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Third World uarterly
The Genesis of the Iranian RevolutionAuthor(s): Fred HallidaySource: Third World Quarterly, Vol. 1, No. 4 (Oct., 1979), pp. 1-16Published by: Taylor & Francis, Ltd.
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THE GENESIS OF THE IRANIAN REVOLUTION
Fred
Halliday
The
Fall
The crisis in Iran that unfolded through late 1977 and 1978 is one of the most
momentous
events
of the
postwar
world. It is momentous in its
implications
for
the 36 million
people of Iran. They
have, by
dint of
sustained popular
protest,
and some
of
the
largest
demonstrations
in
history,
forced
the Shah to
abandon
his
autocratic
system
of
government
and to flee
into exile.
Many
of the
problems
that Iran
faces,
and which
in
part underlay
the
collapse
of the
Pahlavi
regime,
still
persist,
and
some have been
aggravated
by
the
protracted
turmoil
necessary
to
unseat the
stubborn
king.
But a hated
system
of
political
dictatorship has
been
ousted in
a
spectacular victory.
The
way
is now
open
for a
democratic
government
to set about
using
Iran's
temporary
oil
wealth
for
the
permanent
and equitably distributed benefit of the country, free from the corruption, the
wastage,
and
the
bombastic and vacuous schemes on
which
the
Shah and his
associates
spent
their
time.
The fall
of the Shah's
regime
is
also of
momentous
importance
for
the whole
population
of the Middle
East:
especially
so for those smaller countries
that
had, in recent
years,
fallen
under the domination of
Iran's
Nixon-incited
'protection' and
who,
as
in Oman and in the
Baluchi areas
of
Pakistan, had been
the victim
of the Shah's
expeditionary corps.
All the
petty tyrants
of the
Gulf
who had looked to Tehran
for long-run protection, and even
the
far from
petty
ruling family of Saudi
Arabia,
must now
be stricken with
alarm; and
further
afield, President Sadat, recipient of the Shah's political and financial support,
is
visibly
shaken
by the waves of
protest
from
Iran. For
the
western economies
the loss of 18 per cent
OPEC output is something that can
probably be recouped
over time and
a new
republican regime
in Iran
will
certainly have
to
sell some
oil to
the West once the
present
uncertainties
cease.
But
what the
western nations
will not be able to
recover is the position of strategic
dominance
in
and through
Iran which the Shah'smilitaristic and
chauvinistic policies
guaranteed.
The
CIA has
lost
its
11
electronic
espionage ground
stations
along
the
1,000
mile
Iranian-Soviet border. The thousands of
US military personnel,
seconded
and contracted by the
Department of Defense, have left.
The
arms sales
have
slumped, and the
new government, and even Carter
himself, have now agreed
that
Iran will
no
longer be able to police the Gulf. The conservative rulers
of
the
October 1979Volume I No. 4
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2
THIRD
WORLD
QUARTERLY
Middle
East and
the western
interests
allied to
them
had
been thinking
for
years
that they had worked out a new viable system for controlling the Middle East
and managing
the
production
of oil
and the
recycling
of oil revenues. Just
as
it
appeared
that
the main
substantive
difficulties
were
over
-
with the Camp
David
agreement,
and
a moderate
pricing policy
in OPEC
- a new
and
unexpected
actor
has
come
rushirng
onto
the
stage:
the
oppressed
masses. Somehow
the
planners
and sheikhs
had forgotten
to programme
this
one
in,
and the few
who
had tried
to
raise
their
heads
before
in
the mountains
of Dhofar,
or
in the
poorer
backstreets
of
Cairo,
had
been
ruthlessly
crushed
and
forgotten
by
their
complacent
oppressors.
No
more.
There
are apparently
superficial
aspects
of
the upsurge
in Iran
that,
in a
way,
can provide an insight into the natureof what is happening. The most obvious
is
that
the fall
of the
Shah
was
extremely
sudden.
No one
-
neither
the
Shah
nor
the
CIA nor
the
opposition
themselves
-
expected
matters
to
move
so
quickly.
Why
was
this so? The
apparent
security
and
calm in
Iran,
confirmed
by a tribe
of sycophantic
writers
at
home
and in the
western
press,
was of
course
deceptive;
great
hostility
lay
beneath
the surface
and
was only
kept down
by
systematic
brutality,
the
extent
of
which
has become
fully
apparent
now
that
people
are
free
to talk.
At the
same
time the
crisis has shown
how fragile
the
Shah's
whole system
of government
was,
and the
unsteady
social
and political
foundations
on
which
it
rested,
a weakness
that was again
concealed
by
the
atmosphere
of
censorship,
terror
and
official rhetoric
that
prevailed
in
fran.
Both
these
aspects
of
the
Iranian
situation
revealed
by
the 1978
crisis
-
the
enormous
well
of
underground
hostility
to the
Shah
and the
precarious
nature
of his
own regime
even
after
a
quarter
of
a century
of
almost
uninterrupted
dictatorship
-
have to
be studied
in close
detail.
Political
Characterof
the Regime
The roots
of
the Shah's
crisis
can be
found
in three
vitally
interrelated
aspects
of his regime; the political dictatorship,the economic development programme
and
its
social
consequences,
and the
international
alignment
of the
state.
By
examining
these
sectors
in turn
it
becomes
possible
both
to
explain
why
the
Shah
lasted
as
long
as he
did and
why
the
system
finally exploded
in
1978.
The
political
system
through
which the Shah
ruled
dates from
the
1920s.
At
that
time
Iran was
in a state
of
near
anarchy:
the
Qajar
dynasty
whi-ch
had
ruled
Iran
since
the 1790s
was unable
to control
much
of the
country
outside
the capital,
Tehran,
and
in the
1890s
and
again
in
the
1900s
it had been
shaken
by
strong
urban-based protest
movements
led
by
the bazaar
traders
and
the
ulema
or
religious
leaders.
The
second
of these
movements
had
forced the
Shah
to accept a constitution limiting his power and granting executive responsibility
to
an
assembly
or
Majlis.
Even
thopgh
the Shah
later stripped
the Majlis
of
any
real
power,
the constitution
remained
formally
in
force,
and
later
protest
move-
ments,
including
that
of
1978,
have based
themselves
on
the
demand
that
the
1906
constitution
be restored.
