The 1953 Roots of 1979: Ervand Abrahamian

okay good afternoon and welcome to our lecture series on the Iranian Revolution at 40 this is our second lecture series in these series of lectures that seek to interpret analyze and discuss the significance and the impact of the Iranian Revolution 40 years later when we put the lecture series together we decided to invite a prominent series of social scientists to participate in the series an anthropologist a political scientist a sociologist a historian and since we are located in a School of International Studies that is very much interested in policy questions we also decided to invite a former American diplomat who could participate in these lectures when it came to selecting the historian for this series it was a very easy decision the name air vond Abraham Yan was at the top of our list and I'd like to introduce him by way of a short little story about air Vaughn that most of you I suspect are unaware of a few years ago I was designing a course here at the corbels School on modern Iranian history and politics and when I was sort of looking at the readings that I wanted to consider I came across a reading called the crowd in the Persian Revolution published in the Journal of Iranian studies by air vond Abraham Yan in the year 1969 and I turned to my friend Danny Postel who some of you know and I said Danny have you seen this journal article it was published almost 50 years ago air Vaughn must have been a teenager when he cranked out this article and all of that just serves to highlight air Vaughn dobry Amiens intellectual prowess his knowledge production and his contributions to scholarship anyone who is serious about the field of modern Iranian history cannot avoid the work in the scholarship of air Vaughn abuhami on a few of his books not all of them that have been widely influential in terms of chronicling modern Iranian history includes his influential post-revolutionary book Iran between two revolutions ho mania ISM essays on the Islamic Republic tortured confessions prisons and public recantations in modern Iran the coup 1953 the CIA in the roots of modern us-iranian relations and most recently a book that's on sale outside of this room a history of modern Iran recently in an updated and expanded edition air van Abraha Mian holds the distinguished holds the title of distinguished professor emeritus of Iranian and Middle East history and politics at Baruch College City University of New York which has been his home his academic home for the last 40 years he's taught at universities of Oxford Columbia New York Princeton and in 2011 he was elected a member of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences when he accepted our invitation on the Iranian Revolution at year 40 he said he'd like to go back to 1953 the important year of the of the American intervention and CIA coup to try and analyze and discuss and reflect upon the 79 revolution and as you all know once again the United States is very much involved with trying to shape internal Iranian politics today in the era of Donald Trump I'm not sure if air vond is going to talk about recent events but we will certainly ask him about those events during the question and answer session it's a huge honor to have him here ladies and gentlemen please join me in welcoming the great airavata borromean [Applause] thank you now there for that introduction thank you for the Center for inviting me and thank you for all we're sacrificing it was such a beautiful day or to come and listen to about a dismal topic also thank you for arranging wonderful weather here two days a visit the 40-year Avenue verse this still draws a lot of attention for the revolution and for good reason if you look at the word revolution it's often used as a sponge word to mean a lot of things such as riots revolts uprisings civil wars movements of national liberation but if you define revolution in its proper sense the way it was used since the french revolution in dramatic sudden change in the social basis of power which is accompanied by transformation of the political system the social system and ideological system if you define it that way which is the true meaning of revolution you find very few revolutions in history thomas carlyle in his famous book on the french revolution writes that the french revolution was a transfer transcendental phenomena and he says fortunately it'll only happened once in a millennium well it may have exaggerated the millennium but if you actually look at walled history they're not that many revolutions since the French Revolution you could talk about the Russian that China is the Mexican but often the ones we call revolutions are coos or uprisings that fail but the Iranian Revolution does fit this very much model there is very much a dramatic shift it's just not just one group of people replacing the top people there is a major crow huge transformation of society leading in fact almost over a million immigrants leaving the country as a result of that and it says of left obviously a deep imprint on not just Iranian history but regional history so hereby on its own account it draws a lot of attention also if you look at the academic world since 1979 because the television was made on earth literally televised there were so many Western reporters there you find that American social scientists of invariably applied their own model of revolutions to Iran so you have a huge library of works applying whether it's a verb area notion or a durkheimian motion or Tilian motion or even a Foucault in motion or a Marxist motion these these paradigms are applied to the revolution itself so this creates a great deal of we can say already a library on the revolution besides that there of course the Revolution was very closely followed by the embassies both by the American Embassy and the British Embassy and those archives are now open yeah so you could get a deep insight of what was happening basically at lifetime at the time of how the people the diplomats saw it so from that ground is a lot of information about the revolution what is striking is in the writings or whether academic or diplomatic that the revolution came as such a surprise that people didn't expect did that somehow they thought this was a very stable regime of course at the time the Shah had one of the largest armies in the Middle East four hundred thousand men is that one of the largest bureaucracies some three hundred thousand a civil servants huge