Was the Iranian Revolution inevitable?
- Thread starter Jeb Bush
- Start date
If the Shah reined in SAVAK, moved against Khomeini and the other radicals early on, didn't take a lot of money for himself, and maybe thought a little more, then yeah, he (Or the monarchy since he was stricken with Leukemia) could have held on.
Was the entire system corrupt or was it just those at the top. Apparently the Shah had his lunch flown to him from Paris everyday :/
The Saudis are corrupt as heck and have lasted a long time. How could the Pahlavis make nice with the ayatollahs, and use them against the leftist dissidents?
It was not inevitable, but resulted from a series of decisions taken by the Shah. The Shah could have made different decisions that allowed the monarchy to survive, although very likely more and more power would have gone to the Majlis and Iran become a parliamentary democracy with a constitutional monarch.
The major problem for the Shah is that he did not have an extensive base of political support. He had the large landowners, but they were very small. For most of the period in his reign, he could also rely on the merchants of the Grand Bazaar, the conservative clergy, and westernizing (but not the liberal elite) middle classes, but he alienated both of them by the late seventies. This was an unwieldy coalition at cross purposes, and the Shah pulled a trifecta by having all of them oppose him.
He lost the conservative clergy early on. They were glad to see Mossadegh go and the Tudeh kept out of power, but the rise of Western cultural influence meant that this group ultimately would not be on his side.
Much of the Shah's economic reforms meant the middle class was growing, but the middle class always expects to have a say in the how they are governed, and this the Shah refused to do. So the biggest mass group that should have supported his modernizing efforts ended up becoming his opponents. Some kind of modest political concessions should have happened. Instead, as the Shah got older, he centralized even more power and eroded what little role the Majlis and middle classes had.
Even with all of this loss of support, the Shah still retained enough old time legitimacy that he could ignore political pressure - but only when the economic times were good. They were for most of the Shah's reign in the 1950s to early 1970s. However, the Shah made a critical error during the Oil Crisis.
Iran was making enormous money from oil sales, and the Shah wanted to invest everything all at once to make Iran a first world economy within a generation. All of his economists said this was a mistake because 1) it was uncertain if oil prices would continue to be high, and Iran should save most of the money as a reserve, 2) it would overheat the economy and cause massive inflation by investing so much money so quickly when the nation lacked the capacity to handle such stimulus, and 3) by investing in so many projects, if oil prices did decline, the state would need to cut off so much funds that it would create massive unemployment and hardship. The Shah ignored their advice, and what they feared happened.
At that point, the politically neutral portion of the middle class become radicalized, and the Teheran bazaar merchants came out against the Shah.
It was this combination that brought the Iranian Revolution. At the time, almost everyone thought the end result would be a liberal democratic Iranian republic controlled by the democratic opposition parties. However, Khomeini was very smart and cunning and used every opportunity to hijack and revolution and institute an Islamic dictatorship.
I believe if the Shah listened to the advice of his economists, he would have stayed in power. He was not going to live long anyway, and after he died, I suspect the crown prince would have conceded enough political reforms to pacify the democratic opposition to keep the monarchy on the throne. There would be continued turmoil to some extent until the new Shah allowed real constitutional reforms, but I don't see why the Shah could not have followed Taiwan's and South Korea's path by eventually establishing a true democratic government by the early 1990s.
The major problem for the Shah is that he did not have an extensive base of political support. He had the large landowners, but they were very small. For most of the period in his reign, he could also rely on the merchants of the Grand Bazaar, the conservative clergy, and westernizing (but not the liberal elite) middle classes, but he alienated both of them by the late seventies. This was an unwieldy coalition at cross purposes, and the Shah pulled a trifecta by having all of them oppose him.
He lost the conservative clergy early on. They were glad to see Mossadegh go and the Tudeh kept out of power, but the rise of Western cultural influence meant that this group ultimately would not be on his side.
