The Short and Long Term Impact of Irans Revolution - Essay Example

? The Short- and Long-Term Impact of Iran’s 1979 Revolution of the March 29, Few of the events of the late twentieth century were so unexpected and had greater influence on the political situation in the region and the world at large than the Iranian Revolution of 1979. In this paper, the author attempts to analyze both short- and long-term consequences of the 1979 Iranian Revolution on domestic policies of Iran, as well as its international dimensions. It is believed that the consequences of the Iranian Revolution were both long-ranging and short-term, and this research purports to show it. The causes of the Iranian Revolution, despite a seeming absence of general crisis so characteristic of previous revolutions of such magnitude1, were manifold. The twentieth century history of Iran was characterized by aggravation of social contradictions. The modernizing policies of the Pahlavi dynasty (1926-1979) were at best inconclusive: the political and civic reforms of the first Shah of the dynasty, Reza Shah Pahlavi, were accompanied by ruthless suppression of both clerical and left-wing oppositional movements2. After his abdication in 1941, the country found itself mired in instability caused by the effect of the WW II and foreign occupation4. After the failure of the attempt of the secular nationalist government of Mohammad Mosaddeq to nationalize oil industry, which led to the coup d’etat against Mosaddeq on August 19, 19534, Mohammad Reza Shah re-assumed the dictatorial powers of his father. At that time, the clerical forces of Iran sided with the Shah, fearing left-wing secularist regime5. The government of Mohammad Reza Shah embarked on the ambitious program of the so-called ‘White Revolution’ in the 1960s, which was to facilitate the development of modern industries in Iran. Despite Mohammad Reza Shah’s populist pretenses, his modernization strategy privileged large, modern enterprises and the oil sector, which served the needs of international market, to the detriment of small businesses traditionally united into the network of bazaar 6. The state developmentalist policies led to the uncontrollable inflation7. The Shah’s land reform actually contributed to the crisis, as the new peasant cultivators were unable to tend the land as efficiently as large-scale farms would, thus leading to massive increases in imports of food stuffs and accordingly in their prices8. The attempts of the Shah’s government to control soaring inflation in the mid-1970s only aggravated the situation9. The revolutionary movement, which sprang from the clashes between the religious students and the Shah’s SAVAK security forces in the late 1977, eventually turned in the country-wide disturbances with the general strike of October 197810. The government of the Pahlavis was swiftly disintegrating, and on January 16, 1979 Mohammad Reza Shah left Iran. From then on, the victory of the Iranian Revolution was guaranteed. The signs of the general crisis in the Iranian economy were much pronounced in the immediate aftermath of the Revolution. As a result of wide-scale strike movement of 1978-1979, the country stood on the brink of economic collapse. As of 1980, the industrial output fell by almost 20%11 in comparison with the 1977 level, while total GNP of Iran in 1981 fell to 81 percent of that in 197712. The Revolution heralded the beginning of spontaneous campaign of occupations and confiscations; the workers’ committees were formed in many sectors, first of all, in oil industry13. Even though the government did not actually contemplate total nationalization of private sector, the complicity of large banking institutions in massive capital flight forced it to bow to the pressures of popular movements and demands of Khomeini-led Revolutionary Council (RC), and in summer 1979 the nationalization of banks, insurance companies and major branches of industries was carried out14. Nevertheless, the PRG policy remained cautious in such important economic spheres as land tenure, working conditions and housing15, while its decision to ban strikes showed its negative attitude towards the demands of the working class16. The fall of the PRG in November 1979 augured the second stage of socio-economic transformations brought in by Iranian Revolution. The turn towards totalitarianism was also felt in the sphere of labor rights. In August 1980 the profit-sharing scheme introduced under the Shah as a concession to industrial workers was abolished, while the role of the workers’ committees (“Islamic Shoras) was relegated to purely consultative one17. The advent of Iran-Iraq War in September 1980 led to further deterioration in the state of national economy. According to the data presented by M. Hashem Pesaran, in 1978-1988 