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~Causes of Revolution
-fluctuations in western oil companies threatened the countries economy and lead to high amounts of inflation.

-sociopolitical repression by the regime of Mohammad Reza Shah Pahlavi  (Persian).

-limited outlets for political participation for citizens.

~Response
-Ruhollah Khomeini, a former professor of philosophy, united many secular intellects who opposed the shah.

-protests against the shah led by opposition groups were met with torture and harassment from  the Pahlavi rulers.

-Instead of limiting the authority of Shah, the secular intellects realized that they could overthrow the Shah with the help of the Ulama.

- members of opposition groups such as the National Front and the  pro-Soviet Tūdeh joined forces to oppose the current reign.

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Iranian Revolution of 1978-79, also called Islamic Revolution, Persian Enqelāb-e Eslāmī, popular uprising in Iran in 1978-79 that resulted in the toppling of the monarchy on April 1, 1979, and led to the establishment of an Islamic republic.

Iran: The Iranian Revolution, 1978-79

Outwardly, with a swiftly expanding economy and a rapidly modernizing infrastructure, everything was going well in Iran. But in little more than a generation, Iran had changed from a traditional, conservative, and rural society to one that was industrial, modern, and urban....
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Prelude to revolution

Mounting social discontent in the 1970s in Iran, which culminated in revolution at the end of the decade, had several crucial dimensions. Although petroleum revenues continued to be a major source of income for Iran in the 1970s, world monetary instability and fluctuations in Western oil consumption seriously threatened the country's economy, which had been rapidly expanding since the early 1950s and was still directed in large part toward high-cost projects and programs. A decade of extraordinary economic growth, heavy government spending, and a boom in oil prices led to high rates of inflation and the stagnation of Iranians' buying power and standard of living.

In addition to mounting economic difficulties, sociopolitical repression by the regime of Mohammad Reza Shah Pahlavi likewise increased in the 1970s. Outlets for political participation were minimal, and opposition parties such as the National Front (a loose coalition of nationalists, clerics, and noncommunist left-wing parties) and the pro-Soviet Tūdeh ("Masses") Party were marginalized or outlawed. Social and political protest was often met with censorship, surveillance, or harassment, and illegal detention and torture were common.

Many argued that since Iran's brief experiment with parliamentary democracy and communist politics had failed, the country had to go back to its indigenous culture. The 1953 coup, backed by the U.S. Central Intelligence Agency (CIA), against Prime Minister Mohammad Mosaddeq, an outspoken advocate of nationalism who almost succeeded in deposing the shah, particularly incensed Iran's intellectuals. For the first time in more than half a century, the secular intellectuals-many of whom were fascinated by the populist appeal of Ayatollah Ruhollah Khomeini, a former professor of philosophy in Qom who had been exiled in 1964 after speaking out harshly against the shah's recent reform program-abandoned their aim of reducing the authority and power of the Shīʿite ulama (religious scholars) and argued that, with the help of the ulama, the shah could be overthrown.

In this environment, members of the National Front, the Tūdeh Party, and their various splinter groups now joined the ulama in a broad opposition to the shah's regime. Khomeini continued to preach in exile about the evils of the Pahlavi regime, accusing the shah of irreligion and subservience to foreign powers. Thousands of tapes and print copies of Khomeini's speeches were smuggled back into Iran during the 1970s as an increasing number of unemployed and working-poor Iranians-mostly new immigrants from the countryside, who were disenchanted by the cultural vacuum of modern urban Iran-turned to the ulama for guidance. The shah's dependence on the United States, his close ties with Israel-then engaged in extended hostilities with the overwhelmingly Muslim Arab states-and his regime's ill-considered economic policies served to fuel the potency of dissident rhetoric with the masses.

Outwardly, with a swiftly expanding economy and a rapidly modernizing infrastructure, everything was going well in Iran. But in little more than a generation, Iran had changed from a traditional, conservative, and rural society to one that was industrial, modern, and urban. The sense that in both agriculture and industry too much had been attempted too soon and that the government, either through corruption or incompetence, had failed to deliver all that was promised was manifested in demonstrations against the regime in 1978.

