CAUSES OF THE IRANIAN REVOLUTION OF 1979

What Were The Causes Of The Iranian Revolution of 1979?



What Were The Causes Of The Iranian Revolution of 1979?

In February 1979, the regime of Mohammad Reza Shah Pahlavi collapsed in the face of an organized popular revolution. This event marked the end of over 450 years of monarchical rule that had begun with the establishment of the Safavid dynasty in 1501; a republican form of government replaced the deposed monarchy. Some scholars trace the origins of the Iranian Revolution to the 1953 coup d'état against the prime minister and National Front leader Mohammad Mossadegh or to the abortive 1963 uprisings sparked by the arrest of Ayatollah Ruhollah Khomeini. The more immediate cause of the revolution (Abrahamian, 2002), however, was the failure of the shah's government to address the multifaceted cultural, economic, political, and social grievances that had been building up in Iranian society during the 1970s. The shah not only ignored these grievances but used his secret police agency, the SAVAK, to repress expressions of discontent and both real and suspected opposition activities.

During 1978, Khomeini was the person who succeeded in uniting the diverse currents of discontent into a unified anti-shah movement. He was a senior clergyman of Shi'ism living in exile in Iraq since 1965. Khomeini effectively used popular Shi'ite themes, such as the moral and religious righteousness of struggling against oppression and for justice, to appeal broadly to both religious and secular Iranians. By 1977, his network of former students had begun circulating tapes of his sermons at religious gatherings; these sermons denounced the shah's injustice and called for strict adherence to the 1906 constitution, which had established a constitutional monarchy, with the shah subordinate to the elected Majles, or parliament. (The shah, like his father before him, had asserted his authority over the Majles by controlling parliamentary elections and creating what in practice amounted to a royal dictatorship.) The government tried to counteract Khomeini's growing popularity by placing in a pro-regime newspaper an article that defamed the ayatollah's character. Its publication provoked major protest demonstrations in Qom (January 1978), which resulted in several deaths and the closure of the city's bazaars. The incident galvanized opposition to the shah and set in motion a cycle of protest demonstrations—and brutal repression—every forty days, the fortieth day after a death being a traditional Iranian commemoration of the deceased (Abrahamian, 2002).

By August 1978, it had ...