The Spectator on the Iranian Revolution

Here's The Spectator's initial take on the Iranian Revolution of 1979:

Iran: the greatest revolution since 1917
Edward Mortimer, 17 February, 1979

'How much the greatest event it is that ever happened in the world! And how much the best!' Fox's words on the fall of the Bastille seem entirely apposite when one sits with a household in south Tehran listening to the revolutionary songs broadcast for the first time on Iranian National Radio, captured only an hour or so earlier by 'the people' from the disintegrating remains of the Shah's armed forces.

Bad reporting and skilled propaganda have persuaded many European intellectuals to see these events as 'a struggle between two fascists'. In fact they are a genuine popular revolution in the fullest sense of the word: the most genuine, probably, since 1917 anywhere in the world, perhaps more genuinely popular than the Bolshevik revolution was, and quite possibly - though here one's perspective may be distorted by proximity - no less far-reaching in its implications for the rest of the world.

The popular movement embraced the whole of the urban middle and lower middle class, and mobilised at least a substantial part of the industrial working class. Outside it were only the most pampered hangers-on of the regime, the most westernised members of the upper bourgeoisie and intelligentsia - toghether with the peasantry and, until the last stages, the professional members of the armed forces. Until these last stages the movement was non-violent. Its weapons were economic (the strike) and ideological. The killing of its members did more damade to the enemy's morale than its own. This was because it ideology had an extraordinary firm hold over its own members, and at least a partial hold over its opponents. A secular socialist ideology would be unlikely to attain such power in any country. A religious  populist ideology proved, in Iran, to have an irresistible dynamic force.

Religious populism is certainly not fascism. But the religious movement does have an extravagant cult of a leader who lays claim to a divine mission. Westernised intellectuals find this disturbingly reminiscent if the official cult surrounding the Shah himself. Khomeini seems to them just as inaccessible, just as stiff-necked and perhaps even less capable of providing his followers with a clear political programme. The fact that his popularity is at the moment undoubtedly spontaneous and genuine is not necessarily reassuring: it could simply prove that the Iranians are an incorrigible nation of Shah-worshippers, determined to subject themselves to a new dictator as soon as they have overthrown the old one.

Certainly it is true that the uneducated rank and file find it easiest to understand the struggle as being between a bad leader and a good one. But a great many people accept Khomeini as a leader of the revolution, admiring his consistency in opposition and acknowledging  his unique achievement in mobilising the masses, without either expecting or intending him to assume absolute power thereafter. Both secular leftists and members of ethnic and religious minorities are suspicious of the religious movement's intentions and hostile to the idea of a Shiite theocracy. But that does not stop them from being wholehearted supporters of the revolution, arguing when challenged that, whatever happens, Khomeini 'is better than that murderer Shah'.

Intellectuals, other than the totally westernised who are really out of sympathy with the whole movement and would have preferred a solution à la Bakhtiar, can be divided into those who believe its objectives are compatible if not identical with their own. Both beleive in the words of the Marxist writer, Bahazin, that 'the form of the revolution is religious, but its content is political'. But while the former are ready to confront the religious movement when the time comes in order to secure the political 'content', the latter argue that the religious movement is itself much more consciously political than is thought. The Shia, they say, has been re-interpreted as a kind of 'theology of liberation', Khomeini has himself defied religious conservatism, and is therefore unlikely to want to impose it on the rest of society.

One could in fact invert Bahazin's remark and say that the revolution is religious, populist or nationalist in content - not Marxisy, anyway - but classically Leninist in form. The pattern of 1917 has been followed quite closely, with Khomeini playing Lenin, and Bakhtiar Kerensky. The recipe of 'dual power' prescribed by Lenin, was folowed to the letter during the days between Khomeini's return and the overthrow of Bakhtiar. Power melted almost physically away from Bakhtiar, and the sense that Khomeini was now the real, the legitimate ruler of the country became so strong that the armed forces could not remain immune from it. Once the Shah had gone, Bakhtiar and 'the Constitution' were not credible poles of authority in their own right. Even the peasants, until then often mistrustful of a movement which they feared might revoke the land reform, promptly took down the Shah's picture and replaced it with Khomeini's.

A more recent parallel would be the Portuguese revolution. In this context, the religious movement in Iran plays the role of the Armed Forces Movement (MFA), enjoying a generally acknowledged 'revolutionary legitimacy' because of its indispensable role in the overthrow of the old regime, but one which does not necessarily  involve endorsement of its pretensions to a permanent guiding role in the new polity. Like the MFA it is strong on emotion, weak on coherent political thought. But, unlike it, it has a specific ideology and a leader whose authority is universally acknowledged: this should mean that it is better placed to resist both communist manipulation (which is certainly being attempted) and general disintergration through in indiscipline - which is a real danger. The sight of soldiers joy-riding down Shah Reza Avenue last Sunday, sometimes with red carnations protruding from their rifles had a definitely Portuguese falvour to it. The weapons so joyfully distributed may not be easy to recover.

