On the Iranian Revolution
A demonstration in Iran against the Shah, 1978 at College Bridge, Tehran. Wikimedia Commons. GFDL
When trying to figure out what’s going on in the Middle East in general and the war in Iran in particular, I have relied quite a lot upon the works of Mouin Rabbani and Trita Parsi, both of whom have done an exemplary job of explaining ongoing events to wide audiences. I’d encourage anyone who wants to improve their understanding of what’s happening to check out these scholars’ interviews and essays. There are also excellent books one ought to read on the subject, not least of which is Nikki Keddie’s Modern Iran, which, when it comes to the Iranian Revolution, allows us to think historically and analytically about what’s often presented as a riddle.
Before 1979, revolutions — whether in 1776, 1789, 1798, the 1820s, 1848, 1905, 1917, 1949, or 1959 — were broadly speaking politically liberal or left. The 1979 Iranian Revolution, however, was the first modern political revolution that was expressly Islamist. Indeed, this type of revolution was so new that both the USA and the USSR were caught off guard by it and initially confused by what it implied.
Why, then, was there a religious revolution in Iran? Every right-minded person who’s discussed the ongoing war has noted that in 1953 the democratically elected secular prime minister Mossadeq was overthrown by the United States and Britain and replaced by the dictator Mohammad Reza Pahlavi, the so-called playboy prince. Yet while the 1953 coup helps explain the enduring mistrust many Iranians have of the US, it in itself does not explain the revolution that occurred 26 years later. It’s therefore also critical, following Keddie, to think about the contingencies contained in the timeline I would like to provide you. Doing so will allow us to answer our riddle, or perhaps think about whether it’s really a riddle at all:
+ Following the 1953 coup, the Shah disbands Mossadeq’s National Front and the communist Tudeh, and in 1957 the Shah further consolidates power by establishing, with Israeli and US assistance, the SAVAK, which spies on, imprisons, tortures, and executes opponents of the regime.
+ In 1960, JFK is elected US president and encourages allies including Iran to institute reforms in order to keep revolution and socialism at bay.
+ In 1962, the Shah institutes the White Revolution, leading to disastrous land reforms and the increased secularization of society, including bringing state education to the countryside and granting women the vote. The ulama is livid with the reforms. Among other complaints, the religious class is upset that the Shah’s promotion of secular education causes job losses among religious teachers. As in many other cases, the dispute between religious sectors of society and the Shah are never abstract or merely theological, but instead represent a conflict over society’s resources. In this regard, as one scholar has put it, “religion is the language in which politics expresses itself.”
+ Hitherto, Iran’s religious establishment largely refrained from entering politics, but in 1964 the Ayatollah Khomeini asserts that in the absence of the Twelfth Imam a righteous individual can in fact enter the political arena. Following a blistering speech against the Shah, Khomeini is exiled to Turkey and then Iraq, where he continues decrying the Shah in recorded speeches that are imported into Iran on cassette.
+ In 1971, the Shah again infuriates the religious class by celebrating the 2500th anniversary of Cyrus the Great and the Persian Empire, in effect subordinating Islam to the monarchy while pursuing an increasingly totalitarian regime.
+ The oil crises of the 1970s introduce massive economic and political disruptions in Iran, as the economy becomes increasingly dependent on oil exports and imports of other goods, bankrupting farmers who move to increasingly overcrowded cities plagued by growing inflation, scarcity, corruption, and inequality. Wealthy foreigners in the cities meanwhile drive up rental prices causing, along with their diplomatic immunity, widespread resentment.
+ In 1976, Jimmy Carter is elected US president and, à la JFK, encourages the Shah to institute a new round of reforms with the aim of suppressing socialism and deep structural change.
+ After Khomeini again condemns the Shah in January 1978, the government slanders Khomeini, leading to widespread protests. After the government kills 70 people in Qom, Khomeini launches repeating cycles of protests every seven and 40 days. The protests represent wide sectors of society including the ulama, the bazaaris or merchant class, students, and others.
+ In the fall of 1978, workers at last join the protests, bringing transportation and energy to a halt. Khomeini increasingly establishes control over the revolution, which is ultimately supported by a resurfaced but weakened Tudeh.
+ On January 16, 1979, the Shah flees Iran.
+ On February 1, 1979, Khomeini returns to Iran.
+ On April 1, 1979, following a national referendum, the Islamic Republic is established.
Okay. What then is the solution to our riddle concerning the world’s first Islamist Revolution? Or why, we might say, is the so-called riddle not really a riddle at all? If we see religion and culture as the language in which politics is expressed, and if we see the economic and political tumult afflicting Iran as a general and predictable result of Iran’s being precluded from radically challenging its subordination to the United States within an increasingly volatile and exploitative global economy, then our independent variable, so to speak, takes us to the beginning of our timeline. Once the Shah, with U.S. support, crushed the National Front and the Tudeh (that is, the left opposition), it ensured that if and when revolution appeared it would not take the form of liberal or left values but would instead take the form of the only tendency that the Shah could not suppress.
The cruel irony, which is all too relevant today, is that many Western observers diagnosed the new religious government, which soon devoured its erstwhile secular left allies, as an inevitable manifestation of a monolithic, static, and hermetically sealed Islamic “culture.” This, as Edward Said and others have shown, was always imperial propaganda masquerading as scholarship. It’s the innumerable and frequently asymmetrical interactions across cultures and the many contradictions within any given culture that make the so-called cultural explanation a fallacious non-starter (to speak of any single “culture” is always silly, but if you are interested in the subject, I would encourage you to watch the wonderful films of Abbas Kiarostami or read Marjane Satrapi’s excellent graphic novel on the Revolution, Persepolis). But of course, Western leaders and their academic and other supporters were engaged in motivated reasoning (and likely projection), concluding that such a government could only be dealt with by force and pursuing an unending game of imperial whack-a-mole that has continued, as we can see via the Trump Administration’s monstrously destructive stupidity, to this day.
This essay is a revised version of a talk delivered as part of a panel discussion at Los Angeles Valley College on April 22, 2026.
