Speakers: Thomas Small & Aimen Dean
Thomas: Aimen, I can't thank you enough for the music video you shared with me the other day. My goodness, it was so moving.
Aimen: Yeah, moving in the wrong direction.
Thomas: So, dear listener, this was a music video for a new … what do you call this? A new national, patriotic, religious crazy anthem that the Iranian regime released on the 20th of March this year on the Eve of Nowruz, the Persian New Year Festival.
It's called Salam Commander. And Aimen, describe the music video. Don't tell us the words, just like, what is the scene? It’s like in a big courtyard of a mosque somewhere.
Aimen: Yeah, it is the courtyard of a big mosque in Qom and you have all of these young children-
Thomas: Under 10. These are really young kids.
Aimen: Yeah. Very, very young kids. Some of them are the children of Iranian Martyrs, Iranian people who died for the regime in different theaters. They are in their almost tens of thousands, and they are chanting that song with that very commanding figure who is singing this song for them.
Thomas: Yes. There are all these children in this big courtyard of a mosque. Some of them are holding pictures of Ghasem Soleimani, for example.
Aimen: Yes.
Thomas: And others are holding pictures of their martyred fathers, I guess. Some of them are in tears. Sometimes, they salute the hidden Imam, which the song is really all about.
We've never done this on Conflicted. So, let's see if it'll work. I'm going to ask our producer B, to play a little bit of this song, and then we'll talk about it. So, here is Salam Commander.
[Music playing 00:01:35]
Thomas: There you have it. That's Salam Commander, a little brief clip. The words are obviously in Farsi, the language of Iran, but this is what they are in English.
“Please arrive. I'll give my life for you. I promise to become your partisan. I promise to fall in love with you. I'll fall head over heels for you. Despite being so short, I'll become one of your army’s commanders.”
So, short because they're all kids, of course. So, basically Aimen, what do we have here in this song? These are kids being brainwashed into extending their devotion to the Shia 12th hidden Imam so much that they will be martyrs in some big war that's coming up. Is that what we're seeing here with this video?
Aimen: Yeah, exactly. The song Salam Farmandeh, which means, “Salam my commander,” this is referring to The Mahdi, to the Messiah figure of Shia imagination. And Shia theology, the one who disappeared 1200 years ago and is prophesized to reemerge again at the end of time.
These young kids are being taught that it is an act of reverence and worship to wait for this emergence and that his emergence is soon about to happen. It might happen in your lifetime as kids, and therefore, you need to show devotion. So, he may arise. He may come because of the way you’re calling upon him to come.
Thomas: I thought that this would be a good way to start the episode because this episode, dear listener, is really, it’s the big one, we've reached it. It's the Iranian Revolution.
The release of this video only a few months ago shows that the ideology, the impetus behind the revolution is alive and well in Iran and throughout the Middle East, wherever Iran's proxies and sympathizers are.
It's a big story. We'll certainly talk about The Mahdi. We're going to talk about the Ayatollah Khomeini. We're going to talk about the Shah and his tragic victorious downfall. You make up your minds, let's get into it.
[Music playing 00:03:55]
Thomas: “Then I saw heaven opened and behold a white horse. The one sitting on it is called faithful and true. And in righteousness, he judges and makes war.
His eyes are like a flame of fire. And on his head are many diadems and he has a name written that no one knows, but himself.
He is clothed in a robe, dripped in blood. And the name by which he is called is the word of God.
And the armies of heaven are raid in fine linen, white and pure were following him on white horses.
From his mouth comes a sharp sword with which to strike down the nations. And he will rule them with a rod of iron. He will tread the wine press of the fury of the wrath of God, the Almighty.
On his robe and on his thigh, he has a name written King of Kings and Lord of Lords.”
Now, Aimen-
Aimen: Hallelujah, hallelujah.
Thomas: Why have I chosen to start this episode of Conflicted with that quote from the book of Revelation in the Bible? Can you tell me why I might have started this episode with that quote?
Aimen: Well, because our theme today is about messiahs.
Thomas: Not only are we talking about messiahs, but we're specifically talking about a specific Messiah. And this figure, the rider on the white horse is the first time in the scriptures of any of the Abrahamic faiths; Christianity, Judaism and Islam, it's the first time that this figure appears, this end of times warrior figure.
And for Shia Muslims and some Sunnis too, this figure is known as The Mahdi. Here he is for the first time. We'll talk more about The Mahdi later in great detail, I'm afraid.
But to Aimen, this is his first appearance, it's stirring stuff. Wouldn't you say?
Aimen: Yeah. The book of Revelation, it doesn't only talk about the long-waited warrior-like Messiah, but also talks about the Antichrist. Talks about all the enemies that he has to vanquish, and this is reflected a lot in Islamic theology and eschatology in later years. I'm absolutely always astonished by how similar the two narratives are.
Thomas: Well, they come out of the same source, I think. And certainly, this figure of Dajjal, the Antichrist informed the Iranian revolution.
Now, the other thing I like about that quote is because, the Messiah figure who it introduces, this warrior figure, who Muslims call The Mahdi — he's given the title King of Kings.
Another good way to introduce today's topic because the Shah of Iran, traditionally from King Cyrus, the Great in the ancient times up to Mohammad Reza Shah, the last Shah, this was their title; King of Kings, Shahanshah.
Aimen: Well, Thomas, the title Shahanshah or King of Kings is anathema to Islamic theology. Why? Because only God is called King of Kings.
Thomas: I think in general, that Christian theology would agree as well. Although possibly at times, the Christian Roman Emperors of Rome and Byzantium may have styled themselves, King of Kings. I'm not sure about that.
But in general, yes, certainly the title King of Kings is God's alone. And this probably comes from the Jewish experience of being conquered by the ancient Persians and being forcibly removed to their capital in Mesopotamia where they would've seen before them what to them, would've been a great sacrilege; a man claiming to be King of Kings, a man claiming to be God, basically.
So, The Mahdi and the King of Kings, a great way to introduce today's topic, the Iranian Revolution.
Also, the good thing about that quote from the Bible is that it introduces a note of apocalypticism into the episode, right at the start. And that's what I wanted to do, because for those with eyes to see, there was something truly apocalyptic about the Iranian Revolution.
Wouldn't you agree, Aimen? This whole story, the Iranian Revolution, one of the great stories of all time, swirling around it is end of times, doomsday, apocalyptic stuff. It's so dramatic.
Aimen: Well, Thomas, of course, when you look at the year that the Islamic Revolution in Iran took place, it is 1978/1979, tumultuous years, the most actually in the postwar 20th century.
If you look what happened in Afghanistan, the Soviet Union invaded. If you look at what happened in Pakistan, the Islamization of Pakistan and the rejection of Western values there just next door to Iran.
The year in also, saw the coup by Saddam Hussein next door in Iraq, and taking over power there; not to mention Sadat of Egypt abandoning the policy of perpetual war with Israel and embracing peace, which was against the consensus in the Arab and Muslim world.
Thomas: And what about Juhayman al-Otaybi’s taking over the Grand Mosque in Mecca.
Aimen: It got the theme of The Mahdi again, you know you have the Sunni radical Salafist movement storming the Grand Mosque in Mecca, the holiest site in Islam. And for 18 days, they turned it into a battleground.
