Iran

E

World War II and Its Aftermath

Following Germany's invasion of the USSR in June 1941, Britain and the Soviet Union became allies. Both turned their attention to Iran. In addition to their suspicions about the role of German technicians in Iran, Britain and the USSR saw the newly opened Trans-Iranian Railroad as an attractive route for transporting supplies from the Persian Gulf to the Soviet Caucasus region. However, Iran's neutrality ruled out this option. In August 1941, after Reza Shah again refused to expel all German nationals, Britain and the USSR invaded Iran. They swiftly defeated the Iranian army, arrested Reza Shah and sent him into exile, and took control of Iran's communications and coveted railroad. In 1942 the United States, an ally of Britain and the USSR during the war, sent a military force to Iran to help maintain and operate sections of the railroad.

The British and Soviet authorities allowed Reza Shah's system of political and press repression to collapse and constitutional government to evolve with minimal interference. They permitted Reza Shah's son, Mohammad Reza Shah Pahlavi, to succeed to the throne after he promised to reign as a constitutional monarch. In January 1942 the two occupying powers signed an agreement with Iran to respect Iran's independence and to withdraw their troops from the country within six months of the war’s end. A U.S.-sponsored agreement at the 1943 Tehrān Conference reaffirmed this commitment. In late 1945, however, the USSR refused to announce a timetable for its withdrawal from Iran's northwestern provinces of East Azerbaijan and West Azerbaijan, where Soviet-supported autonomy movements had developed. Although the USSR withdrew its troops in May 1946, tensions continued for several months. The dispute, which became known as the Azerbaijan crisis, was the first case to be brought before the Security Council of the United Nations. This episode is considered one of the precipitating events of the emerging Cold War, the postwar rivalry between the United States and its allies and the USSR and its allies.

Meanwhile, Iran's political system became increasingly open. Political parties soon developed, and the 1944 Majlis elections were the first genuinely competitive elections in more than 20 years. Reformist parties were determined to prevent a return to authoritarian rule by the monarchy, while parties opposed to economic and social reforms tended to ally themselves with the shah. Foreign intervention remained a sensitive issue for all parties. Reformists accused conservative politicians of collaborating with foreigners to preserve their privileges. With foreign troops withdrawn and the Azerbaijan crisis resolved, British control of Iran's oil fields became the central issue regarding foreign intervention. The Anglo-Iranian Oil Company (AIOC), which was owned by the British government, continued to produce and market all Iranian oil under the terms of the 1901 concession. The AIOC provided a modest royalty payment, which was only a fraction of its annual profits, to the government of Iran. As early as the 1930s, some Iranians began advocating the nationalization of the country's oil fields; after 1946, this effort developed into a major popular movement.

F

Mosaddeq and Oil Nationalization

In the mid-1940s Mohammad Mosaddeq, an Iranian statesman and a member of the Majlis, emerged as the leader of the oil nationalization movement. This movement sought to transfer control over the oil industry from foreign-run companies to the Iranian government. Throughout his political career, Mosaddeq consistently advocated three goals: to free Iran of foreign intervention, to ensure that the shah remained a democratic monarch and not a dictator, and to implement social reforms. He believed ending foreign interference was a prerequisite for success in other areas, and he was convinced that as long as the AIOC controlled Iran's most important natural resource, foreign influence was inevitable. Beginning in 1945 he led a successful campaign to deny the Soviet Union an oil concession in northern Iran. Although he resisted joining political parties, Mosaddeq agreed in 1949 to head the National Front, a coalition of several parties that supported oil nationalization. Within a year the National Front had members in cities and towns throughout the country and had become adept at organizing mass political rallies.

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Conservative political groups, backed by the shah, opposed nationalizing the AIOC, partly because they believed such a course would cause irreparable harm to relations with Britain and partly because they distrusted Mosaddeq's populism. However, as the nationalization movement grew, fewer and fewer politicians openly challenged Mosaddeq on the oil issue. In an effort to forestall nationalization, the shah appointed military officer Ali Razmara as prime minister in 1950. This move increased the scale of demonstrations in favor of nationalization and against a government that increasingly was denounced as a puppet of foreign interests. Razmara was assassinated in 1951 after only a few months in office, and the more militant supporters of nationalization applauded his death. Sensing the popular mood, the Majlis passed a bill nationalizing the AIOC, then took the unprecedented step of appointing Mosaddeq prime minister over the shah's objections.

