A political debate
One thing that I have grown accustomed to in last 10-15 years is hearing a challenging political opinion and outrightly discarding it as ill-informed, presumptuous or even outlandish. Still, something people around me have grown accustomed to has been involuntarily being forced into discussions of political opinions with me. The latest of these events have been caused by my assumption of peoples’ willingness to change their points of view regarding the situation in Iran, perhaps not exclusively, but certainly overwhelmingly. This is a thought exercise I am doing in order to aggregate my thoughts around the situation and see if I really have something to say on the matter. If nothing else, this gives me a chance to think clearly on the matter as well as it gives me a yardstick of my own opinions as of today.
I have to preface all of it by stating an obvious and seemingly pretentious statement. We are living in an age of abundance of information, no doubt. But the quality or accuracy of the information is so inconsistent that it begs the question of whether it should even be called information at all. So, everything I have to say here should stand for questioning and debate. Any good faith argument against the facts or opinions I am presenting should be entertained if not more than then at least as cordially as mine. With this much out of my system, let’s start with the story.
As it goes with all stories from this part of the world, the story starts with the villain- British Petroleum. Of course, in 1951, there was no such thing as British Petroleum. To refer to this entity though, there was another name. Just like in 2026, there is no British Empire. That goes by the name of World Bank now. Too outrageous a thought? Ok, then let’s settle for Standard Chartered Bank and move on to the point I was making. So, in those days British petroleum went by the name of AIOC or the Anglo-Iranian Oil Company, which had as much Iranian in it as Indian in the East-India Company. Unlike in India, where the Britishers were the ruler de jure, in Iran, the British Empire enjoyed a de facto control over the economy and the foreign policy by means of financial dependency, military coercion, and corporate dominance. This was a sweet arrangement for AIOC as they owned controlling interests in the vast oil reserves of Iranian land.
During this time, Iran had a constitutional monarchy under the Shah of Iran which allowed for a parliament majlis which was to be democratically elected. This parliament was represented by a prime minister. For all intents of policies and representation, this prime minister was the ruler of the nation.
The sentiment of the people of Iran, in accordance with the traditions of any society dealing with a pseudo-colonial governance was to summarize with caution not positive. This reflected in their allowing of the formation of Mohammed Mosaddegh’s coalition government- the candidate who ran on the promise of reduction of foreign, military and royal interventions in policy making and the nationalization of the Iranian oil reserves. Mosaddegh proved to be true to his promise. Under him, the democratic Iranian government nationalized the Iranian oil reserves under the NIOC (National Iranian Oil Company) and stripped the Iranian royalty of its rights of intervention in such matters. In the words of Stephen Kinzer Britain was facing a grave challenge at that moment. Its ability to project military power, fuel its industries, and give its citizens a high standard of living depended largely on the oil it extracted from Iran. Since 1901, British government enjoyed exclusive extraction rights over the Iranian oil through the AIOC. The then American president Truman tried to negotiate and bring the two parties to share the oil. This proposal, according to Kinzer was acceptable to Iranians but not the British.
The British government returned the favor. They blockaded Iran and threatened any country or entity in the world against buying their oil. The loss of oil revenue triggered hyperinflation and shortages in Iran. Mosaddegh’s fragile political coalition shattered between the noises of growing demands on yet swifter reforms and the fears of those red noises from the merchants and Islamic clerics. Exploiting the domestic instability, the British MI6 and the American CIA orchestrated a military coup d'état. They paid street mobs to riot, bribed military officers, and arrested Mosaddegh. He was charged with treason and tried in a military court. He practically lived the rest of his life in captivity and died of cancer in a place by the name of which goes another city where a future dictator in a similar part of the world would arise.
Keeping in mind the sentiment against their name and their powers, the Britishers changed the name of their company and agreed to generously lower their share of ownership in the liquid from the land in return for what some people might call hefty and others might call fair, but nobody may call insubstantial amount of money, which was to be paid of course majorly by the government of Iran, read the Shah of Iran, read the people of Iran.