the real output fell by average annual rate of 1.8 per cent, while per capita output plunged by 4.2 per cent18. In the end, the short-term impact of Iranian Revolution on the economy seemed to be rather detrimental. The collapse of the Shah’s government led to the brief flowering of diverse political tendencies, not all of which would agree with the Islamic character of the Iranian Revolution. Such political forces as the People's Mujahedin of Iran (PMOI), the Organization of Iranian People's Fedai Guerrillas (OIPFG), and, to a lesser extent, the Tudeh (People’s) Party, strove to establish a socialist society in Iran, broadly modeled after Islamic socialist or Marxist-Leninist principles19, which put them in direct confrontations with bazaar-based RC and Khomeini’s Islamic Revolution Party (IRP). The liberal forces, concentrated in the Liberation Movement of Iran led by Mehdi Bazargan, were weak, and did not constitute any significant counter-balance to authoritarian policies of Khomeini. The designation of the country as Islamic Republic after the referendum of April 1, 1979 greatly benefitted Khomeini; the election of ‘Assembly of Experts’ in July 1979 for the purposes of drafting the new constitution was used by IRP to its great advantage20. The liberals were first to fall as the result of Khomeinist power grab. After the capture of the U.S. Embassy on November 4, 1979 Bazargan resigned from the position of the head of the government, and for the next decade the role of moderate forces in the political life was close to negligible. The leftist forces who supported Khomeini’s takeover of the government (the pro-Soviet Tudeh Party being most enthusiastic of them all21) soon paid dearly for their miscalculation: after the beginning of the so-called Islamic Cultural Revolution in April 1980, which led to the repressions against the secular forces in academia22, the left soon found itself harassed by the Islamic fundamentalists, and after 1981 the left-wing parties and movements were outlawed. The intense standoff between the reformist Islamists led by President Abolhassan Banisadr and his PMOI allies, on the one hand, and the Khomeinists, on the other, ended in June 1981 with the decisive victory of the latter. After the flight of Banisadr and the PMOI leaders from Iran, the consolidation of power in hands of Khomeini and his ruling circle was complete. The Iran-Iraq War also contributed to the strengthening of Islamist totalitarianism: from March to June 1981 the all-encompassing censorship was imposed upon media23, while the Pasdaran (Islamic Revolution Guard Corps) militia, which was established in May 1979, was turned into principal arm of the repressive apparatus, and in November 1982 the Ministry of Revolutionary Guard was set up24. The establishment of totalitarian regime, with the IRP as the only ruling party, was now completed. The hostage crisis of November 1979 underlined the importance of anti-U.S. foreign policy for the political strategy of Khomeini. His supporters accused the USA of acts of aggression against the Islamic Republic, while Khomeini himself termed the Unites States “the Great Satan”25. The attempt of the Carter Administration to rescue the hostages in April 1980 led to complete severance of the U.S.-Iranian relations and ignited the anti-U.S. sentiments among the Islamist segments of Iranian society even higher. At the same time, the Khomeinist leadership was equally hostile to the USSR, as its reaction to the Soviet invasion to Afghanistan in December 1979 showed26. In general, the Islamic Republic tried to present itself as an alternative to both superpowers, denouncing the USA and the USSR alike as ‘imperialist’. The policy of ‘export of Islamic Revolution’ was conceived as a means of undermining the U.S. and Soviet dominance, as well as of extending the influence of revolutionary Islamic ideology27. The support given by the Islamic regime to various fundamentalist movements in such countries as Afghanistan, Philippines, Lebanon and Palestine was used both for immediate aims of Iranian government, and for the propaganda of international Islamic solidarity28. The most direct expression of the ‘export of revolution’ policy was, however, found in Iraq, where the Iranian emissaries actively supported the anti-Ba’athist Shiite movement. The intense propaganda campaign aimed at urging the Iraqi Shiites to rise against the Hussein dictatorship, which was waged in 198029, provoked Saddam Hussein to attack Iran first, thus ushering in the Iran-Iraq War, which continued up to 1988 and led to about 1 million casualties on both sides, as well as to approximately $490 billion in economic losses for Iran alone30. The lesser conflicts caused by Iranian ‘export of revolution’ policy include the involvement of Iranian