October 12, 1971 – Iran holds extravagant celebrations for the founding of the 2,500-year old Persian Empire
From October 12–16, 1971, Iran led by Shah Mohammad Reza Pahlavi held elaborate celebrations for the founding of the Persian Empire, the festivities being officially called “The 2,500th Year of Foundation of Imperial State of Iran”. The event aimed to present the country’s ancient civilization and history, and highlight the advances made in the modern age. The celebrations, along with other government actions, were considered anti-Islamic by the clergy and many Iranians, and would lead to the anti-royalist backlash in the 1979 Iranian Revolution.
(Taken from Iranian Revolution – Wars of the 20th Century – Volume 4)
Meanwhile in Iran,
the Shah continued to carry out secular programs that alienated most of the
population. In October 1971, to
commemorate 25 centuries since the founding of the Persian Empire, the Shah
organized a lavish program of activities in Persepolis, capital of the First Persian
Empire. Then in March 1976, the Shah
announced that Iran
henceforth would adopt the “imperial” calendar (based on the reign of Persian
king Cyrus the Great) to replace the Islamic calendar. These acts, considered anti-Islamic by the
clergy and many Iranians, would form part of the anti-royalist backlash in the
coming revolution.
Another paradox in a deeply conservative Muslim country was
the government’s hosting the Shiraz-Persepolis Festival of Arts from 1967 to
1977, which was meant to showcase the various forms of music, dance, drama,
poetry, and film from western and eastern countries, including traditional
Persian and Iranian Shiite cultures. The
festival’s extravagance and especially some of the avant-garde western
performances (which were already controversial by European standards) were
outright sacrilegious in a country where Islam was the state religion. It would be in 1977, one year before the
start of the revolution, that Ayatollah Khomeini spoke out against the arts
festival, even decrying the clerics in Tehran for not speaking out against the
performances.
Also by 1977, Iran’s decade-long period of strong
economic growth had ended, and the country faced financial problems because of
an oil glut in the world market. Iran’s
oil revenues dropped sharply, forcing a cut in oil production and a rise in
unemployment. Inflation and commodities
shortages were met by the government imposing austerity measures, which in turn
were resisted by the general population.
Background of the
Iranian Revolution Under the Shah, Iran
developed close political, military, and economic ties with the United States, was firmly West-aligned and
anti-communist, and received military and economic aid, as well as purchased
vast amounts of weapons and military hardware from the United States. The Shah built a powerful military, at its
peak the fifth largest in the world, not only as a deterrent against the Soviet
Union but just as important, as a counter against the Arab countries
(particularly Iraq), Iran’s traditional rival for supremacy in the Persian Gulf
region. Local opposition and dissent
were stifled by SAVAK (Organization of Intelligence and National Security;
Persian: Sāzemān-e Ettelā’āt va Amniyat-e Keshvar), Iran’s CIA-trained intelligence and
security agency that was ruthlessly effective and transformed the country into
a police state.
Iran, the
world’s fourth largest oil producer, achieved phenomenal economic growth in the
1960s and 1970s and more particularly after the 1973 oil crisis when world oil
prices jumped four-fold, generating huge profits for Iran that allowed its government to
embark on massive infrastructure construction projects as well as social
programs such as health care and education.
And in a country where society was both strongly traditionalist and
religious (99% of the population is Muslim), the Shah led a government that was
both secular and western-oriented, and implemented programs and policies that
sought to develop the country based on western technology and some aspects of
western culture. Iran’s push to westernize and
secularize would be major factors in the coming revolution. The initial signs of what ultimately became a
full-blown uprising took place sometime in 1977.
At the core of the Shiite form of Islam in Iran is the ulama (Islamic
scholars) led by ayatollahs (the top clerics) in a religious hierarchy that
includes other orders of preachers, prayer leaders, and cleric authorities that
administered the 9,000 mosques around the country. Traditionally, the ulama was apolitical and
did not interfere with state policies, but occasionally offered counsel or its
opinions on government matters and policies.