I don’t want to get into the details of the other factors including the cold war and the American interests, not because I find that uninteresting, rather, because I think I have made my point. The point has been that in the quest for saving their interests, the colonial machinery demolished the nascent structure of representative democracy in Iran and demoralized those Iranians who ascribed to this vision.
… in the quest for saving their interests, the colonial machinery demolished the nascent structure of representative democracy in Iran and demoralized those Iranians who ascribed to this vision.
My knowledge of the Shah of Iran is forever under the shadow of the quote from Thomas Paine monarchy in every instance is the Popery of government. How I read this quote is as this: A king is a dictator who wears a crown. One of the benefits of having been born in the place and time that I was has been that I have near zero respect for kings and it doesn’t go near zero from the direction you are imagining. All kings are idiots if and because they think they can rule. And the Shah puts it out for display to the whole world when in order to celebrate the 2500th anniversary of the Founding of the Persian empire in 1971, and, to establish his credibility as the ruler of Iran, he throws a party, rather, he throws the party. The party was made of everything that is wrong with dictatorship, everything that is wrong with monarchies and everything that is common between dictatorships and monarchies. The sheer extravagance of the event was staggering. The Shah invited over 60 foreign heads of state, kings, queens, and dictators. Crucially, ordinary Iranians were strictly barred from the venue, and the entire area was put under military lockdown for security. The most famous restaurant in the world at the time closed its doors in France for two weeks to cater the event. Tons of ingredients, including millions of eggs and thousands of bottles of wine, were flown from Paris to the Iranian desert. While royalty drank vintage champagne in air-conditioned silk tents, millions of ordinary Iranians were living in deep poverty, lacking basic infrastructure like clean water, electricity, or schools. The stark visual contrast shattered any illusion that the Shah cared about his everyday citizens. One has but to imagine this straw of a party and extrapolate from it the size of the heap that broke the camel’s back called the Shah’s rule.
While royalty drank vintage champagne in air-conditioned silk tents, millions of ordinary Iranians were living in deep poverty, lacking basic infrastructure like clean water, electricity, or schools. The stark visual contrast shattered any illusion that the Shah cared about his everyday citizens.
Among the most notable aftermaths of this party were two: uniting of the opposition, and, the crackdown of that opposition. There had been voices of opposition in Iran throughout this time, but they were scattered across the leftist students, the secular nationalists and the religious traditionalists. They rarely saw eye-to-eye to each other. The staggering waste at Persepolis gave them a single, highly visible symbol of royal corruption to rally against. Naturally followed the aforementioned crackdown. To ensure nothing disrupted the party, the Shah’s feared secret police, SAVAK, preemptively arrested, interrogated, and jailed thousands of suspected dissidents, students, and intellectuals. This intensified the public's hatred of the regime's authoritarian tactics.
The journey of a sovereign nation state to a failed one invariably starts with a shift in the perception of the ruled class about where the power actually resides. This is true for kingdoms and republics alike. Once the Shah fell in the eyes of the masses of Iran, the public gaze shifted towards another protagonist- someone who was exiled by the prior following a heated public speech he gave about granting of diplomatic immunity to the American military personnel in Iran. If you are an aspiring religious dictator trying to rile up the democratic instincts of a vast people, I cannot imagine you doing better than that speech on the fundamental scales of oratory, political awareness and pathos. This protagonist was of course, the future Supreme Leader of Iran and the Ayatollah of the Shia: Ayatollah Ruhollah Khomeini. Arrested after his speech by the secret police of Iran, Khomeini had to spend years in exile in multiple countries before he moved to France where he became a folk hero giving out daily interviews to the western media who were deeply charmed by his humble appearance and his sophisticated ability to present his movement as a democratic, anti-imperialist liberation movement against a tyrannical dictator contrary to a clerical takeover.
All revolutions are about everything. No revolution has the right to be about just one thing.