During
World
War
I the
country
was occupied
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THE GENESIS
OF THE
IRANIAN REVOLUTION 3
by Russian,
Turkish and British
troops
and after the
war,
with effective
govern-
ment ended, and with the new threat of the Bolshevik Revolution in the north,
the British
desperately
resorted to a new
political
element in the
hope
of
finding
some replacement
for the
Qajar
monarchsto re-establishcentralised and
neutral
government
in
Iran. They formed an alliance with a colonel in the Cossack
Brigade, a force organised by White Russian
officers
with
Iranian
soldiers,
and
in
1921
supplied
him
with the
material
and
political backing
to
stage
a
coup
in
Tehran.
ThePahlavi
'Dynasty'
This man was Reza Khan, a tough and capable leader, born in 1879, who within
a few years had reunited the country and
built
up a 40,000-strong army.
He
deposed the Qajar monarchs and then, after
some
hesitation, crowned
himself
Shah
in
1925, founding the Pahlavi dynasty
which he named
after an
ancient
Persian language. After establishing a centralised state he carried out limited
social and economic reforms: he developed
some
import-substituting industry,
built a
national
railroad
network,
and
expanded
education.
But he
was
unable
substantially to increase the revenues from the British-owned
oil
company,
and
he did nothing to alter the extremely backward condition of
Iranian
agriculture.
Indeed, his only contributions to reforming the countryside
in which
the great
mass of Iran's population lived and worked, were to force some of the
rebellious nomadic tribes to settle,
and
to appropriate
an estimated
2,000
villages (out of a total of
50,000)
for the exclusive use of
his own
family.
His
regime was nationalistic in tone,
and
it is a mistake to
see
him
as
a British client
merely
because he was
helped
into
power by
the
British. He
was a
home-based
despot who crushed all opponents with the use of his army
on which
the
new
dynasty was based.
There were
two
noticeable
weaknesses of
the
regime
he
established which were
later to bedevil his son. First, although
he
propagated, with
German
assistance,
a
new
official mythology about
the
historical roots
of the Pahlavi
regime,
this
new dynasty never had either an active popular following or, in the broadest
sense, any political legitimacy in
Iran.
Reza Shah was feared
and to
some
extent
respected, but he was always regarded by the urban population
as a
usurper,
particularly
as he had first
used,
and
then
ruthlessly crushed,
the nascent
democratic forces that had survived the Constitutional
Revolution.
The
rural
landowners tolerated him insofar as
he left them undisturbed.
He
therefore
bequeathed to his son a rather precarious regime
that had
always
relied
on
repression and on overt material inducements to maintain the loyalty of the
officers
and politicians around
him.
And,
like his
son,
he
gradually
isolated
himself from even the most minimally critical and aware politicians in the
country, with the result that he
made
increasingly
serious
mistakes.
The other
great weakness was that by neglecting
the rural
sector,
he
left
Iran
almost
as
economically backward as he found it,
with enormous
popular
discontent.
This
found its expression in the demand that
the oil
be
used
for
the
benefit
of
the
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4
THIRD
WORLD QUARTERLY
whole population.
Reza Shah'srulecame to an abruptend in August 1941. With the war between
Russia
and Germany
two months
old,
the
Allies
desperately
needed to use
Iran's communications
to
move supplies
into Russia.
Reza Khan
objected
to
this so Britain
and
Russia simply
invaded
the
country,
deposed the
Shah and
sent him
into exile. For
the
next four years they
ruled
Iran
directly,
with the
new
Shah,
Mohammad
Reza
Pahlavi,
occupying
a
humiliated
symbolic
position
as the second
monarch
of the Pahlavi dynasty.
It took the new Shah
another
eight years after
the end
of the war
to
get
himself back into
a
position
remotely
comparable
to
that
in which his father
had been
in 1941.
First,
he had to
eliminate
the
threat
from the Tudeh
Party,
the successor to
the
outlawed
Communist Party, which developed a 400,000-strong trade union organisation,
and
which
was in
control
of two
autonomous
socialist
republics
in
the
northern
provinces
of Azerbaijan
and
Kurdistan
that had
sprung up
under the Russian
occupation after
1941.
In 1946
the Shah's
troops
reoccupied
these northern
provinces,
and in 1949
the Tudeh Party
was banned. But the
Shah had then
to
face another
challenge
of an
equally
substantial
kind from
the nationalist
forces
led by Dr Mohammad
Mossadeq.
Mossadeq
headed
the National
Front, a
coalition
of
four liberal,
but
not left
wing, parliamentary
groups,
and
after
becoming
Prime
Minister
in
1951 he nationalised
the oil
company,
with
what
most observers agree
was
the
support
of
the
majority
of the
population.
But
within
two years
Mossadeq's policies
had run
into
serious
opposition
from
the
Shah
and from
the
US,
who
saw him as
opening
the door to a
communist
takeover and
who
used
the economic
problems
Iran
faced as
a
result
of
the
international
oil
boycott
as
an excuse to
mobilise
support
against
him.
In
August
1953,
in a
coup
organisedby
the CIA
in
league
with
pro-Shah
generals,
the
Shah
was
able to oust
Mossadeq
and
impose
full control.
From
1953
to
1978 the Shah
ruled
Iran
unchallenged
by any
serious
opposition.
Two generals
tried
to organise
conspiracies
against
him
in
1958
and
1961
but
these
were
nipped
in
the bud.
In the
period
1960-3
a
degree
of
liberalisation
was
allowed, but the National Front, which revived in this period, was prevented
from gaining
any
access
to
power.
Tribal leaders
staged
revolts
against
the
Shah's land
reform,
whilst
a
protest
movement
against
the
extraterritorial
rights
for US
servicemen
and against
the
Shah's
whole
programme
was
led
by
the
religious
leader
Ayatollah
Khomeini.
In
June
1963
the interlude came
to
an
end
as thousands
of demonstrators
were slain
by
the
Shah's troops
and
the
leaders
of the opposition
were either
arrested or,
as in the
case
of Khomeini,
sent
into exile.
Institutionalised
Repression
The seeds
of the present
discontent can
certainly be
seen in this
history
of
repression
as
the
Shah,
using
his US-supplied
army, systematically
crushed
all
those independent
and
democratic
forces
opposed
to the
Pahlavi
dictatorship.