Much of the Shah's economic reforms meant the middle class was growing, but the middle class always expects to have a say in the how they are governed, and this the Shah refused to do. So the biggest mass group that should have supported his modernizing efforts ended up becoming his opponents. Some kind of modest political concessions should have happened. Instead, as the Shah got older, he centralized even more power and eroded what little role the Majlis and middle classes had.
Even with all of this loss of support, the Shah still retained enough old time legitimacy that he could ignore political pressure - but only when the economic times were good. They were for most of the Shah's reign in the 1950s to early 1970s. However, the Shah made a critical error during the Oil Crisis.
Iran was making enormous money from oil sales, and the Shah wanted to invest everything all at once to make Iran a first world economy within a generation. All of his economists said this was a mistake because 1) it was uncertain if oil prices would continue to be high, and Iran should save most of the money as a reserve, 2) it would overheat the economy and cause massive inflation by investing so much money so quickly when the nation lacked the capacity to handle such stimulus, and 3) by investing in so many projects, if oil prices did decline, the state would need to cut off so much funds that it would create massive unemployment and hardship. The Shah ignored their advice, and what they feared happened.
At that point, the politically neutral portion of the middle class become radicalized, and the Teheran bazaar merchants came out against the Shah.
It was this combination that brought the Iranian Revolution. At the time, almost everyone thought the end result would be a liberal democratic Iranian republic controlled by the democratic opposition parties. However, Khomeini was very smart and cunning and used every opportunity to hijack and revolution and institute an Islamic dictatorship.
I believe if the Shah listened to the advice of his economists, he would have stayed in power. He was not going to live long anyway, and after he died, I suspect the crown prince would have conceded enough political reforms to pacify the democratic opposition to keep the monarchy on the throne. There would be continued turmoil to some extent until the new Shah allowed real constitutional reforms, but I don't see why the Shah could not have followed Taiwan's and South Korea's path by eventually establishing a true democratic government by the early 1990s.
Mostly yes.
I would say that it could have been reformed though.
The Shah regime was probably unsustainable in the long term with anything close to its OTL's form after the 1953 coup (which created a godawful amount of - largely justified - resentment at the West among Iranians) but a violent revolution like 1979 was not the necessary endgame if the right steps are taken early enough.
There are, however, obvious constraints due to the Cold War. The Iranian socialist and communist movement was pretty large -I am under the impression that the West was apparently scared shitless by the possibility of a Communist (or even vaguely left-leaning) Iran, making it willing to go along any amount of oppression, corruption and nastiness from the Shah's Court (there is, of course, a lot of comparable cases around the world; see South Vietnam or Chile for instance).
I would say that the oil chosk of 1973 is the last chance - had the Shah managed the newfound inflow of cash it brought in a more equitable and intelligent way (as opposed to, for example, throwing an inordinate part of it at buying tanks and fighters, or odd celebrations where he tried to present himself as the heir of Cyrus) he could have had a much better chance of holding to power. However, sooner or later that would have required a massive cleansing in the upper echelons of the system (at the very least). I understand that the visible modesty of the revolutionary leaders lifestyle was a factor in their lasting popularity (even if it looks like the current Iranian power system is still remarkably corrupt) so arguably slapping less of his luxurious life onto the face of the poor would have improved the Shah's chances.
And, oh, yes, torturing people in the hundred of thousands may cow and terrorize the people into submission, but will NOT make your regime popular. They'd likely revolt at the first occasion, like the Iranians did.
There are also some PODs even before that could change this too...but I don't know which ones exactly...
No the Iranian Revolution was not inevitable. If in the early 60s the U.S. pushed for slow democratic reforms and they happened over time eventually by the late 70s if the U.S. pushed the Shah along the Iranians would feel they have a democratic valve to channel their unhappiness at the government rather then violent revolution.
The point of my referance to 1951
If they had been left alone or supported in 1951 the Iranians where making another stab at becoming a modern democracy, but this looked a little too left wing and therefore "Communist" to the Cold war US. The Shar was not a compartment man unlike his father who had been deposed as a threat to allied oil supplies in the 1940's as he was seen as too pro German and the oilfields of Persia and the Iraqi Mandate powered the British war effort, the son had been installed to provide a more biddable ruler.