Why? All on the premise that it was the first night of the 15th century of Islam and therefore, a Mahdi is going to come forward and lead Islam into a glorious era again.
Thomas: Apocalypticism was definitely in the air closer to home in Iran. At one point, the people of Iran looked up and saw Khomeini’s face in the moon or so they thought.
And in addition, ancient Iranian ideas and stories and legends of the cyclical nature of political time, about the providential downfall of tyrants, about the brief triumph of darkness over light, all of these ideas were swirling around. Plus, obviously Islamic ideas of The Mahdi and the return of Jesus and the conquest of Jerusalem, and the holy cities; it all hung over the Islamic revolution.
Aimen: Absolutely, Khomeini did not waste any occasion in his cassettes which were recording his sermons, going and spreading throughout the Iranian population, reminding them of The Mahdi, reminding them of his mission, reminding them that his time is soon approaching, but there is a barrier and what is the barrier? Tyranny, and who symbolizes tyranny? The Shah.
Thomas: So, yep, it's the Shah versus the Ayatollah. It's the big showdown, the prize fight. Two 20th century heavyweights duking it out for the biggest trophy of all, the Persian throne.
Now, these two figures, Shah, Mohammad Reza Pahlavi, and the Ayatollah Khomeini are symbols now. They're symbols of two contrary principles. You have on one hand, the Ayatollah, representing traditionalism, religion, faith, apocalypticism, and you have the Shah, representing modernization.
And there is definitely a lot of truth to that characterization, isn't there Aimen?
Aimen: Oh yeah, there is no question. The Shah was a modernizer in my opinion, too much of a modernizer, which contributed to his downfall. And Khomeini is the eschatological apocalyptic figure coming to say, “The end nigh.” And many people believed him.
Thomas: The Ayatollah's ideas were seeped in ancient, theological eschatological and mystical concepts. Many of them even more ancient than Islam as we'll see. And the Shah, as you say, Aimen, he wagered everything on transforming Iran into a modern powerhouse, and went so far in the 1970s as to claim that by the 1990s, Iran would have a more advanced economy than the United States.
He was focused on making Iran a modern place with a modern economy. However, the equation; Ayatollah equals tradition, the Shah equals modernity can also be reversed because the Ayatollah's Islamism, Shia-inflicted Islamism, was very modern in many ways. And the Shah's regime though modernizing, invoked very traditional ancient ideas of Persian monarchy.
So, that's what makes the two characters so fascinating. They're right, for sort of storytelling on an epic scale because they both incarnate the opposite values. The Shah, the modernizer who dreams himself to be Cyrus the Great reincarnated.
And the Ayatollah, the traditionalist wanting to bring back the time of the prophet, the time of Ali, the time of the noble Imams, but he's also invoking Bolshevik Marxist political ideas to achieve it. It's amazing.
Aimen: I totally agree, Thomas, that this is how the two represented this dichotomy. And this conflict between them shaped now what we know today as Iran and its ever-expanding influence across the Middle East.
Thomas: Now, going from the symbolical level that we've just discussed, we can bring it down to something more sort of personal because the personalities of the two men were very different.
The Shah was a sensitive, quite anxious actually, indecisive person, very romantic, I would say, in his sensibilities, delicate even somewhat feminine, perhaps, which I think he tried to compensate for by performing rigid severity, but it wasn't really his nature. He was a very gentle soul and that is very different from the Ayatollah.
Aimen: Well, the Ayatollah couldn't have been more different. He was no gentle, for sure, that's the first thing. He lived in a rigid household. His own father was killed by one of the old Kajar Shahs in the early 20th century.
And of course, he was only a few months old when that happened. And so, Khomeini lived with the idea that kings are so bad. And so, he lived an austere life, and a life of learning in terms of theology, in terms of laws and regulations, in terms of the Shia jurisprudence. And this austerity helped him a lot, which endeared him to the people. The people were always contrasting the two figures.
There is this austere, decisive, uncompromising character in Khomeini. While on the other hand, you have this modernizing somewhat slavish towards the West, Shah who is effeminate as some of his enemies and detractors would say, but he was just a gentle soul, indecisive, unable to actually hold his ground.
And at the same time, he was always trying to show himself like as decisive and as strong as his father, the iron Shah, but you know what? He was not his father, definitely not his father.
Thomas: His father, the Shah Reza, the iron Shah, we talked all about him in episode four, go back, listen to it if you want to hear about him.
But yes, Aimen, absolutely, in contrast to the Shah, as you said, the Ayatollah is stoical, determined, vengeful, single-minded, utterly inscrutable.
I love this story; when the Ayatollah’s plane landed in Tehran in February, 1979, following the Shah's downfall, this is the culmination of a life's work fomenting revolution against his arch enemy. Khomeini lands, and a journalist asks him, “What do you feel?” His reply, “Nothing.”
Aimen: Yeah, nothing.
Thomas: Nothing. This just says it all. This man was like an iron brick, my goodness. So, that's really how they're different.
But in some important respects, I would say two important respects; the Shah and the Ayatollah were very similar. Both men, it has to be said were quite narcissistic, almost megalomaniacal.
And the other side to that narcissism was that they were both hugely sensitive to any perceived slight. They were in fact, very insecure, weirdly enough.
The Shah, like most authoritarians, he grew more and more paranoid and he saw enemies everywhere. The Ayatollah, he felt slighted once in the 1940s by the Shah and he never forgave him. And from that point on, he had him in his sights.
So, this sort of prickly narcissistic personality trait is something that they shared.
Aimen: There is no question that both of them were narcissistic. The difference is I would say, who was far more bloodier towards their enemies? And I would say definitely Khomeini.
Thomas: Oh, definitely Khomeini, in the end, he's a revolutionary. Revolutions always need to spill blood in order to succeed.
Aimen: Also, don't forget that when you are a religious philosopher king (what he would become later), you really have certainty, absolute certainty that what you're doing is right. What is right for the people.
And there is a story told by Ayatollah Khoei. So, in the 1970s, Khomeini went to see Ayatollah Khoei, who was, of course, the most senior of all the religious clerics of Shia Islam at that time.
And he met him for half an hour, and then he left. And then the son-in-law of Ayatollah Khoei came back into the room and he noticed that Ayatollah Khoei was deeply upset about that meeting. And he said, “What happened?” He said, “Khomeini was here.” I say Khomeini, as he used to call him, like an out of respect.
He said, “Khomeini was here, and he was asking me to give an absolute backing of Najaf and the religious authority of Najaf, and my authority as Ayatollah Al-Khoei, the most senior Shia religious cleric in the world at that time to the revolution he is about to start in Iran. He wants my backing.”
And I said to him, “I can't countenance giving a fatwa for something that will result in bloodshed on a massive scale.”
So, Khomeini looked at him and he said, “For me, I'm happy to see the deaths of hundreds of thousands, if it means that the return of the Imam is near.”
Thomas: The return of the Imam, the Ayatollah believed himself to be … well, what exactly Aimen? Really, it's not always clear because he spoke in riddles and in suggestions. Did he claim to be the 12th Imam, the returned Mahdi himself? Is that what Khomeini was implying?
