As Wordsworth present in Paris after 1789, revolutions are deeply enthralling. There may be nothing so daring, so self-sacrificing, so courageous, so merciless as a revolutionary crowd. What’s extra, revolutions have formed the trendy world. The European Union has been reworked by the overthrow of Marxism-Leninism in japanese Europe, whereas the near-revolution in Tiananmen Sq. in 1989 feeds the neuroses of the Chinese language Communist celebration to at the present time.
But in some methods it was a revolution 10 years earlier that has been much more formative for our instances: the overthrow of the shah in Iran. That, certainly, was a real revolutionary archetype on the 1789 mannequin: barricades within the streets, crowds armed with previous searching rifles and kitchen knives dealing with as much as the tanks (British-made, naturally); palaces, barracks and secret police headquarters stormed and sacked, the uniforms of the shah’s supposed “Immortals” mendacity on the bottom, deserted in utter panic. I even got here throughout the last word revolutionary picture: the physique of an unlucky cop hanging from a lamp-post. Squeamishness again on the BBC in London meant the shot wasn’t used.
The overthrow of the shah’s dynasty had deep roots: heavy-handed British and American imperialism going again many years, the huge wave of corruption created by the oil worth rise after 1973, the shah’s personal neurotic indecision, the brutality of the Savak (which, a lot as within the French and Russian revolutions, proved to be a moon-cast shadow of the incoming regime’s repression).
When the revolution occurred, it electrified Muslims in every single place: they noticed it was truly attainable to face up and overthrow the chosen devices of western coverage. However Iran was a Shia Muslim nation, outdoors the mainstream of Sunni politics and thought, and the revolution had a very highly effective impact on Shia communities, particularly in Lebanon, the place Shias within the south of the nation had been an underclass because the Crusades. Immediately they had been aware of a brand new energy, and Hezbollah was fashioned to withstand Israel’s encroachments. Half a century on, Hezbollah is certainly one of Israel’s main enemies; whereas Iran itself has taken on the mixed may of america and Israel and proved a formidable opponent.
The historical past of the Iranian revolution has been written many instances, however I haven’t discovered an account as clear and freed from preconceptions as Homa Katouzian’s. Katouzian is a serious historian, however he’s additionally a polymath – an economist, a political scientist and a revered literary critic. These days he’s an honoured determine at St Antony’s Faculty, Oxford, but what I notably loved was the occasional second if you really feel you’re within the presence of the younger man he as soon as was, trying on, Wordsworth-like, because the historical past of which he would in the future be a grasp was being made.
This enterprise of being an onlooker is necessary. Far too many diplomats, British, American, French, German, had been shut up of their embassies, listening to the reassuring intelligence pumped out by the shah’s companies. The one British diplomat I knew who understood the seriousness of the shah’s scenario was a younger man who was allowed to reside outdoors the embassy along with his Iranian girlfriend. Overseas journalists, who spent their days speaking to extraordinary individuals, foresaw the approaching collapse most clearly. As late as November 1978 a number of western embassies, together with the British and American ones, had been reporting again to their capitals that regardless of every part, the shah would outlast the revolution.
However then, as Katouzian makes clear, the political convulsion in Iran didn’t conform to western concepts. Iran, he writes, “was a society through which change – even necessary and basic change – tended to be a short-term phenomenon. And this was exactly as a result of absence of a longtime and inviolable authorized framework which might assure long-term continuity.” At current, in fact, the west itself faces a reasonably comparable course of in Donald Trump’s United States, the place legislation and coverage should adapt themselves to no matter Trump says they need to be at any given second. But when there are occasional similarities between the shah and Trump, the shah’s all-pervasive insecurity has completely no echo in Trump’s armour-plated certainty that he’s proper, irrespective of how usually and the way radically he alters his thoughts. What hyperlinks the 2 males is their skill to control by whim alone. It introduced the shah down; it might nicely clip President Trump’s wings after this November’s midterm elections.
All revolutions are accompanied by a level of self-deception: with out that, they’d by no means succeed. Katouzian provides the perfect description I’ve seen of the odd alliance between the rebarbative ultra-conservative clergy and the leftwing Iranian intellectuals who managed to steer themselves that Ayatollah Khomeini’s return to Tehran would open the door to democracy, liberty of expression and true socialism. “Why are you so bloody optimistic?” I requested a British-educated former member of the Majlis, or parliament, who had simply bought again to his flat, sweaty and exhilarated, from welcoming the Ayatollah within the tumultuous streets of Tehran. “Something is best than the shah,” he answered, “and Khomeini will probably be simple to get spherical. He’s only a bigoted previous ignoramus, in spite of everything.”
Having met and interviewed Khomeini outdoors Paris at Neauphle-le-Château a few weeks earlier, I wasn’t satisfied, and I used to be proper. My pal died in Evin jail a yr or so later, in a method I desire not to consider; Khomeini stayed in energy till his loss of life 10 years later, and handed on the system which has lasted, largely unchanged and positively unmoderated, till at this time. As Donald Trump and Benjamin Netanyahu are discovering, merely chopping off the regime’s head is totally pointless. Its energy goes far deeper than that.
The shah left Iran for the final time on 16 January 1979, tears working down his face as he climbed into the plane which took him to exile and a painful loss of life from most cancers. On 1 February, Ayatollah Khomeini flew into the identical airport and established the Islamic Republic. Forward lay chaos, assassinations, terror and an appalling eight-year battle (western-encouraged) with Saddam Hussein’s Iraq. Nobody thought the Islamic revolution would final something like so long as it has. On my frequent visits to Iran I labored out a system which I assumed summed issues up: “the revolution feels steady however not everlasting”. In fact nothing is everlasting, however Iran’s Islamic revolution has outlived loads of others, from Gorbachev’s perestoika to Orbánism.
Katouzian is as clear-sighted in regards to the maintain the Iranian system has developed over time as he’s in regards to the revolution itself, and his account of the younger girls who’ve refused to simply accept that system is admirable. In fact it is going to collapse sooner or later, although Israel and america between them could have injected a brief new energy into it with their assaults. Most autocracies are introduced down ultimately by corruption, and this would be the destiny of the ayatollahs and the revolutionary guards too. The method has taken so lengthy as a result of, not like the shah, the regime has been keen to make use of the utmost violence to remain in energy. In any case, Katouzian’s heat, rational, extremely accessible research will proceed to clarify the phenomenon lengthy after it has vanished.
John Simpson is the BBC’s world affairs editor. Iran and the Revolution: A Historical past by Homa Katouzian is revealed by Yale (£25).