If they had been left alone or supported in 1951 the Iranians where making another stab at becoming a modern democracy, but this looked a little too left wing and therefore "Communist" to the Cold war US. The Shar was not a compartment man unlike his father who had been deposed as a threat to allied oil supplies in the 1940's as he was seen as too pro German and the oilfields of Persia and the Iraqi Mandate powered the British war effort, the son had been installed to provide a more biddable ruler.
Delta Force
Banned
The Iranian Revolution wasn't inevitable. In fact, the Iranian Revolution has attracted significant attention because the typical factors that lead to a revolution weren't present. Imperial Iran was at peace, hadn't lost a major war, was doing well economically, and the leadership had the support of the military.
Iranians are not normal
Basically the Iranian revolution was the result of two things. First the Iranians see themselves as a world power, and have been one at times. They are nationalists to the core and they resent being meddled with especially by what they perceive as upstarts, the British they could tolerate as equals even if they did not much like it, the Americans, perceived as ignorant arrogant upstarts less so it at all. Second they had managed a peaceful revolution in 1911 which had failed after a time, and in 1951 which had been put a stop to so 1979 was very much try three at that.
In a democracy it would have been the voting out of a government which had lost its popular support, but as it was an autocracy then you get a revolution. It didn’t have to happen in 1979 it could have been earlier or latter but something was going to happen eventually. The revolution need not have gone the way it did and you could have got a very different Iran.
It was not seen coming largely because for all his faults the Shar was good at lying and the Americans who with the best will in the world are often a bit naïve when it comes to foreigners, believed him and the rest is history.
Basically the Iranian revolution was the result of two things. First the Iranians see themselves as a world power, and have been one at times. They are nationalists to the core and they resent being meddled with especially by what they perceive as upstarts, the British they could tolerate as equals even if they did not much like it, the Americans, perceived as ignorant arrogant upstarts less so it at all. Second they had managed a peaceful revolution in 1911 which had failed after a time, and in 1951 which had been put a stop to so 1979 was very much try three at that.
In a democracy it would have been the voting out of a government which had lost its popular support, but as it was an autocracy then you get a revolution. It didn’t have to happen in 1979 it could have been earlier or latter but something was going to happen eventually. The revolution need not have gone the way it did and you could have got a very different Iran.
It was not seen coming largely because for all his faults the Shar was good at lying and the Americans who with the best will in the world are often a bit naïve when it comes to foreigners, believed him and the rest is history.
What happened in 1953 - not 1951 - was that the elected leader of government seized power for himself. He wasn't too bad a leader, but he was too moderate for the conservatives, too conservative for the liberals, and not harsh enough to keep both groups down. The West saw that a coup was inevitable, so made sure that it happened on its' terms and produced an outcome favourable to it, lest Iran slip into Moscow's orbit. Documents from the time are quite illuminating in making it clear that Mossadegh was reasonably well regarded by the CIA.
My take on it is that the latest it can be done is better investment following the oil shock, but that still gives you an Iran with major internal unrest. It's possible that the death of the Shah, collapse of the repression apparatus and attempts to bring in democratic reforms backfire, giving hardliners (either Communist or Islamic) the chance they need to seize power. To get a really healthy nation, you need to go back to the White Revolution and keep at least the moderate ayatollahs behind the Shah. Reducing Tudeh to a fringe movement should be quite easy once reforms bring wealth to the people of Iran.
Ironically, one thing that would help is dealing with Mohammed Reza Shah's father issues. He wanted to be a kind father to the nation and build on his father's achievements, without having to resort to the kind of harsh measures his father had used. A lot of the excesses - especially the 2,500th anniversary celebrations - were attempts to demonstrate what a great leader he was. When the Iranian people opposed his paternalistic reforms, he essentially lost his temper and decided to force them to do what he thought was best, whether they liked it or not.
How did the Saudis do so well with the Wahhabis. Have they just been paying them off this entire time? How can they be both so ultra-conservative and decadent at the same time? Basically have the Shah do the same things that they have, and things will be peachy-keen until after the Cold War when you have a restive population of embittered young men who want to go on jihad.
