History of the Resistance Part 2:  Democracy, Dictatorship, Resistance 1941-1978
 

From 1941 to 1952, democracy flourished in Iran and the country played an active role in the post-war negotiations to ensure that such a conflict would not occur again.

1945 saw the formation of the United Nations, which Iran joined as a founder member.   At that time, it was a democratic sovereign nation under a constitutional monarch.   It was the same sovereign nation that in 1948 signed the UN Universal Declaration on Human Rights.

But, by 1951 democratic Iran was beginning to feel secure and wanting to test its ability to reduce the control of other nations, particularly over its natural resources.   In April 1951, the Majlis nominated Mohammad Mossadegh as Prime Minister and asked the Shah to appoint him to the post.   Mossadegh was chosen specifically because he was one of the original Mujahedin Constitutionales and so commanded the respect of the people and, it was hoped, the outside world.

Within a week, Mossadegh nationalised the Anglo-Iranian oil company, cancelling its concession and allowing Britain no further involvement with the oil industry.   As expected, this did not please Britain, but rather than accepting the action as the Majlis had hoped, the British whipped up support and organised a worldwide embargo on Iranian oil, which made it very hard for Mossadegh to run the country.   A smear campaign was also mounted against him as a person and a leader and finally a Western backed coup was initiated, orchestrated by Britain and the United States.   August 1953 saw Mossadegh thrown out of office, the Majlis disbanded, and Mohammad Reza Pahlavi restored to the Shah’s throne as an absolute monarch. 

The British lost out on the result, however, as they no longer had a monopoly on oil, while giving a relatively small amount of the profits to the Iranian government.   In 1954, after the coup, the Iranian Oil Consortium was formed of eight companies, one Dutch, one French and five from the United States, as well as the newly named British Petroleum, to manage the oil reserves, with Iran to receive 50% of the profits.

As an absolute monarch, Mohammad Reza Shah set out to modernise Iran along Western lines as had his father, but also became increasingly autocratic and suppressive of any independent enterprises, closing down newspapers, schools, clubs and imprisoning anybody who criticised him or his policies.   No political parties were tolerated.  The SAVAK was a brutal special force that carried out his bidding.  His prison population swelled. 

In January 1963, the Shah introduced his White Revolution, designed to break down the power of the landed class and create loyalty with the peasants.   In the event, he alienated almost everybody.   As well as the landed classes, he upset the people by not allowing them any independent bodies or organisations.   He also upset the clergy by allowing women too much freedom, giving them universal suffrage and ‘going soft’ on Islamic purity in many other ways. 

In response to the White Revolution, the People’s Mujaheddin Organisation of Iran (PMOI) was launched on 6 September 1965, by a group of students and intellectuals who believed in freedom of expression and religion, separation of church and state in government and the participation of the people in the country's running.   They rightly claimed the legacy of the 1906 Mujaheddin Constitutionales by including Mujaheddin in their name and gained enormous popularity and a huge readership for their daily independent journal, the Mujahedin.  

By the mid-1970s, all the leaders of the PMOI had been imprisoned and the majority executed.   One of the youngest leaders, Massoud Rajavi, was only saved from execution by the efforts of his brother Kazeem, who was a well-respected Iranian Ambassador to the UN and elicited the support of the international community. 

Also as a result of the Shah’s White Revolution, a fervent and outspoken Mullah, Ruhollah Khomeini, was exiled in November 1964 for fulminating against the Shah and his Westernisation, especially the  enfranchisement of women and other indications of a ‘soft’ Islam.   He had been arrested early in 1963, but was saved from execution by being nominated an Ayatollah, the high religious status of which made him immune.

The Ayatollah who conferred this honour on him to save his life was later executed as a thank you, presumably to eliminate any reminders.   Initially secretly bundled out of Iran to Turkey on 4 November 1964, Khomeini moved to Najaf, the high religious city in Iraq, equivalent to Qom in Iran, on 5 September 1965, where he spent the next 13 years of his exile.   He spent his time refining his system of velayat-e faqih, absolute rule of the clergy, before re-emerging from exile in Paris in October 1978.    

Left to his own devices, the Shah became increasingly repressive of any who expressed individual views, whether or not they aligned with his own.   Western modernisation was, by his decree and along his lines.   He also tested his sense of power against the Western nations who had originally given him his throne.   In 1969, he allied himself with the Muslim and Arab nations of the region, Iran, becoming a founding Member of the Organisation of Islamic Cooperation.

This sort of behaviour led the US State Department to make a note against their Iran file in the early 1970s to the effect that “The Shah seems to think that he runs his country and to have forgotten the friends who put him there.”   The same report noted that he was being over enthusiastic in his repression of the people and their desire for independent thought and activities, but that the US would not attempt to advise him to relax his grip as it could prove useful in the future if they needed him to go. 

Sure enough, when the Shah’s high-handed treatment of the Western nations and repressive measures against his own people reached new heights, the new Carter administration talked of the priority of promoting human rights and International Commissions were sent to Iran to inspect the prison system and recommend significant relaxing of the harsh treatment of prisoners.

Perhaps most significant were the Red Cross reports of 1977 and 1978, made after visits to prisons in Iran and noting signs of torture and abuse in sixteen of the eighteen visited.

From January 1978, the people of Iran, emboldened by various measures taken to relax the treatment of prisoners, started to rise up in significant numbers, and were met by a mixture of concession and repression from a vacillating Shah.   The protests grew in strength and momentum as every death created another martyr to pave the road to freedom.  

On 8 September, the Shah’s regime proclaimed martial law and used lethal fire against the protesters, bringing all sectors of the community, the workers and significantly the oil workers, out on strike against the brutality.   This sufficed to disrupt and destabilise the Shah’s position.   The writing was on the wall.

(C) 2023 Attribution-NoDerivatives 4.0 International by the Link for Freedom Foundation Committee