Aimen: No, he never claimed to be The Mahdi and far from it. Otherwise, people will know he's a charlatan and he doesn't fit the physical description of The Mahdi. The Mahdi has super powers according to Shia Islam. No.
However, we will come to this later in the show, what Khomeini did is far more clever than that. He positioned himself as the flag bearer of The Mahdi.
Thomas: The forerunner, if you like. He was sort of proclaiming the imminent arrival of the long awaited Mahdi, that was his role.
Aimen: Exactly. He's the Faramir to Aragorn.
Thomas: Oh, but Faramir is my favorite character in The Lord of The Rings. So, you've just spoiled it for me forever.
Aimen: Ayatollah Faramir.
Thomas: Oh God. So, that's Khomeini. I wanted to say one other thing, really. Another thing that the Shah and the Ayatollah have in common or had in common, they were both revolutionaries.
This is a very important point. In 1963, as we talked about in the last episode, the one on OPEC, the Shah launched what he called the White Revolution, meaning it was neither red i.e., communist or black i.e., Islamist. It was white, it was modernizing, it was liberalizing, the White Revolution.
In that very same year, Khomeini, in reaction to the White Revolution, basically launched a Black Revolution, which resulted in his exile, but which he continued really to wage behind the scenes for many, many years and which culminated in 1979.
So, we not only have two pivotal sort of epic figures fighting. We have two revolutionaries debating the best kind of revolution for Iran. That's on the one hand.
Now, the other hand, this is an episode about revolution, and revolution has many meanings. You have like the American Revolution, the French Revolution, the Bolshevik Revolution, indeed, the Iranian Revolution. This is when one state is toppled and replaced by another, which is usually more radical. So, there's that one idea of revolution.
But there's another use of the word revolution. And we use it for things like the Scientific Revolution, the Industrial Revolution, the Sexual Revolution, the Information Revolution.
So, this kind of revolution is bigger and longer lasting than Political Revolution. This kind of revolution is the replacement, not of one state with another, not of one regime with another, but of one world view with another, with one material and spiritual basis of civilization with another.
And this kind of revolution, Iran has been undergoing for well over a century as indeed has the entire Middle East. And this is what this whole season of Conflicted has been about.
What we've called the clash of civilizations is really the revolution from the traditional Islamic worldview into the modern worldview and the Iranian revolution of 1979, is a key moment in that wider civilizational revolution.
Aimen: Well, there has been so many different revolutions in Iran, whether it's in 1906, Constitutional Revolution, the Pahlavi’s; Reza Shah Pahlavi opposing the Kajar in his revolution. And then after that, came the White Revolution, and after that, came the 1979 Islamic Revolution.
But in my opinion, can we say that on the path to modernity and these cultural and political revolutions that Iran went through, can we say that the Islamic revolution of 1979 was in fact, not a revolution, but a counter-revolution?
Thomas: You could say that. I'm not sure I would agree with you if you did say that, because there is something very modern about the state that was erected after 1979 in Iran. It is modern, not in a liberal sense, but it is modern in a totalitarian sense, in an authoritarian sense.
It is something like a fascist state, but with Islamic window dressing, if you like. So, there is still something very modern about the state that Khomeini built after 1979.
Aimen: Indeed. And this is why when some people say that the Islamic Revolution was there in order to throw out the excesses of liberal reforms that the Shah introduced into society, especially like when it come to women's rights and women ability to vote and all of that.
But the funny thing is that women became even more freer in terms of political participation after the Shah was-
Thomas: Precisely. And remember, the revolution of the Nazi Movement in Germany was animated by the same thing — to undo the liberal excesses of the Weimar Republic. But nonetheless, what Hitler brought to Germany was nothing traditional at all. It was a highly modern and highly disgusting centralized authoritarian state.
Aimen: Indeed. And this is why in our discussion today of the Iranian Revolution, the Iranian Islamic Revolution of 1979, one of the things it always fascinate me is how the leaders of that revolution, all the way, until really the people went to the streets, when they were in prisons or exile, were not dreaming that their time will come so soon.
And just like the times we are living in right now, the times of high inflation, the times of food scarcity, the times of energy crisis, you start to see that there are parallels there. What started in Iran is what I call the uprising of high expectations.
Thomas: Oh Aimen, that's some good podcasting there; you just brought it right into the present, making it very topical. So, are you saying that we might have another kind of crazy revolution on our hands soon?
Aimen: We might. Why? Because what happened is that the Shah during his White Revolution from 1963 until 1974, these years were the best years of Iran. He made sure that the oil prices through his stewardship of OPEC, as we talked about it in the last episode, made sure that the oil prices rise and rise and rise. The Iranian economy was prospering.
But what he did is that he raised sky high, the expectations of Iranian people, whether they were the upper classes or the middle classes or the lower classes, he raised their expectations sky high.
And he took all that money and straight away, pumped it into the economy without proper planning. He just wanted results so fast. And as a result, the expectations came crashing down when the oil prices started to fall down from 74 onwards.
Thomas: Aimen, as always, you're racing ahead of me here. Okay. So, let's get into the actual history now. Now, the history of the Iranian Revolution, which started in ‘63 with the White Revolution, as we said. The Shah launches the White Revolution, later that year, Khomeini leads clerical opposition to it and is exiled.
Now, one aspect of the White Revolution, which was key to the Shah's program, was land reform. And though the clerics were explicitly opposed to women's liberation, modernization in terms of social mores and whatever. In fact, it's arguable that what really upset them was the Shah's land reform plan.
And why would that be, Aimen? And I want you to talk now about the way in which Mullahs in Iran are financed, because I know this is one of your favorite topics. I've just thrown you a little gift, Aimen. You love this topic because you're going to stick it to the Mullahs now.
Aimen: Yeah, exactly. As I've been called many times, like somewhat of an expert on terrorism finance. So, when you look into how the religious clergy and Shia Islam is financed, they are not financed by the state.
They are financed by a system of taxation, religious taxation called alkhamis. And alkhamis means that 20% of whatever, basically, like people earn is the 20% of their income.
Thomas: Alkhamis the Arabic word for fifth. The fifth, alkhamis.
Aimen: Yeah. The one fifth. So, for the clergy, they depended so much on two classes of people to finance them through the alkhamis. One are called the Bazaaris, the market leaders, the traders, the commercial people, the people of commerce.
Thomas: We talked about them in episode four, the Bazaaris, yeah.
Aimen: Exactly, yeah. And then you have the landowners. Iran at the time, was futile. Actually land owning was concentrated in the hands of few hundred families. And these few hundred families gave considerable patronage to their religious seminaries of Qom and Mashhad.
And therefore, the land reform, the Shah of course, was clever about it. If he breaks away the monopoly of these families, then the amount of money that would be going to finance this massive endowments of the religious seminaries and religious institutions, because they are leading the opposition to his reforms, how does he want to drive the money?
Well, break the monopoly of the land-owning families. And this is when you see considerable resistance and pushback from the religious institutions in Iran.
Thomas: We’ve seen this happen throughout the season of Conflicted as indeed, we've seen it happen throughout history. The Shah's move against really the futile aristocracy of Iran in 1963, which he had resisted for 20 years.
