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The Iranian Revolution, 1978–79
Outwardly, with a swiftly expanding economy and a rapidly modernizing infrastructure, everything was going well in Iran. But in little more than a generation, Iran had changed from a traditional, conservative, and rural society to one that was industrial, modern, and urban. The sense that in both agriculture and industry too much had been attempted too soon and that the government, either through corruption or incompetence, had failed to deliver all that was promised was manifested in demonstrations against the regime in 1978.
In January 1978, incensed by what they considered to be slanderous remarks made against Khomeini in a Tehrān newspaper, thousands of young madrasah students took to the streets. They were followed by thousands more Iranian youth—mostly unemployed recent immigrants from the countryside—who began protesting the regime’s excesses. The shah, weakened by cancer and stunned by the sudden outpouring of hostility against him, vacillated, assuming the protests to be part of an international conspiracy against him. Many people were killed by government forces in the ensuing chaos, serving only to fuel the violence in a Shiʿi country where martyrdom played a fundamental role in religious expression. Despite all government efforts, a cycle of violence began in which each death fueled further protest, and all protest—from the secular left and religious right—became subsumed under the cloak of Shiʿi Islam.
During his exile, Khomeini coordinated this upsurge of opposition—first from Iraq and after 1978 from France—demanding the shah’s abdication. In January 1979, in what was officially described as a “vacation,” he and his family fled Iran; he died the following year in Cairo.
The Regency Council established to run the country during the shah’s absence proved unable to function, and Prime Minister Shahpur Bakhtiar, hastily appointed by the shah before his departure, was incapable of effecting compromise with either his former National Front colleagues or Khomeini. Crowds in excess of a million demonstrated in Tehrān, proving the wide appeal of Khomeini, who arrived in Iran amid wild rejoicing on February 1. Ten days later, on February 11, the country’s armed forces declared their neutrality, effectively ending the shah’s regime. Bakhtiar went into hiding, eventually to find exile in France, where he was assassinated in 1991.
Postrevolutionary chaos
On April 1, following overwhelming support in a national referendum, Khomeini declared Iran an Islamic republic. Elements within the clergy promptly moved to exclude their former left-wing, nationalist, and intellectual allies from any positions of power in the new regime, and a return to conservative social values was enforced. The family protection act, which provided further guarantees and rights to women in marriage, was declared void, and mosque-based revolutionary bands known as komītehs (Persian: “committees”) patrolled the streets enforcing Islamic codes of dress and behavior and dispatching impromptu justice to perceived enemies of the revolution. Throughout most of 1979 the Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps (IRGC; also called Revolutionary Guards)—then an informal religious militia formed by Khomeini to forestall another CIA-backed coup as in the days of Mosaddegh—engaged in similar activity, aimed at intimidating and repressing political groups not under control of the ruling Revolutionary Council and its sister Islamic Republican Party, both clerical organizations loyal to Khomeini. The violence and brutality often exceeded that of SAVAK under the shah.
The militias and the clerics they supported made every effort to suppress Western cultural influence, and, facing persecution and violence, many of the Western-educated elite fled the country. This anti-Western sentiment eventually manifested itself in the November 1979 seizure of the U.S. embassy by a group of Iranian protesters demanding the extradition of the shah, who at that time was undergoing medical treatment in the United States. Through the embassy takeover, Khomeini’s supporters could claim to be as “anti-imperialist” as the political left. This ultimately gave them the ability to suppress most of the regime’s left-wing and centrist opponents. The Assembly of Experts (Majles-e Khobregān), overwhelmingly dominated by clergy, put a new constitution to referendum the following month, and it was overwhelmingly approved. Taking 66 U.S. citizens hostage at their embassy proved to highlight the fractures that had begun to occur within the revolutionary regime itself. Centrists, such as provisional Prime Minister Mehdi Bazargan and the republic’s first president, Abolhasan Bani-Sadr, who opposed holding the hostages, were steadily forced from power by conservatives within the government who questioned their revolutionary zeal.