government in the Lebanese Civil War, which directly contributed to the formation of the Hezbollah movement that was effectively founded by Iranian emissaries31; the support for anti-royalist Shi’a forces in Bahrain including the formation of Islamic Liberation Front of Bahrain in 197932, and the similar support for pro-Iranian factions of the Afghani Mujahideen. At the same time, the non-Shi’a Islamic Fundamentalist forces were greatly inspired by the example of Iran, as the insurrectionary activities of Muslim Brotherhood in Syria in the early 1980s, as well as the Grand Mosque Seizure in Saudi Arabia on November 20, 1979 clearly evidenced. Although the Islamist movements had existed in the Middle East since the foundation of the Muslim Brotherhood in 1928, they were generally marginalized by the secular leftist groups in the protest politics of the region. It was with the Islamic Revolution that the Islamists found new confidence and began to displace the left as the key revolutionary actor in the Middle East. The example of Hezbollah in Lebanon is the most evident one but similar movements were inspired by the Iranian example in South-East Asia, with the Moro National Liberation Front openly supported by Iran until at least 198933. In more general way, the Iranian Revolution was an integral part of the Islamic resurgence, which was a dominant tendency in the Greater Middle East in the 1980s to the 1990s, and its success greatly emboldened Islamist political forces in the region. While it was a favored partner of the USA in the times of the Pahlavis, as the result of the Revolution, Iran turned into main opponent of the American geo-political interests in the Middle East. The Western governments came to regard Iran as a revisionist state, bent on disrupting status quo in world politics. The conservative monarchies and secular regimes of the region came to regard Iran as a potential threat to their stability, and the support given to fundamentalist insurgents in their territories led to especially bitter attitude of Egypt and Saudi Arabia to Iranian influence in the region. The Gulf States, Bahrain most of all, were also disturbed by the potential impact of the Iranian Revolution, and this attitude persevered up to the latest events in the Middle East, as Saudi concern over possible Iranian involvement in 2011 Bahraini protest movement shows. Even though the Reformist government of Mohammad Khatami alleviated the relative international isolation of Iran in the late 1990s with its attempts at relative rapprochement with the USA and the resumption of wide-ranging relations with the EU, the detente in the relations between Iran and the West remained tenuous, and the election of more conservative Mahmud Ahmadinejad for the presidency in 2005, the legacy of the Islamic Revolution showed itself once again in more combative rhetoric of the new government and its inclinations toward confronting the West on the important issues of international politics, including the Middle East conflict and the nuclear non-proliferation. Evidently, the Islamic radicalism of Khomeinist variety did not die out completely in Iran. Although the end of the Khomeini era led to the relative liberalization of socio-political life of Iran, the basic tenets of radical Islamism still continue to govern social life in Iran. The limitation of the political participation to those adhering to the idea of Islamic rule hampers the political life and helps to entrench the most conservative elements of the Iranian establishment. Even though the purist views on the role of women in society, so typical of the 1980s, seemed to lose their dominance in the 1990s, there still remain a lot of restrictive policies, both official and informal, that enable the discrimination against women in Iran. The economic development of Iran was not as harmonious and even as promised by Khomeini in 1979 either. The years of Iran-Iraq War imposed heavy burden on national economy, while the economic development remained skewed towards excessive reliance on the oil sector – a situation similar to the times of the last Shah. The neo-liberal reforms implemented under Hashemi Rafsanjani and Mohammad Khatami failed to significantly improve the situation in the national economy, while generating conservative backlash symbolized by populist character of Ahmadinejad. In the end, the future of Iran remains uncertain, and the current tumult in the Middle East leaves each and every alternative open for it. In total, one should conclude that the Iranian Revolution was one of the most tumultuous events of the late twentieth century. It had important geo-political consequences for the regional international relations and facilitated the development of political Islam as the global trend. It remade the Iranian society and yet left with almost the same problems that it faced at the beginning of the Revolution, and from this one might say that the history of the Iranian Revolution is still incomplete. Notes 1. Said Amir Arjomand, Turban for the Crown: The Islamic Revolution in Iran (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1988), p. 191. 