In January 1963, the Shah launched sweeping major social and
economic reforms aimed at shedding off the country’s feudal, traditionalist
culture and to modernize society. These
ambitious reforms, known as the “White Revolution”, included programs that
advanced health care and education, and the labor and business sectors. The centerpiece of these reforms, however,
was agrarian reform, where the government broke up the vast agriculture
landholdings owned by the landed few and distributed the divided parcels to
landless peasants who formed the great majority of the rural population. While land reform achieved some measure of
success with about 50% of peasants acquiring land, the program failed to win
over the rural population as the Shah intended; instead, the deeply religious
peasants remained loyal to the clergy.
Agrarian reform also antagonized the clergy, as most clerics belonged to
wealthy landowning families who now were deprived of their lands.
Much of the clergy did not openly oppose these reforms,
except for some clerics in Qom
led by Ayatollah Ruhollah Khomeini, who in January 22, 1963 denounced the Shah
for implementing the White Revolution; this would mark the start of a long
antagonism that would culminate in the clash between secularism and religion
fifteen years later. The clerics also
opposed other aspects of the White Revolution, including extending voting
rights to women and allowing non-Muslims to hold government office, as well as
because the reforms would reduce the cleric’s influence in education and family
law. The Shah responded to Ayatollah
Khomeini’s attacks by rebuking the religious establishment as being
old-fashioned and inward-looking, which drew outrage from even moderate
clerics. Then on June 3, 1963, Ayatollah
Khomeini launched personal attacks on the Shah, calling the latter “a wretched,
miserable man” and likening the monarch to the “tyrant” Yazid I (an Islamic
caliph of the 7th century). The government
responded two days later, on June 5, 1963, by arresting and jailing the cleric.
Ayatollah Khomeini’s arrest sparked strong protests that
degenerated into riots in Tehran, Qom, Shiraz,
and other cities. By the third day, the
violence had been quelled, but not before a disputed number of protesters were
killed, i.e. government cites 32 fatalities, the opposition gives 15,000, and
other sources indicate hundreds.
Ayatollah Khomeini was released a few months later. Then on October 26, 1964, he again denounced
the government, this time for the Iranian parliament’s recent approval of the
so-called “Capitulation” Bill, which stipulated that U.S.
military and civilian personnel in Iran, if charged with committing
criminal offenses, could not be prosecuted in Iranian courts. To Ayatollah Khomeini, the law was evidence
that the Shah and the Iranian government were subservient to the United States. The ayatollah again was arrested and
imprisoned; government and military leaders deliberated on his fate, which
included execution (but rejected out of concerns that it might incite more
unrest), and finally decided to exile the cleric. In November 1964, Ayatollah Khomeini was
forced to leave the country; he eventually settled in Najaf, Iraq,
where he lived for the next 14 years.
While in exile, the cleric refined his absolutist version of
the Islamic concept of the “Wilayat al Faqih” (Guardianship of the
Jurisprudent), which stipulates that an Islamic country’s highest spiritual and
political authority must rest with the best-qualified member (jurisprudent) of
the Shiite clergy, who imposes Sharia (Islamic) Law and ensures that state
policies and decrees conform with this law.
The cleric formerly had accepted the Shah and the monarchy in the
original concept of Wilayat al Faqih; later, however, he viewed all forms of
royalty incompatible with Islamic rule.
In fact, the ayatollah would later reject all other (European) forms of
government, specifically citing democracy and communism, and famously declared
that an Islamic government is “neither east nor west”.
Ayatollah Khomeini’s political vision of clerical rule was
disseminated in religious circles and mosques throughout Iran from audio recordings that
were smuggled into the country by his followers and which was tolerated or
largely ignored by Iranian government authorities. In the later years of his exile, however, the
cleric had become somewhat forgotten in Iran, particularly among the
younger age groups.
