Iran After the Islamic Revolution (1979)

Don’t listen to those who speak of democracy. They all are against Islam. They want to take the nation away from its mission. We will break all the poison pens of those who speak of nationalism, democracy, and such things.

—Grand Ayatollah Khomeini1

If the people of this religion [Islam] are asked about the proof for the soundness of their religion, they flare up, get angry and spill the blood of whoever confronts them with this question. They forbid rational speculation, and strive to kill their adversaries. This is why truth became thoroughly silenced and concealed.

—Razi, 9th century Persian physician2

I am an Iranian, a descendant of Cyrus the Great. This emperor proclaimed at the pinnacle of power 2,500 years ago that he “would not reign over the people if they did not wish it.” He promised not to force any person to change his religion and faith and guaranteed freedom for all. The Charter of Cyrus the Great should be studied in the history of human rights.

—Shirin Ebadi, Nobel laureate3

Iran was indeed Islamized, but it was not Arabized. Persians remained Persians. And after an interval of silence, Iran reemerged as a separate, different and distinctive element within Islam, eventually adding a new element even to Islam itself. Culturally, politically, and most remarkable of all even religiously, the Iranian contribution to this new Islamic civilization is of immense importance.

—Bernard Lewis, historian4

In 1986, a woman living in rural Iran, 35-year-old mother of nine Soraya Manutchehri, was buried up to her shoulders in the earth and stoned to death. Her crime, as related by family members, was becoming “an inconvenient wife.” Soraya had been bartered away at age 13 to a petty local criminal named Ghorban-Ali. A violent man who consorted with prostitutes, Ghorban-Ali turned against the mother of his children when he found a 14-year-old girl who struck his fancy. Although polygamy was allowed, he was unable to support a second family financially and unwilling to return the dowry to his wife’s family.5

Ghorban-Ali had a third option, one unavailable to Iranian women: he accused his wife of adultery. Under sharia law, the burden of proof falls upon the wife in such a case to prove her innocence. Meanwhile, Ghorban-Ali found a male cousin willing to swear to the truth of the adultery charge. The testimony of two adult men was compelling proof to the sharia court. The local mullah—a man who had himself been imprisoned for child molestation under the Shah—supported the charge. Soraya was convicted, sentenced, and executed in barbaric fashion.6

Her story would never have seen the light, if not for the efforts of an Iranian-born journalist who came to her village not long after the execution. Freidoune Sahebjam was traveling across the country, assessing the impact of the Islamic Revolution of 1979. When Sahebjam came to Soraya’s village, he heard the tale of the innocent woman’s brutal execution. His later account of the event, published in 1994 as The Stoning of Soraya M., became an international best-seller and was made into a feature film.

More than two decades after the event, however, it is the shame of Iran that such executions still take place. The victims are overwhelmingly women. By any ordinary estimate, it is the fruit of “a system that rejects modernity, justice, equality and rationality.”7 That it still happens in Iran, a country which is home to an ancient and civilized culture and full of all the trappings and infrastructure of a modern state, is a testimony to the impact Freidoune Sahebjam was originally trying to assess. It is part of the enduring legacy of Iran’s Islamic Revolution.

THE ISLAMIC REVOLUTION

The political regime which governs modern Iran is only 35 years old. It came to power in a 1979 revolution that replaced the Western-backed monarch Mohammad Reza Pahlavi (the Shah) with a theocratic totalitarian state led by Shi’ite clerics. Although the events leading up to the Iranian Revolution are quite complex, a couple of factors stand out: a popular perception among Iranians that their country was being dominated by western people and ideals, and growing hostility to heavy-handed efforts by the Shah to maintain control.8

