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Third World uarterly

The Genesis of the Iranian RevolutionAuthor(s): Fred HallidaySource: Third World Quarterly, Vol. 1, No. 4 (Oct., 1979), pp. 1-16Published by: Taylor & Francis, Ltd.

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THE GENESIS OF THE IRANIAN REVOLUTION

Fred

Halliday

The

Fall

The crisis in Iran that unfolded through late 1977 and 1978 is one of the most

momentous

events

of the

postwar

world. It is momentous in its

implications

for

the 36 million

people of Iran. They

have, by

dint of

sustained popular

protest,

and some

of

the

largest

demonstrations

in

history,

forced

the Shah to

abandon

his

autocratic

system

of

government

and to flee

into exile.

Many

of the

problems

that Iran

faces,

and which

in

part underlay

the

collapse

of the

Pahlavi

regime,

still

persist,

and

some have been

aggravated

by

the

protracted

turmoil

necessary

to

unseat the

stubborn

king.

But a hated

system

of

political

dictatorship has

been

ousted in

a

spectacular victory.

The

way

is now

open

for a

democratic

government

to set about

using

Iran's

temporary

oil

wealth

for

the

permanent

and equitably distributed benefit of the country, free from the corruption, the

wastage,

and

the

bombastic and vacuous schemes on

which

the

Shah and his

associates

spent

their

time.

The fall

of the Shah's

regime

is

also of

momentous

importance

for

the whole

population

of the Middle

East:

especially

so for those smaller countries

that

had, in recent

years,

fallen

under the domination of

Iran's

Nixon-incited

'protection' and

who,

as

in Oman and in the

Baluchi areas

of

Pakistan, had been

the victim

of the Shah's

expeditionary corps.

All the

petty tyrants

of the

Gulf

who had looked to Tehran

for long-run protection, and even

the

far from

petty

ruling family of Saudi

Arabia,

must now

be stricken with

alarm; and

further

afield, President Sadat, recipient of the Shah's political and financial support,

is

visibly

shaken

by the waves of

protest

from

Iran. For

the

western economies

the loss of 18 per cent

OPEC output is something that can

probably be recouped

over time and

a new

republican regime

in Iran

will

certainly have

to

sell some

oil to

the West once the

present

uncertainties

cease.

But

what the

western nations

will not be able to

recover is the position of strategic

dominance

in

and through

Iran which the Shah'smilitaristic and

chauvinistic policies

guaranteed.

The

CIA has

lost

its

11

electronic

espionage ground

stations

along

the

1,000

mile

Iranian-Soviet border. The thousands of

US military personnel,

seconded

and contracted by the

Department of Defense, have left.

The

arms sales

have

slumped, and the

new government, and even Carter

himself, have now agreed

that

Iran will

no

longer be able to police the Gulf. The conservative rulers

of

the

October 1979Volume I No. 4







2

THIRD

WORLD

QUARTERLY

Middle

East and

the western

interests

allied to

them

had

been thinking

for

years

that they had worked out a new viable system for controlling the Middle East

and managing

the

production

of oil

and the

recycling

of oil revenues. Just

as

it

appeared

that

the main

substantive

difficulties

were

over

-

with the Camp

David

agreement,

and

a moderate

pricing policy

in OPEC

- a new

and

unexpected

actor

has

come

rushirng

onto

the

stage:

the

oppressed

masses. Somehow

the

planners

and sheikhs

had forgotten

to programme

this

one

in,

and the few

who

had tried

to

raise

their

heads

before

in

the mountains

of Dhofar,

or

in the

poorer

backstreets

of

Cairo,

had

been

ruthlessly

crushed

and

forgotten

by

their

complacent

oppressors.

No

more.

There

are apparently

superficial

aspects

of

the upsurge

in Iran

that,

in a

way,

can provide an insight into the natureof what is happening. The most obvious

is

that

the fall

of the

Shah

was

extremely

sudden.

No one

-

neither

the

Shah

nor

the

CIA nor

the

opposition

themselves

-

expected

matters

to

move

so

quickly.

Why

was

this so? The

apparent

security

and

calm in

Iran,

confirmed

by a tribe

of sycophantic

writers

at

home

and in the

western

press,

was of

course

deceptive;

great

hostility

lay

beneath

the surface

and

was only

kept down

by

systematic

brutality,

the

extent

of

which

has become

fully

apparent

now

that

people

are

free

to talk.

At the

same

time the

crisis has shown

how fragile

the

Shah's

whole system

of government

was,

and the

unsteady

social

and political

foundations

on

which

it

rested,

a weakness

that was again

concealed

by

the

atmosphere

of

censorship,

terror

and

official rhetoric

that

prevailed

in

fran.

Both

these

aspects

of

the

Iranian

situation

revealed

by

the 1978

crisis

-

the

enormous

well

of

underground

hostility

to the

Shah

and the

precarious

nature

of his

own regime

even

after

a

quarter

of

a century

of

almost

uninterrupted

dictatorship

-

have to

be studied

in close

detail.

Political

Characterof

the Regime

The roots

of

the Shah's

crisis

can be

found

in three

vitally

interrelated

aspects

of his regime; the political dictatorship,the economic development programme

and

its

social

consequences,

and the

international

alignment

of the

state.

By

examining

these

sectors

in turn

it

becomes

possible

both

to

explain

why

the

Shah

lasted

as

long

as he

did and

why

the

system

finally exploded

in

1978.

The

political

system

through

which the Shah

ruled

dates from

the

1920s.

At

that

time

Iran was

in a state

of

near

anarchy:

the

Qajar

dynasty

whi-ch

had

ruled

Iran

since

the 1790s

was unable

to control

much

of the

country

outside

the capital,

Tehran,

and

in the

1890s

and

again

in

the

1900s

it had been

shaken

by

strong

urban-based protest

movements

led

by

the bazaar

traders

and

the

ulema

or

religious

leaders.

The

second

of these

movements

had

forced the

Shah

to accept a constitution limiting his power and granting executive responsibility

to

an

assembly

or

Majlis.

Even

thopgh

the Shah

later stripped

the Majlis

of

any

real

power,

the constitution

remained

formally

in

force,

and

later

protest

move-

ments,

including

that

of

1978,

have based

themselves

on

the

demand

that

the

1906

constitution

be restored.

