The Cause of The Iranian Revolution
By Jon Curme '02
The Ayatollah Ruhollah Khomeini led the revolution of the Iranian people against
the shah because they were dissatisfied with his government’s rule. The Shah was
spending all of the money earned from the sale of the Iranian oil on the purchase
of top of the line American military products, leaving very little money to be
reinvested back into the Iranian economy. Many of the religious leaders were also
angry with the Shah because he continued to westernize the country at a rapid
rate, losing focus on it Islamic ways of life. With the building dissatisfaction that
many of the high religious leaders had
expressed years earlier in the sixties
resurfacing, the Shah faced a crumbling
country and was forced to use martial law
to control his revolting people. The
Ayatollah Ruhollah Khomeini and his
efforts to keep Iran an Islamic nation free
of the Shah’s touch caused the fall of the
Shah’s regime in Iran.
What led up to the revolution was an
amalgam of things, including the anger of
the people at their mistreatment at the
hands of the Shah to the rebellious words
of the Ayatollah Ruhollah Khomeini from
1963 to 1979, which were debasing the
Shah even in the early sixties. Khomeini
leveled accusation after accusation at the Shah from the early sixties to his exile to
Turkey in October 1964. The Ayatollah used his religious
weight to mar the Shah. Khomeini did this with words
telling of the Shah’s governmental corruption, of his
constitutional violations, and most importantly of his
unholy westoxication, his imitation of things western. (Sick
10) All of the Iranian peoples rights were being altered
from their traditional Islamic ways and rights to the more
free and Western rights that almost all Westerners were
experiencing at that time. The Ayatollah was arrested on
three separate occasions, for his debasement of the Shah.
Once in March and once in June of 1963, and finally in
October on 1964 when he was exiled to Turkey. (Sick 11)
The Iranians also had economic and political causes for the rebellious movements
of nineteen seventy-eight and nineteen seventy-nine. The Shah was spending all
of his countries oil finances on foreign products, channeling away money from
the Iranian economy and severely weakening the country's economy. Labor was
also moved away from the country to exports, further weakening the Iranian
economy. (Fischer 190) The Shah was funneling all of his country’s economy into
a deal that he had made with President Nixon. This deal was one in which the
Shah would be allowed by the US government to buy any top of the line
American military products if he would watch out for American interests in the
Persian Gulf. The Shahs government was in an unstable position to say the least,
but the arrangement was great for the Unite States of America. (Sick 13)
During the late nineteen seventies the revolutionary acts of the Iranian’s against
the Shah began to resettle around the Ayatolluh Khomeini, (Trescot par 7) who
was leading from the exile that was imposed upon him by the Shah in 1964. This
pressure forced the Shah into releasing many political prisoners to improve his
public image (Iran, a country study 43) Mourners for the death of Khomeini’s son
on 11/3/77 had a violent clash with the police. (Fischer 193) In 1977 during the
Shah’s two-day visit to the US capital on 11/15/77 and 11/16/77 about sixty
thousand Iranian students swarmed to Washington D.C. to protest and shout antiShah slogans, proving that even the Iranian peoples that were not under his rule
wanted him to be removed from power. (Sick 28) The dissident students had been
protesting throughout the Shah’s entire regime. Also on the fifteenth, sixteenth,
and twenty-fifth of November, the Iranian police arrested many dissidents in Iran
for chanting
anti-shah
slogans.
