40 Years On: Reflections on the Iranian Revolution (original) (raw)
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The year 1979 was among the most tumultuous, and important, in the history of the modern Middle East. The Middle East Institute will mark the 30 th anniversary of these events in 2009 by launching a year-long special series of our acclaimed publication, Viewpoints, that will offer perspectives on these events and the influence which they continue to exert on the region today. Each special issue of Viewpoints will combine the diverse commentaries of policymakers and scholars from around the world with a robust complement of statistics, maps, and bibliographic information in order to encourage and facilitate further research. Each special issue will be available, free of charge, on our website, www.
Third World Quarterly, 1988
Studies of the Iranian revolution of 1977-79 have gone through at least three overlapping phases. In the first phase, influenced strongly by the political and emotional immediacy of the revolution itself, many of the critiques and battle cries of the opposition against the ...
Introduction: The Iranian Revolution Turns 30
Radical History Review, 2009
This issue of Radical History Review marks the thirtieth anniversary of the Iranian revolution. The 1979 revolution brought about radical changes in the Iranian political, social, and cultural institutions, reverberated across the globe, and caused rifts and realignments in international relations. The complex and evolving nature of the postrevolutionary dynamics in Iran call for renewed reflections on the roots of the revolution, the processes leading to its victory, and its impact on the Muslim world and the global balance of power. While this special issue was in production, the tenth presidential election in Iran and its aftermath caught the world's attention. In the following introduction, we speak about how the inherent contradiction in the postrevolutionary constitution became the point of reference on the one hand for the idea of republicanism and on the other for autocratic theocracy. The massive demonstrations against what the former president Mohammad Khatami called a "velvet coup against the people and the republic" has demonstrated that the Iranian revolution remains unfinished and its basic principles continue to be deeply contested. 1 The unanticipated response by hundreds of thousands of members of the electorate and by the allegedly defeated candidates, who refused to accept the fraudulent results, shook the country and generated an unprecedented crisis of legitimacy for the Supreme Leader Ayatollah Khamenei. It is unclear whether the current protest movement will redirect the revolution toward its original democratic ideals or if its suppression will strip the Islamic regime of its republican core. The events that followed the establishment of the Islamic Republic-the American hostage crisis of 1979-81, the devastating eight-year war between Iran and Iraq (1980-88), Tehran's ideological and political leverage in Lebanon, recent diplomatic tensions surrounding Iran's development of nuclear energy, and various domestic miscarriages-can obscure the sense of empowerment and euphoria the
The Rise and Fall of the 1979 Iranian Revolution- Its Lessons for Today
Our Place in the World: A Journal of Ecosocialism
The February 1979 Iranian revolution was the largest urban mass uprising since the 1917 Russian revolutions. It was also a deep-going revolution in which working people and youth organized popular democratic committees called shoras (councils) in workplaces, in the countryside, by the oppressed nationalities, in universities, and briefly among the soldiers. The working people of Iran had a genuine opportunity to create a government of the people, by the people, and for the people. Yet, within a month after the February 11, 1979 revolution, an absolute majority of the population voted in an undemocratic referendum organized by Ayatollah Khomeini for an undefined Islamic Republic. Khomeini used this "mandate" to undermine and destroy all popular independent mass organizations and by the end of 1982, destroy the revolution and solidify a capitalist theocracy in place of the capitalist monarchy. The essay draws the lessons of the revolution and its defeat.
The Iranian Revolution: From Monarchy to the Islamic Republic
Understanding and Teaching the Modern Middle East (University of Wisconsin Press), 2020
"One way to present a more complex picture is to focus the discussion of the revolution around three “actors”: the Pahlavi State, the Opposi- tion, and the People. In doing so, we suggest emphasis be placed on how each of these actors creates a different periodization and frame- work of analysis for the revolution, even though they all intersected in the lead-up to 1979. This division can also fit onto an imperfect timeline that moves from the 1950s to the 1970s as demonstrated below. By shift- ing the beginning point of the revolution, and by presenting multiple explanations for the events leading to it, educators can simultaneously stress the unpredictable nature of this revolution (and revolutions in gen- eral), acknowledge how an event as forceful as a revolution can simul- taneously be many things to many people, and probe with students the degree to which their current ideas about politics, religion, culture, and even revolution determine their views of the past. To facilitate this, in each section we introduce mainly primary sources that embody the com- plexities this essay highlights. There is, of course, a rich body of scholar- ship focusing on the political, economic, cultural, ideological, and social causes of the revolution, a few of which we have referenced below but many of which can be found in online searches of libraries or syllabi on modern Iran or the Middle East."