During

World

War

I the

country

was occupied







THE GENESIS

OF THE

IRANIAN REVOLUTION 3

by Russian,

Turkish and British

troops

and after the

war,

with effective

govern-

ment ended, and with the new threat of the Bolshevik Revolution in the north,

the British

desperately

resorted to a new

political

element in the

hope

of

finding

some replacement

for the

Qajar

monarchsto re-establishcentralised and

neutral

government

in

Iran. They formed an alliance with a colonel in the Cossack

Brigade, a force organised by White Russian

officers

with

Iranian

soldiers,

and

in

1921

supplied

him

with the

material

and

political backing

to

stage

a

coup

in

Tehran.

ThePahlavi

'Dynasty'

This man was Reza Khan, a tough and capable leader, born in 1879, who within

a few years had reunited the country and

built

up a 40,000-strong army.

He

deposed the Qajar monarchs and then, after

some

hesitation, crowned

himself

Shah

in

1925, founding the Pahlavi dynasty

which he named

after an

ancient

Persian language. After establishing a centralised state he carried out limited

social and economic reforms: he developed

some

import-substituting industry,

built a

national

railroad

network,

and

expanded

education.

But he

was

unable

substantially to increase the revenues from the British-owned

oil

company,

and

he did nothing to alter the extremely backward condition of

Iranian

agriculture.

Indeed, his only contributions to reforming the countryside

in which

the great

mass of Iran's population lived and worked, were to force some of the

rebellious nomadic tribes to settle,

and

to appropriate

an estimated

2,000

villages (out of a total of

50,000)

for the exclusive use of

his own

family.

His

regime was nationalistic in tone,

and

it is a mistake to

see

him

as

a British client

merely

because he was

helped

into

power by

the

British. He

was a

home-based

despot who crushed all opponents with the use of his army

on which

the

new

dynasty was based.

There were

two

noticeable

weaknesses of

the

regime

he

established which were

later to bedevil his son. First, although

he

propagated, with

German

assistance,

a

new

official mythology about

the

historical roots

of the Pahlavi

regime,

this

new dynasty never had either an active popular following or, in the broadest

sense, any political legitimacy in

Iran.

Reza Shah was feared

and to

some

extent

respected, but he was always regarded by the urban population

as a

usurper,

particularly

as he had first

used,

and

then

ruthlessly crushed,

the nascent

democratic forces that had survived the Constitutional

Revolution.

The

rural

landowners tolerated him insofar as

he left them undisturbed.

He

therefore

bequeathed to his son a rather precarious regime

that had

always

relied

on

repression and on overt material inducements to maintain the loyalty of the

officers

and politicians around

him.

And,

like his

son,

he

gradually

isolated

himself from even the most minimally critical and aware politicians in the

country, with the result that he

made

increasingly

serious

mistakes.

The other

great weakness was that by neglecting

the rural

sector,

he

left

Iran

almost

as

economically backward as he found it,

with enormous

popular

discontent.

This

found its expression in the demand that

the oil

be

used

for

the

benefit

of

the







4

THIRD

WORLD QUARTERLY

whole population.

Reza Shah'srulecame to an abruptend in August 1941. With the war between

Russia

and Germany

two months

old,

the

Allies

desperately

needed to use

Iran's communications

to

move supplies

into Russia.

Reza Khan

objected

to

this so Britain

and

Russia simply

invaded

the

country,

deposed the

Shah and

sent him

into exile. For

the

next four years they

ruled

Iran

directly,

with the

new

Shah,

Mohammad

Reza

Pahlavi,

occupying

a

humiliated

symbolic

position

as the second

monarch

of the Pahlavi dynasty.

It took the new Shah

another

eight years after

the end

of the war

to

get

himself back into

a

position

remotely

comparable

to

that

in which his father

had been

in 1941.

First,

he had to

eliminate

the

threat

from the Tudeh

Party,

the successor to

the

outlawed

Communist Party, which developed a 400,000-strong trade union organisation,

and

which

was in

control

of two

autonomous

socialist

republics

in

the

northern

provinces

of Azerbaijan

and

Kurdistan

that had

sprung up

under the Russian

occupation after

1941.

In 1946

the Shah's

troops

reoccupied

these northern

provinces,

and in 1949

the Tudeh Party

was banned. But the

Shah had then

to

face another

challenge

of an

equally

substantial

kind from

the nationalist

forces

led by Dr Mohammad

Mossadeq.

Mossadeq

headed

the National

Front, a

coalition

of

four liberal,

but

not left

wing, parliamentary

groups,

and

after

becoming

Prime

Minister

in

1951 he nationalised

the oil

company,

with

what

most observers agree

was

the

support

of

the

majority

of the

population.

But

within

two years

Mossadeq's policies

had run

into

serious

opposition

from

the

Shah

and from

the

US,

who

saw him as

opening

the door to a

communist

takeover and

who

used

the economic

problems

Iran

faced as

a

result

of

the

international

oil

boycott

as

an excuse to

mobilise

support

against

him.

In

August

1953,

in a

coup

organisedby

the CIA

in

league

with

pro-Shah

generals,

the

Shah

was

able to oust

Mossadeq

and

impose

full control.

From

1953

to

1978 the Shah

ruled

Iran

unchallenged

by any

serious

opposition.

Two generals

tried

to organise

conspiracies

against

him

in

1958

and

1961

but

these

were

nipped

in

the bud.

In the

period

1960-3

a

degree

of

liberalisation

was

allowed, but the National Front, which revived in this period, was prevented

from gaining

any

access

to

power.

Tribal leaders

staged

revolts

against

the

Shah's land

reform,

whilst

a

protest

movement

against

the

extraterritorial

rights

for US

servicemen

and against

the

Shah's

whole

programme

was

led

by

the

religious

leader

Ayatollah

Khomeini.

In

June

1963

the interlude came

to

an

end

as thousands

of demonstrators

were slain

by

the

Shah's troops

and

the

leaders

of the opposition

were either

arrested or,

as in the

case

of Khomeini,

sent

into exile.

Institutionalised

Repression

The seeds

of the present

discontent can

certainly be

seen in this

history

of

repression

as

the

Shah,

using

his US-supplied

army, systematically

crushed

all

those independent

and

democratic

forces

opposed

to the

Pahlavi

dictatorship.