What the events
of
1946-53 demonstrated
was first, that his
dynasty
was
in-
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THE GENESIS OF THE
IRANIAN REVOLUTION
5
capable
of
permitting
the basic
constitutional
liberties which
the
1906
cons-
titutional struggle had temporarily won; and, secondly, that it was continuing
to rely
on
the
armed
forces to control the
country,
as the Shah's
father
had
done. The difference
was that whereas
in Reza Shah's
time this
dictatorship
was
perceived
as
being
relativelyautonomous,
without
visible backing from
foreign
powers
and with an
insignificant
proportion
of foreign
advisers in the
country,
this new military machine,
10 times as
large,
involved
the
presence
in
Iran of
thousands
of US
personnel
and a much more
visible
linkage
between the
Shah's
regime
and the US than Reza had ever permitted
himself. Hostility to
the
dictatorshipwas,
therefore,
able to
combine
with a growing sense of
nationalist
resentment
about the mannerin which the Shah remained
in power.
An underground opposition did continue in Iran throughout the 1960s and
the early half
of
the
1970s. The students
struck and demonstrated
as they could,
and
from 1971
onwards,
a small
urban guerrilla
movement,
which recruited
almost exclusively
from the higher educational
milieu,carried
out raids on banks
and
police stations,
as well
as assassinating
a number
of leading state
security
officials.There
was
simmering
resentmentamongst
writers and lawyers,
and from
1973
onwards,
a
growing
number of
workers' strikes.
But the Shah's
response
to this
was,
even
in
his own terms,
shortsighted
and inflexible.
The
powers
of
SAVAK,
the secret police, grew
so that it pervaded
all walks of Iranian
life
and
torture became
a
regular
instrument of interrogation.
Political imprisonment
increased so
that, on a
modest but informed
estimate,
there were
at least
10,000
political prisoners
in the mid-1970s.
The official
political and cultural
life
of the country
was totally fraudulent
and
was perceived as such
by the whole
population.
The press was
censored on
the
basis
of regular
circulars
sent out
by SAVAK
specifying
what
issues
could not
be mentioned, and those
which
had to be given prominence.
Hardly
a
day
went
by
without a
picture
of
one
member of
the
royal
family being
on the
covers of
the
leading papers.
In
1975, over
90 per
cent
of
all magazines
in the country
were
closed down, in
order to focus
attention on the
few chosen organs
of
the
regime.
Intellectual and cultural life was also blocked because of the ban on a whole
range
of
relevant
topics, and
the contradiction
between
what
existed
in Iran
and
what many knew was
possible received
reinforcement by
the observation
of
those
tens of thousands
of
Iranians
who
were studying
abroad.
Many
members
of
the
professional
middle class,
sickened by the conditions
at
home, rejected
lucrative
salary offers
and refused after graduation
to work
in
their
homeland.
The Majlis, as specified
in the 1906
constitution,
continued
to
meet
and
to
be
'elected' but
this was
a
hollow process,
believed in
by
none.
From
the
early
1960s
until
1975 two puppet
official parties,
the fran
Novin
and
Mardom
Parties,
known more
popularly as
the 'Yes'
and 'Of Course' parties,
were
allowed to performa vacuous political debate, but when two of the leaders of the
Mardom Party tried
genuinely to
criticise
the Shah's
social
programme
they
were
instantly
dismissed by
the
Shah.
In
1975,
this discredited
system
was
re-
placed by
a new single party,
the Rastakhiz
or
National
Resurgence
Party.
The
Shah
threatened those
who refused
to
support
it with
losing
their
jobs,
so
5
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6
THIRD WORLD
QUARTERLY
million
people signed up
in the
space
of a few months. It then
spawned three
'wings' or fake factions that, as with the earlier Novin-Mardom debate, went
through
the motions of a
political debate. But Rastakhiz, like the other
parties,
was just
a
vehicle
for
opportunists
and
fixers and no one
took it
seriously.
It was one of the least substantialof the imperial institutions
and it evaporated
in
the recent
crisis as
quickly
as it
had
appeared
in the Shah's sudden
announce-
ment of its existence.
The Hollowness Within
This extraordinary political system,
fuelled
by
oil
revenues and
make-believe,
suffered
from
many weaknesses,
a few of which can be
singled
out and which
are relevant
to the manner in which the Pahlavi
regime,
apparently
so
secure,
was
brought
to its knees.
First,
it was a
very
inflexible
system,
since the Shah
was the indispensable centre and once he
went,
the whole edifice was in
danger
of
crumbling.
But he
was,
despite
his
four
separate intelligence
systems,
out
of
touch with
what went on in the
country.
He sacked those
people
who
criticised
or contradicted
him,
and
the mass
of
flatterers that
congregated around
the
court repeated
what the Shah wanted
to
hear.
A
British
journalist who
had
worked 20
years
in
Iran had a conversation
with the Shah
in the
summer
of 1978.
He found that the occupant of the peacock throne refused to believe that there
were
any
shanty
towns
in
southern
Tehran,
a
fact
known
to
most
franians,
not
least to the
I
to
2
millions living
in
them. His economic
policies were based on
faked
figures
and
even
more
faked
projections
of
what
was
possible.
His
military
procurement
policies,
grossly inflated
by greedy generals and western arms
salesmen, bore no relation to the
skilled manpower available
to service and use
this
equipment.
This abstraction went
together with massive
corruption, the scale of which
has
only begun
to
be
revealed,
first
by the
US
Congressional
hearings into
arms
sales
in
1975,
and then
by revelations inside Iran itself. The
Shah's own family
had massive holdings of undisclosed kinds in hotels, casinos, banks, land,
tourist
projects
and the like.
All
major
economic
projects in Iran
involved under-
the-counter
payments of some
kind
-
?1
million here on an arms sale, a bit more
on
an
around-the-rules permit to use land for
speculation,
and so on. An
illustrative
case
concerns one court
officiaI who used
court funds to finance
a
huge
tourist
project
on Kish
Island
in the Persian
Gulf,
granted 90 per cent of
the
constructionjobs to a company
he
owned,
and then sold
the whole thing
to
the oil
company, and to the head of the secret
police,
General
Nassiri. Nassiri,
and the former
Prime Minister
Hoveida, were imprisoned on corruption charges
in
late
1978 but nearly all members
of the royal family were also
involved. It was
a sickening system of nepotism, bribery and greed that grew out of the rotten
court
system the Pahlavis had
created,
but which was made all
the worse in the
scramble
for money that was unleashed by the rise in oil
revenues after 1973.
