With the acquiescence of the West, Mohammed Reza Shah rose to become autocrat in the 1950s. In 1963, Ayatollah Ruhollah Khomeini, who would later become the identity-forming figure of the Islamic Revolution, became politically active for the first time. Monika Gronke summarizes the events.
By Monika Gronke
During World War II, British and Soviet troops invaded Iran in August 1941. As a result, Reza Shah, who had founded the Pahlavi dynasty in 1925, was forced to abdicate on September 16, 1941, and was expelled to South Africa, where he died in 1944. With the approval of the occupying powers, Great Britain and the Soviet Union, he was succeeded by his son Mohammed Reza (1919-1980), who cooperated with the Allies and was considered their ally. Mohammed Reza's rule did not become truly independent until the end of the occupation in 1946.
At that time, the new shah seems to have been undecided about Iran's political future. Parliament presented a disappointing picture: under his father Reza Shah, it had had only a token function; now it fell back into party infighting, rendering itself virtually incapable of action. In 1949, an assassination attempt on Mohammed Reza failed. The communist Tudeh Party ("People's Party"), founded in 1941, was accused of the crime and subsequently banned. Both the incompetence of parliament and the assassination probably led the shah to conclude that the state could not be run by democratic means. As a result, Muhammad Reza pursued two goals: first, to secure his dynasty with an heir to the throne born to him after two divorces from his third wife, and second, to expand his powers at the expense of Parliament.
The coup against Mossadegh
As early as 1949, the Shah had himself authorized by a constitutional amendment to dissolve Parliament. In the same year, an upper house was created, half of whose 60 members he appointed himself. However, with the election of the leader of the National Front party alliance, Mohammed Mossadegh (1880-1967), as prime minister, conflict with the shah soon arose. On May 1, 1951, Mossadegh announced the nationalization of Iran's oil industry to keep oil money in the country. The result was a boycott of Iran by almost all international oil companies and a financial crisis in the country. Nevertheless, he was given special powers by Parliament for twelve months.
Armed with these powers, Mossadegh ordered a land reform that also affected the shah's inherited lands, which were now placed under public control. The court budget was cut and the shah was prohibited from negotiating directly with foreign diplomats. Such contacts now fell solely under the jurisdiction of the Foreign Ministry. After a failed attempt by Mohammed Reza Shah to remove Mossadegh from office and the ensuing fighting between supporters of the two opponents, the shah fled abroad. On August 19, 1953, elements of the Iranian army, with the help of U.S. intelligence, the CIA, carried out a successful coup d'état: The U.S. feared Mossadegh's rapprochement with the Soviet Union. Mossadegh surrendered to Iran's new government, and the Shah returned from exile.
It remains to be seen whether this was the last chance for Iran to have a liberal, parliamentary-legitimized government, as is occasionally said among experts. For many Iranians, at any rate, it has been clear since then that all important political decisions in Iran were apparently made by foreign countries. This was true until the 1979 revolution.
Significantly, the new prime minister was Fazlollah Zahedi, the general who had led the coup against Mossadegh. He took vigorous action against any possible opposition. To get the economy going again, a consortium of nine international oil companies was formed in 1954, which shared profits with the National Iranian Oil Company (NIOC). These revenues were used primarily to modernize and enlarge the Iranian army-with the support of the United States. Also with foreign aid, the shah built up his feared secret service, SAVAK, which began operating in 1957.
The autocrat Mohammed Reza Shah
In the following years until 1962, half-hearted attempts at democratization were made due to U.S. pressure. Ultimately, the Shah rose to become sole ruler and modernized Iran in his own sense, which essentially meant alignment with the "West," that is, with Europe and the United States. From this point on, Mohammed Reza spoke of the "White Revolution" when he meant his development program, including an - ultimately unsuccessful - land reform. Against these reform plans, which had initially been supported by the majority of the population, there were serious riots in mid-1963 that were brutally put down.
The country's religious leaders, the Shiite clergy, played a leading role in these riots for the first time. Above all, the clergy feared losses of their land holdings, the government's planned spread of secular education among the rural population and the introduction of women's suffrage.
Likewise, for the first time, the most important figure in politics in the future became active: Ayatollah ("sign of God," a high religious title) Ruhollah Khomeini (1902-1989). After the shah berated the clergy as reactionaries, parasites of the people, and British agents, Khomeini responded in a sharp retort. After serving two brief prison terms, he was forced into exile in Turkey in 1964. From there he immediately went to Najaf in Iraq, as many opposition clerics had done before him. Najaf is one of the holy sites of the Shia. In October 1978, Khomeini was expelled from Iraq - at the Shah's request - and went to Neauphle-le-Château near Paris, from where he continued to fight the Shah. Audio tapes of Khomeini's speeches and sermons calling for the overthrow of the shah circulated in large numbers alongside leaflets of the same content in Iran.
Both the government and the intelligence service appear to have initially misjudged the significance of these events. Although the SAVAK also persecuted opposition clerics, a network of connections had nevertheless formed, consisting of mosques and madrasas (Koranic schools), religious discussion circles, and religious associations.