There had been calls for land reform for a long time, which he had resisted because he had at the beginning of his reign, allied more with the landed aristocracy with the barons, if you like.
But once he set his mind towards modernization in a big way, then he needed to do what Henry VIII needed to do, what every leader needed to do. If he wanted to create a modern centralized state, he needed to crush the barons and crush the vested interests of the religious institution.
So, he did that in 1963, the Mullahs were unhappy about it, and Khomeini was able to weaponize that dissatisfaction to launch his Black counterrevolution, his Black Revolution against the Shah. And in 1964, he was banged in prison and then sent into exile where he stayed for 15 years.
So yeah, there you have the Shah, playing Henry VIII. He's exiled Khomeini and he has won over the clerical opinion, at least, in the short-term, by offering some compromises to help them financially, so they will not feel so put out by his revolution.
He's riding high and though, we've just painted him as this great modernizer, in 1967, he actually was crowned — now, this is an interesting fact about Shah Mohammad Reza’s life. Though he came to power in the early forties, he wasn't actually crowned until 1967.
And it was a very elaborate ceremony, which you can see on YouTube. You can watch it, it was filmed. It's quite beautiful. And it looks a bit like a Western coronation with some Iranian elements.
But importantly, when he was crowned, he received the title Shahanshah, King of Kings, and this played into Khomeini's hands didn't it?
Aimen: Absolutely. Because as I said before, the title of King of Kings belongs to God in Islam. Khomeini saw this as the Shah departing from Islamic traditionalism and into the realm of idolatry as he was calling it.
Thomas: So, here we have this strange contradiction at the heart of the Shah, the modernizer the man who was educated in Switzerland, the figure of a Western gentleman in many respects, crowning himself the Shahanshah, adopting the title of the Achamenid Persian and Sassanid Persian Shahs of antiquity. So, that contrast is here made explicit.
Earlier that same year, in 1967, there was another very important event in the Shah's life, which was a harbinger of things to come. This is when he went to Germany on an official visit and as he arrived, he was met by furious protests against him by Iranian students who were studying abroad. And this shocked the Shah, didn't it Aimen?
Aimen: Oh yes. He was thinking, “Why are they even protesting? They are studying in Germany, but financed by who? By the Iranian state. So, why shouldn't they be grateful?” That was his worldview. They should be grateful for the fact that they are receiving good education on the state expense.
Thomas: Also in his mind, he's a modernizer. He is liberating these people to become modern people, to be liberal modern people as they want, he's funding them to go study abroad, as you said, Aimen. And yet they're protesting him.
He was very out of touch with the movement, the larger cultural movements that was happening. We think of the 1960s as the time of the hippies, as the time of student protests all around Europe.
And he was just not really aware that by liberalizing, he was in fact sowing the seeds of his own demise because liberalization and the King of Kings do not make very comfortable bedfellows.
Aimen: Oh no, definitely not. If you want to be a king and you want your kingdom to last, stick to some elements of traditionalism. Yes, advance slowly, modernize gradually, do not introduce shock therapy into your nation. And unfortunately, this is what the Shah did; shock therapy.
Thomas: So, these students in Germany and elsewhere, these Iranian students had been radicalized to some extent by left-wing ideas. So, there was this sort of bedrock of left-wing activism against the Shah, which he associated with communism and the Soviet Union and which he thought was just absolutely unacceptable. He was obsessed with them.
And at the same time there were some is Islamist activists opposed to him quite openly at the time, not Khomeini’s people who were kind of taking a backseat, they were being a little bit more clandestine.
But there was an Islamist group, the Mujahedeen-e-Khalq and other such groups who were known as Islamic Marxists, who were openly resisting the Shah and committing terrorist attacks in the late sixties and early seventies.
Aimen: Oh yes, indeed. During all of this time, while there are protests by students, by Marxist and by some hybrid Marxist Islams like the Mujahedeen-e-Khalq, Khomeini and his people and the underground network of the religious seminaries who were now in Najaf, in exile, they were biting their time.
Why? Because from 1964 until ‘74, these years were the prosperous years, so they thought, “Okay, during this time, let the Iranian people basically like enjoy it. We however, prepare the ground for something bigger to come.” And Khomeini was busy writing his book; Hokumat-e Eslami also known, the book of Wilayat-al-Faqih.
Thomas: So, he formally introduces his own ideas on Wilayat-al-Faqih in a series of lectures in Iraq, in Najaf in 1969. So, now, this is when we need to talk about this very, very key concept, Wilayat-al-Faqih. First of all, translated, it's something like, “The Guardianship of the Jurist.”
Aimen: Yeah. You can call it the stewardship of the grand jurist. The death of the Prophet Muhammad caused succession crisis. For the Sunnis, they believe that he never named anyone, and for the Shia however, they believed that he named Ali.
However, history tells us that Abu Bakr, Omar, and ‘Uthman became the caliphs after Muhammad. Ali became the fourth caliph and The Shia believed that he is the first Imam, and that his sons; Hasan, who died of natural causes, before he could become a caliph. And then Husayn, who died in the Battle of Karbala, was killed. And it is one of the great tragedies of Islam.
His descendants after that, the nine descendants, as well as Husayn, Hasan, and Ali, all of them became known as the 12 imams.
Now, we go all the way to the 160th year after the death of the Prophet Muhammad, we have a child, a child that has disputed among historians, whether he was born or not.
He is the son of the 11th Imam. So, therefore, he is the 12th. The 11th Imam died at the right age of 28 only. And therefore, this hidden Imam, this Imam that no one saw, went into hiding.
Thomas: So, my question is, before we talk about what happened to the 12th Imam, tell me what is in Shia view, what is an Imam?
Aimen: According to Shia Islam, an Imam is a successor of the prophet.
Thomas: The same as a caliph then?
Aimen: Greater than a caliph, because for them, the Imams are divinely inspired as opposed to caliph and Sunni Islam, which there is no divine inspiration.
But here in Shia Islam, they believe that the Imams are divinely inspired, that their actions are a conduit to God's commands. So, they don't do anything from their own volition. No, they are inspired by God to do God's work on earth.
The Imams in Shia Islam make no mistake. They are masum, this is why they call them al-Imam Masumeeen.
Thomas: Infallible, a bit like the Pope, the Pope in Rome sort of thing.
Aimen: Exactly, infallible. They are sinless and don't make any mistake whatsoever because all of their actions are divinely inspired. So, the Imam has a political religious authority over the Shia Muslims.
Thomas: Okay. And the 12th Imam who's a child when his father dies, what happens to him?
Aimen: Remember, it's disputed even among Shia. So, the Ismailis and others basically don't believe there was a 12th Imam because Muhammad al-Askari, the 11th Imam basically, was childless.
But nonetheless, there is this narrative among Shia Muslims, that there was a child, he was hidden from view for security reasons. And that when his father died at the age of 28, he was only four-year-old and he went into hiding in a cave or a basement in Samarra, in Iraq.
And this is when the legend, this myth, this big legend about him being hidden until the time is right for him to emerge. First, the Shia jurist at the time, stated that it'll be 70 years. This is all in their books. It'll be 70 years, and he will emerge.