This
corruption
at
the top
-
one former Prime Minister
reckoned that about
4,000
families
creamed off the main profits from the oil boom
-
was known to
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THE
GENESIS
OF
THE IRANIAN REVOLUTON
7
muchof
the
population
even
if,
as
with
torture,
no one
was
quite
sure
of
the
full
extent of the disease. It served to weaken still further any legitimacy that the
regime might
have
and to
widen the
gap
between
the
court
and
the
rest of
the
population
including,
and
this is the vital point,
many
of those who
benefited
from
the boom.
For
the Shah's
regime,
although accepted
by
some,
was
never
liked
and
the
middle class
which
was denied
any access
to
decisionmaking,
to
responsibility,
and
to the pickings
of
the boom,
remained
resentful.
This
applies
both
to the 'new' middle
class
-
in
business
and the
professions
-
and the
'old'
middle
class
in the bazaar.
This was
to
prove
of enormous
importance
in
the
crisis
of 1978.
In military dictatorships
like Chile or Argentina
or
Spain
there
existed
a middle
class support
for the
regime,
even
when
such
regimes
were
dictatorial.In the Shah's Iransuch supportwas absent.
Economic
'Development'
The economic
development
programme
launched
by the
Shah contained
within
it
the seeds of
his
own
destruction,
even
though
it
was
consciously
designed,
as
the inflated
rhetoric
of the
'White
Revolution'
and the
'Shah-People
Revolution'
indicated,
to
strengthen
the monarchical
system
and the
capitalist
character
of
Iran. The
key to this
programme
was oil
and with
annual
oil revenues
rising
from
522
millions
in
1965 to
20,500
millions
in
1975,
Iran
received
substantial
quantities
of capital
with
which
to attempt
a transformation
of the economy.
The
1973
OPEC
oil prices
alone
enabled
the 1973-8
Five
Year
Plan to
double
its allocations
from
35 to
70
billions,
and
for the
decade
up to
the
mid-1970s
industry was
expanding
its output
by,
on
average,
15 per
cent
a
year.
Per capita
income
rose by probably
five
times in
monetary terms
to
around
2,500
a
head.
For the
Shah this
money,
which
was supposed
to
last at
least until
the early
1990s,
provided
not
only
the
means by
which
he
could purchase
all the
military
equipment
he
needed
but also the
funds
to
launch
Iran towards
what he
called
'The Great
Civilisation'.
Yet despite all the claims made for it, and the
very
real changes
in
Iranian
society,
this
development
programme
proved
to
be very
unsatisfactory.
While
some land
had
been
redistributed
by
the land
reform
of
the early
1960s,
this
failed
to
expand
output
at
more
than 2
per
cent
per
annum
on
average,
and
food
demand
rose at
15
per
cent.
This stagnation
in
the
countryside
had
two
very
negative
effects.
First, it
necessitated
increasing
food
imports
so
that
whereas
in
1968
Iran
spent
142
millions
on
food imports,
this
had risen in 1977
to
2,550
millions
and was expected
to
reach 4
billions by
the
mid-1960s.
Iran
was,
by
the mid-1970s, importing
15
million
tons
of
wheat,
a
quarter
of
the
total
demand.
The second major
problem
was
that
because
agricultural
output
was not properly organisedand.promoted, it failed to provide adequate employ-
ment for the
half of
the
population
still
living
outside
the
towns,
with the
result
that millions
flocked
to
the towns
and
half
of the
rural
population
became
landless labourers,
even
more
socially
outcast
than
they
had
been
prior
to
the
reform.
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8
THIRD WORLD
QUARTERLY
Although growing
in
output
terms,
industry
remained
a
highly
inefficient
sector and was indeed artificially protected both by high tariff walls and by
subsidies from
the
oil
sector. Costs of Iranian industrial goods were on average
30-50 per cent higher
than
those
of world market
prices
and
with the
shortage
of
skilled labour
after the
1973
oil
boom, wages
for some kinds of
industrial
workers rose by
up
to 50
per
cent a
year.
Most
crucially,
Iran failed to develop
any significant
ndustrial
export
sector not
only
because of the enormous
internal
demand
that had arisen
from the oil
boom,
but also because of its above-average
costs.
Iran's
exports, apart
from
oil,
make
up only
4
per
cent of its
export
earnings,
and of these
only
about
I
per
cent are
exports
of the modern industrial
sector.
Compared
to a
country
like
India,
where
manufactured
exports
make up
over 50 per cent of export earnings,or Mexico, where they make up 35 per
cent,
Iran's
weakness as an economic power
becomes clear.
Whilst not
all that was reportedwas make-believe,
a
considerable amount of
sheer
fantasy and
lies did
pervade
the
official picture
of Iranian economic
development. Inflation figures were
deliberately
understated.
Up
to half of the
monies 'allocated'
under the 1968-73 and 1973-8
Five Year Plans were not spent.
Dams were built
without any provision
for
the water
being distributed to farmers
nearby. Factories
were
given grants and subsidies
when
they only
existed on
paper. Much
of the money allocated
to 'construction'
and
'regi'onal develop-
ment', especiallyin
the
southern provinces,
was
in
fact used
for
military purposes.
In
the chaotic years following
the
oil price rises
in
particular,
large amounts of
imported goods were
lost
through
delays
in
the docks.
RampantCorruption
The money
was,
however, spent
and the question, therefore, arises of where
it
went.
Military
expenditure
absorbed
officially
25
per
cent of the budget
but
given the
hidden allocations already mentioned,
the
real figure was probably
nearer
35
per
cent. Enormous
and
unquantifiable corruption was also
involved,
evident in the luxurious 'Californian' lifestyle of the Iranian rich who lived in
north
Tehran
and who
purchased
over
100,000
houses
abroad
by early
1977.
Until
late 1978
no
serious
exchange
controls
were
imposed
on
private
individuals
taking money abroad,
so that
enormous capital flight
occurred whenever political
conditions
were
unfavourable.