What the events

of

1946-53 demonstrated

was first, that his

dynasty

was

in-







THE GENESIS OF THE

IRANIAN REVOLUTION

5

capable

of

permitting

the basic

constitutional

liberties which

the

1906

cons-

titutional struggle had temporarily won; and, secondly, that it was continuing

to rely

on

the

armed

forces to control the

country,

as the Shah's

father

had

done. The difference

was that whereas

in Reza Shah's

time this

dictatorship

was

perceived

as

being

relativelyautonomous,

without

visible backing from

foreign

powers

and with an

insignificant

proportion

of foreign

advisers in the

country,

this new military machine,

10 times as

large,

involved

the

presence

in

Iran of

thousands

of US

personnel

and a much more

visible

linkage

between the

Shah's

regime

and the US than Reza had ever permitted

himself. Hostility to

the

dictatorshipwas,

therefore,

able to

combine

with a growing sense of

nationalist

resentment

about the mannerin which the Shah remained

in power.

An underground opposition did continue in Iran throughout the 1960s and

the early half

of

the

1970s. The students

struck and demonstrated

as they could,

and

from 1971

onwards,

a small

urban guerrilla

movement,

which recruited

almost exclusively

from the higher educational

milieu,carried

out raids on banks

and

police stations,

as well

as assassinating

a number

of leading state

security

officials.There

was

simmering

resentmentamongst

writers and lawyers,

and from

1973

onwards,

a

growing

number of

workers' strikes.

But the Shah's

response

to this

was,

even

in

his own terms,

shortsighted

and inflexible.

The

powers

of

SAVAK,

the secret police, grew

so that it pervaded

all walks of Iranian

life

and

torture became

a

regular

instrument of interrogation.

Political imprisonment

increased so

that, on a

modest but informed

estimate,

there were

at least

10,000

political prisoners

in the mid-1970s.

The official

political and cultural

life

of the country

was totally fraudulent

and

was perceived as such

by the whole

population.

The press was

censored on

the

basis

of regular

circulars

sent out

by SAVAK

specifying

what

issues

could not

be mentioned, and those

which

had to be given prominence.

Hardly

a

day

went

by

without a

picture

of

one

member of

the

royal

family being

on the

covers of

the

leading papers.

In

1975, over

90 per

cent

of

all magazines

in the country

were

closed down, in

order to focus

attention on the

few chosen organs

of

the

regime.

Intellectual and cultural life was also blocked because of the ban on a whole

range

of

relevant

topics, and

the contradiction

between

what

existed

in Iran

and

what many knew was

possible received

reinforcement by

the observation

of

those

tens of thousands

of

Iranians

who

were studying

abroad.

Many

members

of

the

professional

middle class,

sickened by the conditions

at

home, rejected

lucrative

salary offers

and refused after graduation

to work

in

their

homeland.

The Majlis, as specified

in the 1906

constitution,

continued

to

meet

and

to

be

'elected' but

this was

a

hollow process,

believed in

by

none.

From

the

early

1960s

until

1975 two puppet

official parties,

the fran

Novin

and

Mardom

Parties,

known more

popularly as

the 'Yes'

and 'Of Course' parties,

were

allowed to performa vacuous political debate, but when two of the leaders of the

Mardom Party tried

genuinely to

criticise

the Shah's

social

programme

they

were

instantly

dismissed by

the

Shah.

In

1975,

this discredited

system

was

re-

placed by

a new single party,

the Rastakhiz

or

National

Resurgence

Party.

The

Shah

threatened those

who refused

to

support

it with

losing

their

jobs,

so

5







6

THIRD WORLD

QUARTERLY

million

people signed up

in the

space

of a few months. It then

spawned three

'wings' or fake factions that, as with the earlier Novin-Mardom debate, went

through

the motions of a

political debate. But Rastakhiz, like the other

parties,

was just

a

vehicle

for

opportunists

and

fixers and no one

took it

seriously.

It was one of the least substantialof the imperial institutions

and it evaporated

in

the recent

crisis as

quickly

as it

had

appeared

in the Shah's sudden

announce-

ment of its existence.

The Hollowness Within

This extraordinary political system,

fuelled

by

oil

revenues and

make-believe,

suffered

from

many weaknesses,

a few of which can be

singled

out and which

are relevant

to the manner in which the Pahlavi

regime,

apparently

so

secure,

was

brought

to its knees.

First,

it was a

very

inflexible

system,

since the Shah

was the indispensable centre and once he

went,

the whole edifice was in

danger

of

crumbling.

But he

was,

despite

his

four

separate intelligence

systems,

out

of

touch with

what went on in the

country.

He sacked those

people

who

criticised

or contradicted

him,

and

the mass

of

flatterers that

congregated around

the

court repeated

what the Shah wanted

to

hear.

A

British

journalist who

had

worked 20

years

in

Iran had a conversation

with the Shah

in the

summer

of 1978.

He found that the occupant of the peacock throne refused to believe that there

were

any

shanty

towns

in

southern

Tehran,

a

fact

known

to

most

franians,

not

least to the

I

to

2

millions living

in

them. His economic

policies were based on

faked

figures

and

even

more

faked

projections

of

what

was

possible.

His

military

procurement

policies,

grossly inflated

by greedy generals and western arms

salesmen, bore no relation to the

skilled manpower available

to service and use

this

equipment.

This abstraction went

together with massive

corruption, the scale of which

has

only begun

to

be

revealed,

first

by the

US

Congressional

hearings into

arms

sales

in

1975,

and then

by revelations inside Iran itself. The

Shah's own family

had massive holdings of undisclosed kinds in hotels, casinos, banks, land,

tourist

projects

and the like.

All

major

economic

projects in Iran

involved under-

the-counter

payments of some

kind

-

?1

million here on an arms sale, a bit more

on

an

around-the-rules permit to use land for

speculation,

and so on. An

illustrative

case

concerns one court

officiaI who used

court funds to finance

a

huge

tourist

project

on Kish

Island

in the Persian

Gulf,

granted 90 per cent of

the

constructionjobs to a company

he

owned,

and then sold

the whole thing

to

the oil

company, and to the head of the secret

police,

General

Nassiri. Nassiri,

and the former

Prime Minister

Hoveida, were imprisoned on corruption charges

in

late

1978 but nearly all members

of the royal family were also

involved. It was

a sickening system of nepotism, bribery and greed that grew out of the rotten

court

system the Pahlavis had

created,

but which was made all

the worse in the

scramble

for money that was unleashed by the rise in oil

revenues after 1973.