secret police the Sabich then you he was also basically swimming in money the oil revenues had jumped from five billion to something like 20 billion by 1978 so from all objective level if you look at the regime it was a solid foundation there was no problems if it there are any problems he could deal with it because it was a real like one of his huge dams that was built at that time so people helped confident this was a regime to last in fact some of the NIE is the National Intelligence Estimates given by the American government they were predicting that there wouldn't be any problems till 1985 with the regime was very stable so what you find here is the unexpectedness of the revolution I mean most revolutions are pretty unexpected but this one I think was more unexpected because that people saw the regime as a very solid very viable regime it had all the cards on its in his hands with all the Aces there were people of course who had other views but they were usually disregarded they were seen as basically not experts on the area so if you read a journal like monthly review there was actually talking about the regime was unstable because it said the public that the regime viewed the masses as asses but Iranian history it was full of cases where the asses overthrew the elites so their work expectations in opposition that this revolution was going to happen sooner or later in fact if you look at student movement there was a viable Iranian student movement in America in Europe invariably their annual meetings would end up with the prediction that there was going to be a revolution soon so much so it became like a crying wolf so after a while even students started believe not believing in that but there was always this counter argument that there is basically the regime is unstable and of course what happened is once the revolution came it unraveled very quickly in 17 months of demonstrations this formidable fortress literally collapsed like a pack of cards now much of the academic works that were published there's a lot of good stuff what if you look carefully at them what they're looking at is the what I would call the short term the trigger as' of the revolution in the 1960s Lawrence stone who's their famous historian of the English revolution wrote this very good article in comparative politics as titled theories of revolution and he makes a good distinction between causes of revolution he separates that trigger as' or short term medium causes from what he was called since describes as long term fundamental causes and if you look at the literature on the Iranian Revolution they invariably look at the triggers and there are plenty of triggers but rigorous could don't cause revolutions you really need something more fundamental so for instance the triggers that are often people focus on with cart as human rights campaign so yes that's true there was a human rights campaign not so much actually by Carter but by human rights organizations like Amnesty and the Shah felt pressure to somewhat open up were liberalized and some people latch on to this and the RET Republican said you know the Democrats lost in Iran as if Iran belonged to United States and blame Carter for for the revolution but if you think of it logically what does that human rights campaign man it meant the shop instructed Sabich stop torturing people in prison okay that's true but why should their regime collapse just because torture is stopped there must be something wrong more more fundamentally wrong with their regime that it collapses just because people are not being tortured in prison what sort of regime is it that collapses just because of that another short-term cause that's often given is the argument that there was sudden boom in the oil prices but then there was a slight dip and this caused an economic crisis so there's a lot written about the big economic crisis that triggered off the revolution but again if you look at it there was no real economic crisis there was an evening out of oil revenues that did not cause an economic crisis in Iran because the the regime still had huge reserves abroad it could have cut down on its military expenditures still use the money for economic development it could have even necessarily borrowed money abroad because it had good credit so the idea of economic crisis was often popular in academic circles because it fitted into the notion of the rentier state the notion of rentier state is that the state is dependent so much on oil then it can have a disastrous crisis because oil prices suddenly shift could decline and this is they've fitted into their No that well the revolution came because there was our slighted evening out of oil prices and the Royalists actually the monarchist in Iran loved this idea because it fits into their notion that the revolution wasn't really a popular uprising it was triggered off by United States they've got tired of the shard they wanted to get rid of the Shah so they engineered with the Saudis this decline in oil prices and this led to the revolution this issue of the economic crisis also fitted in in academic circles well because right at the beginning of the Iranian Revolution he the Scotch Paul wrote a very important book about comparative revolutions she was comparison of the French Russian Chinese revolutions and her notion at that time was the became a basic classic for understanding revolutions her argument with revolutions are not made by people they're made because when there's a major crisis in the state for instance if they were foreign defeat or a foreign invasion or major bankruptcy to the state the state collapses and then you have an uprising so they're the the secret of a revolution is the state crisis in the state so the idea of the rentier state and the slight decline in oil price rises that fitted into this notion that what caused the Iranian Revolution was an economic issue but there was not rarely an economic crisis in 1978-79 the economy was overheated but that wasn't because of decline in oil prices because it was the massive expenditures the Shah had made earlier at the oil boom so there was inflation shortage of housing shortage of electricity and stuff so it it was not decline in oil prices that led to the revolution so there were a lot of arguments made about the revolution but these tend to be basically trigger asur the last factors one argument now that is often used specially by the State Department people is that the Revolution occurred because the