Capital
flight
in
1977 came
to
an estimated
2
billions
-
10
per
cent of
oil
revenue
-
and in
the closing months
of 1978
individuals associated
with the
previous
regime took out
millions each, totalling
2 3 billions
in
the
last
few
weeks alone. The chief perpetrator
of this capital
flight was,
of
course,
the Shah himself
but one businessman was reported
to
have taken out
40 millions,
a
leading general 17
millions and so on. The
visible signs of this inequality and class pillage were to be seen in the character
of
Tehran
itself,
where millions lived in impoverished shanties
in the south and
where many families had to spend up
to 70 per cent of their incomes on rent
as
living costs rose
by up to 200 per cent a year after 1973.
Whilst luxury villas
abounded
in
the north of the city,
the government made almost no effort
to
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THE
GENESIS
OF
THE IRANIAN
REVOLUTION
9
provide
low income
housing,
an
easy enough thing
for it to
have
done, given
the
financialresourcesat its disposal. Income inequalitygrew substantially after the
oil
boom began,
so
that
although
the absolute
standard
of
living
of
much
of
the
urban population
may
have
risen,
the
perceived
gap
between
rich and poor
certainly
widened
too. The gap
between
urban
and rural
incomes
rose
from
under
2:1 in
the late 1960s
to 5:1 in
the
mid-1970s
and was still
growing,
whilst
the top
20
per
cent
of the
population
accounted
for over
60 per cent
of con-
sumption.
To
crown
it
all,
this boom
could
not
go on forever.
Not only did
major
problems,
such
as agriculture,
remain
unsolved,
whilst others,
such
as urban
living
conditions
and
inflation,
were
getting
worse, but
also Iran's
oil-fuelled
boom relied on a continued rise in real income from abroad; in 1977, Iran's
oil
income was,
at
20X7
billion,
only
slightly
above that
of the previous
year.
With shortages
in
all
areas of
the
economy
and
substantial
inflation
at
home
and
in
the prices
of
imported
goods,
this produced
a defacto
slowdown
in
the
economy,
so
that
GNP
rose
hardly
at
all
in that
year.
The sense
of
impending
crisis,
if
not real
doom,
unsettled many
people;
the
first serious unemployment
for some
years
became
noticeable;
and
public
awareness
of the mismanagement
and of
the social problems
associated
with the boom,
spread. This
relative
stagnation
in
the
economy
-
not,
be it repeated,
a
real
crisis,
but
a far cry
from
the galloping
optimism
of 1974
and 1975
-
was a
significant
contributing
factor
to
the
emergence
of the
political
cataclysm
that Iran was quickly to undergo,
for
it
weakened
the illusion
of
permanent
and
grandiose
advance fostered by
the
Shah and
it
compounded
the
hostility
already bred
by
the
inequalities
and
disruptions
of the
oil boom
itself.
The Social
Dimension
The changes
in Iran since the
early
1960s
bred social
conflicts
that,
whilst
largely
invisibleuntil
1978,
nevertheless
underlay
the breakup
of the monarchical
system
and the rise of
a
popular opposition.
Among
the
most
important
changes
was
the migration
of population
to
the cities
so that by
1978
half of the
population
lived in the
towns,
as
opposed to
less
than a third
two decades
before. Some
towns,
such as Isfahan,
experienced
a
doubling
of their population
in less
than a
decade,
and
in
all
a
mass of first generation
immigrants,
badly
housed,
dis-
oriented and
insecurely
employed,
was created. Added to
this
was the growth
of
new employment
categories
that by
the mid-1970s
had
assumed
enormous
proportions:
there were 3
million
workers
employed
in
manufacturing
and
construction,and
an estimated
800,000
in
civilian
state
employment.
In the
upper
reaches
of
the employment
scale
there was a
growth
in
the
middle
class,
both
in
trade and finance, outside the traditionalconfinesof the bazaarand amongst the
professional
classes
produced
by
Iran's
expandingpool
of
graduates
from
its
own
and foreign
universities.
It
is
important
to stress
that
it was the
real,
and to
some
extent
identifiable,
social
forces
that brought
down
the
Shah,
not an undifferentiated
mass
of
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10
THIRD WORLD QUARTERLY
believers.
This
basic, materialist
fact is obscured
both by the
hostile
accounts
given by the Shah and his western sympathisers, and by the opposition itself,
which has
conveniently
concealed
its
class character behind
the flowing robes
of
the Ayatollah
Khomeini.
If
one
were to list
these forces they
could be
presented
schematically
as follows.
The
first to launch
the
opposition
movement,
in the spring
and summer
of
1977,
were
the
professional
middleclass. Thesewere
the
writers,
lawyers,journa-
lists,
and
university
teachers
who circulated
letters
criticising
the
regime.
Later,
the
doctors
were to play
a major
role in the
conflicts
with the
regime,
as were
judges
-
two
categories
that,
because
of the
nature of
their
work,
were
brought
face to face
with the
victims of militarybrutality
on the streets.
They were
aware
of the mounting socio-economic problems Iran faced, apart from being suffo-
cated by
the political
and
cultural repression
of the Pahlavi
monarchy.
The
next
group
which
came
into
public opposition,
in the autumn of 1977,
were the
students,
who organised
a
series
of mass demonstrations
in
October-
November
and
were brutally
attacked
by
the police
and SAVAK. They had,
as
noted, been active
opponents
of the
regime
for
years
and were in
the
coming
months
to play
a major
role in
the street
demonstrations
that rocked Tehran and
the
major provincial
towns. Resenting
the same
oppressions
as the
professional
middle class
they also
suffered from
the
inadequate
facilities
in higher
education
and,
in the case
of secondary
school
students,
from
the lack of
sufficient
places
in
higher education to satisfythe demand for advancement.
From December
1977 onwards
the
ulema
and,
related
to
them,
the
merchants
of the bazaar
came into
action.
The ulema resented their
loss of social
position
-
over
law, education
and
land
-
under the
Pahlavis
and
had
in
the
past
partici-
pated
in leading
nationalist
and
anti-monarchical
movements. Although religious
practice
certainly declined
in the
1960s
and
1970s,
the absence
of
any
other
form
of
evident organised
opposition,
and the real ideological
confusion experienced
by
first generation
migrants
to
the
cities,
enabled
the
ulema to
become
a focus
of
popular
opposition
again,
and
through their
network
of
mosques
and associated
officials,
to
mobilise
people
in
the
streets.