Revolution

In January 1978, incensed by what they considered to be slanderous remarks made against Khomeini in Eṭṭelāʿāt, a Tehrān newspaper, thousands of young madrassa (religious school) students took to the streets. They were followed by thousands more Iranian youth-mostly unemployed recent immigrants from the countryside-who began protesting the regime's excesses. The shah, weakened by cancer and stunned by the sudden outpouring of hostility against him, vacillated between concession and repression, assuming the protests to be part of an international conspiracy against him. Many people were killed by government forces in anti-regime protests, serving only to fuel the violence in a Shīʿite country where martyrdom played a fundamental role in religious expression. Fatalities were followed by demonstrations to commemorate the customary 40-day milestone of mourning in Shīʿite tradition, and further casualties occurred at those protests, mortality and protest propelling one another forward. Thus, in spite of all government efforts, a cycle of violence began in which each death fueled further protest, and all protest-from the secular left and religious right-was subsumed under the cloak of Shīʿite Islam and crowned by the revolutionary rallying cry Allāhu akbar ("God is great"), which could be heard at protests and which issued from the rooftops in the evenings.

During his exile, Khomeini coordinated this upsurge of opposition-first from Iraq and after 1978 from France-demanding the shah's abdication. In January 1979, in what was officially described as a "vacation," the shah and his family fled Iran. The Regency Council established to run the country during the shah's absence proved unable to function, and Prime Minister Shahpur Bakhtiar, hastily appointed by the shah before his departure, was incapable of effecting compromise with either his former National Front colleagues or Khomeini. Crowds in excess of one million demonstrated in Tehrān, proving the wide appeal of Khomeini, who arrived in Iran amid wild rejoicing on February 1. Ten days later Bakhtiar went into hiding, eventually to find exile in France.

Aftermath

On April 1, following overwhelming support in a national referendum, Khomeini declared Iran an Islamic republic. Elements within the clergy promptly moved to exclude their former left-wing, nationalist, and intellectual allies from any positions of power in the new regime, and a return to conservative social values was enforced. The Family Protection Act (1967; significantly amended in 1975), which provided further guarantees and rights to women in marriage, was declared void, and mosque-based revolutionary bands known as komītehs (Persian: "committees") patrolled the streets enforcing Islamic codes of dress and behaviour and dispatching impromptu justice to perceived enemies of the revolution. 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 Mosaddeq-engaged in similar activity, aimed at intimidating and repressing political groups not under control of the ruling Revolutionary Council and its sister Islamic Republican Party, both clerical organizations loyal to Khomeini. The violence and brutality often exceeded that which had taken place under the shah.

The militias and the clerics they supported made every effort to suppress Western cultural influence, and, facing persecution and violence, many of the Western-educated elite fled the country. This anti-Western sentiment eventually manifested itself in the November 1979 seizure of 66 hostages at the U.S. embassy by a group of Iranian protesters demanding the extradition of the shah, who at that time was undergoing medical treatment in the United States ( see Iran hostage crisis). Through the embassy takeover, Khomeini's supporters could claim to be as "anti-imperialist" as the political left. This ultimately gave them the ability to suppress most of the regime's left-wing and moderate opponents. The Assembly of Experts (Majles-e Khobregān), overwhelmingly dominated by clergy, ratified a new constitution the following month. The new constitution created a religious government based on Khomeini's vision of velāyat-e faqīh (Persian: "governance of the jurist") and gave sweeping powers to the rahbar, or leader; the first rahbar was Khomeini himself. Moderates, such as provisional Prime Minister Mehdi Bazargan and the republic's first president, Abolhasan Bani-Sadr, who opposed holding the hostages, were steadily forced from power by conservatives within the government who questioned their revolutionary zeal.

Janet Afary The Editors of Encyclopædia Britannica

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Iranian Revolution of 1978-79 | Timeline, Causes, Effects, & Facts

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Iranian Revolution of 1978-79, also called Islamic Revolution, Persian Enqelāb-e Eslāmī, popular uprising in Iran in 1978-79 that resulted in the toppling of the monarchy on April 1, 1979, and led to the establishment of an Islamic republic. Iran: The Iranian Revolution, 1978-79 Outwardly, with a swiftly expanding economy and a rapidly modernizing infrastructure, everything was going well in Iran.

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Social Effects of the  Islamic Revolution

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Social Effects of the  Islamic Revolution

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~a return to conservative social values

-Family Protection Act(provided rights to women concerning marriage) was declared inaccurate .

-komītehs patrolled the streets enforcing Islamic codes of dress and behavior.

- women were seen as inferior and expected to be submissive to their male counter parts

~Population Control
-reduction in population due to new structures of control within the state

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Over the last thirty years, political Islam has been at the centre stage of the Middle Eastern politics. Indeed, not only has political Islam been a cause for social mobilisation, it has acted as an agency for the radicalisation of the marginalised people throughout the region. Even beyond the boundaries of the Middle East, the voice of political Islam has been heard. Many events from the protests against Salman Rushdi to the tragic bombings of July 7th have been explained in the context of political Islam. At the time, that Tehran is celebrating the thirtieth anniversary of the Islamic Revolution, one should look back to assess the legacies of a social phenomenon that arguably put Islam into the forefront of politics.