Then when the 70 years passed, they said, “Oh, he entered from the minor absence into the major absence. So, now, we don't know exactly when he will emerge, but one day, when the Shia most need him, he will emerge to be their savior. But until then, the Shia can only rely on their local clerics for their day-to-day religious duties, whether it is to pay the homes.”
We talked about it, the religious taxation; whether to perform prayers, to do the judgements and the inheritance laws and marriage and divorces, and all of that.
Thomas: Okay. So, I see now, so originally, then, the concept of Wilayat-al-Faqih, The Guardianship of the Jurist had this smaller localized scope. All Shia basically agree that their jurists have some Wilayat or authority or guardianship power. It's the scope of that authority that is contested.
And it was not until the 19th century that Wilayat-al-Faqih took on the maximal scope in some Shia thinkers that it had for the Ayatollah Khomeini, is that right?
Aimen: Absolutely. So, the grand Wilayat-al-Faqih, the grand stewardship, which include now political, not only just the local jurist role and the local judge role, no. They argued in the 1860s in Najaf, Al-Bahrani and others, that there should be now after a more than a thousand years absence that the Imam is not there and he is divinely inspired.
We need someone who is close to that, who can deputize on his behalf for the entire Shia Muslim world, not just on local matters, on political matters.
Thomas: So, as you say, Aimen, after the 12th Imam is occulted, he goes into occultation, for a Shia, his or her local jurist deputizes on the 12th Imam's behalf in matters, religious and in Islam, of course, religious matters include juridical matters, questions of property, law, question of marriage, all these things. But this religious dimension is overseen by the cleric.
However, for most of history, following that point, Shia lived within Polites, dominated by Sunni Sultans or Emirs or Caliphs, although that wasn't always the case.
Sometimes, there was a Shia sultan or Emir or whatever. So, a Shia politician governing their state. And in that case, the politician had his political authority and the clerics had their religious authority, but they were separate.
And this was the case through the Safavid period of the 16th century, when the Safavid Empire took over Iran, it was at this time that Iran was largely converted to Shi’ism.
It was true during the Kajar period, which we've talked about already a lot, because it was the Kajar Shahs that were overthrown by Mohammad Reza Shah's father, the iron Shah in 1925.
So, throughout all of this period, clerical power and political power was separate in Shia Islam, like in Sunni Islam. But something happened to change that in the 1860s, 1870s. And what was that?
Aimen: The clerics in Najaf and among the Maitham al-Bharani started the idea of, “Well, Wilayat-al-Faqih, we now have to think about it.” Why they have to think about it? Because the world was changing around them.
First, the Ottoman Empire, which was in control of Najaf at that time, started to westernize and started to import Western laws, Western modernity, to the extent where they started to see this as an anathema to Shia Islam and its traditional and moral principles.
The same thing also was happening to the Kajar who were started to get influenced by the neighboring British Raj, which in the 1860s and seventies started to expand and started to expand in a way which started to influence the Kajar. The Russian Empire also started to influence Iran.
All of this influence meant that the piety and the upholding of traditional Shia Islam by traditional rulers, whether Sunnis or Shias started to be weak.
Thomas: This is the story we've been talking about in this season of Conflicted, the westernization of traditional Islamic empires. And now, the Shia reaction to this on part of the clerical class; they were made anxious by these changes.
And so, you're saying it's because of this, that they thought, “Well, we must expand the definition of Wilayat-al-Faqih. We must give political power to a cleric because he will be able to resist westernization.”
And these ideas were first formulated in the 1860s, but they didn't really have much traction then.
Aimen: Yeah, because of course, the empires were still there and they were still strong in the sense that the people didn't feel the need to rebel yet. And don't forget also, there was no mass communication.
So, mass communication is important because hundred years later when Khomeini decided to dust that idea of Wilayat-al-Faqih from the libraries of Najaf and to start to preach it as well; “Look, the time of The Mahdi is near. And in order for his appearance to happen, there has to be a state that represent him, a state that can pave the way for him. And that can only happen if there is a flag bearer, someone who basically is standing in his stead, a deputy, a Wilayat-al-Faqih,” which means the steward on his behalf, a grand steward.
And this is when the idea of the absolute Wilayat-al-Faqih was born.
Thomas: And in the meantime, between the 1860s and the 1960s, something else happened in Sunni Islam that was very important to this story. We've talked about it a lot in Conflicted. It started in Egypt.
And I'm talking of course, about the Muslim brotherhoods rise to influence in the Muslim world and its version of Islamic modernization had a big influence Khomeini and on those who were surrounding him. Isn't that right, Aimen?
Aimen: Oh, absolutely. You have to understand that Khomeini was always influenced by a earlier revolutionary in Iran who rejected the Shah’s modernity. His name is Navvab Safavi.
Thomas: We talked about him in episode four, Navvab Safavi. He was one of the founders of the Fada'iyan-e Islam movement, which assassinated a prime minister in the 1950s, which was a thorn in the Shah’s side earlier on in his reign.
Aimen: Exactly. So, Navvab Safavi who was executed by the Shah in 1955, 24 years before the Islamic Revolution by Khomeini, Khomeini said that the first martyr of the Islamic Revolution in Iran was Navvab Safavi.
Thomas: So, what's the connection though? Navvab Safavi, I read that he was the maternal uncle of Musa al-Sadr. Musa al-Sadr who we talked about in the episode on Lebanon. He was the founder of the movement, which would become the Amal Movement in Lebanon during the Lebanese Civil War.
So, there's all these connections. So, Navvab Safavi, one of the founders of the Iranian Movement, Fada'iyan-e Islam is the uncle of Musa al-Sadr, the founder of the Amal Movement in Lebanon. And somehow, Khomeini is mixed up in all of these with these people.
Aimen: Oh yes. He is mixed up in all of this for a reason because Navvab Safavi, he knew that Shia Islam lacks a modern political framework. So, he borrowed that from the Muslim Brotherhood, which in 1928, came with a modern political framework that could work for political Islam, which was born due to the collapse of the Ottoman Caliphate.
Navvab Safavi, in fact, was the first Shia to pioneer the borrowing of modern political framework from the Muslim Brotherhood.
Thomas: And inspired by the Muslim Brotherhood, Navvab Safavi, in turn, inspired the Ayatollah Khomeini, who drew on his ideas when developing his own.
At the same time, the younger clerics who were inspired by Khomeini, some of whom were in Najaf with him, some of whom remained in Iran, were also inspired by the Muslim Brotherhood. One of whom was the current Supreme leader of Iran, the man who succeeded the Ayatollah Khomeini after he died in 1989, The Ayatollah Khamenei.
Very sadly, dear listener, the Ayatollah Khomeini was succeeded by a man whose surname in English sounds remarkably like Khomeini, Khamanei. Don't be confused.
Aimen: Well, Ayatollah Khamenei when he was known in his young age as Sayyid Ali Khamenei, was a fervent religious student of Khomeini, and he was inspired by Navvab Safavi and the Fada'iyan-e Islam and by the Muslim Brotherhood to the point where when he was in prison, he made it his life work to translate the books of none other than Sayyid Qutb, the inspiration for radicals in groups.
Thomas: Yeah. Sayyid Qutb, the great idealog who inspired Osama bin Laden, Ayman al-Zawahiri and all your old friends in Al-Qaeda.