The guiding figure of the Revolution was Grand Ayatollah Ruhollah Khomeini. Khomeini had the view that Muslim governments should be under the “guardianship” of religious clerics.9 Without such protection, Islam would deviate from traditional sharia law. Khomeini attributed a wide variety of social problems to such deviation—including poverty, injustice, and the dominance of Muslims by heretics.10 This view put Khomeini at odds with more moderate Shi’ite scholars such as Mohammad Kazem Shariatmadari, because traditionally Shia clerics have held themselves aloof from government involvement.11 Out of 12 Grand Ayatollahs alive during the Revolution, only one voiced support for Khomeini’s published political doctrines—and that one later recanted.12

Khomeini was an expert in the time-honored Shi’ite practice of taqiyya (religious dissimulation). Taqiyya is a legal or religious justification to lie, blaspheme, or commit illegal acts in order to avoid personal danger. Although all Muslim sects recognize taqiyya as sanctioned by the Qur’an, it has been particularly useful for Shia Islam, which has traditionally been a persecuted minority sect among majority-Sunni populations. Briefly put, taqiyya provided Khomeini with a religious justification to lie about his true political motives. Even today, taqiyya deception is an intrinsic part of Iran’s political engagement with the world.

Taqiyya was essential for Khomeini because the Iranian Revolution initially involved a collection of groups—not just extremist mullahs. There were more moderate religious groups who wanted to return to the Constitution of 1906, which included greater parliamentary controls over the kingship. There were leftist groups which hoped to replace the monarchy with a socialist or communist government.13 Khomeini also used taqiyya to help keep the Western powers from assisting the Shah. He portrayed himself as a moderate to Western media and emphasized complaints against the Shah, which were echoed by secular leftist factions within Iran. It was only after the overthrow of the Shah was completed that enough people realized that Khomeini’s true aim was the establishment of Islamic fundamentalism as the supreme political force in Iran.

Once Khomeini’s forces prevailed, the ugly reality of the Revolution became clear. One of the faces of that ugly reality was Ayatollah Khalkhalli. In the words of V.S. Naipaul:

Khomeini received and preached and blessed; Khalkhalli hanged. He was Khomeini’s hanging judge. It was Khalkhalli who had conducted many of those swift Islamic trials that had ended in executions.14

By his own estimation, Khalkhalli was personally responsible for the deaths of some 400 enemies of the Revolution in Tehran.15

Perhaps the most famous of Khalkhalli’s victims was the Shah’s long-time Prime Minister Amir Abbas Hoveyda. Hoveyda was a political pragmatist who attempted to conciliate with forces opposed to the Shah. He waged a long but unfortunately futile war against corruption in the government. After the Revolution, Khalkhalli ran a show trial in which Hoveyda was accused of a wide variety of crimes—many of which were based on nothing more than rumor and were never substantiated. Hoveyda was denied access to counsel and was not permitted even to bring testimony in his own defense. Instead of dying by firing squad as sentenced, he was shot in the neck and left lying on the floor in pain, begging his executioner to finish the job, until he was shot in the head.

The leftist and moderate groups who joined in the Revolution were purged or killed by Khomeini’s forces. Khomeini’s slogan, “Neither East, nor West—Islamic Republic,” indicates his allegiance was not to a modern political ideology, neither democracy nor communism, but to his own peculiar brand of Shia Islam.16

Khomeini seems to have seen himself as something like the Islamic version of Lenin: a revolutionary hero who would ignite a firestorm of religious revolutionary excitement that would take over the Islamic world. His main problem here was that the majority of Muslims worldwide (about 80 percent) are Sunni, while Khomeini and his regime were Shia. It was never likely that Iran would take over the leadership of the Islamic ummah (community of believers). Instead, despite internal success—including the crafting of a Constitution that enshrined Khomeini’s ideal of clerical guardianship as a fundamental political principle—Iran was not able to export its revolution. Less than two years later, it was in a prolonged, brutal war with Saddam Hussein’s Iraq.

