Nature of the 1979 Iranian Revolution
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The Iranian Revolution took place in 1979 but could be foreseen in some form several years before that. Much of the world misunderstood the nature of the regime of the Shah of Iran before the revolution and not surprisingly has misunderstood the nature of the revolution itself. For the United States, one reason for this myopia may have been the fact that the monarchy had been restored by a CIA aided coup in 1953, after which Reza Shah Pahlavi had used Iran's oil revenues to finance the rapid modernization of his country and the purchase of American arms. Nixon viewed Iran as a U.S. surrogate in the Persian Gulf, and as late as 1977, President Carter praised the Shah for making Iran "an island of stability." It is clear that American intelligence services failed to detect or underestimated the widespread Iranian resentment of modernization and other forces in the country leading to the revolution. Fundamentalist movements and conflicts between Sunnite and Shi'ite Muslims occurred from time to time in the course of Islamic history, but the fundamentalist revival and conflicts in this century have been especially important in light of the Western assumption that less developed countries would naturally secularize their politics and culture as they modernized their society and economy. This is not what happened in Iran, which instead experienced the religious revolution led by Ayatollah Ruhollah Khomeini. An examination of how different commentators write
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ned by the West is quite different from the underlying forces seen in Iran and other religiously-based regimes. The first axiom of revolutionary thought in the West is the recognition of individual rights, and the recognition of the individual is accompanied by the assertion that human freedom rests on natural law. The concern is with the cultural role by which the recognition of individual rights generates individualism and magnifies it. The point of view taken is that every human being is an object of primary interest to himself and in himself, not a means to the welfare of class or state or to other group purposes. In addition, that which is truly valuable in each individual is his uniqueness, and he is free to develop this free of oppression from the government or from his neighbors.
Afrasiabi finds that those who consider the role of Islam in the revolution see the people turning to religion because they have no secular political form to embrace, and he cites Ashraf and Banuazizi to this effect:
In the absence of genuine political parties, independent labor unions and professional associations, and freedom of speech and assembly, religion became the only rallying point around which a mass movement could be built. (7)
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Some common words found in the essay are:
Fred Halliday, Iran Afrasiabi, Latin American, Fahrang Khomeini, Ashraf Banuazizi, Iranian Revolution, Islamic Revolution, God Iran, West Weber, MERIP Reports, iranian revolution, merip reports, islamic populism, 69 july-august 1978, ibid 15, 69 july-august, reports 69, fred halliday, july-august 1978, merip reports 69, reports 69 july-august, recognition individual, latin american, york simon schuster, simon schuster 1989,
Approximate Word count = 3729
Approximate Pages = 15 (250 words per page)
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