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A Retrospective

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The Shah, the Islamic Revolution and the United States

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Abstract

This introductory chapter deals with the fundamentals of Iran’s contemporary history, indispensable for an understanding of the dynamics that went into the making of the Islamic Revolution. A panoramic view of the highlights of previous events offered in this chapter provides the necessary perspective. The author argues that the landmark events in twentieth-century Iran invariably resulted from interactions between the crown, the clerical estate and the intelligentsia, and that the imbalance among these poles invariably caused conflict. Foreign influence had also an input. The Islamic Revolution had the same make-up and pattern. The emergence of the new middle class ended the elitist and westernizing trends and brought a fundamental cultural transformation in the 1960s that led the new middle-class youth to drift toward political extremes.

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Notes

  1. 1.

    This saying has been attributed to the American abolitionist John Brown (1800–1859).

  2. 2.

    Shahrough Akhavi, Religion and Politics in Contemporary Iran (Albany: University of New York, 1980), 29–30.

  3. 3.

    Yahya Dalatabadi, Hayat’e Yahya (Tehran: Atar Publishers, 1361/1982), 4–361.

  4. 4.

    Mohammad Turkman, Asrar’e qatle Razmara (contains archive files on the assassination of premier Razmara) (Tehran: Rasa Publishers, 1370/1991); Ali Rahnema, An Islamic Utopian: A Political Biography of Ali Shariati (London: I. B. Tauris, 1998), 194–5.

  5. 5.

    Article 2 of the 1907 Supplement.

  6. 6.

    Article 1 of the 1907 Supplement.

  7. 7.

    Homa Katouzian, State and Society in Iran: The Eclipse of the Qajars and the Emergence of the Pahlavis (London: I. B. Tauris, 2000), 64.

  8. 8.

    The local British officials were: General Edmund Ironside; the British envoy to Tehran, Herman Norman; and Colonel Smythe. Relevant material from the Foreign Office archives has been scanned by a host of academics, notably Cyrus Ghani, Yann Richard, Homa Katouzian, E. J. Czerwinski and Mahmoud Toluei and published in a several publications in English and Farsi; see, for example, Cyrus Ghani, Iran and the Rise of the Reza Shah: From Qajar Collapse to Pahlavi Power (London: I. B. Tauris, 2001).

  9. 9.

    For the Soviet role in the creation of the Tudeh party, see Nureddin Kianouri, Khaterat’e Nureddin Kianouri (Kianouri memoirs) (Tehran: Didgah Publishers, 1371/1992), 77–79, hereafter Kianouri memoirs.

  10. 10.

    Bullard to Eden, September 21, 1943, PRO FO 371/EP6088/38/34.

  11. 11.

    Baqer Moin, Khomeini, Life of the Ayatollah (London: I. B. Tauris, 1999), 60 and note 60n12.

  12. 12.

    For a concise analysis of Kashf’al Asrar, see ibid., 61–63.

  13. 13.

    Moin, Khomeini, 60.

  14. 14.

    Khaterat Ayatollah Hossein-Ali Montazeri, az 1301 ta 1378 (Memoir of Ayatollah Hossein-Ali Montazeri), 54–55, 81. https://aftabparast.files.wordpress.com/2009/12/montazeri_memoir.pdf.

  15. 15.

    These documents were extracted by Dr. Jamil Hasanli (Baku State University) and published in Cold War International History Project Bulletin (CWIHP) 12/13 (2006).

  16. 16.

    Decree of the Politburo of the Central Committee (CC) of the Communist Party of the Soviet Union (CPSU) to Mir Bagirov, Central Committee Secretary of the Communist Party of Azerbaijan, on “Measures to Organize a Separatist Movement in Southern Azerbaijan and Other Provinces of Northern Iran,” July 6 1945, top secret, CWIHP.

  17. 17.

    Speech by Secretary James Byrnes at Overseas Press Club, New York Times (March 9, 1946); State Department note to the USSR, March 2 1976, FRUS (1946), vol. 7, Iran, pp. 340–2.

  18. 18.

    Soviet aide-memoire dated February 28, 1946; for the text in Farsi, see the speech by Qavam in Majles, October 21, 1947, Majles proceedings 15th session; for the English version, see Jamil Hasanli, At the Dawn of the Cold War, 217 (full citation in the next note).

  19. 19.

    Jamil Hasanli, At the Dawn of the Cold War: The Soviet-American Crisis over Iranian Azerbaijan, 1941–1946, Harvard Cold War Series (Lanham, MD: Rowman & Littlefield, 2006), 213–18; for Qavam’s secret talks with Stalin see the verbal presentation of the book by Hasanli at the Woodrow Wilson Center for Scholars, November 28, 2006. http://www.wilsoncenter.org/event/book-discussion-the-dawn-the-cold-war.

  20. 20.

    Details in Hasanli, At the Dawn of the Cold War, 316; see also FRUS (1946), vol. 7, Iran, 498–9.

  21. 21.

    Outline of that strategy is confirmed by both the Soviet and British assessments: see Hassanli, At the Dawn of the Cold War, 328n5; FO.371/52731, 16 April 1946, in Abbas Milani, The Shah (New York: Palgrave, 2011), 123.

