1979 Islamic Revolution. The Iranian Revolution was one of the pivotal events that define many aspects of international relations today. A recession beginning in 1975 increased tensions between the classes in Iran. The 1979 revolution was a characteristically Iranian revolution — a revolution by the whole society against the state in which various ideologies were represented, the most dominant being those with Islamic tendencies (Islamist, Marxist-Islamic and democratic-Islamic) and Marxist-Leninist tendencies (Fada’i, Tudeh, Maoist, Trotskyist, and others). There were those in both revolutions who saw that total revolutionary triumph would make some, perhaps many, of the revolutionaries regret the results afterwards, but very few of them dared to step forward. Any suggestion of a compromise was tantamount to treason. Due to the push for industrialization, peasants were driven from the agrarian lands and filled the slums of cities. Forty years ago, Ayatollah Ruhollah Khomeini spearheaded a revolution that deposed a monarchy in Iran. The Shah also gave a public address in which he stated that he heard the people's "revolutionary message." The revolution of February 1979 was a revolt of the society against the state. The Shah responded with an all-out military attack on the protest, using tanks and helicopter gun-ships in addition to ground troops. This became a puzzle to some in the West, resulting in their disappointment and disillusionment within the first few years of the revolution’s triumph. Much of Iranian society was in euphoria about the coming revolution. Some of the army troops sent in to quell the protests began to defect to the protesters' side. The Shah's American allies began to believe that his days in power were numbered. In August, the Rex Cinema in Abadan caught fire and burned, probably as a result of an attacked by Islamist students. Dr. Kallie Szczepanski is a history teacher specializing in Asian history and culture. The US was intent on keeping the Shah in place in Iran, however, as a bulwark against the Soviet Union. In both the traditional and the modern Iranian revolutions, however, the whole society — rich and poor — revolted against the state. On December 11, 1978, more than a million peaceful protesters turned out in Tehran and other major cities to observe the Ashura holiday and call for Khomeini to become Iran's new leader. For them, as much as for a growing number of modern Iranians who themselves had swelled the street crowds shouting pro-Khomeini slogans, the revolution became “enigmatic,” “bizarre,” and “unthinkable.”. It rattled the region by exporting its zealous ideology; it sired or sponsored militant allies from Lebanon to the Gulf. Secular protests in the form of marches, organizations, and political poetry readings sprouted all across the country. Shapour Bakhtiar as his new prime minister with the help of Supreme Army Councils couldn't control the situation in the country anymore. Shah Reza Pahlevi, returning to Iran after a week-long exile due to the failled Mohamed Mossadegh coup d'etat. Panicking, the Shah quickly recruited a new, moderate prime minister from within opposition ranks, but he refused to do away with the SAVAK or release all political prisoners. 9-10, fighting broke out between the Imperial Guard (the "Immortals"), who were still loyal to the Shah, and the pro-Khomeini faction of the Iranian Air Force. Carter’s visit in 1978 saw protests, which led to more violent protests later in the year. Before the fall of the Shah’s regime, this “puzzle” of the Iranian Revolution was somewhat closed to the eyes of Western observers. But no argument would have made them withdraw their support before the collapse of the respective regimes. It broke his hold on the military and the government dissolved. In 1953, the American CIA helped to overthrow a democratically elected prime minister in Iran and restore the Shah to his throne. Middle East Institute Islamist revolutionaries opposed the western secular policies of the authoritarian Shah of Iran Mohammed Reza Pahlavi.. The Iranian Revolution: why 1979’s uprising still shapes the Middle East Try 3 issues of BBC History Magazine or BBC History Revealed for only £5 Forty years ago, Iran’s Shah Mohammad Reza Pahlavi fled Tehran – and 2,500 years of monarchy ended, to be replaced by an Islamic republic. This wonderful book describes the Iranian Revolution of 1979 which has far reaching greatly impacts our current environment. Up to that moment, the secular and religious protesters had been evenly matched, but