In response to these events, Britain enforced a blockade on oil exports from Iran, a move that deprived Iran of foreign exchange. Although Iran had not relied on oil revenues prior to 1951, Mosaddeq's development budget anticipated this income; its absence severely hindered efforts to stimulate the economy and implement social reforms. Attempts to secure foreign financial assistance proved unsuccessful because most countries and international financial institutions feared offending Britain. The escalating crisis also discouraged private investment inside Iran. Mosaddeq, like many other Iranian political leaders, hoped the United States would intervene to resolve the crisis. Initially, the United States tried to mediate a compromise. By 1952 it had persuaded Britain to accept the principle of oil nationalization. However, the various diplomatic efforts ultimately failed to resolve the dispute.

In early 1953, when a new administration came to power in the United States, U.S. policy toward Iran began to change. The United States now became sympathetic to British arguments that Mosaddeq's government was causing instability that could be exploited by the USSR to expand its regional influence. As the Cold War escalated, world superpowers began to interpret political developments around the globe as “wins” or “losses” for the U.S.-led Western bloc and the Soviet-led Eastern bloc. Although Mosaddeq advocated Iranian neutrality in the Cold War conflict, neither side wanted to “lose” Iran. Consequently, the United States decided to use its Central Intelligence Agency (CIA) to help overthrow Mosaddeq. By this time, many conservative politicians in Iran, some senior military officers, and the shah were prepared to work with the CIA to bring down the Mosaddeq government. The coup, carried out in August 1953, failed initially, and the shah was forced to flee the country. After several days of street fighting in Tehrān, which were instigated by the CIA, army officers loyal to the shah gained the upper hand. Mosaddeq was arrested, and the shah returned in triumph.

The Iranian government restored relations with Britain in 1953 and concluded a new oil agreement the following year. Under the new agreement, the concession formerly held by the AIOC passed to a consortium of British, Dutch, French, and U.S. oil companies; this consortium was to share the profits of oil operations in Iran with the Iranian government. Although the agreement increased Iran’s share of the oil profits, production levels and sale price remained under foreign control.

G

Mohammad Reza Shah’s Consolidation of Power

Although he had succeeded his father as shah in 1941, prior to 1953 Mohammad Reza Shah Pahlavi had been overshadowed by Mosaddeq and other politicians and seemed destined to remain a passive, constitutional monarch. Following the coup, however, he moved to consolidate power in his own hands. With the help of the military and later a secret police, the Savak, the shah created a centralized, authoritarian regime. He suppressed opposition by former National Front supporters and Communists, tightly controlled legislative elections, and appointed a succession of prime ministers loyal to him. In 1961 the shah dissolved the Majlis, instructing the prime minister to rule by decree until new elections were held.

Initially, Mohammad Reza Shah Pahlavi did not demonstrate the same enthusiasm for development and reform programs that his father had shown. His early reforms were undertaken only with prodding from the United States, which believed that dissatisfied Iranian peasants were susceptible to influence by local agents of the USSR. In the early 1960s more than 60 percent of Iran’s inhabitants were sharecroppers who received a subsistence share (usually 20 percent) of the harvest from their landlords. A land reform program implemented between 1962 and 1971 required landlords to sell most of their land to the government, which then resold it to the peasants. Although widely promoted as a major rural reform effort, only half of the peasants obtained any land under the program, and about three-quarters of those receiving land got less than 6 hectares (15 acres).

Mohammad Reza Shah took more interest in industrial and public works projects, and between 1963 and 1978 numerous development schemes contributed to an increase in industrialization and urbanization. The shah presented his program as an integral part of a wider reform effort known as the White Revolution, initiated to prevent a Red, or Communist, revolution from originating at the grass roots level. The middle class expanded, but much of the urban growth resulted from the migration of poor villagers seeking city jobs. Consequently, slums proliferated on the outskirts of cities. Government policy focused on the creation of modern industrial facilities but neglected the development of social services. The construction activity under the White Revolution stimulated expectations of political and social change. Oil revenues tripled after 1973 due to higher prices and increased sales, providing ready funding for the shah’s programs. However, economic success only caused the shah’s regime to become more repressive as his confidence in his rule grew.