(Fischer 43)
It is widely
accepted that
the Iranian
revolution
against the
Shah began in
January of
1978, when
the police
killed many
religious
demonstrators in the town of Qum. (Sick 34) In January of 1978 the Iranian paper
Etalaat published an article that proclaimed Khomeini as a British spy, in an
attempt to bring back the peoples hatred of the British from the days of the AngloPersian Oil Company. (Iran 43) The police killed close to seventy students in a
march with the focus of bring back Khomeini to the country. In March of 1978,
Ayatollah Khomeini called for the Shah’s assassination to end his corrupt
government’s rule. By midsummer of nineteen seventy-eight, all parts of Iranian
society had joined in with one part of the rebellion or another. (Fischer 194-6) In
an effort to reduce the Shah’s greedy spending the bank and oil workers went on
strike, and the economy of the country plummeted, the oil strike having reduced
the barreling of oil from six million a day, to 1.1 million per day. (Fischer 200-2)
In the Islamic faith for a martyr to truly be a martyr there must me a fortieth day
commemoration of the event. So to prevent the death of Khomeini’s son from
being an official one, the Shah’s government banned any commemoration. The
police had a clash Qum, which resulted in the deaths of 70 students, who were
members of a group demanding the return of Khomeini. ("Shah" par 2) Forty days
later a commemoration march was done also demanding the return of Khomeini,
but this one took place in Tabriz. More than one hundred people were killed at
this protest on February 18th. Again forty days later over a hundred people were
killed for the same reasons, but this time in the city of Yazd. This pattern became
constant and when the month of August rolled around the protests were very
frequent in almost all areas. ("Shah" par 3) To "celebrate" the 25th anniversary of
the restoration of the shah’s monarchy, rebels torched the Rex Movie Theater, in
Abadon, where more that four hundred people burned alive. (Fischer 197) On
Friday, September the eighth, 1978, at a demonstration to bring back Khomeini
and dethrone the Shah, soldiers firing into the crowd a Jaheh Square, in Tehran
killed over 87 people. (Iran 45)
The next four months of the revolution that Khomeini had spawned, was a
whirlwind of successes for the revolutionaries and series of failures for the Shah’s
government. In mid-October Khomeini was further exiled from Iraq, completely
put of the Middle East to France. In
France the Ayatollah gained even more
power because now he had access to the
world at large. (Iran 45) In his book, All
Fall Down, Gary Sick mention s a time in
early November when "the Shah
confesses to the American Ambassador
that he is leaning towards abdication." In
December of ’78, the Shah’s troops
continue to make a fiasco of the situation
by slaughtering one hundred and twenty
people at a funeral. On the ninth and tenth
of December the biggest anti-shah’s
government marches in the year took
place, each possessing over several
hundred thousand people in their ranks.
Later in the month the Shah begins to
make official negotiations with all the
leaders of his revolting people save the
Ayatollah, who refuses to set foot in Iran
till the Shah is gone. They reach the agreement that Shapour Bakhtiur will form
the new Iranian government if the Shah will leave. (Iran 46)
The beginning of the New Year marked the beginning last sixteen days of the
Shah’s rule over Iran. The economy was at a standstill. On the fourteenth day of
January citizens of Iran placed flowers in the gun barrels of the Iranian troops.
Also the selfsame soldiers who had been fighting to keep the Shah in power were
displaying pictures of the Khomeini on their vehicles. (Fischer 209-10) Two days
later The Shah, Mohammed Reza Shah Pahlevi, fled the
country and lost power for the second and final time. On
the first day of February the Ayatollah Ruhollah
Khomeini returned to Iran
triumphantly. The next day
Khomeini declared Iran an
Islamic Republic, and
became the leader of Iran.
(Fischer 181-3)
The Ayatollah Ruhollah
Khomeini was a major
player in the downfall of the Shah. He began the process of removing the Shah in
the early sixties, which got him exiled to Turkey, then to Iraq, and finally to
France for the last three months of the revolution. He incited the religious mobs to
swarm and revolt, which gave the other groups the courage to revolt in the name
of the economy. The strikes and demonstrations weakened the Shah’s precarious
position to a point were he had to abdicate, giving the country over to the people,
who then installed Khomeini as there religious and political leader. The Iranian
revolution would have gotten off of the ground a couple of years later except for
the Ayatollah to spur the way, by making an example of himself. With out the
influence and deeds of the Ayatollah Ruhollah Khomeini, the Iranian revolution
would never have gotten as far as it did. This just goes to show how much of an
influence that one man can have. For more on the history of Iran, click here
http://encyclopedia.com/index.html For more about the Ayatollah Ruhollah
Khomeini click here http://www.infoplease.com/ce5/CE028297.html For more on
the Shah and Khomeini, click here
http://www.iranian.com/History/June97/Leaders/index.shtml
Bibliography
Fischer, Michael J. Iran: From Religious Dispute to Revolution, Harvard University Press,
1980, pg. 181 - 231
"Shah and revolution" wsu.edu,1997 paragraphs 1-9 10/1/98
Trescot, Andrew, Iran, The Shah, and the West,6/20/98 paragraphs, 1-8, 10/1/98
Iran, a Country Study, US government, 1989,
pg. 41-46
Sick, Gary; All Fall Down; Random House New York; 1985; Pg. 3-34