Iran Before and After the Revolution The Islamic Republic of Iran, formerly known as Iran or Persia, was crowded with a young generation looking for full freedom against the Shah. Persia, once as a powerful country with vast oil resources, soon became a vulnerable nation, ready to accept a new leader to guide them. The people were ready for change, but were the changes they got the changes they were looking for. The people wanted freedom against the shah, (For generations Iran was ruled by Kings) who allowed some freedoms, but it was somewhat limited. The people wanted freedom of speech, so that the press could freely publish their own opinions. They wanted to get rid of a law that made all eighteen-year-old males attend two …show more content…
This organization was another huge factor that pushed the Iranians over the edge, increasing the essentiality of freedom more than ever. The other reason that Iranians were sick of the Shah was because of his dependency on the United States for advice. There is nothing wrong with countries consulting each other for advice on certain issues, however the Shah was asking the United States what to do about every little thing. The people felt that the Shah was incapable of making a good decision on his own, which made people wonder if this man should be the leader of their country. The shah would ask about what to do with government, the economy, and even at one point if he should kill the civilians protesting in Iran. Although this may sound completely negative, the United States helped Iran in many ways as well. Militarily they helped Iran develop to prevent threats from Iraq, economically they helped Iran construct oil platforms and refineries, and they helped with many other things. Even though Iran's oil was a major reason the United States assisted Iran for so many years, the United States was also an important factor of keeping Iran a powerful nation for so many years. This was the reason civilians were pushed to the revolution as well. People were now ready to fight for what they believed in. The people of Iran began demanding the Shah change, and they were now
The United States still kept and stayed on track with its values of freedom and democracy. On the other hand, in Iran, the United States' main goal was to gain trading partners and raw materials. An elected leader by the name of Mohammed Mosadegh nationalized oil for the Iranian people. The United States did not like that, so the CIA overthrew their government and put a Shah in power. The Shah had the same views as the United States, but was a dictator.
This was one reverse too far, for Iran's young “cherish a packet of grievances, ranging from the acute shortage of jobs to the social restrictions that ban most boy- and-girl outings. Restrictive though it is, the system allows discussion of these complaints, and many niggling rules have been quietly eased since Mr. Khatami took over” (Anonymous Iran's second revolution? 13). It was, however, after the police and their allies, the Islamist bully-boy militia, raided the dormitories in Tehran University, where they killed at least one student and probably more, that the shout for change began to penetrate “out-of-bounds areas. The students started to call for fundamental reforms, questioning the legitimacy of clerical control” (Anonymous Iran's second revolution? 13). They even went so far as to challenge the sacrosanct heart of Iran's Islamist edifice, the ultimate authority of the “supreme leader.”
This fact shattered the hopes of millions of Iranians who thought the revolution would bring more freedom, not less. Women lost many of the social gains they had made under the Shah, and were forced to wear head coverings and full-body cloaks called chadors. Opponents were imprisoned and tortured as harshly and cruel as was done under the Shah. A parliamentary democracy existed mostly on paper, with true authority residing with the mullahs. With the Shah in exile, Khomeini identified the U.S. as 'the Great Satan' and an 'enemy of Islam.' Subsequent to this Khomeini regime, under the Shah dissent was also ruthlessly suppressed, and he jailed and tortured his political opponents. Moreover, under the Shah, Iran became a police state, monitored by the hated SAVAK secret police. Furthermore, the Shah's reforms, particularly those concerning the rights of women, angered Shia clerics such as the Ayatollah Khomeini, who fled into exile in Iraq and later France beginning in 1964. The US was intent on keeping the Shah in place in Iran in the 1970s, for many reasons, especially as a deterring buffer against Soviet expansionism ("Iranian Civil
The reformation of the country of Iran toward Islam caused turmoil among the people because the drastic changes forced on the people were not easily accepted. One of the major changes is that
In the late 1970's, the world was hit with the events of the Iranian Revolution, a movement in which the Shah was overthrown in replacement with Ayatollah Khomeini. Causes for this movement included the economic, political, and socio-economic conditions in Iran before the Revolution. Economically, the Shah's hopes for the country ended up being their downfalls while politically, the Shah's ruling as a dictator prohibited the freedom of the Iranians. Socio-economically, the Shah didn't place much emphasis on religion, angering the majority of the population. The overthrow of the Shah led to the uprise of a religious leader, Ayatollah Khomeini, a figure supported by many. Unlike advice
Mossadegh completely altered Iran by letting the Iranian people experience freedom within a democracy.9 In 1951, he was named Time Magazine’s man of the year and was referred to as the “Iranian George Washington,” as he gave them the gift of democracy.10 The people loved him because as soon as he took power, he set about making reforms; he granted women more rights than they had ever received in Iran and permitted religious freedom.11 Mossadegh also appealed to the Iranian people as he, unlike prior Shahs, was neutral in foreign policy. He made negotiations with foreigners illegal, which was controversial in Iran because it would destroy its economy. In 1952, Mossadegh appointed a new chief of war and head of staff. This granted him control of Iran’s entire military, which Pahlavi had been building up.12 He also tended to the requests of the people by nationalizing the AIOC, at the expense of the British. This initially made the Iranian people happy because they would get more jobs and revenue for Iran. However, there were no trained professionals to work the oil machines because