Shah was very weak in his attitudes if the Shah was willing to use force and they expected him to use force if you had a crackdown he could've easily controlled the situation again this is basically they're focusing on the individual to explain the revolution they don't really go into the fact that the Sharpe was quite actually here rational and pragmatic he knew that he couldn't use the arm in his army was not dependable on this issue of being able to go out and shoot against relatives and stuff people in the street you're not dealing with a small opposition you're dealing with actually millions of people mass movement and it actually one point the Shah says well I can control one block which was going to control the next block and the army was not really that was strong enough to be able to deal that it wasn't a Pinochet type of disciplined army to do it so much of these interpretations that are given are basically dealing with short-term causes they don't deal with why the whole system basically collapsed within 17 months with unarmed opposition people on the street day-in day-out and every month ready the opposition got bigger and bigger in the in in the public sphere so in the post-mortems that were done especially in the Foreign Office and in the State Department and they're not a post-mortem saying you know you know how come we didn't we were taken by surprise and they said they're their way of God defending themselves I said well he critics of the regime and they used the name Fred holiday they said even Fred holiday who was very critical of the regime he never expected a revolution and therefore we can be actually absorbed of not being able to predict the revolution and in the State Department CIA Foreign Office the archives they often actually when they deal with the short through the seventies they say there are problems in the regime that they're all very laudatory they like the shot there's no question of that they want to get rid of the shot they basically consider him their basic there's rond arm in the Middle East but they say there are problems the problems being there's corruption there is an inequality there is the Shah is consolidating more and more power in his hands but again if you think about those things how do those things enough to cause a revolution inequality corruption autocracy Trotsky in his classic work on the Russian Revolution one point says that you know if bad leaders incompetence at the high places is enough to cause revolution then most countries would be in a permanent state of revolution symbol literally you know in aquatic Whitney equality yes you know eating quality causes a lot of discontent but it doesn't necessarily cause revolution we have more inequality in America now than we've had you know in our lifetimes probably more inequality here than in Iran but obviously the u.s. is not on the verge of a revolution so these are factors that they admit don't really get to the core the real issue that I would are I'm arguing is basically the regime collapse because it had no legitimacy any regime with legitimacy with some sort of social support could have easily weathered these short problems but the Iranian regime of the Shah lacked the literate legitimacy and the lack of that legitimacy goes back rarely to 53 and if you look at the crisis of 51 53 the Nash oil nationalization crisis the roots of a crisis can be actually seen all in that period when oil was nationalized in April of 1951 George McGee who was the Under Secretary of State for under the Truman administration rushed off to Tehran to persuade the Shah not to sign the nationalization bill the State Department had a misunderstanding of the Iranian Constitution the Shah actually didn't have the constitutional power don't to do that the Parliament had already signed that but once he got to Tehran and this is all in the State Department depart archives he discovered the mood was such that there was no way the shark could resist and there's a very revealing conversation between the Shah and Henderson who was the American ambassador the Shah says to Henderson look I don't like this guy what's out there there had other issues with Mossad their Messiah was a strict constitutionalist wanted the short array not to rule he didn't like most out there but he said I can't go against him because if I go against him I'm going against the nation and the public will he says strong men like my father Stalin Hitler it's interesting images is you he says they could be tough but they had the public behind them in this case I don't have the public behind if I go against us against Mossad they're candle nationalization I will doom the monarchy here the show is often seen as incompetent in American media especially after 1979 he's seen as an indecisive figure even used as a hamlet figure that can't make up his mind in fact what you find in the show is very different figure he knows actually what he wants he's very clever at getting what he wants he knows what his cards are I would say his a shrewd politician he what he identifies here in 1951 which he kept through the crisis oil crisis is that nationalization of oil is a very crucial issue for the Iranian public if he goes against it he will doom himself in the monarchy so instead of seeing him as a hamlet figure it's better to see him as a tragic figure in a Greek tragedy where you know the protagonist knows that if they do X they are doomed but they still end up doing acts and doomed because of the stars their faith their destiny in this case obviously is you can't use the stars to explain the SHA center of behavior he was actually dragged by the British and Americans to participate in the coup despite all his reluctance basically they told him by August of 53 that we're going ahead with the coup if you're not on board there is no guarantee that you'll still be king after the coup we in fact are thinking of one of your brothers to replace you so this was a basically an ultimatum blackmail you either join us with the coup or else you're gone so that base the shop being pragmatic has no choice they're going along with the coup so he might as well participate in the cool so having done that having participated in coup he knows how weak he is that he is in fact against the oil nationalization against Mossad they're here to backtrack a moment why is oil nationalization so important in Iranian consciousness in Iran true was not a coal colony of Britain like a classic colony but it was a semi