This

corruption

at

the top

-

one former Prime Minister

reckoned that about

4,000

families

creamed off the main profits from the oil boom

-

was known to







THE

GENESIS

OF

THE IRANIAN REVOLUTON

7

muchof

the

population

even

if,

as

with

torture,

no one

was

quite

sure

of

the

full

extent of the disease. It served to weaken still further any legitimacy that the

regime might

have

and to

widen the

gap

between

the

court

and

the

rest of

the

population

including,

and

this is the vital point,

many

of those who

benefited

from

the boom.

For

the Shah's

regime,

although accepted

by

some,

was

never

liked

and

the

middle class

which

was denied

any access

to

decisionmaking,

to

responsibility,

and

to the pickings

of

the boom,

remained

resentful.

This

applies

both

to the 'new' middle

class

-

in

business

and the

professions

-

and the

'old'

middle

class

in the bazaar.

This was

to

prove

of enormous

importance

in

the

crisis

of 1978.

In military dictatorships

like Chile or Argentina

or

Spain

there

existed

a middle

class support

for the

regime,

even

when

such

regimes

were

dictatorial.In the Shah's Iransuch supportwas absent.

Economic

'Development'

The economic

development

programme

launched

by the

Shah contained

within

it

the seeds of

his

own

destruction,

even

though

it

was

consciously

designed,

as

the inflated

rhetoric

of the

'White

Revolution'

and the

'Shah-People

Revolution'

indicated,

to

strengthen

the monarchical

system

and the

capitalist

character

of

Iran. The

key to this

programme

was oil

and with

annual

oil revenues

rising

from

522

millions

in

1965 to

20,500

millions

in

1975,

Iran

received

substantial

quantities

of capital

with

which

to attempt

a transformation

of the economy.

The

1973

OPEC

oil prices

alone

enabled

the 1973-8

Five

Year

Plan to

double

its allocations

from

35 to

70

billions,

and

for the

decade

up to

the

mid-1970s

industry was

expanding

its output

by,

on

average,

15 per

cent

a

year.

Per capita

income

rose by probably

five

times in

monetary terms

to

around

2,500

a

head.

For the

Shah this

money,

which

was supposed

to

last at

least until

the early

1990s,

provided

not

only

the

means by

which

he

could purchase

all the

military

equipment

he

needed

but also the

funds

to

launch

Iran towards

what he

called

'The Great

Civilisation'.

Yet despite all the claims made for it, and the

very

real changes

in

Iranian

society,

this

development

programme

proved

to

be very

unsatisfactory.

While

some land

had

been

redistributed

by

the land

reform

of

the early

1960s,

this

failed

to

expand

output

at

more

than 2

per

cent

per

annum

on

average,

and

food

demand

rose at

15

per

cent.

This stagnation

in

the

countryside

had

two

very

negative

effects.

First, it

necessitated

increasing

food

imports

so

that

whereas

in

1968

Iran

spent

142

millions

on

food imports,

this

had risen in 1977

to

2,550

millions

and was expected

to

reach 4

billions by

the

mid-1960s.

Iran

was,

by

the mid-1970s, importing

15

million

tons

of

wheat,

a

quarter

of

the

total

demand.

The second major

problem

was

that

because

agricultural

output

was not properly organisedand.promoted, it failed to provide adequate employ-

ment for the

half of

the

population

still

living

outside

the

towns,

with the

result

that millions

flocked

to

the towns

and

half

of the

rural

population

became

landless labourers,

even

more

socially

outcast

than

they

had

been

prior

to

the

reform.







8

THIRD WORLD

QUARTERLY

Although growing

in

output

terms,

industry

remained

a

highly

inefficient

sector and was indeed artificially protected both by high tariff walls and by

subsidies from

the

oil

sector. Costs of Iranian industrial goods were on average

30-50 per cent higher

than

those

of world market

prices

and

with the

shortage

of

skilled labour

after the

1973

oil

boom, wages

for some kinds of

industrial

workers rose by

up

to 50

per

cent a

year.

Most

crucially,

Iran failed to develop

any significant

ndustrial

export

sector not

only

because of the enormous

internal

demand

that had arisen

from the oil

boom,

but also because of its above-average

costs.

Iran's

exports, apart

from

oil,

make

up only

4

per

cent of its

export

earnings,

and of these

only

about

I

per

cent are

exports

of the modern industrial

sector.

Compared

to a

country

like

India,

where

manufactured

exports

make up

over 50 per cent of export earnings,or Mexico, where they make up 35 per

cent,

Iran's

weakness as an economic power

becomes clear.

Whilst not

all that was reportedwas make-believe,

a

considerable amount of

sheer

fantasy and

lies did

pervade

the

official picture

of Iranian economic

development. Inflation figures were

deliberately

understated.

Up

to half of the

monies 'allocated'

under the 1968-73 and 1973-8

Five Year Plans were not spent.

Dams were built

without any provision

for

the water

being distributed to farmers

nearby. Factories

were

given grants and subsidies

when

they only

existed on

paper. Much

of the money allocated

to 'construction'

and

'regi'onal develop-

ment', especiallyin

the

southern provinces,

was

in

fact used

for

military purposes.

In

the chaotic years following

the

oil price rises

in

particular,

large amounts of

imported goods were

lost

through

delays

in

the docks.

RampantCorruption

The money

was,

however, spent

and the question, therefore, arises of where

it

went.

Military

expenditure

absorbed

officially

25

per

cent of the budget

but

given the

hidden allocations already mentioned,

the

real figure was probably

nearer

35

per

cent. Enormous

and

unquantifiable corruption was also

involved,

evident in the luxurious 'Californian' lifestyle of the Iranian rich who lived in

north

Tehran

and who

purchased

over

100,000

houses

abroad

by early

1977.

Until

late 1978

no

serious

exchange

controls

were

imposed

on

private

individuals

taking money abroad,

so that

enormous capital flight

occurred whenever political

conditions

were

unfavourable.