Indeed the Iranian revolution was the point of realisation for the immense political potential of Islam in modern times. The demonstration of the political capacity of Islam by the Iranian revolution militarised the regional political culture, this resulted in further instability in the region. The activist movements either with a political or with a religious agenda now were convinced that with Islam they have the winning card, itcan be employed as a potent political mechanism to, politicize , mobilise, radicalise the masses in order to confront the authoritarian states across the Middle East. The voice of the Iranian revolution was heard across the world from an early stage and particularly alarmed the countries with the substantial Muslim minorities. The political foundations of the neighbouring countries were shaken especially of those who had significant Shiite population, namely, Saudi, Kuwait, Bahrain and Iraq.

Only a short while after the triumph of the Islamic Revolution, on November 20, 1979, a date, which marked the start of the Islamic fifteenth centaury, 400 well- armed Islamist took control of the Grand Mosque in Mecca, the holist site within the entire Islamic world. That unprecedented event shaken the authorities in Saudi, It took them more than two weeks to regain control of the Mosque. In that process, according to official sources 127 troops, 25 pilgrims and 117 rebels were killed.

On 27th of the same month 400,000 strong Shiite minority concentrated in the oil-rich region of al-Hasa , broke the long establish ban on Ashura. ( Ashura is the most secret event of Shiite calendar which celebrates the martyrdom of Imam Hussein, a defining figure in the Shiite faith)

To the horror of the Saudi establishment,the Ashura'sprocessions turned into a pro- Khomeini demonstrations in eight strategically important towns in the oil rich region.

20,000 security forces were employed by the authorities to confront the rebels and regain control ofthe region. However, the sporadic demonstrations by Shiite militate continued for the next two month.

Khomeini regarded the Persian Gulf rulers as corrupt men who fostered what he called "American Islam" or "Golden Islam". He strongly criticised their policy of reducing the valuable natural resources of their country in order to satisfy the US, whom he described as the "Great Satan, the number one source of corruption on earth"

Despite the extreme censorship of the Persian Gulf state's media in covering the revolution, the inflammatory speeches were heard across the region. The wind of Iranian revolution was now on the air in every country in the Middle East. Bahrain and Iraq with substantial Shiite majorities were particularly threatened by the ideas from across the border, which at any time could trigger a Shiite insurrection.

Khomeini was calling on the export of revolution, confrontation with the "Grate Satan" and the liberation of occupied territories. In order to demonstrate the revolution as an Islamic one rather than an Iranian one, he engaged himself with the Issues close to the hearts and minds of Arabs, namely the question of Palestine and Pan-Islamism. Although, the Iranian revolution did not lead in the establishment of Pax Islamica, it formed a new Islamic paradigm, which is increasingly radicalisingdissatisfied Muslim communities who are desperate for change.

The question arises here, whether this new Islamic paradigm would emerge anyway, without the success of the Iranian revolution in 1979. Given the extreme level of dissatisfaction, arbitrary governance, widening social divisions, the luck of any political platform for a dialogue between the governors and the governed and the failure of secular discourses, the answer very likely would be yes.

However, this argument cannot reduce the importance of 1979 as the year that changed the modern Middle East. Even though the existing conditions in the region would make the emergence of political Islam inevitable; nevertheless, the Iranian revolution intensified and radicalised the process, which was slowly gaining momentum. The Iranian revolution for the first time in recent history set a precedent for the immense political potential, mobilising capacity and unifying capability of religion in the region that all other political agencies were repressed by dictatorship. Of course, the Iranian revolution reinvigorated political Islam, but at the same time it created more division among the leaders in the Islamic world. From the very early stage, the Sunni politicians expressed their distrust of the emerging Shiite order in Iran. This view was classically represented by king Abdullah of Jordan in an interview with The London Times in January 26,1982 . Where he referred to the Iranian Revolution and stated that: "we are facing the most difficult time that I ever witnessed in this region of the world. The threat of Zionism is not any greater than threat of Shiite fundamentalism".

That statement was not an isolated view in the region and soon majority of the Muslim leaders except Hafiz Al-Asad of Syria,supported Iraq and perpetuated the eight-year long war against Iran. Political disagreement was nothing new between Iran and its Arab neighbours. Nonetheless, after the revolution the political differences were articulated with a religious tone. Of course, the main question has been geopolitics and the balance of power, as Arab leaders have been cynical about the Iranian penetration in countries such as Lebanon and Iraq with significant Shiite population.Currently, they not only concerned about Shiite alliances, they have been also distrustful of Iranian ties with other militant sunny organisations such as Hamas.