Still, observation so far suggests that these are the fringes of the movement rather than its main body, which remains impressively united and disciplined and has built up a fine degree of organisation. Yet another parallel which occurred to me was with one of the big Western European communist parties, courted by smaller groups to its left because of its overwhelming mass following, seeking to preserve that mass following from contamination, and infuriating the gorups in question by its caution and its willingness to send the country back to  work as soon as its immediate political aims are achieved. Here one can cast Engineer Mehdi Bazargan (mutatis emphatically mutandis) as the Maurice Thorez of 1936 ('Il faut savoir terminer une grève') or 1945 ('there's never been anything revolutionary about shirking).

So what are movement's objectives? Interestingly enough, the demands are not economic. There have been strikes for higher wages, but they have gone on, even after wage demands were granted, for specifically political aims. One list of demands even included the resignation of President Carter. That mnay ot be achieved, but Iran may well contribute to his non-re-election. For there is no doubt that what has happened here is a tremendous blow to American power and prestige, and that it was definitely intedned as such. This is a nationalist revolution. That may seem surprising when one remember's the Shah's own extravagant nationalist posturings, and the tendency of Khomeini and other religious leaders to formulate their thought in pan-Islamic rather than purely Iranian terms.

But let no one be deceived; the movement has been sustained by, and in turn has contributed to, an overwhelming national pride. 'We are Iranian,' was one worker's simple answer when I asked him, as he lay in hospital with one kindney and ahlf his spine shot away, how he had the courage to go into the streets unarmed against rifles and machine guns. The Shah's policies were seen not as a reflection of this pride but as an insult to it. My Kurdish hosts waited eagerly on Sunday night for the closedown of the first evening's television broadcasting under 'people's' control. They were waiting to hear the 'real' Iranian national anthem - that is the old one - played for the first time, instead of the imperial hymn invented by the Shah. The trappings of empire were almost entirely artificial, and never accepted by the people as a true expression of the nation.

The Shah attempted to play on anti-Aral feelings in Iran, emphasising the pre-Islamic Persian tradition. The result has been an unprecedented strengthening of pro-Arab feeling in Iran. Iranians ahve concluded that in present circumstances the Arabs and no threat to their national sovereignty, but rather fellow victims of Western and especially American imperialism. The Arabisation of their country happened twelve centuries ago and has long since been absorbed. But Americanisation has been proceeding apace for these last twenty-five years and can still be resisted. Iranians know that for many of them it has meant, in purely material terms, an increased standard of living. But in other respects they have experienced it as a deterioration in their quality of life, as the imposition of a cultural and social model they find alien and unattractive.

The economic rationale of this process may not be fully understood by the masses. But it certainly is understood by the intellectuals, including some of those close to Khomeini, such as Abolhassan Bani-Sadr. It was explained to me by Professor Amir Hosain Jahanbaglou of the University of Tehran: 'Iran is perhaps an extreme case of the general role of developing countries in the present world economy. A key raw material, oil, is being extracted from it to fuel ever increasing production in the West, and the products are then dumped in Iran, enabling the petrodollars to be "recycled' back to the West. Thus the Iranian economy has been based on crazy, idiotic waste.' The West has expaned its market in Iran by encouraging pointless defence expenditure, unrestrained consumer spending, the constuction of factories on a scale Iran does not need (and which cannot produce economically for export), and so on.

He gives as an example of this porcess the proliferation of motor vehicles in Iran - both imported and domestically produced (or rather assembled). The cost of the resulting traffic jams, he says, is astronomical, when one counts in the secondary and tertiary effects. This is easy to believe - especially when one has spent most of a  day in Tehran traffic jams oneself, and heard tales of doctors having to abandon their cars half a mile form the hospital on the way to perform a vital operation.

All which means that this may actually be the revolution undertaken to reduce consumption rather than increase it - a 'cultural and spiritual revolution', as Jahanbaglou puts it, rather than an acquisitive one. If that is right, it could also be one of the most successful revolutions in history, since expectations of this kind could be less difficult to fulfil.

The implications for the West would then be extremely serious. Iran could decide to make do with half the oil revenue if had before of even less, and its example could well affect other oil-producing countries, especially Muslim ones. Even those with pro-Western governments might feel obliged to pre-empt an Iranian-style revolution by adopting more nationalist and less consumerist policies. The result would be a drop in oil prices, and a shrinking of the markey for many western products. The prospect for continued 'growth' - that is, ever-increasing production in the West - would be severly reduced. The cult of productivity might have to be abandoned. The econlogical conservationist lobby would come into its own.

All that would be a lot for one backward, middle-sized country like Iran to have achieved. Iran may yet botch it, as under Massadeq it botched the attempt to nationalise its oil resources. But that did not stop the example from being followed later by other countries, and it would not necessarily do do this time either.