Capital

flight

in

1977 came

to

an estimated

2

billions

-

10

per

cent of

oil

revenue

-

and in

the closing months

of 1978

individuals associated

with the

previous

regime took out

millions each, totalling

2 3 billions

in

the

last

few

weeks alone. The chief perpetrator

of this capital

flight was,

of

course,

the Shah himself

but one businessman was reported

to

have taken out

40 millions,

a

leading general 17

millions and so on. The

visible signs of this inequality and class pillage were to be seen in the character

of

Tehran

itself,

where millions lived in impoverished shanties

in the south and

where many families had to spend up

to 70 per cent of their incomes on rent

as

living costs rose

by up to 200 per cent a year after 1973.

Whilst luxury villas

abounded

in

the north of the city,

the government made almost no effort

to







THE

GENESIS

OF

THE IRANIAN

REVOLUTION

9

provide

low income

housing,

an

easy enough thing

for it to

have

done, given

the

financialresourcesat its disposal. Income inequalitygrew substantially after the

oil

boom began,

so

that

although

the absolute

standard

of

living

of

much

of

the

urban population

may

have

risen,

the

perceived

gap

between

rich and poor

certainly

widened

too. The gap

between

urban

and rural

incomes

rose

from

under

2:1 in

the late 1960s

to 5:1 in

the

mid-1970s

and was still

growing,

whilst

the top

20

per

cent

of the

population

accounted

for over

60 per cent

of con-

sumption.

To

crown

it

all,

this boom

could

not

go on forever.

Not only did

major

problems,

such

as agriculture,

remain

unsolved,

whilst others,

such

as urban

living

conditions

and

inflation,

were

getting

worse, but

also Iran's

oil-fuelled

boom relied on a continued rise in real income from abroad; in 1977, Iran's

oil

income was,

at

20X7

billion,

only

slightly

above that

of the previous

year.

With shortages

in

all

areas of

the

economy

and

substantial

inflation

at

home

and

in

the prices

of

imported

goods,

this produced

a defacto

slowdown

in

the

economy,

so

that

GNP

rose

hardly

at

all

in that

year.

The sense

of

impending

crisis,

if

not real

doom,

unsettled many

people;

the

first serious unemployment

for some

years

became

noticeable;

and

public

awareness

of the mismanagement

and of

the social problems

associated

with the boom,

spread. This

relative

stagnation

in

the

economy

-

not,

be it repeated,

a

real

crisis,

but

a far cry

from

the galloping

optimism

of 1974

and 1975

-

was a

significant

contributing

factor

to

the

emergence

of the

political

cataclysm

that Iran was quickly to undergo,

for

it

weakened

the illusion

of

permanent

and

grandiose

advance fostered by

the

Shah and

it

compounded

the

hostility

already bred

by

the

inequalities

and

disruptions

of the

oil boom

itself.

The Social

Dimension

The changes

in Iran since the

early

1960s

bred social

conflicts

that,

whilst

largely

invisibleuntil

1978,

nevertheless

underlay

the breakup

of the monarchical

system

and the rise of

a

popular opposition.

Among

the

most

important

changes

was

the migration

of population

to

the cities

so that by

1978

half of the

population

lived in the

towns,

as

opposed to

less

than a third

two decades

before. Some

towns,

such as Isfahan,

experienced

a

doubling

of their population

in less

than a

decade,

and

in

all

a

mass of first generation

immigrants,

badly

housed,

dis-

oriented and

insecurely

employed,

was created. Added to

this

was the growth

of

new employment

categories

that by

the mid-1970s

had

assumed

enormous

proportions:

there were 3

million

workers

employed

in

manufacturing

and

construction,and

an estimated

800,000

in

civilian

state

employment.

In the

upper

reaches

of

the employment

scale

there was a

growth

in

the

middle

class,

both

in

trade and finance, outside the traditionalconfinesof the bazaarand amongst the

professional

classes

produced

by

Iran's

expandingpool

of

graduates

from

its

own

and foreign

universities.

It

is

important

to stress

that

it was the

real,

and to

some

extent

identifiable,

social

forces

that brought

down

the

Shah,

not an undifferentiated

mass

of







10

THIRD WORLD QUARTERLY

believers.

This

basic, materialist

fact is obscured

both by the

hostile

accounts

given by the Shah and his western sympathisers, and by the opposition itself,

which has

conveniently

concealed

its

class character behind

the flowing robes

of

the Ayatollah

Khomeini.

If

one

were to list

these forces they

could be

presented

schematically

as follows.

The

first to launch

the

opposition

movement,

in the spring

and summer

of

1977,

were

the

professional

middleclass. Thesewere

the

writers,

lawyers,journa-

lists,

and

university

teachers

who circulated

letters

criticising

the

regime.

Later,

the

doctors

were to play

a major

role in the

conflicts

with the

regime,

as were

judges

-

two

categories

that,

because

of the

nature of

their

work,

were

brought

face to face

with the

victims of militarybrutality

on the streets.

They were

aware

of the mounting socio-economic problems Iran faced, apart from being suffo-

cated by

the political

and

cultural repression

of the Pahlavi

monarchy.

The

next

group

which

came

into

public opposition,

in the autumn of 1977,

were the

students,

who organised

a

series

of mass demonstrations

in

October-

November

and

were brutally

attacked

by

the police

and SAVAK. They had,

as

noted, been active

opponents

of the

regime

for

years

and were in

the

coming

months

to play

a major

role in

the street

demonstrations

that rocked Tehran and

the

major provincial

towns. Resenting

the same

oppressions

as the

professional

middle class

they also

suffered from

the

inadequate

facilities

in higher

education

and,

in the case

of secondary

school

students,

from

the lack of

sufficient

places

in

higher education to satisfythe demand for advancement.

From December

1977 onwards

the

ulema

and,

related

to

them,

the

merchants

of the bazaar

came into

action.

The ulema resented their

loss of social

position

-

over

law, education

and

land

-

under the

Pahlavis

and

had

in

the

past

partici-

pated

in leading

nationalist

and

anti-monarchical

movements. Although religious

practice

certainly declined

in the

1960s

and

1970s,

the absence

of

any

other

form

of

evident organised

opposition,

and the real ideological

confusion experienced

by

first generation

migrants

to

the

cities,

enabled

the

ulema to

become

a focus

of

popular

opposition

again,

and

through their

network

of

mosques

and associated

officials,

to

mobilise

people

in

the

streets.