Today, the Shia fundamentalists whom Khomeini brought to power are still in control in Iran. But as the events surrounding the “Green Revolution” of 2009 showed, their hold over the people is far from the popular support they enjoyed in ’79. Many of the same complaints the people once directed to the Shah are now directed to the clerics who now rule the country. There is every sign that the modern regime is even more oppressive than the Shah since, in addition to security forces who abuse anyone who speaks out against the mullahs, there is widespread suppression of any cultural activity deemed “un-Islamic.” In short, there is all the oppression of the Shah with none of the freedoms he promoted.17

The regime maintains its legitimacy and its hold on power in one of the oldest ways known to politics: by stoking anger and hatred against external enemies. Khomeini’s rhetoric about “the Great Satan” (i.e. America) and “the Little Satan” (Israel) are now essentially enshrined as public policy. More significantly, the regime positions itself as a defender of Islam against the encroachments of modernity. Thus, the mullahs promote such things as sharia law, abuse of women, oppression of religious minorities, and the use of terrorism. Promoting hatred of the West and modernity is necessary—without these things, the mullahs have no purpose.

HATRED OF THE U.S. AND ISRAEL

Almost from the beginning, the Iranian regime has used anti-American feeling to distract attention from its own problems. One of the most prominent examples of this came early in the Iranian Hostage Crisis. This event began in late 1979 when a group of Iranian students, excited by the recent Revolution, decided to take over the American embassy in Tehran. Khomeini gave the students his blessing, then tied his regime to the event to milk the students’ enthusiasm for his own prestige.18

When the hostage-taking became popular with Iranians, who still regarded the Americans as meddlers in their internal affairs, the event took on a life of its own. Originally planned to take no more than a week, the hostages remained under de facto house arrest for over a year. Throughout negotiations for the release of the hostages Khomeini followed a pattern of refusing any agreement at the last second—almost as if he didn’t want the publicity to end.19

In the meanwhile, Khomeini used the crisis to deflect criticism of his theocratic constitution. With nationalist sentiments running high, the controversial political document passed by public referendum.20 His earlier promises to stay out of politics were forgotten. Once the hostages had outlived their usefulness, they were released. Ironically, none of Iran’s original demands were met: they had asked for the return of the Shah to face trial, but the Shah died in exile while the hostage crisis was at its peak. There were demands for the United States to apologize for its role in a 1953 coup that removed a popular Prime Minister and to unfreeze Iranian assets in the United States.21 Neither of these things happened. But the event galvanized support for the regime and enshrined anti-Americanism as a “go-to” strategy, which it has used ever since.22

Iran’s distrust of the United States has not been entirely unfounded. The 1953 coup that was brought up during the Hostage Crisis is an embarrassing case in point. In the early 1950’s, Iranians were becoming increasingly annoyed by the profits the British Anglo- Iranian Oil Company (later British Petroleum) was reaping for their oil. In 1951, the Iranian government nationalized the Anglo-Iranian Oil Company and relations between the UK and Iran rapidly deteriorated. The British appealed to the United States for help. Alarmed by the prospect that Iran could shift leftward and possibly into the orbit of the Soviet Union—even though Mosaddegh was publicly opposed to Iran’s pro-Soviet Tudeh Party23—the CIA coordinated with British Intelligence to orchestrate a coup.24 In the end, Mosaddegh was ousted as Prime Minister and spent his last years under house arrest. Mosaddegh and his nationalization policy were both popular with the Iranian people, and after the ouster their anti-British sentiments became increasingly directed toward the U.S. as well.25

Iranian hostility toward Israel, on the other hand, is motivated in large part by internal concerns of the mullah’s regime. Iran does not share borders with Israel, and its population is largely Persian, not Arab, so they do not exactly have a dog in the fight between Israelis and Palestinian Arabs. Indeed, prior to 1979 Iran wasn’t particularly hostile toward Israel. Although they opposed the partition of Palestine in 1947 and voted against Israel’s admission to the U.N. in 1949, during Shah Pahlavi’s reign, relations between the two countries were cordial. It was only after the 1979 revolution that Iran became openly hostile toward Israel. Ayatollah Khomeini is the one who declared Israel “Little Satan” and an enemy of Islam.26 Ironically, despite this official hostility Iran still purchased hundreds of millions of dollars worth of military arms and equipment from Israel during its war with Iraq—support which some scholars say was critical to surviving the war with its borders intact.But despite Iranian hostility toward America and the West, these also hold an attraction for the Iranian people. Author V.S. Naipaul saw this attraction in the people even in the immediate aftermath of the Revolution:

