In August 1941, British and Russian forces invaded Iran and Reza Shah’s abdication was followed by his son Mohammad Reza’s succession. In the 37 years that separate the Allied invasion from the revolution of 1979, three distinct phases may be distinguished.
1941 to 1953 was a period of chaos, followed by the nationalization of oil and ending with the Anglo-American-instigated coup; the decade from 1953 saw the establishment of a growing dictatorship by the Shah, landlords and the religious establishment, the last three years of which saw an economic bust resulting in power struggles eventually won by the Shah who launched his White Revolution in January 1963.
There followed a mass revolt in the following June led by Ayatollah Khomeini which was severely supressed. From then, government turned into one-person rule, and politics was abolished, a process which was reinforced by the growth of oil revenues in dollars which were directly received by the state. Land reform might have been a successful policy had it not been for deliberate attempts to shrink agriculture and rural society. Likewise, attempts for modern industrial development could have paid off with a strategy of export-led growth which was successfully pursued by South Korea in the same period.
However, the Shah was successful in his foreign policy, such that by 1977 almost all foreign powers had friendly relations with Iran. He was also successful in his educational policies, expanding all levels of education for girls as well as boys. But the downside was that university students in Iran and abroad were opposed to him and his regime.
With President Carter’s human-rights stance in 1977, the Shah felt impelled to allow for some opening of the political space. This was by no means the cause of the protest movements that ended up in revolution, but it was helpful to them.
Was the Iranian Revolution Inevitable?
The revolution of February 1979 was not inevitable had the Shah appointed a reputable and competent prime minister and been prepared to give up his control of power two years before.
All this while, Ayatollah Khomeini had been advocating the overthrow of the Shah from his place of exile in Iraq, for which reason he had the undiluted support of not just the religious but secular Iranians as well. This prompted the Shah to push for his expulsion from Iraq, which backfired by making him fly to Paris and become popular in the world public opinion. Quickly, protest turned into countrywide revolt, particularly after the shooting at the demonstrators in September 1978.
The Shah’s last prime minister, Shapur Bakhtiar, had no base on which to stand except for the army, which, having been always dependent on the Shah, but now being leaderless in his absence from the country, declared neutrality. That was 11 February 1979 and the end of the Pahlavi monarchy.
This was not a bourgeois revolution; it was not a liberal-democratic revolution; it was not a socialist revolution. It was the total revolt of the society against the state.
Revolutionary Justice in the Midst of Chaos
The single unifying aim of overthrowing the Shah having been achieved, it was now time for each group to try, not to share but to grab as much as possible the spoils of the revolution. To begin with, there was chaos, disorder, revenge killing and looting.
From the beginning, the main bone of contention had been the principle of Guardianship of the Jurist which was later sanctified in the new constitution, making the spiritual leader of the revolution the final arbiter of public decisions. This had the full support of the Tudeh party and most other Marxist-Leninists.
On 4th November 1979, a group of young revolutionaries attacked the American embassy and took its staff hostage, supported by all the revolutionary groups except for the small band of ‘liberals’. It was the start of the process of a truly Islamic revolution which took another eighteen months to complete.
The Iraq-Iran War
In September 1980, Saddam Hussein’s Iraq attacked Iran which led to eight years of death and destruction to both sides of the conflict. If anything, however, the domestic conflict between the recently elected President Banisadr and the Islamists looked more urgent. It eventually resulted in his dismissal, especially as the Islamic Marxist Mojahedin had become his closest allies. Banisadr’s fall and the ensuing Mojahedin revolt completed the process of the Islamic Revolution.
Saddam’s invasion at first caught the Iranians by surprise, but a war of attrition followed until July 1988 when, in the face of Iraq’s vast global support, the Iranians realised that they could not win, and accepted the UN ceasefire resolution.
Khomeini himself died in 1989 and was passionately mourned by many people.
Relative Normality Leading to High Hopes
Khomeini’s death led to the surprise election of Ali Khamenei as the supreme leader.
This was shortly followed by the election of the able and pragmatic Akbar Rafsanjani to executive presidency who pursued a relatively moderate policy in both domestic and foreign spheres.
Soon, however, he began to face opposition from two opposite poles: the former Islamist left, and the Islamist hardliners. But it was more in his second term as president – 1993-1997 – that hardline pressures became strong, their mob often shouting ‘death to the capitalist’ in street demonstrations.
On 23rd May 1997, the Muslim democrat Mohammad Khatami won a landslide victory to many people’s joy, but especially women and young people. Reformed old radicals, religious intellectuals, and Muslim democrats manned the pro-Khatami campaign, but, most of all, his own liberal reputation won him the presidency.
In celebrating the victory, however, the power of conservatives and hardliners was grossly underestimated, and pressures by the enthusiasts for more and quicker change tended to squeeze Khatami in between.
Still, he managed to sustain himself for six years, but later in his second term – 2001-2005 – the conservatives won back the Parliament, while voters and reformers had become disillusioned because Khatami had not delivered the moon.
The Damage Caused by Populist Mahdism
In the 2005 presidential election, Mahmud Ahmadinejad, a virtually unknown quantity, defeated Rafsanjani, although had reformists voted for the latter, he would have won the election.
Ahmadinejad – a populist, frequently praying for the advent of the Mahdi / Messiah – set about to dismantle most of Khatami’s achievements regarding improving foreign relations and more civil liberties. His economic policy looked like almsgiving to the poor, and generous aid (to countries such as Venezuela) saw him squander $700 billion of oil revenues he was blessed with due to zooming oil prices.