after the Qom massacre, the religious opposition became the leaders of the anti-Shah movement. Forty years ago today, February 11, 1979, Iran’s Islamic revolution culminated in the ascension to power of Ayatollah Ruhollah Khomeini. In 1976 and 1977, further secularization reforms by Shah Pahlavi isolated Iranians from all social classes. Retrieved from https://www.thoughtco.com/the-iranian-revolution-of-1979-195528. (2020, August 28). A conservative rule in Iran was enforced, and former nationalists, elites, and left-wing revolutionaries were sidelined in the new regime. Photos from Kave Kazemi Iran became a police state, monitored by the hated SAVAK secret police. Secular and leftist politicians piled onto the movement hoping to gain power in the aftermath, ignoring the fact that Khomeini was the very antithesis to all of the positions they supported. 1763 N St. NW, Washington D.C. 20036. This was the beginning of Iranian revolution. From October of 1977 to February of 1979, the people of Iran called for the end of the monarchy but they didn't necessarily agree on what should replace it. Over the next several months, violent protests spread and were met with increasing violence from security forces. Approximately 400 people were killed in the blaze. On September 8, the Iranian military killed hundreds of people in Iran, and on December 12, millions of Iranians protested against the shah. A few years ago the US sent a computer virus into computers in Iran that damaged the centrifuges that spin to turn uranium and … TEHRAN, Iran (AP) — Struggling with the region’s worst outbreak of the coronavirus, Iran is marking the anniversary of the country’s 1979 Islamic Revolution on Wednesday on wheels — cars, motorcycles, bicycles — instead of traditional rallies and marches. Moreover, if any settlement had been reached short of the overthrow of the monarchy, legends would have grown as to how the liberal bourgeoisie had stabbed the revolution in the back on the order of their “foreign [i.e. After further skirmishes be… He spoke of democracy at that point, as well, but would soon change his tune. Bakhtiar also allowed Ayatollah Khomeini to return to Iran and called for free elections. However, the Shah also ruthlessly suppressed dissent, jailing and torturing his political opponents. Thirty years later, Ebrahim Yazdi, a leading assistant of Ayatollah Ruhollah Khomeini in Paris and later Foreign Minister in the post-revolutionary provisional government, was reported in Washington as speaking “candidly of how his revolutionary generation had failed to see past the short-term goal of removing the Shah...”. The opposition was not mollified. The Iranian Revolution (1977-1979) Download PDF Version By Stephen Zunes April 2009. And, as everyone knows, when things get better for women, things get better for everyone. From the Western perspective, it would certainly make no sense for some of the richest classes of the society to finance and organize the movement, while a few of the others either sit on the fence or believe that it was America’s doing and could not be helped. The West is afraid the nuclear bombs could be used against them. Szczepanski, Kallie. The Iranian Revolution of 1977-79 was the first in a series of mass popular civil insurrections which would result in the overthrow of authoritarian regimes in dozens of countries over the next three decades. He outlawed the chador or hijab (the full-body veil), encouraged education of women up to and including at the university level, and advocated employment opportunities outside the home for women. Then, late in October of 1977, the Ayatollah Khomeini's 47-year-old son Mostafa died suddenly of a heart attack. While it was increasingly clear to more secular Iranians that Khomeini was not a liberal, he was widely perceived as a figurehead, and that power would eventually be handed to the secular groups. It is certainly possible to make sense of Iranian revolutions by utilizing the tools and methods of the same social sciences that have been used in explaining Western revolutions. Chaos increased in September with the Black Friday incident. (Nevit Dilmen) It was also a world that was looking brighter for women. From October of 1977 to February of 1979, the people of Iran called for the end of the monarchy but they didn't necessarily agree on what should replace it. The religiously-motivated rioters attacked movie theaters, banks, police stations, and nightclubs. The Iranian Revolution of 1979 was a pivotal moment in revolutionary history. The most obvious