Aimen: Indeed, and many other movements, the FIS in Algeria, the Salafist in Libya. We could go on and on about it. But it is ironic that one of those that Sayyid Qutb inspired was Ayatollah, later in life will become, Ayatollah Khamenei.
When he was in prison, he translated most of the works, the political works of Sayyid Qutb to the point where, when the SAVAK, the infamous security apparatus of the Shah, when they learned of how much translation was done by Khamenei of Sayyid Qutb books, they actually took his hand and put it in an oven to burn it and to disfigure it, which is why you see always his right hand being a little bit stiff and can't use it properly.
Thomas: Ah, to prevent him from translating. He couldn't use a pen anymore.
Aimen: Exactly. So, it lasted with him to this day. He was punished for Sayyid Qutb translations, and actually, he named a street in Tehran, when he became president of Iran, he named a street in Tehran after Sayyid Qutb.
Thomas: So, we've been talking about Wilayat-al-Faqih and the extent to which the Muslim Brotherhood’s ideas influence Khomeini’s ideas. And it's important to point out that the Muslim Brotherhood model includes at the top a figure with absolute power called the Murshid.
And this Murshid figure in the Muslim Brotherhood is very similar to the idea of the Supreme leader as it was ultimately kind of developed by Khomeini; the Supreme leader who exercises total Wilayat-al-Faqih.
Aimen: All of this revolves around the idea that Wilayat-al-Faqih derives its legitimacy from the absent Imam, The Mahdi. And this actually translated into the new post-revolution, Iranian Constitution, article five in particular.
Thomas: That's absolutely right. Article five of the Iranian Constitution says this (this is obviously an English translation).
It says, “During the occultation of the guardian of the age (may God hasten his reappearance), the guardianship and leadership of the Umma devolve upon the just and pious Jurist, who is fully aware of the circumstances of his age; courageous, resourceful, and possessed of administrative ability.”
So, there you have in the Iranian constitution, the one that Khomeini imposed on the country. Well, in fact, which the people of Iran voted in favor of in a referendum following the revolution, where it explicitly invokes The Mahdi, his absence, his imminent return. And until that point, the authority that the Supreme leader has over every aspect of the Shia or the Muslim life.
Which brings us, Aimen, to The Mahdi. Now, we've talked about The Mahdi a lot, and we need to talk a little bit more about this character.
Now, I started this episode by quoting the book of Revelation. What is clear is that in early Islam, the new religion adopted from Christianity, its eschatological story, if you like. That at the end of time, a rider and a white horse would emerge, bearing a sword, would vanquish the Antichrist and judging the world, inaugurate an era of eternal peace.
This is what the Muslims expected. And it was almost exactly what the Christians expected. Even more so, it's quite clear from early Islam that they believed that this person was Jesus.
So, Hasan al-Basri who died a hundred years after Muhammad and is considered the greatest authority among the second generation of Muslims said that there is no specifically Muslim Mahdi. Already, this idea was in the air.
Some Muslims were saying that we were having our own Messiah. Our own Mahdi will come. Hasan al-Basri said, “No, there is no specifically Muslim Messiah, Jesus is the Messiah.” And of course, the Quran says this specifically.
However, and this is my view Aimen, over time, as Islam developed, it wished to distinguish itself more and more from Christianity. I think some Muslims having forgotten maybe the original impetus of their own religion were a little bit embarrassed that they shared this eschatological expectations with Christians.
And so, it tended to develop in the way that alongside Jesus (because the return of Jesus is in Quran, you can't avoid it), there would be this Muslim figure, The Mahdi. And some Muslims, including Sunni Muslims believed that at the end of time, Jesus would in fact hand power over to this Muslim and would pray behind him.
So, a new idea arose as Islam developed, disentangling the original single figure of Jesus returning as it is in the Bible and creating a Muslim version as well. This is The Mahdi. And as we said, the Shia took their own version of The Mahdi and the 12th Imam was The Mahdi, he's hidden. He's going to come again, et cetera.
And there are so many versions of The Mahdi. If you look up the entry Mahdi in the Islamic encyclopedia, it’s like a flood of different ideas of what The Mahdi is. The Muslims do not agree on what The Mahdi is.
Although, it seems to me that The Mahdi really is just Jesus, who's going to return at the end of time, vanquish the Antichrist, and judge the world. Are we on the same page with that, Aimen?
Aimen: Absolutely. There is no question. I truly believe that there is no such thing or no figure of a Mahdi in Islam, whether Sunni or Shia. I believe passionately that it wasn't just only about distancing themselves from Christianity in the first century of Islam.
Also, there was a lot of politics involved and the politics revolved around the Al-Basi dynasty wanting to throw away the Umayyad dynasty. So, they invented The Mahdi as a propaganda. Just like Khomeini wanted to overthrow the Shah, so The Mahdi was used to overthrow a dynasty, perfect, political. It's absolutely political.
Thomas: A fascinating story in its own right, which we don't have time to go into. What I want to talk about is something that people really don't know that much about and which I think is extremely interesting. And this is the possible Zoroastrian roots of the Shia idea of The Mahdi.
Now, dear listener, Zoroastrianism, the Iranian religion that preceded Iran, it was the religion of the great ancient empires of Persia. And in Zoroastrianism, God is called Ahura Mazda. He is light, He is truth, He is righteousness, He is order. He is God.
His arch enemy is Ahriman. Now, this is basically the Zoroastrian devil. And he personifies the opposite of Ahura Mazda. He personifies darkness, deceit, sin, and chaos.
These two divinities; Ahura Mazda, the greater and Ahriman, the lesser are constantly fighting. And the implication is basically that behind their fight, Ahura Mazda remains firmly in control, but nonetheless, there's an eternal struggle between light and dark, Ahura Mazda and Ahriman.
Now, there's a legend, the Zoroastrian myth that expresses this eternal struggle. Ahura Mazda looks down from heaven and sees that human beings are greedy, sinful, and selfish. So, he withdraws light from the earth. And without this light, everything falls into darkness. The earth becomes the realm of Ahriman.
Now, Ahriman's realm is one of terrible tyranny. A tyranny that to the people of earth, feels endless. Yet, eventually, in the midst of all this darkness and tyranny, Ahura Mazda looks upon humankind with compassion. He finds one good man, a humble shepherd called Jamshid, and anoints him universal king, a vessel through whom the light returns to the world.
Jamshid builds a beautiful majestic throne, the throne of Jamshid. And he rules the world with justice. It is a time of plenty, a time of prosperity, where there's a flourishing of art, culture, and learning.
But Jamshid grows proud. He begins to believe that the light, which was a gift of a Ahura Mazda is in fact, his own light. Full of hubris, he commands the people to worship him. Ahura Mazda (and we should imagine the great God's heartbreaking at Jamshid’s apostasy), once again, withdraws the light and Ahriman returns.
He anoints an evil man, Zahhak who overthrows Jamshid and takes his place upon the great throne. This inaugurates a reign, not only of tyranny, but of terror. The people begin longing for a savior and this savior they call the Saoshyant in ancient Persian. This is the Zoroastrian Messiah who in their period of dark tyranny and terror, the Iranian people look forward to.