It seems events were converging to bring down the Shah government very quickly. It was like how the Bolsheviks took down the Tsar government in Russia in the earlier century. In both revolutions, you had to convince the people their government is evil or uncaring, and then go out and demonstrate. Before the Russian revolution, the people were really mad because of the shortage of bread. And this was after the Russians suffered tremendous casualties from World War One. In the Iranian revolution, there were many factors. It was repression of opposition groups by the Shah’s police, inflation, support for Israel, and some Iranians didn’t like the way the Iranians were being westernized. For many years, the clerics were instigating the masses in their sermons in condemning the Iranian government. The people eventually went out in the streets to demonstrate. The people suffered some casualties in these demonstrations which made the Shah’s regime look repressive. More Iranians got involved
Early in the 1960s, the Shah announced social and economic reforms but refused to grant broad political freedoms. Iranian nationalist condemned the Shah and his U.S. supported regime and accused him of “westernizing” of Iran. Between 1963 and
The crisis made the relations between the united States and Iran very bitter. The Iranians also developed strong and contempt feelings toward President Jimmy Carter. Carter failed at attempting to secure the hostages’ freedoms and that decreased his popularity. This crisis caused the Iranian Revolution to get moved along and become a bigger problem. An oil conflict also resulted because the United States then had trouble getting oil from Iran. After the hostage crisis, the U.S. then looked at Iranians as terrorists and did not have
Furthermore, the Shah purchased billions of dollars worth of weapons of security from the US. In 1979 the realm was overthrown by extreme Islam’s that were followers of Ayatollah Khomeini. The intention of the Iranian students was to display their displeasure against the Shah. Their demand was the return of the Shah for a trial followed by his death. In addition, they asked that the US stay out of their country’s affairs. Carter’s approach required the safeguarding of American hostages but also guaranteed an alliance with Iran. Carter’s tactics on the situation had devastating effects on his run for re-election (Hamilton, 1982).
The Iranian Revolution was an uprising by the common people of Iran who were upset about the doings of their Shah and his government. The Shah’s treatment of his own people can be characterized as unjust and cruel. After all, he severely limited the rights of groups whom he felt threatened his power to rule. He opposed the political rights of religious Shiite groups, which especially enraged Iranians, and led to the rise of Ayatollah Khomeini. The Ayatollah was a religious leader who would overthrow the Shah and establish a proper Islamic State in the nation. Ever since, the so called Islamic Revolution has raised concern over the dangers that Iran may pose to the Western world. Nevertheless, the Iranian Revolution was a progressive movement that reflected the major concerns of Iranians towards corruption in government, all with the intention of removing injustices and enforcing rightful liberties and common needs.
However, the ideas had already spread throughout the Iranian people and religious protesting escalated continuously. People’s ideas of recreating a religious based government persisted to an unstoppable level. Khomeini, whom many protesters felt to be a hero, said in a speech in 1979, “Do not try to westernize everything you have! Look at the West, and see who the people are in the West that present themselves as champions of human rights and what their aims are. Is it human rights they really care about, or the rights of the superpowers? What they really want to secure are the rights of the superpowers. Our jurists should not follow or imitate them” (Ayatollah Khomeini: speech on the uprising of Khurdad 15, 2010). Based on this quote, the “voice” of the protesting Iranians was that westernization was not a good thing because the west does not care for human rights and freedoms of the lesser powers in the world and that the way to change for the better is to impose the Islamic values that already existed into society. In January of 1979, the Shah fled the country under the pressure of the people and Khomeini returned to Iran to be greeted as a hero (Bentley & Ziegler, n.d., p. 1117). Fighting erupted between Khomeini’s supporters and remaining military officials and on the eleventh of February the government fell. On the first of April, Khomeini proclaimed the beginning of the new Islamic republic (Islamic
The emergence of the Islamic Republic in late 1970’s Iran demonstrates how middle class Iranian people purged themselves of the Pahlavi Dynasty in an effort to continue down a more righteous and egalitarian path. As a result, the country underwent a complete social upheaval and in its place grew an overtly oppressive regime based in theoretical omnipotence. In response to this regime, the very structure of political and social life was shaken and fundamentally transformed as religion and politics became inexorable. As a result, gender roles and the battle between public and private life were redrawn. Using various primary and secondary sources I will show how the Revolution shaped secular middle class Iranians. Further, I will show how the
Before the revolution, Shah Reza Pahlavi was the ruler of Iran. Under his leadership power was clustered and concentrated among his close allies and networks of friends and others with whom he had close relations. By 1970s, the gap between the poor and the rich was widening and huge distrust about his economic policies grew. Resentment towards his autocratic leadership grew fuelling people to dissent his regime further. Shah now was considered an authoritarian who took full control of the Iran government preventing the Iranians from expressing their opinion. The government has transformed from the traditional monarchial form of government to authoritarian with absolute authority replacing individual freedom of the Iranians. This transformation to Iranian was unacceptable because they needed to control their own affairs. They wanted self-government where they could take control as opposed to what Shah was doing. Shah was seen as a western puppet for embracing authoritarian form of government (Axworthy, 2016).
Various factors influenced the 1979 Iranian revolution, but at the core of this significant event was Islamic fundamentalism. The Iranian religious leader, Ayatollah Khomeini, led this movement to end the thirty-seven-year reign of Mohammad Reza Shah Pahlavi, also known as the Shah of Iran (Diller 1991, p.152). The revolution was a combination of mounting social, economic, political and religious strains. The nation of Iran was never colonized, unlike some of its bordering countries, making its people intolerant of external influences. The Shah had gradually westernized and secularized his country, creating a strong American presence that was being felt