Reading and Misreading the Iranian Revolution

Reading and Misreading the Iranian Revolution

Dr Roham Alvandi

14 November 2023

The Fall of the Shah

A Counter-Factual History

• The nature of the Islamic Republic that replaced the Pahlavi monarchy
• The Tehran Hostage Crisis and the presidency of Jimmy Carter
• Iran-Iraq War
• Gulf War of 1991

Why did we misread the Revolution in Europe and the United States?

• Why were American and British decision-makers so reluctant to see that the fall of the Shah was coming?
• Why were some intellectuals celebrating the fall of the Shah?
• Why were other intellectuals so reluctant to acknowledge that they had gotten the Revolution wrong?

The American Misreading

• US support for the 1953 coup that made the Shah an absolute monarch
• Shah’s autonomy from the United States in the 1970s
• Failure to support Iranian reformists

Jimmy Carter and the Shah

• The end of uncritical support for the Shah under Jimmy Carter
• The myth that Carter abandoned the Shah
• The Shah’s refusal to use force to hold on to power
•  

The British Misreading

Britain and Iran after Empire

• Britain had lost its oil monopoly in Iran in 1951 and never recovered
• Popular perception of Britain as all powerful versus reality of a declining power
• Focus on commercial contracts and ignorance of social and political dynamics

The Labour Party and the Iranian Revolution

• Growing criticism of the Shah in Britain itself amongst the Left and Amnesty
• Failure of Whitehall and Labour ministers to understand the fragility of Shah’s regime
• BBC Persian’s role in the Revolution
• Browne Report commissioned by Lord Owen.
•  

The Intellectuals’ Misreading

Contacts with the Iranian opposition in the West

• Shah’s visit to Berlin in 1967
• Confederation of Iranian Students in Europe and the United States
• Radicalization of Iranian student groups: speaking of armed struggle and Westoxification in Persian and of human rights in English, German and French
• Failure of the Western Left to understand the significance of the Shah reforms or the anti-liberal authoritarianism of the Iranian opposition

Foucault and the Iranian Revolution

• Michael Foucault’s critique of modernity and his attraction to Khomeini
• Foucault and the seductions of Islamism
• Foucault, unlike much of the Left, was correct that the Iranian Revolution was anti-modern
• Foucault ignored the danger of clerical rule for democracy, women’s rights and minority rights
•  

The Triumph of an ‘Anti-Imperialist’ Revolution

Revolutionary Terror

• Executions of the Shah’s generals and officials (15 February 1979)
• International Women’s Day (8 March 1979)
• Execution of Hoveyda (7 April 1979)
• Closure of Ayandegan (8 August 1979)

An ‘Anti-Imperialism of Fools’?

• Richard Falk, Andrew Young, and the celebration of Khomeini
• Fred Halliday and ‘Islam with a fascist face’
• Edward Said and America’s Islamophobia

Misreading ‘Women, Life, Freedom’ in 2023

Context of Iran’s 2022 uprising

• Women: secularism vs. Islamism
• Life: prosperity vs. corruption
• Freedom: liberalism vs. authoritarianism

Our ‘culture wars’ and Iran’s enqelab

• Anti-Americanism and the reluctance of the Left to criticism the Islamic Republic
• Islamophobia in the West and the issue of mandatory veiling
• Making it about us: Feminism and Kurdish rights

© Dr Roham Alvandi 2023

References and Further Reading

Ervand Abrahamian, Khomeinism: Essays on the Islamic Republic (London: I. B. Tauris, 1993). 

Janet Afary and Kevin B. Anderson, Foucault and the Iranian Revolution: Gender and the Seductions of Islamism (Chicago: The University Press of Chicago, 2005).

Roham Alvandi, Nixon, Kissinger, and the Shah: The United States and Iran in the Cold War (New York: Oxford University Press, 2014)

Roham Alvandi (ed.), The Age of Aryamehr (London: Gingko Library, 2018)

Ali M. Ansari, The Politics of Nationalism in Modern Iran (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2012)

Nicholas Browne, ‘British Policy in Iran, 1974-1978’, UK Foreign and Commonwealth Office, 1979. Available at https://www.gov.uk/government/publications/foi-release-report-on-british-policy-on-iran-1974-1978.

David Greason, ‘Embracing Death: The Western Left and the Iranian Revolution, 1978-83,’ Economy and Society, 34/1 (2005), pp. 105-140.

Robert Jervis, Why Intelligence Fails: lessons from the Iranian Revolution and the Iraq War (Ithaca: Cornell University Press, 2010)

Arian Khameneh, ‘The Silence of the Lambs,’ Tablet, 10 August 2023, available at: https://www.tabletmag.com/sections/israel-middle-east/articles/iran-scholars-war-on-reality.

Negin Nabavi, Intellectuals and the State in Iran: politics, discourse and dilemma of authenticity (Gainesville: University Press of Florida, 2003).

Edward Posnett, ‘Treating His Imperial Majesty’s Warts: British Policy towards Iran 1977-1979,’ Iranian Studies, 45/1 (2012), pp. 119-137.

George L. Simpson, ‘Seeking Gandhi, Finding Khomeini: How America Failed to Understand the Nature of the Religious Opposition of Ayatollah Ruhollah Khomeini in the Iranian Revolution,’ The Journal of the Middle East and Africa, 8/3 (2017), pp. 233-255.

Graeme Wood, ‘Whose Afraid of Masih Alinejad,’ The Atlantic, 22 November 2022, available at: https://www.theatlantic.com/ideas/archive/2022/11/masih-alinejad-iran-hijab-protests/672204/.

David Zarnett, ‘Edward Said and the Iranian Revolution,’ Democratiya, 9 (2007), pp. 43-53, available at: https://www.dissentmagazine.org/wp-content/files_mf/1390333455d9Zarnett.pdf.

© Dr Roham Alvandi 2023