What had attracted these Iranians to the United States and the civilization it represented? Couldn’t they say? The attraction existed; it was more than a need for education and skills. But the attraction wasn’t admitted; and in that attraction, too humiliating for an old and proud people to admit, there lay disturbance— expressed in dandyism, mimicry, boasting, and rejection.27

While Khomeini was originally hailed as a liberator of Iran from the oppressions of the Shah, the Iranian people weren’t deeply religious in the sense of being regular mosque- goers or enthusiastic fasters. They didn’t expect Shia clerics to take over the economy, court system, government administration, and much of the management of day-to-day life.28

A modern study of the Islamic Republic agrees with Naipaul’s early assessment, concluding that Iran’s regime hates the West, in part, because of its “seductive power as an alternative to the religious life.”29 The majority of the Iranian population today was born after the revolution. They have no memory of past oppressions and plenty of experience with the oppressions of the current regime. They know that before 1979 their country had a number of civilized comforts to offer which the mullahs now declare off-limits.

OPPRESSION AND ANTI-MODERNISM

The Iranian mullahs keep themselves in business by constantly raising the cry that Islam is endangered. Naipaul observed this on his travels in post-revolutionary Iran back in 1981, reporting a Pakistani religious student at Qom telling him in hushed tones, “If there had been no revolution here, Islam would have been wiped out.”30 Prior to the Revolution, efforts to modernize and westernize Iran were associated with the Shah and the Pahlavi dynasty. Under Mohammad Reza Pahlavi, Iran made enormous strides in women’s rights—granting women the right to vote, the power to seek a divorce, and the possibility of winning custody of their own children. Islamic theologians who wished to become clerics had to pass examinations to demonstrate competence. Iran was a patron of the arts through such promotions as the Shiraz Art Festival.

After the Shah’s overthrow, all this was associated with unwanted “western” influences. Women’s rights became a special focus of the new Islamic Republic, but the laws which gave women equal protection now came with a caveat: “in conformity with Islamic criteria.” In practice, this has meant increased inequality and injustice. Under sharia law in Iran, the life of a woman is worth only half that of a man. This is reflected in the laws concerning “blood money” paid to the families or victims of murder and abuse: female victims and their families are compensated at half the rate for men. In court, the legal testimony of a woman is worth half that of a man—in cases of he said/she said, “he” always wins unless “she” has another woman to back her up.31

In some cases, the Islamic Republic simply reversed earlier movements in Iranian society. In 1936, the first Pahlavi Shah outlawed compulsory use of the hijab (proper Islamic dress for women). After 1979, despite Khomeini’s earlier promises, the hijab became compulsory for women under penalty of receiving 70 lashes. Though this harsh punishment has since been amended to “only” imprisonment and fines, women in Iran are still required to cover their bodies except for the face, hands, and feet in public.32

In the notorious example of Nikah al-Mutah (literally, “pleasure marriage”), the Islamic Republic uses the cover of a disputed religious practice to exploit women. This “temporary marriage” involves a contract between a man (who can be married or unmarried) and an unmarried woman to marry one another for a time and price agreed on between them. The practice is obviously liable to exploitation, and is widely regarded by many Muslims and non-Muslims alike as little more than sanctioned prostitution. Mutah is forbidden under Sunni Islam, but Shi’ites allow it on the grounds that it is allegedly sanctioned by the Qur’an.33