The Revolutionary Movement Grows - The End of the Shah's Time
The actual beginning of the Islamic Revolution can be precisely determined: On January 7, 1978, the Tehran daily Ettela'at published an article massively insulting Khomeini. The author, whose identity remains unknown to this day, probably came from high government circles. Numerous demonstrations and protests ensued, which were bloodily put down by the police. These events were repeated again and again. The security forces were taken completely by surprise by the large number of protesters of all political persuasions. The demonstrations were mainly attended by impoverished rural residents who had moved to the cities in search of better living conditions. The Iranian revolution was a revolution of the cities, especially the capital. Unsuccessful and uprooted, the impoverished turned to religious circles that gave them a sense of security. It was these poor and disenfranchised whom Khomeini referred to as mostaz'afin, "the weak," and on whom he relied with urgency.
The shah himself no longer pursued a consistent policy in the face of these events. He reintroduced the Islamic calendar, which he had abandoned in 1976 in favor of a calendar dating back to the beginning of the ancient Iranian Achaemenid Empire (550 B.C.), released political prisoners, and lifted existing restrictions on the entry of opposition Iranians abroad. When Mohammed Reza Shah also admitted in a televised speech at the end of 1978 that his government had been overshadowed by corruption and cruelty, asked the population for forgiveness and approved of the revolution, even the army, which might still have been able to save his rule, was morally incapable of acting. Desertions increased; opposition members streamed home to Iran from abroad. On January 16, 1979, the Shah left Iran, and on February 1, Khomeini flew from Paris to Tehran.
The Return of Ayatollah Khomeini
Khomeini's first step after arriving in Iran was to dissolve the interim government still in place by the shah under Shapur Bakhtiyar; on February 5, he appointed Mehdi Bazargan, a religiously inclined engineer, to form a revolutionary government. With this choice of a non-clerical engineer, Khomeini reassured wide circles in the military and economic leadership who feared that the Shiite clergy might seize power.
But Khomeini faced an even greater problem: The leftist groups in Iran, especially the modjahedin-e khalq ("People's Modjahedin"), which had been in power since 1965, played a major role in the victory of the revolution.
Their leader Mas'ud Radjavi demanded just land reform, freedom of expression and equal rights for women. Other leftist groups went even further, demanding the nationalization of all farms and the execution of those formerly in charge. For Khomeini, whose goal was an Islamic state, it must have seemed at this point that "his" revolution was turning into a Marxist class struggle.
The Islamic Republic of Iran - By Constitution to Theocracy
Thus, for appearances' sake, Khomeini went along with some demands and increasingly wove into his speeches radical slogans that sounded familiar to leftist groups. At the same time, clerics were sent to the provinces to distribute money to the poor rural population, the mostaz'afin, thus competing with leftist groups and at least partially pushing back their influence. Following these preparations, Khomeini ordered a referendum for March 30, 1979, in which the population was asked to vote in favor of the establishment of an Islamic republic, which it did, predictably for lack of alternatives, with an overwhelming majority.
The Islamic Republic was officially proclaimed on April 1, 1979, and a corresponding constitution was adopted by referendum on December 2. This constitution had been drafted by an assembly of experts, most of whose members were clerics. According to this constitution, the Islamic Republic of Iran is a theocracy, which means that God, or the hidden Twelfth Imam as his representative, is the sole ruler. The Twelver Shia has been the state religion in Iran since 1501. Fundamental to this is the doctrine of the Imamate, which assumes a specific chain of twelve Imams, that is, legitimate leaders of the Shiite community. According to the doctrine of the Twelver Shia, the Twelfth Imam has not died but lives in obscurity. He is a savior figure who will one day return and establish a kingdom of justice on earth.
Until the return of the hidden Twelfth Imam, the principle of the so-called velayat-e faqih, the "rule of the jurist," programmatically formulated by Khomeini as early as 1971 in his writing Hokumat-e eslami ("The Islamic Government") comes into effect. According to this principle, the leadership of the Shiite community, in this case the state, is assumed by the religious leader by proxy of the hidden imam.
This confluence of the deputy role of the clergy with the exercise of actual political rule is not envisaged in traditional Shi'a, nor is the office of a supreme spiritual and political leader of the stature of Khomeini. The idea of a politically active Shi'a was new and in principle goes back to Iranian intellectuals of the 20th century.
By constitution, the religious leader was given far-reaching powers; among other things, he determines the guidelines of foreign policy, appoints the army leadership, the heads of the influential Revolutionary Guards, and the members of the Guardian Council. This Council of Guardians, composed of clerical and secular jurists, monitors, among other things, the conformity of laws passed by Parliament with Islam; on the occasion of presidential and parliamentary elections, the Council reviews the religious-Islamic attitudes of candidates, whom it can deny admission if necessary. With the entry into force of this constitution, the Islamic Republic became a reality in December 1979.