H

Growing Opposition to the Shah

Because of his collaboration with the CIA to overthrow Mosaddeq in 1953, the shah was never able to overcome a popular perception that he was merely a tool for foreign interests. Mosaddeq’s ouster had shocked the nation, and over the years his image as a national hero had grown stronger despite the fact that the shah’s government had banned any publications that mentioned his name. Furthermore, because of the CIA’s role in the overthrow, most Iranians saw the United States, even more so than Britain or the USSR, as a threat to Iran's national interests. Strong relations between the United States and Iran at the official level, especially an alliance whereby the United States assisted in the buildup of Iran's military, fed the public’s fears. In the early 1960s the shah's government drafted legislation granting diplomatic status to U.S. military personnel stationed in Iran. Nationalists denounced the bill as a reversion to the detested extraterritorial legal privileges accorded to British and Russian citizens in Iran before 1925.

One of the shah’s most vocal opponents was the leading Shia scholar, or ayatollah, Ruhollah Khomeini. Khomeini was arrested in 1962 after publicly speaking out against the bill, and his arrest instantly elevated him to the status of national hero. Although released the following year, he refused to keep silent. He instead broadened his criticisms of the regime to include corruption, violations of the constitution, and rigging of elections. Khomeini’s second arrest in June 1963 led to three days of rioting in many Iranian cities; the military suppressed the riots only after more than 600 people had been killed and more than 2,000 injured. Fearing that Khomeini would assume martyr status if he were kept in prison or executed for treason, the shah exiled him to Turkey in 1964. Khomeini eventually settled in the Shia theological center of An Najaf in Iraq. From there he maintained regular contact with his former students in the Iranian city of Qum. These students formed the nucleus of a covert anti-shah movement that was growing among the clergy. In 1971 Khomeini published a book, Velayat-e faqih, that provided the religious justification for an Islamic government in Iran.

The shah also failed to win mass support among the secular middle class of professionals, bureaucrats, teachers, and intellectuals. This social group, created as a result of his father’s reforms and expanded during the 1960s and 1970s due to the shah’s own development plans, tended to be highly nationalistic and looked back nostalgically to the Mosaddeq period as an era of genuine democracy. Like the clergy and the religiously inclined traditional middle class of merchants and artisans, the secular middle class resented the lack of meaningful political participation and the close ties the shah had established with the United States. They criticized the shah's promotion of Iran beginning in the late 1960s as America’s security pillar in the Persian Gulf region. Despite their commonality of views, the secular and religious groups had distrusted one another in the 1950s and 1960s. The growing severity of political repression during the 1970s gradually brought them closer together, however, and by 1977 various secular and religious opposition movements were prepared to cooperate against the shah's regime.

I

The Islamic Revolution

The spark that ignited the revolution was a pro-Khomeini demonstration in Qum in January 1978. Police intervened, the demonstration turned into a riot, and about 70 people were killed before calm was restored. From his exile in Iraq, Khomeini called upon his followers to commemorate the victims on the 40th day after their deaths, in accordance with Iranian mourning customs. In February they held services at mosques throughout the country, and demonstrations in Tabrīz turned into riots during which more people were killed. Thus began a cycle of nationwide mourning services every 40 days, some of which turned violent and resulted in more fatalities. By late summer, when it became clear that the government was losing control of the streets, the shah imposed martial law on Tehrān and 11 other cities. This move only escalated tensions. Employees in different industries and offices began striking to protest martial law, and within six weeks a general strike had paralyzed the economy, including the vital oil sector.

By October the strikes and demonstrations were becoming a unified revolutionary movement. From the security of his exile in Iraq, Khomeini continued to denounce the corruption and injustices of the shah's regime, as well as its dependence on the United States. His sermons were recorded, duplicated on thousands of cassette tapes, and smuggled into Iran. The tapes appealed equally to religious Iranians and members of the secular middle class. Alarmed by Khomeini’s growing influence, the shah persuaded the Iraqi government to expel him. Khomeini immediately found asylum in France, where access to the international media made it even easier for him to communicate with supporters in Iran. In November the shah realized that the army could not indefinitely contain the mass movement, and he began making plans for his departure from Iran. He left the country in mid-January 1979. Two weeks later, Khomeini returned to Iran in triumph after more than 14 years in exile. On February 11, 1979, the royalist government was overthrown, and in a referendum on April 1 Iranians voted overwhelmingly to establish an Islamic republic.

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