Now, I hope that was interesting, Aimen. I hope that was interesting dear listener, the story from ancient Persia, because it is still in the Iranian imagination today, the Iranians still tell this story. It was enshrined in the Shahnameh, the great epic of Iran, every Iranian knows the story. And it maps very neatly into this story of the downfall of the Shah and the rise of Khomeini.
So, the downfall of the Shah, this story starts in 1971, when the Shah plans a big Jamboree in Persepolis, celebrating 2,500 years of Persian monarchy, or so he said. Now, what is interesting about this Aimen, what is Persepolis? It is the throne of Jamshid, that is what Persepolis is.
Aimen: 1971, my God, when I was young, I used to look at my father's stamp collections and he had a whole album of stamps commemorating the 1971 celebrations of the two and a half thousand years of Persian Empire.
I saw so many beautiful stamps commemorating that. I was young child at the time, but there I saw the two and a half thousand years of many stamps depicting different eras, Achaemenid, Sassanid and the Parthian and all of that.
And you see the glory of it. And of course, there is always there, the splendor of the Shah and his wife, the Empress, wearing Imperial regalia.
And so, this is when you see the extravagance, the obscene amounts of money, hundreds of millions of dollars (by that standard money, by today, it'll be billions) spent on an event just to entertain 90 heads of states and kings and queens and all of that to celebrate this occasion.
But the amount of money that was spent on that occasion was so obscene that Khomeini saw in that decadent celebration, his opening, that's it. This is the disconnect between the Shah and his people. Instead of spending that money on the poor, on the needy, you know, on the education, the Shah is spending this on a frivolous event.
The reality is that the Shah actually did spend a lot of money, 16 billion dollars actually on infrastructure and education and all of these things, he did. This is I think, where haw made a mistake. There was no need for that whatsoever.
Thomas: And see, the resonances with the myth. Persepolis is where the throne of Jamshid is meant to have been. This is according to the myth and there you have a modern day Shahanshah, King of Kings.
And you can look it up on YouTube, dear listener, look it up, look at the footage, the extravagance, the imperial sort of bling and glamor. You see the Shah enthrone himself in majesty upon the throne of Jamshid, and you can almost hear the Iranian people begin to turn against him.
They weren't even allowed to attend this celebration. They were corralled away from the main party. The main party was foreigners, rich people, wine flowed, the food was extravagant. You can almost sort of see Ahura Mazda remove the light and the dark engulf this megalomaniacal Shahanshah.
So, that's 1971. As we said in the last episode, in 1973, when the Shah, as the leading voice in OPEC called for an increase in oil, the Iranian economy began growing extremely quickly in the two years that followed.
In 1974, it grew by 38%. In 1975, by 40%. This is big growth. This is too big of growth. Inflation resulted, growing inequality resulted, corruption resulted. And all of this led to great political unrest.
Aimen: There is a recurring theme here, Thomas, which is modernity. We keep talking about modernity, modernity — actually Khomeini, uses one of modernity’s great tools in order to spread his message, the cassette.
Now, for the millennials who are listening to our podcast, cassettes are an ancient tool which you can store voice files on them (I digress here). A cassette of course, was the greatest weapon. It is the social media of that time. It is the Twitter, it is the YouTube, it is the Facebook. It is everything for the Iranian people.
Khomeini from his exile in Iraq, and later in Novel Chateau in France, he was recording these sermons to his band of small followers in Najaf or France. But then later, they will transmit these cassettes. They will send them over and they will be copied in their hundreds of thousands distributed by the network of religious seminaries and revolutionaries and people who were loyal to Khomeini and his ideals.
And so, people will listen to these cassettes containing his sermons in their cars, in their taxis, on their Walkman, in their houses. And this is how the message was disseminated. Basically, the Shah who was so disconnected, lost the publicity and the public relation war with Khomeini. Seriously, it was all a PR war and Khomeini won hands down.
Thomas: In 1974, the Shah secretly was diagnosed with leukemia. This really changed his whole attitude. He thought I'm going to die. He was only 57-years-old. He was a young man, relatively speaking. He thought I'm going to die, I need to see this modernization program through, and he doubled down.
The following year, he created a one party state. Now, he was working on the advice of American advisors. He founded the rest of his party, the Resurrection Party linguistically, the equivalent of the Arabic Ba’ath Party, in fact.
He required all “loyal Iranians” to join this party. Here, we see again, the contradiction at the heart of the Shah. He wanted a modern, liberal, prosperous Iran. And in order to achieve it, he's going to create a one party authoritarian state. It didn't really work.
And the reaction against this on the part of the left especially was great, but he really alienated the clerical right as well, because at the same time, he changed the calendar of the Persian state. Instead of the Hijri calendar, the Islamic calendar, he adopted a new calendar where things in Iran would be dated from the reign of Cyrus the Great in ancient Persia.
Aimen: Yes, he did actually anger the clerics by changing the calendar and actually, as a sign of his indecisiveness, which were to lead to his downfall, he changed it back into the Islamic one. So, which is more damaging; either stick to it, man, if you do something, stick to it.
But anyway, Khomeini in 1975, while all of this is happening in Iran, is more or less in touch with Musa al-Kadr in Lebanon, as well as the PLO in Lebanon, because they were training Iranian dissidents.
The Civil War was happening already in Lebanon. Lebanon is becoming a training ground for all kinds of international terrorists and among them, Iranian dissidents, loyal. They are the embryonic stage of the IRGC or the Islamic Revolutionary Guard.
Thomas: The Shah is aware that there's a lot of opposition to his rule by this stage, but he is obsessed with the left. He thinks the real enemy is the communist left. He thinks the left wing have it out for him. And he is jailing them, he is turning a blind eye to SAVAK’S his security services, mistreatment of them. Of course, this backfires; this is creating even more opposition to him.
But to a large extent, the Shah is not paying attention to the threat from the clerical. He thinks he has bought them off. He is wrong about that.
With growing political unrest, particularly from the left in 1977, the Shah changes tac and begins a new era of political liberalization. He says, okay, he still has his one party state, but now he starts announcing other measures, like he's going to have open elections, he's going to return to a multi-party democracy.
Again, it's confused. It's indecisive, it's reactive. There's no overall strategy. It was not a good response to the growing pressure against him. In that same year, 1977, a big event happened. SAVAK assassinated the Ayatollah Khomeini’s son Mostafa in Iraq.
Aimen: Of course, that event was shocking to say the least because the SAVAK believed that Mostafa is the ultimate link between Khomeini and Iraq and his supporters in Iran and that this link need to be severed.
So, they went ahead and assassinated him in Iraq. And that, of course, apart from the fact that this added to the extra list of grievances that Khomeini has against the Shah and added this personal vendetta, it has galvanized people and gave Khomeini this mystical status of the martyr, of the person who is willing to give all to the cause, including his own son.
Thomas: Yes, a lot of sympathy flowed towards Khomeini from ordinary Iranians and his star rose ever higher. It was a massive own goal on the part of the Shah in SAVAK. And from this, begins the year of the revolution, 1978.
On the 7th of January, 1978, an anonymous government agent publishes an article in a newspaper that insults Khomeini. Young seminary students in Qom riot and the police fire on them killing several. How many? We don't know.