Yet,
if
the majority
of those whom
the
ulema
mobilised
were urban
poor
-
workers
in manufacturing
and
construction,
casual workers
in services
et cetera
-
the
social force behind
the ulema were
the
merchants
of the bazaar,
the traditional
trading
and financial
sector
who paid
-
officially
-
20 per cent
of their earnings
in zakat
or
religious
taxes
to the
mosque.
The merchants
had once
monopolised
trade
and finance
in Iranand
their position
had been
eroded by
the rise
of new institutions
-
shops and banks
-
outside their
control.
But this alone
does
not
explain
why they
turned so
ferociously
against
the
Shah.
What reallyforced them
into
active opposition
was the Shah's
attempt
to
impose
control
on
them
through appointing
the officials
who would
administer
the bazaarand by prosecutingaround 30,000 bazaar merchants for alleged price
fixing.
Nearly
8,000
were imprisoned
and over
20,000 sent
to
the countryside
for
periods
of exile as
a result of these
policies
in 1975
and, given
the
much greater
corruption known
to
exist in the
court, no one
was very
favourably
impressed
by
these policies
anyway. Even
withinthe
social group
which
was relatively
betteroff,
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THE GENESIS OF THE IRANIAN REVOLUTION
1I
there was a strong gap between the Shah and the middleclass, a gap that he had
inherited from his father, but which was widened by the political repression
against
middle class
opponents
and
by
the economic harassment of the
bazaar
merchants.
If
the
ulema did
mobilise
urban
workers
under
the
banner
of
religion through-
out
the demonstrations that lasted from
February through
to
September 1978,
the
working
class
adopted quite
different forms of
protest
after the declaration
of martial law on 8
September.
They
resorted to a form of
protest
much
more
classically
associated with their social
position,
namely,
the
strike,
and from
September
onwards the
economy
was
riven by strikes,
not
only by
the
urban
working class,
but also
by professionals
and civil servants. In
particular,
the
protractedpolitical strikeby oil workers in the Khuzestan oilfields from October
1978
onwards
crippled
the
regime
and was the
greatest single
blow to the Shah's
power,
more
so than
the
largest
street
demonstrations,
for it
struck not
only at
the
repressive apparatus by
depriving
it
of
oil,
but also cut
off
the
revenue
on
which the whole state had
depended.
The
working class,
like
the
professionals,
students
and bazaar
merchants,
were not
just protesting
at
their
economic
situation, although wage demands
were
certainly part
of
their
protests. They
were also
protesting
at
the
imposition
of an
official trade
union
system
on
them
which
was run
by
SAVAK and the
Ministry
of Labour.
They
too
wanted
the
right
to exercise their social and
political
freedoms
and
were
another
social
force
broughtinto prominence by the past decade and a half of economic development
which turned against
the
system
with the
resentment
and
the increased social
weight resulting
from
the prevailing pattern of economic development.
International
Alignment
The Pahlavi monarchy was
brought into being with the active encouragement of
British imperialists
after World War
I.
But the real
organic
link
between the
regime and an outside power was
that formed
in
World War
II
between the new
Shah and
the US,
as the
first
US
military
missions
were
despatched
to
patch
the
regime together after the
shattering Anglo-Russian invasion of August 1941. By
the
time
the Shah came
to
confront the communists
in
1946,
and
Mossadeq
in
1953, he had a comparatively efficient
and
US-equipped repressive instrument at
his
disposal on
which he
continued
to
rely throughout
the decades that followed.
In
1957
the
FBI
and CIA helped
him to set
up SAVAK,
the secret
police,
and
by
the
mid-1970s the Shah was the
largest purchaser
of US arms in
the world,
with
over
20 billions delivered
or
on
order for
his
armed forces.
This
alignment
with
the
US
which the Shah used to bolster
his
regime
at
home and
to
become the
policeman of the Gulf produced
a number of
major problems.
The massiveexpenditureon weapons, farbeyond what Iranneeded for its own
defence purposes, constituted
a net
diversion of
funds needed
for
development.
Not
only did the
arms cost
money,
but Iran
had
to
pay
vast sums for
training
personnel in the US ( 100,000- 150,000
a head for a
Phantom pilot
at Fort
Lubbock, Texas) and for stationing US techniciansin Iran. By the mid-1970s the
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12
THIRD WORLD QUARTERLY
corruption
and bureaucratic
in-fighting
associated
with the
arms
sales
led
to
rueful rethinking on the part of many in Iran. In addition, this vast military
apparatus
served
as the
effective support
of the
Shah's
regime
and
a massive
social
impediment
on its
transition
to any democratisation.
Iran's
foreign
stance caused
hostility
at
home.
No
widespread
rejection
of
Iran's
interventions
in
Oman,
Iraq
and
Pakistan
was
visible,
although
the
student
community
in
exile
was very active
in support
of
Omani
guerrillas.
But Iran's
covert support
for Israel,
and
its
hostility
to the Palestinian
Liberation
Move-
ment,
were unpopular,
and
the
Shah's
closeness to
the US
caused him to
be
dubbed
as the 'dog'
of Johnson,
Nixon
and
Carter,
whoever
it was
in office
in
Washington.
Whilst overt xenophobia
towards foreigners
in Iran
was
rare,
the
presence of a large number of US military in the provincial town of Isfahan,
complete
with
a
crop
of
ex-Saigon
prostitutes,
did
lead to considerable
friction
in
that
town
at
least.
In early 1977
thereentered
onto
the scene
a factor
that is hard
to
evaluate
but
which
certainly played
some
role, the
'human rights policy'
of
Jimmy
Carter.
This
certainly
emboldened
Iranian
middle
class
opposition
and
may
have
given
the Shah
some
cause for unease,
but it is probably
not the
main
reason why
he
allowed
the
middle
class
protesters
to circulate
their letters.
The Shah already
judged
the opposition
well
and
truly
crushed and
he now realised
that
some
liberalisation
was
necessary
to offset rising
criticism
of social
and
economic
policies.
These
internal
reasons were,
therefore,
only compounded
by
the
external
pressure,
real
or
imagined
we
do
not
know,
from
the new Carter
administration,
and
led to
the
first
break
in the
system
of total
political
repression
that
had
persisted
since
1963.
