Mahmud Afshartus, the pro-Mosaddeq chief of police. The British played a crucial but supporting role to the Americans in the coup—and they are not keen to draw attention to their actions. Indeed, they have never officially acknowledged their role, unlike the Americans, and have been quite happy for Washington to take the blame.
Just days after the coup, the U. For decades, both Britain and the United States publicly denied their roles in the coup so as not to embarrass the shah or endanger their close political and economic ties with Iran.
With the overthrow of the shah in , U. Nonetheless, it was not until March , in the midst of a brief detente between Iran and the United States, that then-U. This history leaves no doubt that the CIA played a key role in the coup—planning, financing, and orchestrating the various Iranians who carried it out. The U. But in August , the CIA officially declassified a document acknowledging its own role in the coup. While the CIA documents that have been declassified in the last few years held few surprises for professional historians, the historical reality of the U.
Iranian monarchists who support the exiled Prince Reza Pahlavi, the son and heir of Mohammad Reza Pahlavi, worry that these documents refute the monarchist narrative that the coup was a popular so-called national uprising in support of the shah and expose the crisis of legitimacy that engulfed the monarchy after the foreign-backed coup.
The historical reality of the U. Meanwhile, current U. Why are young Iranians demanding the return of the Pahlavi dynasty? Media-savvy exiles in Europe. It is uncomfortable for the Islamic Republic to remember and commemorate a secular liberal icon like Mosaddeq.
Mosaddeq was a secular liberal democrat who steadfastly refused to abolish the monarchy in favor of a republic. Within Iran, the official narrative has tried to credit Ayatollah Abolqassem Kashani, a populist cleric who initially supported Mosaddeq and then broke with him to support the shah, as the leader of the oil nationalization movement.
Putting these various politicized historical narratives aside, the documents and memoirs that are now available to historians leave no doubt that the United States played a crucial role in the coup. The consequence was a dangerous regress into sycophancy; one courtier later told the shah that, whereas officials were scared of telling his father a lie, they had been scared of telling him the truth.
Such was the atmosphere at the start of The shah began the year urging his minister of information to deal with Ayatollah Khomeini, a particularly troublesome Shia cleric who had been preaching in increasingly robust terms against the shah.
Khomeini was the ostensible leader of the religious opposition to the shah, and had been sent into exile in Iraq after an especially abrasive speech in Although the shah, convinced that his son should inherit a more consultative system with a functioning constitution, had begun to toy with a measure of liberalism, he held back from engaging with the serious political reform the country needed.
Indeed, the imposition of the one-party state seemed to be a move in the wrong direction. Students, bereft of avenues through which to engage in politics, increasingly allied themselves to the underground politics of the left or to the politics of religion.
That latter move, towards Islam, appeared to bother the shah less, because he considered his primary foe to be communism. On 8 January , a scurrilous anonymous article was published in the newspaper Ettelaat. It seemed relatively innocuous at the time, but historians now think it may have been the firing of the starting gun of the revolution.
The article, which attacked Khomeini and described his character in deeply unflattering terms, sparked a series of demonstrations — encounters for which the regime was not ready.
As a consequence, the military was deployed — with the kind of results that often ensue when soldiers are asked to perform a policing role for which they are ill-suited: demonstrations in many cities turned to violence, and a number of protesters were killed.
This led to political paralysis and the unravelling of a government machinery overly dependent on decisions from the top. Even so, until the summer of few people took the demonstrations seriously; still fewer considered them a threat to the regime. Indeed, in contrast to other Arab states of a similar size and population, Iran was generously endowed with resources and a growing economy that, for all its flaws, held great promise for the future.
By autumn, though, it was clear that the shah was losing control of the situation, not least because he appeared unwilling to take any decisions.
In , British and Soviet troops occupied Iran, and the first Pahlavi shah, who they regarded with suspicion, was forced to abdicate in favor of his son, Mohammad Reza. After a Communist plot against him was thwarted in , he took on even more powers.