Yet,

if

the majority

of those whom

the

ulema

mobilised

were urban

poor

-

workers

in manufacturing

and

construction,

casual workers

in services

et cetera

-

the

social force behind

the ulema were

the

merchants

of the bazaar,

the traditional

trading

and financial

sector

who paid

-

officially

-

20 per cent

of their earnings

in zakat

or

religious

taxes

to the

mosque.

The merchants

had once

monopolised

trade

and finance

in Iranand

their position

had been

eroded by

the rise

of new institutions

-

shops and banks

-

outside their

control.

But this alone

does

not

explain

why they

turned so

ferociously

against

the

Shah.

What reallyforced them

into

active opposition

was the Shah's

attempt

to

impose

control

on

them

through appointing

the officials

who would

administer

the bazaarand by prosecutingaround 30,000 bazaar merchants for alleged price

fixing.

Nearly

8,000

were imprisoned

and over

20,000 sent

to

the countryside

for

periods

of exile as

a result of these

policies

in 1975

and, given

the

much greater

corruption known

to

exist in the

court, no one

was very

favourably

impressed

by

these policies

anyway. Even

withinthe

social group

which

was relatively

betteroff,







THE GENESIS OF THE IRANIAN REVOLUTION

1I

there was a strong gap between the Shah and the middleclass, a gap that he had

inherited from his father, but which was widened by the political repression

against

middle class

opponents

and

by

the economic harassment of the

bazaar

merchants.

If

the

ulema did

mobilise

urban

workers

under

the

banner

of

religion through-

out

the demonstrations that lasted from

February through

to

September 1978,

the

working

class

adopted quite

different forms of

protest

after the declaration

of martial law on 8

September.

They

resorted to a form of

protest

much

more

classically

associated with their social

position,

namely,

the

strike,

and from

September

onwards the

economy

was

riven by strikes,

not

only by

the

urban

working class,

but also

by professionals

and civil servants. In

particular,

the

protractedpolitical strikeby oil workers in the Khuzestan oilfields from October

1978

onwards

crippled

the

regime

and was the

greatest single

blow to the Shah's

power,

more

so than

the

largest

street

demonstrations,

for it

struck not

only at

the

repressive apparatus by

depriving

it

of

oil,

but also cut

off

the

revenue

on

which the whole state had

depended.

The

working class,

like

the

professionals,

students

and bazaar

merchants,

were not

just protesting

at

their

economic

situation, although wage demands

were

certainly part

of

their

protests. They

were also

protesting

at

the

imposition

of an

official trade

union

system

on

them

which

was run

by

SAVAK and the

Ministry

of Labour.

They

too

wanted

the

right

to exercise their social and

political

freedoms

and

were

another

social

force

broughtinto prominence by the past decade and a half of economic development

which turned against

the

system

with the

resentment

and

the increased social

weight resulting

from

the prevailing pattern of economic development.

International

Alignment

The Pahlavi monarchy was

brought into being with the active encouragement of

British imperialists

after World War

I.

But the real

organic

link

between the

regime and an outside power was

that formed

in

World War

II

between the new

Shah and

the US,

as the

first

US

military

missions

were

despatched

to

patch

the

regime together after the

shattering Anglo-Russian invasion of August 1941. By

the

time

the Shah came

to

confront the communists

in

1946,

and

Mossadeq

in

1953, he had a comparatively efficient

and

US-equipped repressive instrument at

his

disposal on

which he

continued

to

rely throughout

the decades that followed.

In

1957

the

FBI

and CIA helped

him to set

up SAVAK,

the secret

police,

and

by

the

mid-1970s the Shah was the

largest purchaser

of US arms in

the world,

with

over

20 billions delivered

or

on

order for

his

armed forces.

This

alignment

with

the

US

which the Shah used to bolster

his

regime

at

home and

to

become the

policeman of the Gulf produced

a number of

major problems.

The massiveexpenditureon weapons, farbeyond what Iranneeded for its own

defence purposes, constituted

a net

diversion of

funds needed

for

development.

Not

only did the

arms cost

money,

but Iran

had

to

pay

vast sums for

training

personnel in the US ( 100,000- 150,000

a head for a

Phantom pilot

at Fort

Lubbock, Texas) and for stationing US techniciansin Iran. By the mid-1970s the







12

THIRD WORLD QUARTERLY

corruption

and bureaucratic

in-fighting

associated

with the

arms

sales

led

to

rueful rethinking on the part of many in Iran. In addition, this vast military

apparatus

served

as the

effective support

of the

Shah's

regime

and

a massive

social

impediment

on its

transition

to any democratisation.

Iran's

foreign

stance caused

hostility

at

home.

No

widespread

rejection

of

Iran's

interventions

in

Oman,

Iraq

and

Pakistan

was

visible,

although

the

student

community

in

exile

was very active

in support

of

Omani

guerrillas.

But Iran's

covert support

for Israel,

and

its

hostility

to the Palestinian

Liberation

Move-

ment,

were unpopular,

and

the

Shah's

closeness to

the US

caused him to

be

dubbed

as the 'dog'

of Johnson,

Nixon

and

Carter,

whoever

it was

in office

in

Washington.

Whilst overt xenophobia

towards foreigners

in Iran

was

rare,

the

presence of a large number of US military in the provincial town of Isfahan,

complete

with

a

crop

of

ex-Saigon

prostitutes,

did

lead to considerable

friction

in

that

town

at

least.

In early 1977

thereentered

onto

the scene

a factor

that is hard

to

evaluate

but

which

certainly played

some

role, the

'human rights policy'

of

Jimmy

Carter.

This

certainly

emboldened

Iranian

middle

class

opposition

and

may

have

given

the Shah

some

cause for unease,

but it is probably

not the

main

reason why

he

allowed

the

middle

class

protesters

to circulate

their letters.

The Shah already

judged

the opposition

well

and

truly

crushed and

he now realised

that

some

liberalisation

was

necessary

to offset rising

criticism

of social

and

economic

policies.

These

internal

reasons were,

therefore,

only compounded

by

the

external

pressure,

real

or

imagined

we

do

not

know,

from

the new Carter

administration,

and

led to

the

first

break

in the

system

of total

political

repression

that

had

persisted

since

1963.