It's more complicated than that- Stalin's Soviet Union and Mao's China survived, for example. The problem was the Shah's secret police was that they were brutal enough to evoke opposition but not effective enough to prevent a successful opposition.
Quite so. During the 1970s the USSR was perceived to be in ascendancy and the Tudeh party was thought to be able to stage an insurrection in the north-west (Tabriz and in a lesser measure Tehran were considered the Tudeh strongholds) and call in the big brothers from the north. Both perceptions were wrong, as proven by later events (10 years after the Iranian revolution the USSR would collapse) but at the time almost everyone was believing that Iran was going to become communist at the death of the shah (and the Americans well knew that his life expectancy was pretty poor).
The shah was not a bad man, rather a weak one; he was also a man torn between his religious faith and the belief in a "white revolution" for Iran. It is certainly true that - like all autocrats, real or wannabes - he was very much afraid of a coup, and did not allow anyone of his generals to become prominent to the point of becoming a danger for the monarchy. I will go one step further, and say that I believe he was not corrupt himself (although he was certainly surrounded by a corrupt elite, chief among them his own sister Ashraf).
IMHO if the shah had not got leukemia the revolution would not have happened, and the Americans would not have been so worried as to look for alternatives to a Pahlavi regime (I don't want to go into the old and never fully resolved diatribe on who provided the funds that allowed Khomeini to become a credible alternative and to broadcast his sermons from Paris. However it is difficult to understand how a man who had been in exile for the past 15 years could create and fund such a capillary organization in Iran, even allowing for the strength of the Shia religious leaders - who anyway were not as united as the Islamic regime would like us to believe).
To go back to the OP: if the USA had supported the Pahlavi regime as they had in the past, the revolution would not have happened. An aggressive USSR on the northern border, a weak American presidency and a very sick Reza Pahlavi are certainly among the reasons for the fall of the shah. Another (and possibly the most important) reason was the general backwardness of rural Iran which contrasted very sharply with the better educated inhabitants of the main cities. At best it would have taken another generation to bridge this gap.
What a lot of people seem to forget is that the Saudi regime has sustained itself by making concessions to the puritans in their midst. It was, at one point in the recent past, a fairly standard, albeit despotic, Gulf monarchy, along the lines of Qatar or Jordan. Rather than antagonizing religious hardliners, as the Shah did, the Sauds instead began to increasingly accommodate them from the 1970s onwards (banning women from driving, an enhanced crackdown on 'immoral' media, etc.). I blame this conciliatory shift in attitudes for a lot of the radicalism festering in the Middle East today.
As far as I can see, there are two problems with replicating this scenario in Iran. The first is that the Shah anchored a lot of his legitimacy, however dishonestly, in his track record as a Western-oriented reformer. The liberal middle class was, and continues to be, a far more influential component within Iranian society than virtually anywhere else in the Islamic world (Turkey being the probable exception). Any swing in a religious direction, as the ayatollahs will inevitably demand, risks incurring the ire of a vital pillar for the Pahlavi dynasty. More importantly, the Iranian opposition was never clearly dominated by a single political element until after the Shah's overthrow; in fact, the U.S. State Department, based on intelligence assessments, had expected a takeover by progressives and leftists in the aftermath of the Revolution. For Saudi-style concessions, not only would the Shah have to be ready to compromise in the first place, Khomeini's lot would have to be a lot more dominant from the outset.
yourworstnightmare
Banned
The 1979 Revolution probably can be avoided, but for the Shah not be overthrown by some kind of coup/ revolution... you basically need him to be a very different man and his regime to be very different than OTL.
Realpolitik
Banned
I don't inevitable is quite the right word for it-Iranian internal events between 1953 and 1979 matter more than people are estimating here-but beyond a certain point in the 70s, it's hard to imagine the Shah not facing problems. That doesn't mean he falls persay if his reaction is different, but by the late 70s, Iran was ready to blow and there was no quick band-aid that could stop it.