Could the Shah have preserved the monarchy by force if he willed it?

If the Shah were willing to crack down hard, he could have preserved his regime

  • Yes

    Votes: 11 32.4%
  • No, at least not for more than a few weeks or months

    Votes: 23 67.6%

  • Total voters
    34

raharris1973

Gone Fishin'
Donor
Monthly Donor
What if the Shah were willing to go to any lengths to preserve the monarchy and the structure of the Pahlavi state?

Could this have worked for more than a few months or weeks?

Would it have caused something analogous to the current Syrian Civil War? Or the Algerian Civil War?

Presuming repression buys a multiyear period of quiet or apparent stability, what movement would dominate the next round of anti regime agitation in the 80s, 90s or later? Islamists? Leftists? The National Front? "People Power" Democrats? or a Military coup promising to make popular reforms and policy revisions (sort of a Pakistan solution)?
 
I don't see how he could have made it work much longer no matter what he did. Short version is that for many years, he had been keeping his regime afloat by trying to maintain a balance between the forces of modernization and the islamic fundamentalists, making promises to both sides that were completely incompatible and increasingly impossible to keep. He finally reached a point where he could no longer play both ends against the middle, and he had no more cards to play.

The amazing thing is that he was able to keep it going as long as he did. But once the floodgates cracked open just a little bit, and people all over the country started to see that no, it wasn't just them, and yes, there were a lot of other people who were fed up, there was no stopping it. Someone once said (if i recall correctly) that it was something that everyone knew was impossible until everyone knew that it was inevitable. Once the Islamic fundamentalists began to demonstrate, the entire country came to realize that he really had nothing at all to offer to anyone. The entire country realized almost overnight that the emperor indeed had no clothes, and the whole house of cards collapsed in a matter of weeks. There was nothing at all that he could have done in that amount of time to stem the tide. Nobody was going to follow his orders anymore.
 
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Archibald

Banned
I don't see how he could have made it work much longer no matter what he did. Short version is that for many years, he had been keeping his regime afloat by trying to maintain a balance between the forces of modernization and the islamic fundamentalists, making promises to both sides that were completely incompatible and increasingly impossible to keep. He finally reached a point where he could no longer play both ends against the middle, and he had no more cards to play.

The amazing thing is that he was able to keep it going as long as he did. But once the floodgates cracked open just a little bit, and people all over the country started to see that no, it wasn't just them, and yes, there were a lot of other people who were fed up, there was no stopping it. Someone once said (if i recall correctly) that it was something that everyone knew was impossible until everyone knew that it was inevitable. Once the Islamic fundamentalists began to demonstrate, the entire country came to realize that he really had nothing at all to offer to anyone. The entire country realized almost overnight that the emperor indeed had no clothes, and the whole house of cards collapsed in a matter of weeks. There was nothing at all that he could have done in that amount of time to stem the tide. Nobody was going to follow his orders anymore.

Reading that I can't help but thinking about the freakkin' French revolution of 1789 that within the span of some weeks swept 800 (or even 1200 if Clovis) years of monarchy. There was no way on Earth someone like Louis XVI could grasp the scope of what was happening (and the danger that went along it).
 

raharris1973

Gone Fishin'
Donor
Monthly Donor
I wonder if anything better could have happened for Iran if the Shah had decided to abdicate and emigrate a few weeks or months earlier than OTL?
 

CECBC

Banned
If he fully supported the Muslim conservatives he'd still be in power. Trying to be a liberal was a mistake.
 
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