When,

towards

the end of

1977,

Carter

openly

supported

the Shah's

policies,

it

was

already

too

late

to

stop

the

disintegration

of the

regime,

and

Carter's

belated support

for the

Shah

only

served

by

then to

further

inflame

the

opposition

and

to

discredit

the

man

by

then known

as

'Jimmy's

dog'.

Historical Perspective

What

was,

at

first

sight,

a

superficial

aspect

of the crisis

was the

sense of

repeti-

tion, or

deja

vYi,

when

it was

compared

to other ones.

This

was

not,

however, just

a

misleading

impression

and it

tells us a

lot about

the

crisis

to see

how

the

events

of

1978

resembled,

and then

how

they

differed from,

previous

ones.

The

move-

ment

was

like and

unlike

the

nationwide

protests

against

the

British

tobacco

concession

in

the

1890s,

the constitutional

revolution

of

1906-11,

the nationalist

movement

of

the

late 1940s

led

by

Mossadeq,

and

the brief

revival

of

political

opposition

in

the

early

1960s.

It is

striking

how

many

of the

people

involved

were

the same,

or from

the same

families.

Ardeshir

Zahedi,

the Shah's

chief

adviser

and his long-standingambassador in Washington,was a son of the generalwho

put

the

Shah back into

power

in

the

coup

of August

1953.

Shahpur

Bakhtiar,

the

man

whose

government

presided

over

the Shah's departure

in January,

was

a

relative

both

of the

Shah's

former

wife

Soraya

and of the

first

head

of SAVAK,

General

Teimur

Bakhtiar.

Most

of the

politicians

whom

the Shah

tried

to

use

to







THE GENESIS

OF THE IRANIAN

REVOLUTION

13

stem the

popular movement, including

Prime Minister

Ja'fer

Sharif-Emami,

PrimeMinister from August to November, were names familiar from the 1950s

and 1960s.

So too

were

many

in the

opposition:

Khomeini

made

his

name

by

opposing

the

Shah in the

early

1960s; his main political

ally in Iran,

Mehdi

Bazargan,

was the

directorof the oil

company

under

Mossadeq;

and

many

of

the

tiny political groups

that emerged

in the brief period of

the Iranian 'spring'

-

August-early

September 1978

- were

the revivals of much

earlier

groups

that

most

Iranians underthe

age

of 40 must

have no

memory

of.

More

to

the

point, perhaps,

was the

repeat

of

political practices

associated

with former struggles.

In 1953 the Shah behaved

very

much

as

he

did

in 1978,

fleeing

into

temporary

exile

whilst

leaving

behind a military apparatus

that

might

have restoredhim to power. His morose and, at times, defeatist temperament,on

which western diplomats

commented

ruefully

30 years ago, had,

for the

past two

decades,

been

masked

by

an

outward self-confidence

and

the

evident

power

associated

with

this

throne.

Yet it did not

take many

months

of

popular opposi-

tion,

and the

damage

to the

Shah's image

which this

entailed,

for his old

aberrations

to come out again,

and in the last weeks of

his

time in

Iran,

up to

January 1979, he

was

apparently

unable

to

coordinate

any

sustained policy

in

the

face of the

new

opposition.

Journalists

who met him

found

him,

as he

had

been

in the 1940s, listless and

self-pitying,

and the US Ambassador,

Thomas Sullivan,

was

heard in exasperation

to

remark,

'You would

need to be

an ornithologist to

know

what

is

going

on inside that peacock

throne.'

The nature of

the opposition itself

had striking similarities

and

dissimilarities

with that

in previous

Iraniancrises.

On the one hand,

it was

evident that much

of

the

language

used by the demonstrators

harked

back to much

earlier days.

The

Shah was condemned as a

Yazid,

after

the Arab ruler who

killed

Hussain,

the

early Shi'a Muslim

leader

in the seventh

century, or even as

a

Namrood (the

Pharaoh Nimrod)

who is

condemned

in the

Qur'an

as a terrible

oppressor,

all

the

more so because

he, like other pharaohs,

claimed

to have divinity.

The religious

leaders, the ulema,

were the

leaders of the nationwide

movement

in

the 1890s

and

played a prominent role in the constitutional revolution a decade later. The

calls

they made

-

for

justice and a proper

place for Islam

in

the

country's

social

life

-

were like those made

in earlier times,

with

the

occasional

suggestion

that if

tyrannycontinued

then there would

be ajihad, a holy war

against

the rulers.

As

in

those

earlier campaigns,

too, the issue of social

and political

justice

was com-

bined with a strong

nationalism

and a desire to

see the country

free

of

exploitative

or

interfering

foreigners.

As

we have

seen,

Khomeini rallied

his

supporters

in the

early

1960s on a range

of issues, but

the central

one was

his

hostility

to the

extra-

territorial legal right that

the

Shah

had

just granted

to

US

servicemen

stationed

in

Iran.

Enormous

Differences

And yet

there were certain

enormous differences

between this

movement

and

those of previous

periods

-

differences

that

went

to

the

very

bottom

of

the

crisis.







14

THIRD

WORLD

QUARTERLY

First

of

all, this

was an

urban-based

movement,

not

as

in

Mossadeq's

time

when

under a quarterof the population lived in the towns, but in a situation in which

50 per

cent of

the

population

were

urban dwellers.

Even

though

discontent

was

present

in

the countryside

it was

atomised

there; by

contrast the urban

centres

provided

the

occasion

for

substantial

displays

of

mass protest

that

represented

half of the

population.

Moreover,

most

previous

crises

in Iran

were

detonated

by

international

issues

-

the

oil

crisis,

the tobacco

concession,

the

two World

Wars.

This

time,

more

than on

any previous

occasion,

the crisis

reflected

the

maturing

of internal

conflicts,

ones

within which

the external

questions

-

US

presence,

OPEC pricing,

Carter's

human rights

policy

-

played

a definite

but secondary

role.

The

Shah's

father

was deposed

by foreigners.

This

time the

Iranian

people

did it themselves.

A third strengthof this movement was that it took place after

the

Shah's

regime

had

played all

its cards.

In

the 1950s and I960s

the Shah

could

always

plead

that

with sufficient

time

he would be

able

to use

the oil

to

develop

the country.

That

chance

came and

went

- 15 years

of rising

oil

revenues.