Although, most of the governments in the Arab world distrust the Islamic Republic, it seems Iran is winning the battle of hearts and mind in the Arab streets.

While I was living in Egypt and travelling in the region, I was surprised to notice that there was much admiration for the Iranian revolution among ordinary people . Many people seemed to be inspired by the Islamic Revolution, advocating that Islam is the only way to liberate the region from the entrenched authoritarianism. They were frustrated with the weakness of their own leaders and resented their subordination to the US. It seemed that many people were impressed by the hard-line rhetoric of some Iranian leaders against the West. Ahmadinejad's harsh statements against the Jewish State reinvigorated them.In absence of any other mobilising agencies to address the democratic deficit, people seemed to fantasise and idealise about a revolution that made Islam applicable to every dimension of life in Iran. They wanted to see the same thing happen in their own countries. They wanted an Islamic solution to their profound problems. What cannot be denied here, rightly or wrongly, the Islamic Revolution has created a new model that inspires many people in the region for change. This only manifest that, if the process of creating platforms for dialogues between the rulers and the ruled does not take off in the region, the increasing dominance of Islamic fundamentalism will be very likely if not inevitable. It is in the realms of possibility that could lead to the replication of Islamic revolution in many countries across the region.

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Thirty years on: The Iranian revolution and its impact on the region

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Over the last thirty years, political Islam has been at the centre stage of the Middle Eastern politics. Indeed, not only has political Islam been a cause for social mobilisation, it has acted as an agency for the radicalisation of the marginalised people throughout the region.

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Political Effects of the Islamic Revolution

# data[].attributes.subject
Political Effects of the Islamic Revolution

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-militarised the political culture in Iran.

-generated a voice for a supressed and unrepresented religion(Islamic).

-Iran was declared an Islamic Republic by Khomeini, the coordinator of the Revolution.

-Clergy excluded nationalist, left wing, and intellectual allies from positions of power.

-Iraq invaded Iran because they felt threatened because of their lack of political power.

-Iran was alienated from all western countries, including the US.

-Islamic Sharia law became the new court system.

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History of Iran: Islamic Revolution of 1979

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Iranian Historical & Cultural Information Center

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Economic Effects of the Islamic Revolution

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Economic Effects of the Islamic Revolution

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-has become the primary target of U.S. Sanctions attempting to Influence Iranian policy.

-revolution undercut potential of Iran's economy, including their petroleum reserves.

-right before revolution, transformed from a small, agricultural based economy into a thriving centralized state  with a dominant role in International Oil Markets.

- 2 years after revolution: divine harmony.

-divine harmony: all major industries were nationalized. The result of this was catastrophic to Iranian economy.

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The Revolutionary Economy | The Iran Primer

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The theocracy's enlargement of the state's economic role was to some extent an improvised response to circumstances. Yet the shift proved as consequential as any of its political, social and cultural changes. The state's economic takeover could not blunt the impact of the revolutionary unrest and uncertainty in the short term.

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Religious effects of the Islamic Revolution

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Religious effects of the Islamic Revolution

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-Monarchy collapsed and religious leaders known as clerics rose to power.

-women were forced to wear veils in public and men were encouraged to have beards, falling in line with the traditional Muslim ways.

-Schools began to teach Islamic practices and disapproved of the practicing of any other religion .

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Iran Chamber Society: Iranian Society: The Islamic Revolution's impact on the legal and social status of Iranian women

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Iranian Historical & Cultural Information Center

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Cultural Effects of the Islamic Revolution

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Cultural Effects of the Islamic Revolution

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~Cultural Revolution
-attempt to eradicate western culture and Non-Islamic influence.

-many western educated elite fled the country for fear of persecution. This weakened the economy because of a loss of job skill and capital.

-The termination of Western Universities, causing many children to be deprived of a substantial education.

- many personal freedoms were lost, such as art, music, dancing, and clothing choices.

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A Perspective on Iran's Post-Revolution Political Economy | Foundation for Iranian Studies

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The portent, pitfalls and potentials of this unique revolution were, however, missed by the pundits. On the ominous side, Time magazine, in its "Man of the Year" issue of 1980, portrayed Ayatollah Khomeini's victory as a threat to "the world balance of power more than any political event since Hitler's conquest of Europe."

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The Revolution That Led to the Iran We Know Today

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The 1979 Iranian Revolution set the stage for today's tough negotiations over Iran's alleged nuclear ambitions. WSJ's Jason Bellini has The Short History of Iran's revolutionary ideals.