When,
towards
the end of
1977,
Carter
openly
supported
the Shah's
policies,
it
was
already
too
late
to
stop
the
disintegration
of the
regime,
and
Carter's
belated support
for the
Shah
only
served
by
then to
further
inflame
the
opposition
and
to
discredit
the
man
by
then known
as
'Jimmy's
dog'.
Historical Perspective
What
was,
at
first
sight,
a
superficial
aspect
of the crisis
was the
sense of
repeti-
tion, or
deja
vYi,
when
it was
compared
to other ones.
This
was
not,
however, just
a
misleading
impression
and it
tells us a
lot about
the
crisis
to see
how
the
events
of
1978
resembled,
and then
how
they
differed from,
previous
ones.
The
move-
ment
was
like and
unlike
the
nationwide
protests
against
the
British
tobacco
concession
in
the
1890s,
the constitutional
revolution
of
1906-11,
the nationalist
movement
of
the
late 1940s
led
by
Mossadeq,
and
the brief
revival
of
political
opposition
in
the
early
1960s.
It is
striking
how
many
of the
people
involved
were
the same,
or from
the same
families.
Ardeshir
Zahedi,
the Shah's
chief
adviser
and his long-standingambassador in Washington,was a son of the generalwho
put
the
Shah back into
power
in
the
coup
of August
1953.
Shahpur
Bakhtiar,
the
man
whose
government
presided
over
the Shah's departure
in January,
was
a
relative
both
of the
Shah's
former
wife
Soraya
and of the
first
head
of SAVAK,
General
Teimur
Bakhtiar.
Most
of the
politicians
whom
the Shah
tried
to
use
to
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THE GENESIS
OF THE IRANIAN
REVOLUTION
13
stem the
popular movement, including
Prime Minister
Ja'fer
Sharif-Emami,
PrimeMinister from August to November, were names familiar from the 1950s
and 1960s.
So too
were
many
in the
opposition:
Khomeini
made
his
name
by
opposing
the
Shah in the
early
1960s; his main political
ally in Iran,
Mehdi
Bazargan,
was the
directorof the oil
company
under
Mossadeq;
and
many
of
the
tiny political groups
that emerged
in the brief period of
the Iranian 'spring'
-
August-early
September 1978
- were
the revivals of much
earlier
groups
that
most
Iranians underthe
age
of 40 must
have no
memory
of.
More
to
the
point, perhaps,
was the
repeat
of
political practices
associated
with former struggles.
In 1953 the Shah behaved
very
much
as
he
did
in 1978,
fleeing
into
temporary
exile
whilst
leaving
behind a military apparatus
that
might
have restoredhim to power. His morose and, at times, defeatist temperament,on
which western diplomats
commented
ruefully
30 years ago, had,
for the
past two
decades,
been
masked
by
an
outward self-confidence
and
the
evident
power
associated
with
this
throne.
Yet it did not
take many
months
of
popular opposi-
tion,
and the
damage
to the
Shah's image
which this
entailed,
for his old
aberrations
to come out again,
and in the last weeks of
his
time in
Iran,
up to
January 1979, he
was
apparently
unable
to
coordinate
any
sustained policy
in
the
face of the
new
opposition.
Journalists
who met him
found
him,
as he
had
been
in the 1940s, listless and
self-pitying,
and the US Ambassador,
Thomas Sullivan,
was
heard in exasperation
to
remark,
'You would
need to be
an ornithologist to
know
what
is
going
on inside that peacock
throne.'
The nature of
the opposition itself
had striking similarities
and
dissimilarities
with that
in previous
Iraniancrises.
On the one hand,
it was
evident that much
of
the
language
used by the demonstrators
harked
back to much
earlier days.
The
Shah was condemned as a
Yazid,
after
the Arab ruler who
killed
Hussain,
the
early Shi'a Muslim
leader
in the seventh
century, or even as
a
Namrood (the
Pharaoh Nimrod)
who is
condemned
in the
Qur'an
as a terrible
oppressor,
all
the
more so because
he, like other pharaohs,
claimed
to have divinity.
The religious
leaders, the ulema,
were the
leaders of the nationwide
movement
in
the 1890s
and
played a prominent role in the constitutional revolution a decade later. The
calls
they made
-
for
justice and a proper
place for Islam
in
the
country's
social
life
-
were like those made
in earlier times,
with
the
occasional
suggestion
that if
tyrannycontinued
then there would
be ajihad, a holy war
against
the rulers.
As
in
those
earlier campaigns,
too, the issue of social
and political
justice
was com-
bined with a strong
nationalism
and a desire to
see the country
free
of
exploitative
or
interfering
foreigners.
As
we have
seen,
Khomeini rallied
his
supporters
in the
early
1960s on a range
of issues, but
the central
one was
his
hostility
to the
extra-
territorial legal right that
the
Shah
had
just granted
to
US
servicemen
stationed
in
Iran.
Enormous
Differences
And yet
there were certain
enormous differences
between this
movement
and
those of previous
periods
-
differences
that
went
to
the
very
bottom
of
the
crisis.
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14
THIRD
WORLD
QUARTERLY
First
of
all, this
was an
urban-based
movement,
not
as
in
Mossadeq's
time
when
under a quarterof the population lived in the towns, but in a situation in which
50 per
cent of
the
population
were
urban dwellers.
Even
though
discontent
was
present
in
the countryside
it was
atomised
there; by
contrast the urban
centres
provided
the
occasion
for
substantial
displays
of
mass protest
that
represented
half of the
population.
Moreover,
most
previous
crises
in Iran
were
detonated
by
international
issues
-
the
oil
crisis,
the tobacco
concession,
the
two World
Wars.
This
time,
more
than on
any previous
occasion,
the crisis
reflected
the
maturing
of internal
conflicts,
ones
within which
the external
questions
-
US
presence,
OPEC pricing,
Carter's
human rights
policy
-
played
a definite
but secondary
role.
The
Shah's
father
was deposed
by foreigners.
This
time the
Iranian
people
did it themselves.
A third strengthof this movement was that it took place after
the
Shah's
regime
had
played all
its cards.
In
the 1950s and I960s
the Shah
could
always
plead
that
with sufficient
time
he would be
able
to use
the oil
to
develop
the country.