The Iranian regime’s attitude towards women can be seen clearly in its treatment of lawyer, activist, and Nobel Peace Prize laureate Shirin Ebadi. Before the Revolution, Ebadi worked to become the first female judge in Iran—a position women were barred from after Khomeini’s new constitution went into effect. Since 1979, she has been a lawyer and professor of law known for defending the rights of children and women and providing legal support to critics of the ruling mullahs. When she was awarded the Nobel Prize in 2003, government officials were critical both of the selection and Ebadi’s decision not to cover her hair during the award ceremony.34 In 2008, her continued criticism of human rights violations and decision to defend the families of members of the Baha’i faith (a persecuted religious sect) provoked threats to her life and security.35 In 2009, while traveling in London, Ebadi was told that her bank box had been raided and her Nobel Prize medal, along with other honors and awards stored there, had been taken by Iran’s Revolutionary Court. Although the Iranian government denies it, Ebadi has remained in exile ever since, believing that if she returns the government could imprison her as a dissident—or worse.36

The leaders of the Islamic Republic have also spent the years since the Revolution purging the clerical ranks of more moderate voices. One of the earliest victims of this treatment was Grand Ayatollah Mohammad Shariatmadari, who actually saved the life of the future leader of the Revolution Ruhollah Khomeini by declaring him a Grand Ayatollah at a time when the Shah was angling to remove Khomeini as a threat. Because the Shah was unable legally to execute a member of the highest rank of the religious establishment, Khomeini was permitted to go into exile, where he remained until 1979.37

Despite having saved Khomeini’s life, Shariatmadari did not exactly agree with his politics. Instead, he preferred that Iran return to its 1906 constitution, with a limited monarchy and minimal clerical influence over political decisions. He was openly critical of Khomeini’s interest in establishing a new political regime under the “guardianship” of Shi’ite scholars.38 The reward for this opposition was to be placed on house arrest and to see his family members arrested and tortured. Later, he was convicted on trumped-up evidence of conspiring to overthrow the Islamic Republic and spent his few remaining years under close watch.

The Islamic Republic is even harsher in dealing with people outside the faith. Iranian- American Saeed Abedini is a prominent example. Abedini is an Iranian-born Muslim who converted to Christianity in 2000. In the early 2000’s, he was a pivotal figure in the house church movement in Iran, which was a grassroots effort to spread Christianity through the use of ordinary homes as churches where believers could come and worship together. Iranian authorities cracked down on this movement in 2005, which prompted Abedini and his family to move to the United States. Abedini was ordained as a minister in 2008 and became an American citizen in 2010. On one of his trips back to Iran in 2012, he was arrested for his previous evangelical work and sentenced to eight years in prison.39

Zoroastrianism is an ancient religion native to Iran. The ruling regime actively persecutes members of this religion. Believers are typically excluded from university positions or employment. During the Iraq war, they were used for suicide missions. They are typically characterized in the media as polytheists and devil worshippers.40

Another native Iranian religion, the Baha’i faith, is actively persecuted because its followers are viewed as apostates from Islam. Christians, Jews, and even Zoroastrians receive some manner of protection under the Islamic republic, but as Baha’is are legally regarded as “unprotected infidels” and “heretics,” they have few protections.41 The persecution of Baha’is in Iran is government policy, according to an official document produced by Iran’s Supreme Revolutionary Cultural Council. This document directs that members of the religion be expelled from universities, denied employment, and denied any “position of influence” in society. In addition, since 1979 201 members of the faith have been killed by the regime “solely on the basis of their religious belief.”42 Believers have also been subject to a variety of lesser abuses, including imprisonment and property theft.43

THE ANOMALOUS ISLAMIC REPUBLIC

Too few appreciate just how anomalous the current ruling regime is in the history of Iran. In the words of one journalist, it is a bit of an experiment: “Can a country be run effectively by holy men imposing an extreme version of Islam on a people soaked in such a rich Persian past?”44 In a cruel twist of historical fate, one of the great violators of human rights in the world today is the nation where concepts of freedom and human rights may well have originated. An artifact from Cyrus the Great, who first established the Persian Empire in the 6th century BC, declares the king a defender of the people’s freedom, bans slavery and oppression, and forbids taking property by force or without compensation. The same Cyrus is the king who freed the Jews from their Babylonian captivity, enabling many to return to Jerusalem and rebuild their Temple.45