The intense dislike of Ahmadinejad was demonstrated by huge crowds during the presidential election of 2009, dancing in the streets and chanting ‘Ahmadi bye-bye’, and backing Mir Hossein Mousavi, a former radical turned Muslim democrat. And when it was declared that he had received 14 million votes against Ahmadinejad’s 24 million, they cried foul.
What ensued was a peaceful democratic campaign known as the Green Movement, which was stamped out, though without much bloodshed.
Ahmadinejad continued to govern as before until the end of his term in 2013, although he fell out with Khamenei and the hardliners in 2011 when he tried to defy his wishes.
Nuclear Deal
The eight years that followed Ahmadinejad’s term began with high hopes and ended in despair. The people were hoping for change in the socio-political situation and looked to Rafsanjani to be elected president, but the Guardian Council did not endorse his candidacy because they had expert intelligence that he would win hands down!
Thus, both Rafsanjani and Khatami backed Hasan Rouhani, a moderate politician who promised to solve the international conflict over Iran’s nuclear programme. The ensuing negotiations with the 5+1 powers eventually resulted in the Joint Comprehensive Plan of Action (JCPOA), limiting Iran’s uranium enrichment in exchange for lifting the international sanctions against Iran.
However, partly because of Donald Trump’s campaign against JCPOA, the lifting of sanctions brought fewer economic gains than expected; a hardliners’ mob in the holy city of Mashhad shouting ‘death to Rouhani’ triggered a mass revolt in January 2018 which was stamped out with few casualties.
President Trump kept his election promise, applying his policy of maximum pressure on Iran which dealt a severe blow to the Iranian economy. The political blow was even worse as it badly weakened the moderate reformists, especially as further unrest late in 2019 – due to an increase in the cheap price of petrol – was severely suppressed by the Revolutionary Guard.
This was shortly followed by the assassination of the senior General Ghassem Soleimani on Tump’s orders, which inadvertently resulted in the downing of a Ukrainian passenger plane by the Revolutionary Guard in a Tehran airport, opening a wound which is yet to heal.
A Hardline Victory Followed by a Ray of Hope
Joe Biden’s presidency in 2021 did not fulfil his promise of reversing Trump’s action and, instead, led to renegotiation. A shuttle diplomacy ensued and was likely to bear fruit when the new hardline parliament postponed the conclusion of any deal to the forthcoming presidency, which was duly won by the hardliner Ebrahim Raisi.
Raisi had won the presidency practically unopposed, just like those hardliners who had packed the parliament, hence describing the new setup as ‘the uniform state’, meaning that all the three constitutional powers now spoke with the hardliners’ voice.
The government’s socio-cultural policy took a turn for the worse, particularly in regard to censorship and women. A ‘Guidance Patrol’ was set up whose agents would arrest women with inadequate hejab and take them to nearby centres of ‘instruction’ for modest behaviour.
It was this policy that in September 2022 led to the tragic death of Mahsa (Zhina) Amini, a young Kurdish student on a holiday trip to Tehran. The people took to the streets shouting ‘Woman, Life, Freedom’, and clashed with the police and the paramilitary Basij. When it eventually died down in 2023, around 500 young people had been killed.
Protests, Riots and Wars
The 7th October 2023 attack on Israel by Hamas – a member of the Iran-led ‘Axis of Resistance’ – opened a major new phase in Middle Eastern politics, although it was clear that Iran had no direct hand in it. This was followed by a couple of attacks and counterattacks between Israel and Iran.
However, fortunes were suddenly reversed after Raisi’s death in a May 2024 air accident which led to the surprise election of the veteran reformist Mas‘ud Pezeshkian who, despite all expectations, had been allowed by the Guardian Council to be a candidate.
He expressed a wish to improve relations with the West and negotiate for a new nuclear deal, and upon Donald Trump’s second election to US presidency said that Iran was open to negotiations. He also ordered the return of all the dissident university students and professors who had been expelled under Raisi, and stopped the execution of a new law in favour of hejab, passed by the hardline parliament.
However, there was a turn for the worse when, during the US-Iran nuclear negotiations, Israel suddenly attacked Iran with US approval, which shortly afterwards heavily bombed Iran, and it took twelve days for a ceasefire to be reached.
On 28th December the bazaar struck in protest against another fall in the value of Iran’s currency, a consequence of foreign economic sanctions. President Pezeshkian responded by apologies and promises for rectification, and the Supreme Leader welcomed peaceful protests but warned against rioting.
Quickly however there was a widespread revolt, following an appeal by the former Iranian crown prince, and Trump’s promise that ‘help is on its way’. Since then, some Israeli officials have confirmed that Israeli agents had fomented the uprising. This was severely supressed with thousands dead, though the estimated numbers claimed begin at 3,000 and end at 430,000!
This was followed by another round of US-Iran negotiations aided by Oman whose foreign minister was optimistic about the outcome, but Israel and America suddenly launched an illegal war on Iran, President Trump and the Israeli prime minister both calling for regime change. Iran retaliated, and, at the time of writing, the war is still raging on.
Homa Katouzian is a member of the Faculty of Asian and Middle Eastern Studies at the University of Oxford, and the author of Iran and the Revolution: A History, published by Yale University Press.