That
chance
came and
went
- 15 years
of rising
oil
revenues.
He
made
substantial
changes
but
ended up
by
leaving
most
of the
population
dissatisfied
and
a few
of
the luckier
ones
extremely
wealthy.
In
terms
of
promising
a
brighter
future
he had no
more
cards to
play.
The
movement,
however,
was in
other
senses
at
a
disadvantage
compared
to
previous
movements.
First,
in
the
Mossadeq
period
the movement
was
led
by
secular
political
organisations
that offered
a concrete
socio-economic
solution
to
Iran's
problem.
In
terms
of political
ideology
there
can
be
no avoiding
the fact
that the
1978
movement
in Iran
marked
a
definite
retrogression
compared
to
the
nationalist
movements
of
the
1940s and
1950s.
This
must have
serious
conse-
quences
for the
kind of society
it will
create
and
for the
leadership's
capacity
to
solve
the dire
problems
that
Iran
now faces. Mossadeq's
nationalism was
secular
where
the present
one is dominated
by generic
religious
ideas
that are
certainly
rooted
in
the
social reality
of Iran;
but
they
do
not
provide
any
readysolution
to
its problems
and may
indeed
enable
its proponents
to underestimate
the
serious-
ness
of what
the
condition
of Iran
is.
A second
weakness
is
that
morethan at any
previous time there exists in Iran an identifiablesocial force that is, for its own
reasons,
committed
to
opposing
substantial political
change
and
which at
least
in the short
run
is capable
of
making
a serious
attempt
to
sabotage
such change.
This
force
is spearheaded
by the
army,
much
of
which remains loyal
to its
own
privileges
and
which may
well
reconstitute
itself
as
the
'guardian
of
national
interests',
and
the upper
sections
of
the middle
class
whose own
position
relies
on the continuation
of Iran's previous
economic
growth
pattern
and
on
the
unequal
and
wasteful distribution
of
most
of
the
money.
Even if the
Shah
never returns
they
will not
want
to lose
their class
position.
Finally,
the
Iranian
movement
developed
in
a situation
of almost
total
inter-
national isolation whereby no substantial outside force was willing or able to
lend it
support.
All the
major
western countries
endorsed
the Shah's
regime
to
the
bitter end
and,
whilst warning
the
Soviet
Union about
non-intervention,
poured
weapons
and
advisers
into Iranin an
attempt
to
save the
Shah.
China
too
was
distinguished
in
its
support
of the Pahlavi regime:
Chairman
Hua Kuo-feng
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THE GENESIS
OF THE IRANIAN
REVOLUTION
15
visited Tehran
in the midst
of the crisis
in
August
1978 and
the
Chinese
press
brandedthe demonstratorsas Soviet agents. Iran's 'radical'neighbour Iraq had
systematically
abstainedfrom
supporting
the
opposition
since
reaching
its
border
agreement
with Iran
in
1975 and in
September
1978
expelled
the
Ayatollah
Khomeini
from his
place
of residence
in
Iraq.
The
new
revolutionary
government
on
Iran's
eastern
flank in
Afghanistan
was
inevitably preoccupied
with
establish-
ing
its own
internal control
and
unable to
offer
any
assistance to the
struggling
forces
across
the Iranian
border.
Finally,
the Soviet
Union,
of
necessity,
took
up
a
low
profile:
aware of the weakness
of its own
Tudeh
Party supporters,
and
wary of giving
the US an
excuse to
furtherenhance
its
position
in
Iran,
the Soviet
Union
tended to teact to events in
Iran
very cautiously
and was unable
to
proffer
any significantassistanceto the popular movement. Throughoutthe long months
of
the
summer and
autumn,
as millions demonstrated
in the streets against
the
Shah,
the Iranian
opposition
was
openly supported
by only
a
few
distant and
outspoken
friends:
Vietnam, Cuba,
Libya,
South Yemen
and Ethiopia were
the
most courageous
in their
support,
yet there
was little beyond political
endorse-
ment
that
they
could
provide.
These three
weaknesses
-
the
ideological
character
of
the
movement,
the
continued existence of
a clear counter-revolutionary
social
force and
the lack of
any
significant
outside
support
- must be taken-nto
account
when
drawing up
any
balance sheet
of
the
1978 movement.
A
Harsh
Legacy
The factors leading
to the crisis
in Iran and the
exile
of the Shah are
therefore
rooted
in
the last
half century
of Iranian
history and
in
the
particular
model of
development
that the Shah pursued.
Although
only in
part a nationalist
move-
ment,
Iran's movement
was also crucially
influenced
by
the pattern
of the
country's
relations with the US
and by what
was seen
both as US
distortion of
Iran's development
pattern
and as US
support for
the Pahlavi
tyranny.
The
coalition that rose to oppose
the Shah
was itself
a reflection
of these complex
origins: it spanned
the new professional
and working
classes, but found
its most
visible voice
in the more
traditional
bazaar sector
which provided
the
finance,
organisation
and
ideology
which brought
the mass of the
urban
poor
on
to the
streets. This coalition
could hardly
endure the
tests of
a post-Shah era
given
the
conflicting
material and
political interests
it
contained yet
it did unite,
in
a
spectacular
manner,
to unseat
one of the most
arrogant
and apparently
most
secure of the world's
dictators.
It should by now
be clear that,
whatever the
reasons for the
Shah's fall,
one
thing
that cannot
be taken
seriously is
the claim that
he 'went too
fast
for
his
people'.
If he did
go wrong, it
was because
he was already
going
in the wrong
direction
-
towards greater inequality, neglect of the rural sector and lavish
expenditure
on arms. In
a very
obvious way he
did not go far
or fast enough
in
the right direction,
that
is towards
building a
truly independent
economy
that
distributed
the benefits
of the oil boom
equally amongst
the
people
and
which
allowed
a
growing political
awarenessto
find legitimate
and effective
expression.
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16
THIRD
WORLD
QUARTERLY
The Shah's
system
was
despotic,
corrupt
and in
the
end
extremely
frail.
Even
on
its own narrowterms of economic performance,it contained the seeds of its own
destruction.
The
Pahlavi
dynasty
has
bequeathed
a
difficult
and harsh
legacy
to
any
future
republican
regime,
and it
will
be
years
before the
problems
inherited
from this regime can
be
fully
overcome.