Iran Ire Over Foreign Interference

It was this week in February 1979 that the Iran Revolution, also known as Islamic Revolution that sparked off in early 1978, saw Ayatollah Ruhollah Khomeini assume power in the oil rich Shia-majority country. Ever since Iranian rulers have been vehemently suspicious of extraneous elements. Early 1979, as huge crowds gathered and rallied in the streets of the capital against the emperor, the long-time absolute ruler heeded his foreign friends’ advice to leave the country and save himself and his family members. 

Exiled by the Shah in 1964, Ayatollah Ruhollah Khomeini’s return from exile in February 1979 was greeted by massive crowds, estimated at more than one million people. Within a fortnight, the armed forces announced their neutrality. Soon after the Shah went to Egypt on exile, Iran was officially declared an Islamic republic, and Khomeini installed as the supreme leader. 

And the past 44 years have amply reiterated Tehran’s desire to reject some of the core cultural and political agendas set forth by dominant Western capitals in the name of universal values and endorsement. Sweeping changes followed but many of the Shah-led Iran’s foreign friends were put off by the new rulers’ policy of rejecting suggestions from extraneous forces that hitherto had played an extensively influential role in the country’s major decisions and stands taken at international forums. 

Will to assert

Assertive of its own culture and traditions, Tehran is suspicious of eternal forces undermining its efforts at retaining indigenous culture, accelerating economic advancement and taking an independent stand at international forums. Used to having their advice accepted by most regimes in various parts of the world, the US-led West finds Iranian leaders a tough nut to crack. What all these four and a half decades have demonstrated is that Iranian rulers are hell bent on not allowing INGOs corrupt their youth and academics, professional groups and people in general.

With a population of 86.5 million, Iran’s economy is registering gradual upward swing. Supreme leader Ali Khamenei exercises extensive influence in the political process which has elected representatives for running the state affairs. The Islamic Revolution was not a movement fomented by foreign forces but basically by indigenous political groups inspired and motivated by strong Islamic zeal, of which most of the vociferous among in the Christian-dominated Western countries expressed deep concern that the once reliable partner in West Asia would no longer offer the type of strategic support that suited the major powers in Europe and the United States wished for.

In 1941, Britain and the Soviet Union allied to depose Iran’s Reza Shah, as they considered him to be Nazi Germany’s sympathiser and wanted to break their hold on the proud nation with several millennia of history. Reza Shah was subsequently succeeded by his son Mohammad Reza Pahlavi but not without the assurances that he would heed their advice to the full. The US Central Intelligence Agency and the British Secret Intelligence Service MI6 engineered a military coup against Masoumeh Mosaddegh, prime minister from 1951 to 1953. Mosaddegh’s National Front party was virtually banned while he was imprisoned for three years before being placed under house arrest until his death in 1967. 

On the strength of his extensive powers, the Shah dismissed the country’s elected parliament and, as per Western advice, introduced swift urbanisation accompanied by equally fast Westernisation. This development enraged the religious clerics and sections of Shia community. He also gave very generous concessions to American oil companies.

The disgruntlement spread — at first slowing and then, in the 1970s, intensely. Unequal distribution of wealth and corruption in high places, aggravated by rampant nepotism, combined to stir massive public rallies against the regime. Anyone identified as a communist was liable to suffer the worst of torture. The Shah blindly believed that his loyalty to Western powers ensured him immunity from domestic turbulence. For his regime had helped in maintaining oil production and prices as desired by the foreign forces of the West. This fuelled anger among large sections that felt their country served as a foreign pawn and lost national pride in the eyes of the international community. 

Deep doubts

Socio-political repression persisted but the INGOs, which operated all over the country under a variety of guises, hardly ever raised the issue. They considered the Shah to possess modern outlook with a reformist mind, which meant he shared Western values as an endorsement of modernity.  Once the emperor sensed the depth of public protest against him and the US, too, advised him to leave the country “on a vacation”, he went in exile. But he had not lost all hopes of making a comeback.

Meanwhile, Khomeini’s Revolution Guards were mobilised for emergency preparations in order to quell any military coup that the CIA might engineer. Clearly, the American intelligence agency’s notoriety in instigating coups against rulers the US government wanted out of power haunted them. CIA’s role in ousting the Mosaddegh’s government was recalled.

With suspicions and doubts gripping the nation, a group of armed Iranian students raided the American embassy in the capital in November 1979 and took 66 inmates as hostages. They demanded the Shah’s extradition from the US, where he was undergoing medical treatment.  Although the Shah died eight months later, the hostages were not released until January 1981. 

The incident cost the Jimmy Carter administration heavily in terms of credibility at home and abroad. It also deprived Carter of a second term at the White House. Two notable events related to Tehran occurred on the day of Ronald Reagan’s inauguration as the US president in January 1981. While Washington lifted the freeze on $8 billion in Iranian assets, Tehran released the hostages after 444 days.

Hardly any tears were shed in public for the disgraced emperor. He was at the West’s beck and call, thus causing strong resentment among his people who felt their pride deeply hurt and their entire nation humiliated. The suspicion against the US in particular and the rest of the West in general is so deep that the rulers in Tehran continue doubting the sincerity of the West in improving ties with Iran as two sovereign independent nations. 

(Professor Kharel specialises in political communication.)