Mohammad Reza, who maintained close relations with Britain and the United States, opposed the decision. Nevertheless, he was forced in to appoint Mosaddeq premier, and two years of tension followed. A few days later, British and U. Although these programs were applauded by many in Iran, Islamic leaders were critical of what they saw as the westernization of Iran. Ruhollah Khomeini, a Shiite cleric, was particularly vocal in his criticism and called for the overthrow of the shah and the establishment of an Islamic state.
In , Khomeini was exiled and settled across the border in Iraq, where he sent radio messages to incite his supporters. The shah saw himself foremost as a Persian king and in held an extravagant celebration of the 2,th anniversary of the pre-Islamic Persian monarchy. In , he formally replaced the Islamic calendar with a Persian calendar. Religious discontent grew, and the shah became more repressive, using his brutal secret police force to suppress opposition.
This alienated students and intellectuals in Iran, and support for Khomeini grew. Discontent was also rampant in the poor and middle classes, who felt that the economic developments of the White Revolution had only benefited the ruling elite. Attempts by the Jimmy Carter administration to negotiate for the release of the hostages, and a failed rescue attempt, helped force Carter out of office and brought Ronald Reagan to power.
Iran Hostage Crisis: A group photograph of the fifty-two U. The hostages were released after days of detention in Tehran. The Cultural Revolution began in with a three-year closure of universities for inspection and cleanup in the cultural policy of the education and training system. The Islamic revolutionary regime of Ayatollah Khomeini dramatically reversed the pro-Western foreign policy of the regime it overthrew.
Since then, Iran has oscillated between the two opposing tendencies of revolutionary ardor promoting the Islamic revolution and struggling against non-Muslim tendencies abroad and moves towards pragmatism economic development and normalization of foreign relations. Following the election of President Mahmoud Ahmedinejad, Iran has returned to more a more hardline stance, frequently antagonizing the west and its neighbors while battling for control over the region.
While the revolution brought about some re-Islamization of Iran, particularly in terms of personal appearance—beards, hijab—it has not prompted a total reversal modernization or a return to traditional patterns of family life, such as polygamy and the extended family with numerous children. The political system of the Islamic Republic is based on the Constitution and comprises several intricately connected governing bodies. He is Commander-in-Chief of the armed forces, controls the military intelligence and security operations, and has sole power to declare war or peace.
The heads of the judiciary, state radio and television networks, the commanders of the police and military forces, and six of the twelve members of the Guardian Council are appointed by the Supreme Leader. The Assembly of Experts elects and dismisses the Supreme Leader on the basis of qualifications and popular esteem. After the Supreme Leader, the Constitution defines the President of Iran as the highest state authority.
The President is elected by universal suffrage for a term of four years and can only be re-elected for one term. Presidential candidates must be approved by the Guardian Council before running to ensure their allegiance to the ideals of the Islamic Revolution.
The President is responsible for the implementation of the Constitution and the exercise of executive powers, except for matters directly related to the Supreme Leader. Many people were executed or given harsh punishments for both political and criminal acts. There were no appeals, and trials often lasted just minutes.
In , the regular court system was reinstated, but with the judges now trained in Islamic law. This conflict is often compared to World War I for its similar fighting tactics and brutality. Iran regained virtually all lost territory by June For the next six years, Iran was on the offensive. Despite United Nations Security Council calls for a ceasefire, hostilities continued until August 20, The last prisoners of war were exchanged in The war cost both sides in lives and economic damage: about half a million Iraqi and Iranian soldiers and an equivalent number of civilians died, with many more injured; however, the war brought neither reparations nor changes in borders.
The world powers United States and the Soviet Union, together with many Western and Arab countries, provided military, intelligence, economic, and political support for Iraq. In the same year, Iran and Iraq both joined the Treaty of Saadabad, and relations between the two states remained good for decades afterwards. In April , Iran abrogated the treaty over the Shatt al-Arab river, and as such ceased paying tolls to Iraq when its ships used the waterway.
The Shah justified his move by arguing that almost all river borders around the world ran along the thalweg and claiming that because most of the ships that used the waterway were Iranian, the treaty was unfair to Iran. Iraq threatened war over the Iranian move, but when on April 24 , an Iranian tanker escorted by Iranian warships sailed down the river, Iraq—the militarily weaker state—did nothing.
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