But neither of them was ever able to suppress the older attitudes which persisted beneath the skin of Iranian politics. The legislation of 1964, conferring legal immunity on US forces stationed in Iran, touched a sensitive nerve, bringing mobs back onto the streets and assassins into the Shah’s household. To the outside world, the Shah embodied the swaggering new nationalism of the oil-rich Middle East. Inside the country, he was undermined by an older, more conservative nationalism which retained its hold on the mass of the population and proved to be the real source of the Ayatollahs’ power. Khomeini stood in an ancient and powerful tradition.
Of the mass of Iranians who celebrated the fall of the Shah in 1979, very few would have voted for Khomeini’s brand of totalitarian theocracy. Most probably looked forward to some form of liberal democratic state. Yet it is exceptionally difficult for the liberal model to survive in a society obsessed by the enemy without, whether it is a monarchy or an Islamic republic. The stand-off with the United States and the long war with Iraq served only to consolidate the new regime in power. As for Khomeini himself, the Iranians got what was on the tin. He had never pretended to be a democrat and was certainly not a liberal. The tragedy of Iran’s modern history was that it was doomed to exchange one kind of nationalist autocracy for another.
If Coughlin’s book opens one’s eyes to the sources of Khomeini’s power and his place in Iranian history, Gholam Reza Afkhami leaves one wondering why the Shah ever fell. The author is a former minister under the Shah and a senior researcher at the Washington institute founded by the Shah’s sister in his memory. His biography of Iran’s last King is a courtly book. We are presented with a wise, far-seeing patriot and democrat, brought down by the bigotry of his opponents and the personal scruples which stopped him ordering the army to fire on his own people. The Shah’s manipulation of the Iranian parliament, his appalling human rights record, the internal divisions in the army and administration during his last months in power, are all excused or played down. So too is the political ineptness with which the Shah united against himself a coalition of enemies with nothing in common, many of whom might have been valuable allies of a more skilful ruler.
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