point of contrast is that in Western revolutions, the societies in question were divided, and it was the underprivileged classes that revolted against the privileged classes, who were most represented by the state. Iran 1979: the Islamic revolution that shook the world Celebrating its 35th anniversary, Iran’s Islamic Revolution shocked the world and redrew … © 2018 Middle East Institute All Rights Reserved | Accessibility Policy | Built by Social Driver. After the Islamic Revolution in 1979, when Ayatollah Khomeini deposed the Shah of Iran, 70-years of advancements in Iranian women’s rights were rolled back virtually overnight. Ten days later Bakhtiar went into hiding, eventually to find exile in Paris. Once he was safely inside the country's borders, Khomeini called for the dissolution of the Bakhtiar government, vowing "I shall kick their teeth in." The Islamic Revolution occurred in 1979, in the Muslim majority country of Iran. As their plane took off, jubilant crowds filled the streets of Iran's cities and began tearing down statues and pictures of the Shah and his family. ThoughtCo, Aug. 28, 2020, thoughtco.com/the-iranian-revolution-of-1979-195528. More effectively, the mass of the population who were not strictly ideological according to any of these tendencies — and of whom the modern middle classes were qualitatively the most important — were solidly behind the single objective of removing the Shah. From: Featured Documentaries Iran 1979: Anatomy of a Revolution. The Shah was put in place in World War II, after England and Russia forced the abdication of his father, who refused to let Iran be used as a transport corridor for Allied supplies. Many of the traditional forces backing the Constitutional Revolution regretted it after the event, as did many of the modernists who participated in the revolution of February 1979, when the outcome ran contrary to their own best hopes and wishes. On January 16 1979, the Shah left Iran. On Febr. Demonstrations against the Shah erupted across the nation. It stunned the world by introducing Islam as a form of modern governance. Strict dress codes were implemented and rigorously enforced. He was ill with cancer and seldom appeared in public. Yet they were all united in the overriding objective of bringing down the shah and overthrowing the state. Before the 1979 revolution, Iran was ruled by a Western-supported monarchy led by Mohammad Reza Shah Pahlavi, known colloquially as the Shah. Those who lost their lives in various towns and cities throughout the revolution certainly played a major part in the process. Merchants, traders, intellectuals, and urban masses played a vital role in the Constitutional Revolution of 1906-1909, but so did leading ‘ulama’ and powerful landlords, such that without their active support the triumph of 1909 would have been difficult to envisage — making it look as if “the church” and “the feudal-aristocratic class” were leading a “bourgeois democratic revolution”! Between the theology students, the clerics, and communist groups, the resistance against Pahlavi was gaining major popular support. Many Iranians were wedded to their Shi’a traditions and had a negative view of the Shah’s reforms. “Before the revolution, in 1979, the total agricultural crop was 26 million tons. Now it’s 122 million tons.” Air pollution in Iran is also a growing concern. In short, The 1979 Iranian revolution stemmed from a number of cultural, political, and personality factors of the Shah regime. In some of its basic characteristics, the revolution did not conform to the usual norms of Western revolutions, because the state did not represent just an ordinary dictatorship but an absolute and arbitrary system that lacked political legitimacy and a social base virtually across the whole of the society. Prime Minister Shapour Bakhtiar, who had been in office for just a few weeks, freed all political prisoners, ordered the army to stand down in the face of demonstrations and abolished the SAVAK. Supporters of Ayatollah Khomeini organized protests in opposition to the authoritarian government of the Shah. The 1979 revolution was a characteristically Iranian revolution — a revolution by the whole society against the state in which various ideologies were represented, the most dominant being those with Islamic tendencies (Islamist, Marxist-Islamic and democratic-Islamic) and Marxist-Leninist tendencies (Fada’i, Tudeh, Maoist, Trotskyist, and others). In February, young men in Tabriz marched to remember the students killed in Qom the previous month; the