The Shah was responsible for something called the White Revolution, a top-down effort to modernize the country, bringing it into the 20th century and making it a great regional power. In pursuing this policy, he was following the examples of Peter the Great in early 18th-century Russia and Mustafa Kemal Atatürk in interwar Turkey. Closely allied with the western powers, the Shah was restored to his throne by the US and the UK in 1953 after having fled the country in a dispute with Iran's parliament. Prime Minister Mohammad Mosaddegh had nationalized the oil industry with parliament's support to the displeasure of the British interests that had controlled it. Once the Shah had returned to power, he centralized rule in his own hands. A secret police force, SAVAK, was the most brutal instrument of his rule, effectively alienating many Iranians, especially those of a more traditional bent.
Two things struck me as I witnessed these campus demonstrators nearly half a century ago. First, by publicly protesting the Shah's regime, were these students not putting themselves at some risk? If they returned to Iran, might they be arrested and charged with treason? But of course it is entirely possible that the demonstrators included American young people sympathetic with the regime's opponents.
The second thing that occurred to me was that these demonstrations might be the vanguard of a Marxist-oriented revolution. My youthful study of politics and history had persuaded me that revolutions against oppressive regimes often took on a Marxist flavour. After all, Castro's overthrow of Fulgencio Batista's regime in Cuba had brought that country into the Soviet orbit, much to the irritation of successive American administrations. Moreover, the United States had just fought a losing war in Vietnam against forces which had ejected the French in 1954 and had also embraced communism. Against the backdrop of this history, a communist or socialist Iran seemed plausible, if not necessarily inevitable.
During the next two years, during which I moved from Minnesota to Toronto, I listened to the BBC's nightly broadcasts over shortwave radio. The two stories dominating the news cycle at that time were the transition to majority rule in white-ruled Rhodesia, shortly to become Zimbabwe, and the revolutionary ferment in Iran. At that point the Carter administration in Washington was still claiming the Shah as an ally. From 1955, Iran was part of the Central Treaty Organization, or CENTO, intended to be a Middle Eastern counterpart to NATO whose members included the United States, the United Kingdom, Turkey, Iraq, Iran, and Pakistan. Like NATO, CENTO's purpose was to contain possible Soviet expansion in the region.
In February 1979 I was travelling with a group of young people from Toronto to Quebec City to enjoy the annual Winter Carnival. During the drive back to Toronto, we were astonished to hear on the radio that Ayatollah Khomeini had assumed power in Iran and that the revolution was complete. Of course, it was not a Marxist revolution as many of us had anticipated. Some of my fellow students called Khomeini a fascist, but I knew that that was not altogether accurate either. An Islamic revolution seemed far-fetched and didn't obviously fit into the standard categories familiar to us at the time. Arab nationalism was by then a familiar phenomenon and had been since Gamal Abdel Nasser's ascent to power in Egypt in 1952. But Arab nationalism was a secularizing movement with socialist undertones crossing confessional lines. That an historic religion like Islam could roar back to power from a more credulous past seemed inconceivable and appeared to amount to a reversal of the historical process.
Indeed, the regime of the mullahs under Khomeini and Khamenei imposed severe restrictions on the population, notoriously requiring women to wear clothing covering as much of their bodies as possible, ostensibly to defend their modesty. Iran and Iraq fought a long war between 1980 and 1988, resulting in more than half a million deaths and no territorial gains by either side.
In recent months, as public discontent has mounted, the mullahs have responded with brutal force to protect their power. Iran's theocratic rulers had become adept over the decades at manipulating the populace, blaming other countries, most notably the United States, for its many ills and for their own missteps. But, perhaps inevitably, the mullahs have finally exhausted Iranians' patience with an obviously dysfunctional regime. Massive demonstrations in December and January incurred a bloody response from officials, with the numbers of resulting deaths estimated to range from 5,000 to 30,000.
Last weekend's joint American and Israeli attack on Iran has now dramatically altered the country's trajectory. What now? Will the regime collapse in the ensuing chaos? Will new mullahs simply take over from Khamenei and his now deceased associates and carry on as before? It is too soon to say, but we may have some clarity in the coming weeks.
I personally think that one of the better alternatives would be a constitutional monarchy, perhaps under the late Shah's son Reza Pahlavi. Constitutional monarchies have an enviable record of stability, while presidential republics—especially those combining head of state and head of government in a single office—typically become dictatorial over time. The success of such a monarchy would, of course, depend on Pahlavi's willingness to serve within constitutional limits and to avoid the mistakes of his father. Yet any future political system should be left in the hands of Iran's long suffering citizens. Let us hope and pray that Iranians will soon be living under a regime that will more evidently seek justice for its people, end its support for terrorists, and learn to live in harmony with its neighbours.
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