He

made

substantial

changes

but

ended up

by

leaving

most

of the

population

dissatisfied

and

a few

of

the luckier

ones

extremely

wealthy.

In

terms

of

promising

a

brighter

future

he had no

more

cards to

play.

The

movement,

however,

was in

other

senses

at

a

disadvantage

compared

to

previous

movements.

First,

in

the

Mossadeq

period

the movement

was

led

by

secular

political

organisations

that offered

a concrete

socio-economic

solution

to

Iran's

problem.

In

terms

of political

ideology

there

can

be

no avoiding

the fact

that the

1978

movement

in Iran

marked

a

definite

retrogression

compared

to

the

nationalist

movements

of

the

1940s and

1950s.

This

must have

serious

conse-

quences

for the

kind of society

it will

create

and

for the

leadership's

capacity

to

solve

the dire

problems

that

Iran

now faces. Mossadeq's

nationalism was

secular

where

the present

one is dominated

by generic

religious

ideas

that are

certainly

rooted

in

the

social reality

of Iran;

but

they

do

not

provide

any

readysolution

to

its problems

and may

indeed

enable

its proponents

to underestimate

the

serious-

ness

of what

the

condition

of Iran

is.

A second

weakness

is

that

morethan at any

previous time there exists in Iran an identifiablesocial force that is, for its own

reasons,

committed

to

opposing

substantial political

change

and

which at

least

in the short

run

is capable

of

making

a serious

attempt

to

sabotage

such change.

This

force

is spearheaded

by the

army,

much

of

which remains loyal

to its

own

privileges

and

which may

well

reconstitute

itself

as

the

'guardian

of

national

interests',

and

the upper

sections

of

the middle

class

whose own

position

relies

on the continuation

of Iran's previous

economic

growth

pattern

and

on

the

unequal

and

wasteful distribution

of

most

of

the

money.

Even if the

Shah

never returns

they

will not

want

to lose

their class

position.

Finally,

the

Iranian

movement

developed

in

a situation

of almost

total

inter-

national isolation whereby no substantial outside force was willing or able to

lend it

support.

All the

major

western countries

endorsed

the Shah's

regime

to

the

bitter end

and,

whilst warning

the

Soviet

Union about

non-intervention,

poured

weapons

and

advisers

into Iranin an

attempt

to

save the

Shah.

China

too

was

distinguished

in

its

support

of the Pahlavi regime:

Chairman

Hua Kuo-feng







THE GENESIS

OF THE IRANIAN

REVOLUTION

15

visited Tehran

in the midst

of the crisis

in

August

1978 and

the

Chinese

press

brandedthe demonstratorsas Soviet agents. Iran's 'radical'neighbour Iraq had

systematically

abstainedfrom

supporting

the

opposition

since

reaching

its

border

agreement

with Iran

in

1975 and in

September

1978

expelled

the

Ayatollah

Khomeini

from his

place

of residence

in

Iraq.

The

new

revolutionary

government

on

Iran's

eastern

flank in

Afghanistan

was

inevitably preoccupied

with

establish-

ing

its own

internal control

and

unable to

offer

any

assistance to the

struggling

forces

across

the Iranian

border.

Finally,

the Soviet

Union,

of

necessity,

took

up

a

low

profile:

aware of the weakness

of its own

Tudeh

Party supporters,

and

wary of giving

the US an

excuse to

furtherenhance

its

position

in

Iran,

the Soviet

Union

tended to teact to events in

Iran

very cautiously

and was unable

to

proffer

any significantassistanceto the popular movement. Throughoutthe long months

of

the

summer and

autumn,

as millions demonstrated

in the streets against

the

Shah,

the Iranian

opposition

was

openly supported

by only

a

few

distant and

outspoken

friends:

Vietnam, Cuba,

Libya,

South Yemen

and Ethiopia were

the

most courageous

in their

support,

yet there

was little beyond political

endorse-

ment

that

they

could

provide.

These three

weaknesses

-

the

ideological

character

of

the

movement,

the

continued existence of

a clear counter-revolutionary

social

force and

the lack of

any

significant

outside

support

- must be taken-nto

account

when

drawing up

any

balance sheet

of

the

1978 movement.

A

Harsh

Legacy

The factors leading

to the crisis

in Iran and the

exile

of the Shah are

therefore

rooted

in

the last

half century

of Iranian

history and

in

the

particular

model of

development

that the Shah pursued.

Although

only in

part a nationalist

move-

ment,

Iran's movement

was also crucially

influenced

by

the pattern

of the

country's

relations with the US

and by what

was seen

both as US

distortion of

Iran's development

pattern

and as US

support for

the Pahlavi

tyranny.

The

coalition that rose to oppose

the Shah

was itself

a reflection

of these complex

origins: it spanned

the new professional

and working

classes, but found

its most

visible voice

in the more

traditional

bazaar sector

which provided

the

finance,

organisation

and

ideology

which brought

the mass of the

urban

poor

on

to the

streets. This coalition

could hardly

endure the

tests of

a post-Shah era

given

the

conflicting

material and

political interests

it

contained yet

it did unite,

in

a

spectacular

manner,

to unseat

one of the most

arrogant

and apparently

most

secure of the world's

dictators.

It should by now

be clear that,

whatever the

reasons for the

Shah's fall,

one

thing

that cannot

be taken

seriously is

the claim that

he 'went too

fast

for

his

people'.

If he did

go wrong, it

was because

he was already

going

in the wrong

direction

-

towards greater inequality, neglect of the rural sector and lavish

expenditure

on arms. In

a very

obvious way he

did not go far

or fast enough

in

the right direction,

that

is towards

building a

truly independent

economy

that

distributed

the benefits

of the oil boom

equally amongst

the

people

and

which

allowed

a

growing political

awarenessto

find legitimate

and effective

expression.







16

THIRD

WORLD

QUARTERLY

The Shah's

system

was

despotic,

corrupt

and in

the

end

extremely

frail.

Even

on

its own narrowterms of economic performance,it contained the seeds of its own

destruction.

The

Pahlavi

dynasty

has

bequeathed

a

difficult

and harsh

legacy

to

any

future

republican

regime,

and it

will

be

years

before the

problems

inherited

from this regime can

be

fully

overcome.

genesis of irani revolution

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