Reading Time: 4 minutes In 1979 the Iranian Islamic Revolution shook the global geopolitical structure and changed the face of a whole country and its politics in a dramatic manner. Four decades and some change later, there seems to be a different kind of change brewing in Iran
In 1979 the Iranian Islamic Revolution shook the global geopolitical structure and changed the face of a whole country and its politics in a dramatic manner. Four decades and some change later, there seems to be a different kind of change brewing in Iran.
In this article, we will be reviewing what happened prior to and during the Islamic revolution in Iran and then provide some contrast with the ongoing country-wide protests that have rocked the nation since the death of Mahsa Amini on the sixteenth of September of this year.
This is not to say that the current protests are in any way close to what happened four decades ago. Still, there are some parallels to what happened in the past and what is currently ongoing that make for exciting discourse-especially when we talk about the Irani populace, human rights, women’s rights, and the geopolitical standing of Iran in the middle-east.
So let us begin with a brief going-over of the 1979 Islamic revolution in Iran and find some aspects of the situation then that can be taken as a lesson for what is happening currently and in the future in the great nation of Iran.
The Islamic revolution was, contrary to popular opinion, building up for many years before it actually happened.
It was actually pretty easy to predict that the monarchical system of Iran was not something that could persist for long even in the fifties and sixties. Foreign intervention at first by the UK and then almost every other relevant superpower had left Iran in a very fragile state for decades.
The monarchy itself was actually heavily influenced by foreign powers so much so that it was common knowledge that the Iranian government was more of a puppet government than anything else. Russia, the UK, and then the USA used Iran as an object of a geo-political tug of war since the beginning of the twentieth century. Reza Shah Pahlavi’s monarchy was established with the help of the UK in 1921.
A couple of decades on, it was the UK that pushed Reza out and allowed his son (also Raza Pahlavi) to take the reigns of the nation. At this point, however, the Irani people were becoming a little disillusioned by this foreign intervention. This started to cause some problems for the monarchy in 1952. There was a power struggle between the Shah and the Prime Minister of Iran Mohammed Mossadegh. But the CIA and the MI6 allowed the scales to be tipped in Raza Pahlavi’s favor and Mossadegh faced a coup, leaving the Shah with the power to do as he pleased.
The details of both CIA and MI6 involvement have been made public by the CIA in 2017 and a report by the Observer that came much before.
The Shah began the White Revolution-an aggressive move towards westernization and “modernization” that was beneficial to an extent but alienated conservative thinkers in the country. This was the beginning of the monarchy being openly viewed as a puppet of western power by the public. The religious leadership of the country began to protest the Shah.
Ayatolla Khomenei was among these people.
At this point, the monarchy was being opposed by soviet backed Tudeh Party and the National Front (a coalition between nationalists, religious leaders, and left-wing parties). Even though the groups of the National Front, specifically the left-wingers and the religiously inclined (ulema) disagreed, they decided to throw their lots together in opposition to the shah. The monarchy suppressed any opposition with censorship, suppression, violence, and even torture. Keep this little detail in mind when we come to the modern day.
1977 saw a massive public outpouring of criticism against the Shah and his accumulation of power. Intellectuals, lawyers, the press, and the public all came out together in an effort to ensure that censorship and violence could not keep this outpouring in check. Ayatolla Khomenei, the symbolic leader of the religious and political opposition to the Shah, exiled since 1964, started to accumulate power. This intensified after the death of his son due to unknown causes in Iraq.
The government, backed by the US, began to publicly disparage Khomenei through state sponsored “journalism.” This was the last straw. The events that followed led to the Shah being ousted with the return of Khomenei to Iran. The pendulum swung the other way, maybe a little too hard, and the Islamic Government of Iran replaced the monarchy in full. However, the forced Islamization of the country left a bad taste in the mouth of the left as forced veils and the reduction of women’s rights across the country caused Iran to regress.
This leads us to the now, as perhaps another revolution is being formed in 2022.
A young Kurdish woman, Mahsa Amini, was visiting Iran and was not wearing the Islamic veil. As a result, she was sent to a re-education camp by the Irani morality police (also known as the Hijab Police popularly). Mahsa was tortured, beaten, and eventually died in custody.
This was not an isolated incident. Enforcement of the Hijab had been ongoing since 1979 after the revolution. The fifth book of the Islamic Penal code (introduced after 1979) had an article known as article 638 that not only imposed hefty fines but also lead to the imprisonment of any woman not wearing the proper veil.
Any protests during that time were quelled with force four decades earlier at the direction of Khomenei. 2010 saw protests and so did 2017 and 2018 with the “girls of Enghelab” movement that was started to reclaim women’s bodily autonomy and the abolishing of the morality police of Iran. These movements since 2010 were a part of the larger Iranian Democratic movement but all of these movements were not as explosive as the aftermath of Amini’s death.
Amini’s death worked in the same way as the Shah’s character assassination of Khomenei four decades before. Protests erupted against state-sponsored moral policing across Iran. Videos showing military-style police clashing violently with thousands of protesters have made their way into Twitter across social media and there have been reports of multiple casualties on the side of the protesters. Four days after Amini’s death, sixteen-year-old Nika Shakarami disappeared during protests and was found dead a few days on.
The Iran protests show no signs of slowing down two months after Amini’s death. One can not help but think about the Islamic Revolution four decades ago. The hope is that the blood that followed the 1979 revolution was lesson enough for the Iranian government and the International community.
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