No Iranian religious revolution

What if instead of a iranian religious revolution there had been a peaceful transistion to a secular democracy. How would this affect iranian american relations? How would it affect the iran iraq war?
 
US and Iran remain allies.

No war. Saddam invaded because the revolution and the following US/Iranian split greatly harmed Iran's military.
 

yourworstnightmare

Banned
Donor
Nah, without the Islamic Revolution the terror of the shah would have prevailed. Before the "religous turmoil" there was no signs that the shah was willing to relinquish any power.
 
The Shah was dislodged by a revolution. This questions asks what if the leaders of the revolution wanted a secular democracy?
 
What if instead of a iranian religious revolution there had been a peaceful transistion to a secular democracy. How would this affect iranian american relations? How would it affect the iran iraq war?​

When would this happen?

The Shah wanted and tried to modernize Iranian society and securalize it but met resistance to his effort. But of course he wasn't ready to give away power at least not when percieving his peoples not being ready to be given it. And it was mostly leftist groups and parties that worked to bring down the Shah not exactly the kind of peoples the USA would support. But they would face the religious revolution by Khomeiny.

You need some clear political structure counter to the Shah's regime with a leader ready to go into Iran like Khomeiny would do. Oh and remember Khomeiny was Time Magazine man of the 1979.

Actually the real thing for the US to do would be to support the Shah only as long as he would give political freedom to his peoples.
With less income from oil export Iranian society faced real troubles. And got it.
 
When would this happen?

The Shah wanted and tried to modernize Iranian society and securalize it but met resistance to his effort. But of course he wasn't ready to give away power at least not when percieving his peoples not being ready to be given it. And it was mostly leftist groups and parties that worked to bring down the Shah not exactly the kind of peoples the USA would support. But they would face the religious revolution by Khomeiny.

You need some clear political structure counter to the Shah's regime with a leader ready to go into Iran like Khomeiny would do. Oh and remember Khomeiny was Time Magazine man of the 1979.

Actually the real thing for the US to do would be to support the Shah only as long as he would give political freedom to his peoples.
With less income from oil export Iranian society faced real troubles. And got it.

The Shah was resisted because his reforms benefitted a few, and he was obviously a stooge of the West. When Iran did have a leader trying to guide Iran down the path of liberal-democracy (Mossadegh), the USA and Britain made sure he was destroyed.
 

Hendryk

Banned
When Iran did have a leader trying to guide Iran down the path of liberal-democracy (Mossadegh), the USA and Britain made sure he was destroyed.
The problem with democracy is that the people sometimes get the strange delusion that they, rather than multinational corporations, should decide what to do with their land's natural resources.
 

yourworstnightmare

Banned
Donor
The problem with democracy is that the people sometimes get the strange delusion that they, rather than multinational corporations, should decide what to do with their land's natural resources.

In other words; Some primitive people doesn't deserve democracy because they'd expoit it the wrong way.
 
The Shah was resisted because his reforms benefitted a few, and he was obviously a stooge of the West. When Iran did have a leader trying to guide Iran down the path of liberal-democracy (Mossadegh), the USA and Britain made sure he was destroyed.

The Shah introduced land reform for pete's sake, essentially destroying his own core political support. Land reform clearly benefited most of the population economically. Obviously teaching women to read also benefited a good chunk of the population.

And quite in what world someone who uses violence against their opponents and rigs elections is a democrat heaven knows.
 
The problem with democracy is that the people sometimes get the strange delusion that they, rather than multinational corporations, should decide what to do with their land's natural resources.

It's funny, most dictators believe in state control of the economy, with a substantial chunk believing in corporatism to tame the excesses of capitalism. A commonly favoured left wing solution.

The number of free-market dictators can be counted with fingers.

If these proportions were reversed we would of course NEVER hear the end of it.
 

Hendryk

Banned
It's funny, most dictators believe in state control of the economy, with a substantial chunk believing in corporatism to tame the excesses of capitalism. A commonly favoured left wing solution.

The number of free-market dictators can be counted with fingers.

If these proportions were reversed we would of course NEVER hear the end of it.
I'm going to ask for figures to back up this claim. If free-market dictators are so few and far between, who did the US find to lead the dictatorial regimes they set up in Latin America and Asia?

And I see you're implicitly defending the overthrow of Mossadegh, because in your book "state control of the economy" is such an evil that it justifies sponsoring coups to remove the offenders.
 
I'm going to ask for figures to back up this claim. If free-market dictators are so few and far between, who did the US find to lead the dictatorial regimes they set up in Latin America and Asia?.

You're going to have to find some of these regimes first. Most were corporatist.

And I see you're implicitly defending the overthrow of Mossadegh, because in your book "state control of the economy" is such an evil that it justifies sponsoring coups to remove the offenders.

I did no such thing. As a matter of fact I don't think it much of an issue either way, much like the failure to overthrow Nasser. He survived and Egypt is dicatorship today. I am sure much the same would be true with Iran.
 
who had state control of the economy - Hitler, Mao, Tojo, Mussolini, Stalin, Lenin, Mengitsu, Idi Amin, Milosevic, Mobutu, Suharto among others?
 

Hendryk

Banned
You're going to have to find some of these regimes first. Most were corporatist.
This "corporatist" thing is awfully convenient. It's like saying that the USSR didn't set up "real" Communist regimes, but Leninist ones. At the end of the day, what matters is that some dictators were put in power with US support, and more than occasionally through force of arms, in order to safeguard the interest of Western corporations over those of their own people. Whether they meet your idiosyncratic and abstract definition of "capitalist" is, quite frankly, a moot point.
 
This "corporatist" thing is awfully convenient. It's like saying that the USSR didn't set up "real" Communist regimes, but Leninist ones. At the end of the day, what matters is that some dictators were put in power with US support, and more than occasionally through force of arms, in order to safeguard the interest of Western corporations over those of their own people. Whether they meet your idiosyncratic and abstract definition of "capitalist" is, quite frankly, a moot point.

No, it's the whole point. The government favoured certain corporate organisations. Considering this is what those who want to, say, bail out the car industry support, and those on the right oppose, it's highly pertinent.

It's a clear example of the corruption of state power. If we look at a free-market dictatorship, eg Chile (a small state mixed economy but free market in the broad sense) we quickly see that corporate power was a minor problem compared to the abuse of state power.
 
Mossadeq was overthrown because he nationalized the oil.

There's very little discussion to be had here; he wanted the oil revenue to go to the Iranian government, the British wanted the oil revenue to go to British companies/the British government, and the Americans wanted the oil revenue to go to American companies/the American government. They also wanted to counter Soviet control of the region.

Anyway, the Shah was the worst kind of fascist. Read up on how SAVAK worked if you don't think so.

From what I understand about the 1979 revolution, it was mostly prosecuted by professional activists, communists, and such. It was more after the actual revolution that it took on its religious characteristics. I could be wrong, though, I really know more about Iran before the revolution.
 
Top