2. Nikki Keddie, Modern Iran: Roots and Results of Revolution (New Haven, CT: Yale University Press, 2006), p. 89. 3. Ibid., p. 106. 4. Maryam Panah, The Islamic Republic and the World: Global Dimensions of the Iranian Revolution (London: Pluto Press, 2007), p. 19. 5. Fakhreddin Azimi, The Quest for Democracy in Iran: A Century of Struggle against Authoritarian Rule (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 2008), p. 171. 6. Misagh Parsa, Social Origins of the Iranian Revolution (Piscataway, NJ: Rutgers University Press, 1989), p.62. 7. Ibid., p. 63. 8. Azimi, The Quest for Democracy, p. 299. 9. Jahangir Amuzegar, The Dynamics of the Iranian Revolution: The Pahlavis' Triumph and Tragedy (Albany, NY: State University of New York Press, 1991), p. 191. 10. Ervand Abrahamian, Iran between Two Revolutions (Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 1982), p. 518. 11. Sohrab Behdad , “From Populism to Economic Liberalism: The Iranian Predicament”, in The Economy of Iran: Dilemmas of an Islamic State, ed. Parvin Alizadeh (London: Tauris & Co., 2000), p.102. 12. Ibid., p. 103. 13. Parsa, Social Origins of the Iranian Revolution, p.157. 14. Hooshang Amirahmadi, Revolution and Economic Transition: The Iranian Experience (Albany, NY: State University of New York Press, 1990), p. 24. 15. Ibid. 16. Ibid., p. 23. 17. Maryam Poya, “Iran 1979: Long Live Revolution!... Long Live Islam?”, in Revolutionary Rehearsals, ed. Colin Barker (1987; Chicago: Haymarket Books, 2002), p. 161. 18. M. Hashem Pesaran, “Economic Trends and Macroeconomic Policies in Post-Revolutionary Iran”, in The Economy of Iran: Dilemmas of an Islamic State, ed. Parvin Alizadeh (London: Tauris & Co., 2000), p.64. 19. Panah, The Islamic Republic and the World, p. 53-54. 20. Azimi, The Quest for Democracy, p. 361. 21. Panah, The Islamic Republic and the World, p. 54 22. Azimi, The Quest for Democracy, p. 363. 23. Ibid., p. 107. 24. Ibid., p. 109. 25. Panah, The Islamic Republic and the World, p. 66. 26. Sepehr Zabih, Iran since the Revolution (London: Croom Helm, 1982), p. 173. 27. Panah, The Islamic Republic and the World, p. 101. 28. Ibid., p. 70. 29. Farhang Rajaee et al., Iranian Perspectives on the Iran-Iraq War, (University Press of Florida, 1997), p. 2. 30. Ibid. 31. Panah, The Islamic Republic and the World, p. 74. 32. Ibid., p.75. 33. John W. Garwer, China and Iran: Ancient Partners in a Post-Imperial World (Seattle: University of Washington Press, 2006), p. 132. Bibliography 1. Abrahamian, Ervand. Iran between Two Revolutions. Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 1982. 2. Amirahmadi, Hooshang. Revolution and Economic Transition: The Iranian Experience. Albany, NY: State University of New York Press, 1990. 3. Amuzegar, Jahangir. The Dynamics of the Iranian Revolution: The Pahlavis' Triumph and Tragedy. Albany, NY: State University of New York Press, 1991. 4. Arjomand, Said Amir. Turban for the Crown: The Islamic Revolution in Iran. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1988. 5. Azimi, Fakhreddin. The Quest for Democracy in Iran: A Century of Struggle against Authoritarian Rule. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 2008. 6. Behdad , Sohrab. “From Populism to Economic Liberalism: The Iranian Predicament”, in The Economy of Iran: Dilemmas of an Islamic State, ed. Parvin Alizadeh, 100-144. London: Tauris & Co., 2000. 7. Garwer, John W. China and Iran: Ancient Partners in a Post-Imperial World. Seattle: University of Washington Press, 2006. 8. Keddie, Nikki. Modern Iran: Roots and Results of Revolution. New Haven, CT: Yale University Press, 2006. 9. Panah, Maryam. The Islamic Republic and the World: Global Dimensions of the Iranian Revolution. London: Pluto Press, 2007. 10. Parsa, Misagh. Social Origins of the Iranian Revolution. Piscataway, NJ: Rutgers University Press, 1989. 11. Pesaran, M. Hashem. “Economic Trends and Macroeconomic Policies in Post-Revolutionary Iran”, in The Economy of Iran: Dilemmas of an Islamic State, ed. Parvin Alizadeh, 63-99. London: Tauris & Co., 2000. 12. Poya, Maryam. “Iran 1979: Long Live Revolution!... Long Live Islam?”, in Revolutionary Rehearsals, ed. Colin Barker,123-168. 1987; Chicago: Haymarket Books, 2002. 13. Rajaee, Farhang, Sajjadpour, Kadem, Tousi, Reza Ra’iss, Yavari, Neguin... Iranian Perspectives on the Iran-Iraq War. University Press of Florida, 1997. 14. Zabih, Sepehr. Iran since the Revolution, London: Croom Helm, 1982. Read More