  22. 22.

    Full text of Stalin’s message cited by Hasanli from the Baku archives, At the Dawn of the Cold War, 370.

  23. 23.

    FO to Sir Reader Bullard, September 19, 1941, in Sir Reader Bullard, Letters from Tehran (New York: I. B. Tauris, 1991), 82.

  24. 24.

    For details, see this author’s CIA and Iran: The Fall of Mosaddeq Revisited (New York: Palgrave, 2010), 40ff.

  25. 25.

    Henderson to Department of State, June 13, 1952, FRUS (1952–4), vol. 10, Iran, 396–9.

  26. 26.

    Record of discussion, 135th meeting of the National Security Council, chaired by Eisenhower, March 4, 1953, FRUS vol. X, Iran, doc. 312, pp. 693ff.

  27. 27.

    Fuad Rouhani, Zendegi siasi Mosadde dar matn’e nehzat melli Iran (Mosaddeq’s political biography) (London-1387), 375.

  28. 28.

    Record of the National Security Council, Washington, March 11, 1953, FRUS, vol. 10, Iran, doc. 318, pp. 711–13.

  29. 29.

    Donald Wilber (secret internal history of TPAJAX coup plot), page 2, in Bayandor, CIA and Iran, 84.

  30. 30.

    FRUS (1952–4), Iran, the 2017 Supplement, doc. 193. April 17, 1953.

  31. 31.

    Ibid., doc. 285, August 19, 1953.

  32. 32.

    The Egyptian president was hostile to the Baghdad Pact that Premier Ala was about to sign. Navvab-Safavi was received in Cairo in 1954 with extraordinary reverence. A picture of the latter being received by President Naguib in the presence of Abdul Nasser is retrievable from http://www.khosroshahi.org/uploaded_files/7544/1/navab6.pdf, accessed October 2016.

  33. 33.

    Montazeri memoirs, 1–145.

  34. 34.

    Testimony by the two sons and the daughter of Imam Khomeini, titled Sahargah’e khonin (The gory dawn), in Mashreq on line, https://www.mashreghnews.ir/, 27 Dey 1391/January 16, 2013, news code 186500.

  35. 35.

    Letter addressed by Khalil Maleki to Dr. Mohammad Mosaddeq, February 1963, in Homa Katouzian and Amir Pishdad, nameh’hay Khalil Maleki (A collection of Maleki’s letters) (Tehran: Nashr Markaz, 1381/1992), 65–90.

  36. 36.

    Mohamed Hassanein Heikal, Khomeini et sa révolution (Paris: Jeune Afrique, 1983), 94; Seyyed Hamid Rouhani, Nehzate Emam Khomeini (Imam Khomeini’s movement) (an official chronicle), 3 volumes (Tehran: Orooj Publishers, 2002), 1–456.

  37. 37.

    Sabeti/Qanee-Fard, 133; Montazeri memoirs, 1.237–8.

  38. 38.

    Mehdi Bazargan, shast sal khedmat va moqavemat, khaterat mohandes mehdi bazargan dar goftegu ba sarhang gholam reza nejati (Sixty years of service and resistance: Memoirs of Eng. Mehdi Bazargan, in conversation with Gholam-Reza Nejati) (Tehran: Rasa Publishers, 1995), 1.380–1.

  39. 39.

    Ali Gheissari, Iranian Intellectuals in the 20th Century (Austin: University of Texas Press, 1998), 40–41.

  40. 40.

    Moin, Khomeini, 57, 61.

  41. 41.

    The passage is from Hedayat’s 1947 novel, Toup’e Morvarid; English translation by the author.

  42. 42.

    Gheissari, Iranian Intellectuals, 84–5.

  43. 43.

    Naraghi (1926–2012) authored close to two dozen books and essays. His thoughts are best reflected in qorbat’e qarb (Estrangement from the west) (Tehran: Amir-Kabir Publishers, 1974) and Ancheh khod dashat (What he possessed) (Tehran: Amir-Kabir Publishers, 1976).

  44. 44.

    For variations in English translation of this term, see Gheissari, Iranian Intellectuals, 89.

  45. 45.

    For a useful summary of Fardid’s academic and intellectual carrier, see http://www.ahmadfardid.com/jobs.htm retrieved in February 2013; see also Yann Richard (2007), 282.

  46. 46.

    For Fardid’s thoughts, see Ali Mirsepassi, Political Islam, Iran, and the Enlightenment: Philosophies of Hope and Despair (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2010), 12–13, and chapter 4, “Heidegger and Iran,” 85–91.

  47. 47.

    The Kasravi influence is cited by Nikki Keddie, Modern Iran; Roots and Results of Revolution (New Haven, CT: Yale University Press, 2003), 189n20.

  48. 48.

    Ali Rahnema, An Islamic Utopian.

  49. 49.

    Franz Fanon (1925–1961) was an Afro-Caribbean French sociologist–philosopher and anti-colonialist activist.

  50. 50.

