Contrary to popular western misconceptions, the Iranian Revolution of the late 1970s was remarkable in that it was driven by a broad coalition of classes and groups within Iran; each with various political, economic, social, and religious agendas. These groups were relatively unified in their goal of toppling the Shah due to his heavy handed, and dictatorial style of rule. Additionally, these various groups and organizations were intensely dissatisfied with restrictions on access to the political process, the tight concentration of Iran's huge oil revenues into the hands of a very small, elite group orbiting around the Shah, as well as a growing perception that Iran was becoming too westernized and had lost her grounding in Iranian traditional values.
The seeds of the Iranian Revolution can be traced back to the White Revolution of the early 1960s (Ashraf, 1995, 32). This "Revolutionary era" originated from a demand for land reform among the peasantry as well as foreign pressure for the Shah to institute some social and political reforms. Subsequently, in 1963 a national referendum was put forth with the intention of promoting six reform measures; limited land reform, women's suffrage, profit sharing for laborers, and nationalization of the forests (Iranian revolution, 1996, 873).
This shallow attempt at reforms had the disastrous effects of satisfying virtually no social class or interest group in Iran. The land and labor reforms did not go nearly far enough in satisfying the demands of the lower classes. A small but increasingly influential group of the ulema within the Qom religious establishment, headed by a charismatic new leader, Ayatollah Khomeini, was outraged that the government was increasingly embracing western values to the detriment of traditional Islamic values; as symbolized by the women's suffrage reform. Finally, the increasingly modernized and entrepreneurial oriented middle class was extremely dissatisfi...