The Iran-Iraq War (1980–88)
The new constitution created a religious government based on Khomeini’s vision of velāyat-e faqīh and gave sweeping powers to the rahbar, or leader; the first rahbar was Khomeini himself. Despite the regime’s political consolidation, several new threats manifested themselves. The most significant of these was the eight-year period of armed conflict during the Iran-Iraq War.
In September 1980 a long-standing border dispute served as a pretext for Iraqi Pres. Saddam Hussein to launch an invasion of Iran’s southwestern province of Khūzestān, one of the country’s most important oil-producing regions and one populated by many ethnic Arabs. Iran’s formidable armed forces had played an important role in ensuring regional stability under the shah but had virtually dissolved after the collapse of the monarch’s regime. The weakened military proved to be unexpectedly resilient in the face of the Iraqi assault, however, and, despite initial losses, achieved remarkable defensive success.
The Iraqis also provided support to the Mojāhedīn-e Khalq, now headquartered in Iraq. The Mojāhedīn launched a campaign of sporadic and highly demoralizing bombings throughout Iran that killed many clerics and government leaders. In June 1981 a dissident Islamist faction (apparently unrelated to the Mojāhedīn) bombed the headquarters of the Islamic Republican Party, killing a number of leading clerics. Government pressure intensified after the bombing, and Bani-Sadr (who had earlier gone into hiding to avoid arrest) and Massoud Rajavi, the head of the Mojāhedīn, fled the country. The new president, Mohammad Ali Rajaʾi, and Prime Minister Mohammad Javad Bahonar died in another bombing in August. These attacks led to an unrelenting campaign of repression and executions by the Revolutionary Guards, often based on trivial allegations, to root out subversion. Allegations of torture, poor prison conditions, arbitrary arrests, and the denial of basic human rights proliferated, as did accusations that condemned female prisoners were raped—purportedly forced into temporary marriages (known as mutʿah) with their guards before execution.
By the summer of 1982, Iraq’s initial territorial gains had been recaptured by Iranian troops who were stiffened with Revolutionary Guards. It also became apparent that young boys, often plucked from the streets, were leading human wave assaults on the front lines, thereby sacrificing their bodies to clear minefields for the troops that followed. These tactics eventually enabled Iran to capture small amounts of Iraqi territory, but the war soon lapsed into stalemate and attrition. In addition, its length caused anxiety among the Arab states and the international community because it posed a potential threat to the oil-producing countries of the Persian Gulf. The civilian populations of both Iran and Iraq suffered severely as military operations moved to bombing population centers and industrial targets, particularly oil refineries. Attacks on oil tankers from both sides greatly curtailed shipping in the gulf. Beginning in 1987, U.S. warships were among many in the Persian Gulf escorting oil tankers. On July 3, 1988, the USS Vincennes shot down a passenger plane, Iran Air flight 655, which it had misidentified as a fighter jet. The tragedy, which left 290 dead, accentuated the heavy toll the war had taken on civilians in Iran.
Meanwhile, a series of Iraqi offensives took place in 1988, during which that country recaptured virtually all of its lost territory. Iran now war-weary, Khomeini announced on July 20 Iran’s acceptance of a UN resolution that required both sides to withdraw to their respective borders and observe a cease-fire, which came into force in August.
The cease-fire redirected attention to long-standing factional conflicts over economic, social, and foreign policy objectives that had arisen between several groups in Iran’s government. “Conservatives” favored less government control of the economy, while “leftists” sought greater economic socialization. These two blocs, both committed to social and religious conservatism, were increasingly challenged by a “pragmatist” or “reformist” bloc. The latter favored steps to normalize relations with the West, ease strict social restrictions, and open up the country’s political system as the only solution to their country’s crushing economic and social problems, deeply exacerbated by eight years of war.