    For a critical analysis of Shariati’s thoughts, see the series of articles by the dissident Iranian journalist Akbar Ganji in “Dialogue forum on Shariati,” http://talar.shandel.info/showthread.php?tid=266, accessed February 2014; see also Mehrzad Boroujerdi, Iranian Intellectuals and the West: The Tormented Triumph of Nativism (New York: Syracuse University Press, 1996), 109.

  51. 51.

    Louis Massignon (1883–1962) was a famed French orientalist and scholar on Islam who among other things authored Étude sur une Courbe Personnelle de Vie; le Cas de Hallaj, Martyr Mystique de l’Islam.

  52. 52.

    Russian-born French sociologist, teaching at the Sorbonne in the 1960s.

  53. 53.

    Alexis Carrel was a French Nobel Prize laureate in biology whose eugenic theories had driven him to anti-Semitic sympathies and advocacy of euthanasia for inferior human individuals.

  54. 54.

    Seyyed Hamid Rouhani, Nehzat’e Imam Khomeini (Imam Khomeini’s movement), 3 vols. (Tehran: Orooij Publishers, 1381/2000), 3.382–3, 3.384–7.

  55. 55.

    A three-volume publication containing declassified SAVAK files on Shariati was published by the Documentation Center of the Islamic Republic in 1378/1999 in Iran; see vol. 1, pp. 231 and 237. See also the interview with Hojatol-Eslam Hosseinian (Director of the Center for the Documentation of the Islamic Revolution), June 17, 2007, http://www.irdc.ir/news.asp?id=1746. A book published in 2003 was devoted to this topic: see Reza Alikhani, Shariati va SAVAK (Tehran: Kavir Publishers, 1382/2003). Its author tried to absolve Shariati of charges of collaboration with SAVAK. For the view from inside SAVAK, see Parviz Sabeti (in conversation with Erfan Qanee-Fard), dar damgah’e hadeseh; barresi elal va avamel’e forupashi’ye hokumat’e shahanshahi (Reminiscences of Sabeti ex-chief of Internal Security Bureau of the SAVAK) (Los Angeles, CA: Sherkat Ketab Publishers, 2012), 278–80, hereafter, Sabeti/Qanee-Fard.

  56. 56.

    For clerical input in Shariati’s arrest, see Rahnema, An Islamic Utopian, 321–2.

  57. 57.

    Vali Nasr, The Shia Revival: How Conflicts within Islam Will Shape the Future (New York: W. W. Norton, 2008), 128; see also an interview with Khosrow Mansurpour (a personal friend of Shariati) in Shahrvand’e Emrouz 71 (18 Aban 1387/November 8, 2008).

  58. 58.

    As part of their disinformation campaign, the opposition activists blamed SAVAK for Shariati’s death, which happened in his sleep in the family home in the suburbs of London on June 18, 1977. Rahnema, An Islamic Utopian, 366–69; SAVAK declassified files, 3.53; Sabeti/Qaneei-Fard, 281, 396.

  59. 59.

    Moin, Khomeini, 177–8; Keddie, Modern Iran, 341n55.

  60. 60.

    Discussion paper by Bureau of Near Eastern and West Asian Affairs, Department of State, dated 27 March 1961, doc. 27, Annex 1, FRUS (1961–3), vol. 17, pp. 56–74.

  61. 61.

    Kianouri memoirs, 438; Behruz, Rebels with a Cause, 41.

  62. 62.

    Sabeti/Qaneei-Fard, 163, 275; Kianouri memoirs, 446–52, 456–9; see also Maziar Behruz, Rebels with a Cause: The Failure of the Left in Iran (London: I. B. Tauris, 2000), 39–40.

  63. 63.

    They were writer–journalist Mahmoud Etemad-Zadeh (pen-name Beh’azin), poet Siavoch Kasraei and writer Fereydoun Tonekaboni. The three were expelled from the Kanoon when, after the Revolution, they firmly supported the new regime; see Masud Noqrehkar, “hezb tudeh va kanun’e nevisandegan” (The Tudeh party and the “Writers’ Association”), BBC Persian (January 31 2012).

  64. 64.

    The Marxist-Leninist poet Siavosh Kasraei sang the praises of the Prophet in his poetry readings in October 1977; the Marxist intellectual/poet Khosrow Golsorkhi, charged with conspiracy to kidnap Crown Prince Reza, began his televised defense at a military court in 1975 with effusive praise of the [Shia Third Imam] Hussein ibn Ali.

  65. 65.

    Best represented by Hossein Zedehroudi and Parviz Tanavoli.

  66. 66.

    See recollections of female dissident academic/intellectual Homa Nateq in HIOHP interview with Zia Sedeqi, Paris, 1984, tape 2, pp. 8–9.

  67. 67.

    An Olympian wrestler of unmatched track record, holder of the title jahan pahlavan (world champion), Takhti was known for his affiliations with the pro-Mosaddeq NF. As a result, a myth around his death grew up. Former SAVAK official Sabeti later claimed in an interview with VOA, February 11, 2011, that the champion’s suicide was linked to erectile problems that he could not live with.

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    Darioush Bayandor

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Bayandor, D. (2019). A Retrospective. In: The Shah, the Islamic Revolution and the United States. Palgrave Macmillan, Cham. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-319-96119-4_1

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