march turned into a riot, in which the rioters smashed banks and government buildings. Strike activity declined temporarily, either out of fear of the new military government or gratitude for the Shah's placatory gestures, but within weeks it resumed. On Nov. 5, the Shah ousted his moderate prime minister and installed a military government under General Gholam Reza Azhari. As Karl Popper once noted, there is no such thing as History; there are histories. American and British] masters.”, The most widespread and commonly held slogan that united the various revolutionary parties and their supporters regardless of party and program was “Let him [the Shah] go and let there be flood afterwards” (In beravad va har cheh mikhahad beshavad). People poured into the streets of Tehran and other cities, chanting "Marg bar Shah" or "Death to the Shah," and "Death to America!" In a drastic miscalculation, in January of 1978, the Shah had his Information Minister publish an article in the leading newspaper that slandered Ayatollah Khomeini as a tool of British neo-colonial interests and a "man without faith." Many changed their minds in the following years, but nothing was likely to make them see things differently at the time. Iran Hostage Crisis: Events, Causes, and Aftermath, The Islamic Republic of Iran's Complex Government, Women's Roles After the Revolutions in China and Iran, The Difference Between 'Iranian' and 'Persian', U.S. Policy in the Middle East: 1945 to 2008, The Iran-Contra Affair: Ronald Reagan’s Arms Sales Scandal, Leaders of the Middle East: A Photo Gallery, 8 Countries That Had Arab Spring Uprisings, J.D., University of Washington School of Law, B.A., History, Western Washington University. Khomeini flew into Tehran from Paris on Feb. 1, 1979, to a delirious welcome. Khomeini became the new Leader of Iran. T… Here are key moments in the 1979 Iranian takeover and subsequent 444-day hostage crisis at the U.S. Embassy in Tehran.. Day 1, Nov. 4, 1979 - Iranian … By this point, communist organizations were also supporting the rise of the poor against the rich. The conflict within the groups with Islamic and Marxist-Leninist tendencies was probably no less intense than that between the two tendencies taken together. Iraqfelt threatened by Iran and, to avoid the possibility of a Shia revolution in Iraq, the country invaded Iran in 19… U.S. President Jimmy Carter recognized the human rights violations, and to appease the U.S., Pahlavi relaxed his control and released some of the prominent political prisoners from SAVAK’s jails. Iran, proud and passionate, has been a conundrum since its 1979 revolution. That is the logic of the slogan “Let him go and let there be flood afterwards!”. Background to the Revolution Shah Reza Pahlevi, returning to Iran after a week-long exile due to the failled Mohamed Mossadegh coup d'etat. Beginning in 1978, large-scale anti-government demonstrations challenged Iran's … Iran borders on the then-Soviet Republic of Turkmenistan and was seen as a potential target for communist expansion. https://www.thoughtco.com/the-iranian-revolution-of-1979-195528 (accessed March 8, 2021). Szczepanski, Kallie. Throughout the 1970s, as Iran reaped enormous profits from oil production, a gap widened between the wealthy (many of whom were relatives of the Shah) and the poor. But they were both doomed because they had no social base, or in other words, they were seen as having joined the side of the state, however hard they denied it. On Jan. 16, 1979, Shah Mohammad Reza Pahlavi announced that he and his wife were going abroad for a brief vacation. The revolutions of 1906-1909 and 1977-1979 look poles apart in many respects. As a result, opponents of the Shah considered him an American puppet. Ayatollah Khomeini returned to Iran on February 1. Panelists reflect on the events that unfolded during the Iranian Revolution in 1979, how the United States responded, and the consequences for today. Rumors spread that he had been murdered by the SAVAK, and soon thousands of protesters flooded the streets of Iran's major cities. Middle-class Iranians, leftist university students, and Islamist supporters of Ayatollah Khomeini united to demand the overthrow of Shah Mohammad Reza Pahlavi. In that revolution, too, various political movements and agendas were represented, but they were all united in the aim of overthrowing the arbitrary state (and ultimately Muhammad ‘Ali Shah), which stood for traditionalism, so that most of the religious forces also rallied behind the modernist cause, albeit haphazardly.