Iran: Doctrine and Reality

Abstract

The Islamic revolution in Iran presents a new pattern of power-seizure in the modern history of the Middle East. Typically, the many coups in the last generation in this region and in the Third World in general were carried out by small groups, led mostly by army officers, who only after their seizure of power endeavoured to gain popular support for themselves and their new ideology. The Iranian revolution was a striking exception: it was led primarily by clerics, it enjoyed mass support (from its inception), and its ‘new’ ideology was nothing more than the return to the glorious past of early Islam and to the ideology most familiar to Iranians — to Islam.¹