When Arab Muslims took control of the Persian Plateau in the 7th century, the people did not entirely forsake their former culture. Instead, as historian Bernard Lewis points out in the passage cited at the beginning of this chapter, Iran was Islamized without being Arabized. The Arab conquerors—more accustomed to raiding desert caravans than ruling a far-flung empire—found themselves relying on Persians for the bureaucratic maintenance of their new domains.46 By that time, the Persian people had more than a thousand years of experience running a large-scale civilization. And they never quite gave up the pride in their past, as the great Persian poet Ferdowsi paid tribute to in his verse:

Damn this world, damn this time, damn this fate

That uncivilized Arabs have come to make me Muslim.47
Since the founding of the Safavid Dynasty in 1501, the Shia sect of Islam has also been

part of Iran’s identity. Until 1979, however, the tendency among clerics was to be removed from political affairs. This is partly religious, as Shi’ites believe that political rule of the Muslim people can only be exercised legitimately by members of the Prophet’s family— and this will not be possible until the so-called Twelfth Imam returns. But it is also partly because Shi’ites have historically been a minority party in the Muslim world and have found it to their advantage to keep silent rather than agitate the Sunni majority.48

The ability of the Persian people themselves is perhaps best illustrated in the fate of the Parsees. The modern Parsees are the descendants of a group of Zoroastrians who emigrated from Iran to India during the Islamic conquest of the Persian Plateau. In the thousand years since that migration, they have integrated successfully into Indian society while still maintaining distinct customs and traditions. One of the most successful business ventures in India, the Tata Group, is a $100 billion dollar conglomerate founded, owned, and run by a Parsee family from Gujarat. Parsee families in general are among the wealthiest and most respected today in Indian society.49

When the Pahlavi Dynasty came to power in 1925, they took Ataturk’s approach in Turkey as the model for modernizing and westernizing the country. The first Shah encouraged the development of modern industry, began a cross-country railway system, and set up a nationwide system for public education. Efforts by the Pahlavis also tended to shrink the influence of the clerical establishment while increasing the sphere of secular activity in Iran. A high point came with the 1963 program called the White Revolution, which reformed property laws, granted women the right to vote, and sought to end illiteracy through universal education.

The Shah was accused of trying to modernize his country too quickly and being too paranoid and heavy-handed in dealing with the people. As later events have shown, the Shah had absolutely nothing on Khomeini and the Islamic Republic of Iran.50 Since the Islamic Republic has no claim to superior governance, their raison d’etre has become opposing the United States and Israel abroad and suppressing women and Baha’is at home.As the Green Revolution of 2009 indicated, the many Iranians who have grown up under the leadership of the mullahs are coming to suspect the Revolution only exchanged a secular despot for a worse religious one.51

Unfortunately, on November 24, 2013 the United States played right into the Iranian regime’s hands with an interim agreement in Geneva. The Islamic Republic agreed to halt certain portions of is nuclear weapons program in exchange for a significant reduction in economic sanctions (about $7 billion worth, measured in U.S. dollars). This initial deal was put into place January 20, 2014, then later extended to July 1, 2015. As of publication time, Iran is still in negotiations with the “P5+1” (the five permanent members of the U.N. Security Council plus Germany) on a deal which will ramp up international inspections of the Iranian nuclear program.

The ordinary observer hears only occasional details about these ongoing negotiations, but to anyone familiar with Shia Islam the difficulties are obvious and extensive. Above all, the P5+1 are doubtless experiencing first-hand the difficulty of negotiating with people for whom deception—taqiyya—is a fundamental religious principle. The benefits to the Iranian regime of this whole affair are clear: by negotiating with the world’s major players they gain legitimacy and authority at home and also gain time for the covert pursuit of nuclear weapons. Decades of containment of the Shia regime are being cast aside out of fear of any direct confrontation, and the end result will likely be in the mullahs’ best interest—and no one else’s.