And in fact, all of the events of 1978 involved the police attacking rioters and the numbers of dead being wildly different from either side. The government announcing maybe four or five, six died, Khomeini saying hundreds died. So, we'll never really know the exact numbers. My assumption is that Khomeini was exaggerating for political effect.
So, as I said on the 7th of January, there's this riot in Qom, police fire on the protesters. And some of them are killed.
40 days later as is Shia custom, mosques around Iran held memorials to these fallen martyrs, which again, turned into violent protests, especially in the city of Tabriz. Once again, amongst the violence, protestors were killed.
40 days later on the 29th of March, the same thing happened again at mosques around the country. This time in Tehran, especially, the riot grew big, violence broke out, protesters were killed.
And so again, 40 days later on the 10th of May, it happened again and again. Every 40 days, the country was moving into ever greater spasms of protest. The Shah at this point, is really freaked out.
Aimen: And again, Thomas, in order to prove my theory that monarchs behave better than any other leaders, he didn't want to see his throne covered in blood.
The Shah really accelerated the liberalization programs. He wanted to include more and more parties. He wanted to have more dialogue with the protestors and to really start this reconciliation, which too little too late. I mean, it was just too late.
Thomas: That's the positive way of spinning the situation. I think one could equally say that the Shah was out of ideas and his indecisiveness overwhelmed him.
It's true that there's a certain nobility to his desire not to do what his generals were telling him he had to do, which was crack down hard on the protests. He didn't want to do that. And that is noble.
But sadly, all of his liberalization plans, all of his liberalization programs, lifting censorship, allowing peaceful protest around the country, that only worked in his enemy's favor and the protests against him, the movement against him expanded.
On the 19th of August of 1978, arsonists burned down the Cinema Rex in Isfahan killing 422 people inside burning them alive. This is in fact, the largest terrorist attack until 9/11, 422 people burned alive.
Khomeini blamed the Shah. This is preposterous that the Shah did this, but Khomeini blamed the Shah and a new rallying cry went out, “Burn the Shah.” This culminated on the 8th of September, 1978, which is called Black Friday.
Aimen: The events that transpired in Shahadah Square on 8th, September of 1978 as is now called Shahadah Square means Martyr’s Square, massive protests erupted there.
And while Khomeini accused the police of firing against the crowds killing dozens and dozens of people, the historians now, more or less, are satisfied that elements of Mujahedeen-e-Khalq who were part of the apprising against Shah may have shot at fellow protestors in order to create and ferment further uprising against the Shah.
Thomas: Yes. And so, on Black Friday, lots of protestors were killed. And from that point on really the writing is on the wall. The Shah is not going to stay in power. And in fact, in November of that year, that's made even clearer when behind the scenes, the U.S. turned against him.
Aimen: Spineless Jimmy Carter, the president of the United States at the time, turned against him, abandoning an important ally here. First by sending an envoy to the Iranian military, which was fully U.S. armed and trained, telling them not to intervene on behalf of the Shah and that's it.
Leave the Shah to his own devices, while at the same time, sending a representative to Khomeini’s people in Paris, telling them if Khomeini want to go back to Iran, we will not stop him.
Wow. Just, wow. The complicity of both France and the U.S. in abandoning the Shah and abandoning Iran as a whole to a theocratic fascist person like Khomeini is telling in itself.
Thomas: In their defense, in the defense really of all the Iranian liberals who were there on the streets, protesting the Shah and calling for his downfall and believed the Ayatollah Khomeini who had told them, assured them that at the end of the revolution, democracy, true democracy would reign.
Now, in their defense, the Ayatollah was not being honest with them about his ultimate intentions.
Aimen: With all due respect, there is a saying in Islam, whenever you see ulama (means religious scholars) seeking power and wealth, never believe them.
Thomas: Well, I think that's a pretty wise saying, the Shah probably had that saying in his mind, when, on the 19th of January, 1979, feeling the pressure, he decides peacefully to board a plane and leave Iran.
He goes into exile; he's then hounded by the revolutionary government for the next year or so before he dies of leukemia in Egypt.
On the 1st of February, so two weeks later of 1979, the Ayatollah Khomeini flies from Paris to Tehran and look up the scenes on YouTube, dear listener. They are really a wonder to behold; the ecstasy of the Iranian people upon the Ayatollah Khomeini’s return to Iran is a sight to see.
They were ecstatic. They were overjoyed. And underlying all of this was some kind of eschatological expectation. The Ayatollah descending from heaven in a plane was the harbinger, the forerunner, the proclaimer of the imminent return of The Mahdi and the establishment of a righteous Islamic state on earth. They were heady times for the Iranian people. That's for sure.
Aimen: And this is why I always believe that eschatology is the opium of the masses.
Thomas: Well Aimen, that myth I related earlier, that Zoroastrian myth. It had another detail which I left out. I wanted to save it for now — now, that we've reached the end of our story. The Ayatollah has arrived, he has achieved his ambition of absolute power. He has himself in a way, ascended the throne of Jamshid.
Just like Zahhak the evil agent of Ahriman, the Zoroastrian devil who overthrew Jamshid. After this happens, according to the myth; Ahriman then kisses Zahhak’s shoulders. And from each shoulder, a black snake emerges.
Ahriman tells Zahhak that every day he has to feed those snakes lest they bite him to death, but with what does Zahhak need to feed these snakes Aimen; the brains of children. Isn't that amazing, according to the myth.
And that reminds us of what? Of that video at the beginning of the episode, with these children saluting the Imam, the brainwashing of children. The Iranian revolutionary Islamic government depends on the brainwashing of the next generation to keep themselves in power. Just like that ancient Zoroastrian myth says.
Aimen: Exactly, there was a poetry written by a very famous Iraqi poet. His name is Ahmed Matar. He is a very well-known political satirist. And he said, talking about how fascist and dictatorial regimes use fairy tales. He called them fairy tales to keep the masses obedient.
In his poetry, he said, “My grandmother every night tells us fairy tales so we may sleep. My grandmother is in admiration of the regime's tactics.”
So, it is a fairy tale of The Mahdi. It's a fairy tale, it's an absolute fairy tale. But nonetheless, it's a fairy tale that works, that actually prepares young people to be the next generation of canon fathers in the battles yet to come.
Thomas: Oh, well, that's a very optimistic ending. Well, dear listener, that's it. That's The Big Kahuna; the Iranian revolution. That's our best attempt in an hour and a half or so to describe that revolution and some of the themes that I think it gives rise to.
I hope you found it interesting. Stay tuned. In two weeks’ time, we'll be back with the, as it were, second part of the Iranian revolution, when the Ayatollah Khomeini decides to pick a fight with the Muslim world and his neighbor, Saddam Hussein decides to do something about it.
That's right. In the next episode, we're talking about the infamous notorious and incredibly tragic Iran/Iraq war.
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That's it for this week. Join us again in two weeks’ time, for another episode of Conflicted.
Conflicted is a Message Heard production. This episode was produced and edited by Bea Duncan. Sandra Ferrari is our executive producer, production support and fact checking by Talia Augustidis. Our theme music is by Matt Huxley.
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