Let’s talk a little bit about the protests themselves. Let’s start with who was protesting. Who was protesting? Practically everybody: the clergy, the urban poor, the merchants, the middle class, the students, the socialists, the leftists, the lawyers, the doctors, the writers- everyone. Everyone was out on the streets with their demands. Every time someone was shot by the Shah’s army, the whole bulk of protesters went on the chehelum- 40 days of mourning and then everyone would come back and protest until someone else got shot followed by the same chehelum of 40 days and the cycle continued into an unstoppable, self-perpetuating momentum of unrest. The cassette kept playing on a loop with the music getting louder and louder until in late 1978s, the whole state machinery started collapsing with the street protest turning into economic warfare when the oil workers went on strike and the oil exports shut down. What were the demands? Shah’s unconditional removal. And then? Of course the reduction of the American influence on the wealth, the military and the foreign policy of Iran. Ok! And then? Well.. At this point I must refer to an axiom I heard very recently: “All revolutions are about everything. No revolution has the right to be about just one thing.” And in this crucial little detail lurked the devil. While the secular students and leftists shouted for "Freedom and Independence," Khomeini’s faction shouted for an "Islamic Republic." The secular factions tolerated Khomeini because he was a powerful, uncompromising symbol of resistance living safely in France. They mistakenly believed that once the Shah fell, the elderly cleric would retire to a quiet religious life in Qom- the religious and theocratic center of Iran, leaving the government to educated secular politicians. Instead, Khomeini's organized clerical network quickly outmaneuvered, arrested, and suppressed their former secular allies, establishing an autocratic theocracy.
One important character in my story of Iran is actually French. Foucault: whom Noam Chomsky identified as the most morally corrupt person he had ever met. Chomsky: about whom likely you know because of the whole Jeffery Epstein scandal. Epstein: about whom you might know because he was close friends with certain head of states. Foucault was one of the very few philosophers in the west who not only actually went to Iran during those troubled times, but also wrote favorably about the whole protest. In his writings about Iran, he coined the term "political spirituality," defining it as a collective, transformative will where a population seeks to change their entire existential being rather than just their government. If anything, his study of the situation should serve as a warning to the world who sees anti-modernist philosophers as an answer to the Marxist lens.
What followed the formation of the Islamic Republic of Iran was as dramatic as what had happened before. Americans wanted to maintain stable relations with Iran to avoid the possibility of it forming closer ties with the USSR, but had severely underestimated Khomeini. They maintained a truce until the Shah who was struggling with cancer, against the warnings of the diplomats was granted a medical refuge in New York- a fateful event that caused furious panic in Iran. Zealous and radical students of Iran stormed the American embassy and took American diplomats and civilian staff hostage, demanding the immediate extradition of the Shah to stand trial in exchange for their freedom. President Carter acted swiftly. America immediately banned all imports of Iranian oil, froze billions in Iranian assets held in American banks, and implemented a total economic embargo.
In this string of events, there are many which can be called the main turning point of history, but I am biased towards this last one. Under severe public pressure, president Carter sends American troops to liberate the hostages. The rescue mission fails spectacularly, leading to a public humiliation of American war machinery. Western European nations immediately joined the Americans in condemning Iran, implementing their own economic sanctions. This remains the status quo today. Furthermore, when Iraqi dictator Saddam Hussein launched a surprise invasion of Iran in September 1980, the West covertly shifted its support toward Iraq, providing Baghdad with vital military intelligence and economic assistance to contain Khomeini's revolutionary expansion.
There is a whole next chapter about the next Ayatollah and the western attempts to curb the nuclear ambitions of the Iranian state, but that can possibly be a subject for a next writing session. I sense that my critical portrayal of the pre-Islamic regime of Iran may make it sound as if I am supportive of the present establishment. I must refute that categorically. My own study of the political situation of Iran actually started with the comparison made by a renowned senior journalist from India mentioning the present Iranian regime as the only framework for the ambitions of the voices of anti-modernism in India. Theocracy is inherently anti-democratic regardless of whether it is well intentioned or not. Moreover, this was government that issued the death warrant against my favorite writer.
My intention for writing this post has been to attempt to summarize my own thoughts on the matter more than sharing my point of view, still, I would consider it successful only if someone finds this a good read.
