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Hostages at the U.S. embassy in Teheran.

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Revolutionaries in the street of Teheran, January 28th 1979

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Question 3 & 4
PRELUDE

- Economic difficulties, the oil crisis in the 70'ies, heavy government spending, inflation.
- Suppression of political outlet, censorship, surveillance, harrasment and illegal torture and detention.
- Rapid cultural change, a traditional, conservative rural society turned into a modern, industrial and urban society. The governement failed to deliver what was promised, either through corruption or incompetence.

REVOLUTION
- Ayatollah Ruhollah Khomeini, exiled since 1964 for speaking against the Shah's
- January 1978, Madrassa school students and other youth (mostly unemployed immigrants from the rural areas) protest. Many protesters where killed -
Martydom being a fundamental role in the religious expression, this fuelled more protests.
- Both the secular left and the religious right where fighting under the cloak of the Shiite Islam and Khomeini.
- January 1979, the Shah and his family go 'on vacation' - fleeing Iran. The Regency Council and hastily appointed Prime Minister Shahpur Bakhtiar fail to govern the country.
- April 1. 1979 Khomeini declares Iran an Islamic republic. Left-wing, nationalist and intellectual revolutionaries are excluded from power by elements within the clergy.
- Suppression of oppisition, for example by the Revolutionary Guards, an informal religious millitia formed by Khomeini to prevent a coup from the CIA, who enforced Islamic codes of dress and behaviour and made an effort to suppress Western influences.
- November 1979, Iranian protesters take 66 people hostage in the U.S. Embassy in Tehran, demanding the Shah extradet from the U.S.
- December 1979, a religious government was formed. This gave great power to the Rahbar (or leader), Kohmeini being the first Rahbar.

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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.

Ruhollah Khomeini AP

Prelude to revolution

The 1979 revolution, which brought together Iranians across many different social groups, has its roots in Iran's long history. These groups, which included clergy, landowners, intellectuals, and merchants, had previously come together in the Constitutional Revolution of 1905-11. Efforts toward satisfactory reform were continually stifled, however, amid reemerging social tensions as well as foreign intervention from Russia, the United Kingdom, and, later, the United States. The United Kingdom helped Reza Shah Pahlavi establish a monarchy in 1921. Along with Russia, the U.K. then pushed Reza Shah into exile in 1941, and his son Mohammad Reza Pahlavi took the throne. In 1953, amid a power struggle between Mohammed Reza Shah and Prime Minister Mohammad Mosaddegh, the U.S. Central Intelligence Agency (CIA) and the U.K. Secret Intelligence Service (MI6) orchestrated a coup against Mosaddegh's government.

Reza Shah Pahlavi Keystone/FPG

Years later, Mohammad Reza Shah dismissed the parliament and launched the White Revolution-an aggressive modernization program that upended the wealth and influence of landowners and clerics, disrupted rural economies, led to rapid urbanization and Westernization, and prompted concerns over democracy and human rights. The program was economically successful, but the benefits were not distributed evenly, though the transformative effects on social norms and institutions were widely felt. Opposition to the shah's policies was accentuated in the 1970s, when world monetary instability and fluctuations in Western oil consumption seriously threatened the country's economy, 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 shah's regime 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.

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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 Shiʿi 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 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 migrants 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 madrasah (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 Shiʿi 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 Shiʿi 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 Shiʿi 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.

The violence and disorder continued to escalate. On September 8 the regime imposed martial law, and troops opened fire against demonstrators in Tehrān, killing dozens or hundreds. Weeks later, government workers began to strike. On October 31, oil workers also went on strike, bringing the oil industry to a halt. Demonstrations continued to grow; on December 10, hundreds of thousands of protesters took to the streets in Tehrān alone.

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, on February 11, Iran's armed forces declared their neutrality, effectively ousting the shah's regime. Bakhtiar went into hiding, eventually to find exile in France.

date

January 1978 - April 1, 1979

location

key people

related topics

did you know?

The groups that opposed the Shah did not have what one might imagine as a cohesive political ideology or vision; they included far right-wing clergy who favored a theocratic government, nationalists, and far left-wing interests such as communists.

This Revolution was partly a movement against the Westernization that accompanied modernization and the Shah starting in the 1950s.

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Iranian Revolution | Causes, Effects, & Facts

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Iranian Revolution, popular uprising in 1978-79 that resulted in the fall of the Pahlavi dynasty and the establishment of an Islamic republic. It came about as the culmination of decades of popular discontent mixed with economic turmoil and an increasingly repressive regime.

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Shah of Iran

1. When and how did the Shah of Iran (Mohammad Reza Pahlavi) come to power? What was the US’s role in him becoming Shah?

After World War I, Britain had a major interest in Iran because of its oil and petroleum resources. A deal between Britain and Iran provided Britain with generous profits from the Anglo-Iranian Oil Company in exchange for providing Iran with military and political support. Over time, a nationalist opposition to this external partnership grew and as this intensified the Minister of Defence in Iran, Reza Khan, who was pro-Westernization crowned himself the leader of Iran as Reza Shah Pahlavi in 1925 with the support from Britain. This was the end of the Qajar dynasty and the beginning of the Pahlavi dynasty which was to last until 1978. During Reza Shah Pahlavi’s leadership, Iran was in constant conflict with Britain, mostly because of the British influence on Iran through the Anglo-Iranian Oil Company. In a trial to distance himself from the British influence, the shah developed a strong alliance with Germany, and had close connections to the Soviet Union in the years of pre-World War II. At the outbreak of the war, the shah declared Iran to be a neutral country which led the Allies to suspect an Iranian-German cooperation. The Allies insisted that Iran should quit the cooperation with Germany but as Pahlavi refused, Britain and the USSR invaded Iran. Despite the pressure from the Allies, Reza Shah Pahlavi refused to cooperate with Britain and the USSR, and on September 16th, 1941, he was forcibly dethroned and sent into exile. His son, Mohammad Reza Shah Pahlavi inherited the throne and was to be the ruler of Iran until the doom of the Pahlavi dynasty in 1978.

After World War II, Britain and the US withdrew as they had promised, but the Soviet Reunion remained within the Iranian territory. In post-war time, Mohammad Shah Reza appealed to the UN for assistance, in order to relieve his country from the Soviet occupation. At the time, the US was the only nuclear power in the world, and a letter from President H. Truman to Stalin resulted in withdrawal of the Soviet troops as well. This success implied a further alliance between Iran and the US.

The British influence on the oil industry in Iran still caused tension throughout Iran. The politician Muhammad Mosaddeq had become the leader of a movement to nationalize the Iranian oil industry and to have Britain removed. In 1951 he was appointed as the Prime Minister by the shah and in 1953 he had nationalized the Iranian oil industry. The support for Mosaddeq grew intensively in Iran and riots forced Mohammad Reza Shah Pahlavi into exile in 1953. The exile lasted only for a day, due to US’s interference and use of CIA to overthrow Mosaddeq, as they perceived the shah to be the only reliable leader in the Middle East as well as the one who supported their interest in the Iranian oil industry.