colony in that most Iranians viewed the real power behind the throne behind politics as the British because of the oil company basically ran the major resource so for most Iranians Iran was a semi colony of Britain so how do you dependent how do you gain national sovereignty national independence is to get rid of the British oil company that for Britain for Iran was the declaration of independence from the colonial power so the oil crisis often in the West was seen as an issue about dollars and cents of royalty royalties about oil in Iran it was seen as basically as a declaration of independence from the British and this was how it was seen actually through most of the world when oil was nationalized stream of Congress congratulations came from newly independent countries like Pakistan India Ceylon Burma and other countries congratulating Iran for becoming independent this was even seen as the same way in the conservative press in England the Daily Telegraph for instance the way it covered it you saw it as another blow against the British Empire another colony or other country breaking away and becoming independent and physically you could see this when the oil was nationalized when the oil company flag was lowered over their offices in abadan and the Iranian flag was flown up this was seen both in England and Britain has another country becoming independent of the British Empire so when the coup occurred it wasn't just removal of a prime minister it was seen as undermining of national independence it would be like other countries that became independent like India suddenly having a coup and the Indians who had been opposed to independence suddenly became are now in charge of independence of the state it would be undoing national basically declaration and so the 1953 coup in Iran you can't call it the original sin of the the Shah because from then on he was seen as someone who was no longer really representing Iran he had over helped overthrow the symbol of Iranian independence nationalism and be created a new basically puppet state of United States so from beginning you can say he lacked his credibility he wasn't willing to admit that so you but if you look at his behavior you find throughout this period he is obsessed why not Motz Mossad there the name Mossad there couldn't be used in the public arena but if you look at his the diaries of his confidant alam who wrote the israeli to detail tourist even at the peak of the Shahs power with the oil boom he was surprised that shah was still obsessed by Mossad there it was like a new massive nemesis for him for him this was a figure that he was always the ghost of around him hovering because here again is the realistic side of the Shah that really he knew that by going against Mossad there and the oil nationalization campaign he had in fact undermined the monarchy so what he often did throughout the seventies is a lot of acrobatics gymnastics to cover this problem of legitimacy lacking national legitimacy you have a major sort of somersaults one is he tried to appear as that at the forefront of OPEC of rising oil prices and this was in a way to outbid Mossad there that he was more militant than most out there but it also actually covered the fact under cover covered the fact that under the Shah oil was denationalized actually given back to Western oil companies and Iran didn't have control over the oil industry so he often grant standard in OPEC about higher oil prices but he rarely had no influence over determining over for oil prices it was more the countries including the Saudi Arabia that actually did control oil in production that could determine oil prices so that was one gymnastics another gymnastics he did was tried to act on to 2500 year history of Iranian monarchy so it was saying well implicitly saying if I don't have national legitimacy because of the oil crisis I'm part of 2,500 year history of monarchy so the grant shows he putting on Persepolis and so on and much of the propaganda in the 70s was that he was an ongoing succession of 2500 harmonica this was more saleable actually among orientalists in the West than in Iran it backfired in Iran because in Iran actually the idea of monarchy was considered something backward something medieval and buuuut they knew that his dynasty was an upstart dynasty coming from 1925 they had no connection with the Safa visa comedians their so on so it was a misuse of it and if you look at way the big Persepolis bash of all bashes it was described as where he invited a big all the heads of state to come to Persepolis to celebrate 2500 year history again it was a way to build up his image but it's backfired even among the participants for first of all Iranians weren't invited even members of the cabinet were not invited into the show it was a show for foreign dignitaries and the foreign correspondent especially in Washington Post car they came out with a bad taste in their mouths you know it to hear point great deal of poverty still in the country they claimed there was a starvation people barefoot and meanwhile you've blending billions of millions of dollars bringing in food from Paris because you constantly served foreign dignitaries in Iranian food you have to bring in the best food wines for France and so on so it became a joke in fact there's a more of a joke now if you look at the sources then it was perceived at that time some major figures didn't appear Nixon made excuses not to go his scent Agnew there and Agnew was pissed off because waiting in queues he had to wait in line behind not just monarchs and queens but X 1 X and X Queens so he about God Saul King and he went to his tent and hardly came out of his tent so it hardly worked with with the American administration but it was part of this campaign to have an alternate form of legitimacy by being seen as part of 2500 years history it further undermined his credibility in Iran because for religious people you hatching on to this was seen as a way of undermining Islam the Shah actually was a religious person more than that he was highly superstitious person he often saw Imams in his dreams Imams told him what to do and so he tried to legitimize his his arguments mob war their home any actually in bringing in the Imams to politics so he wasn't anti religious but using this type of symbolism undermined his credibility among the clerics because they said hey he's trying to undermine our culture by talking about the a comedians and the Safavids and so on another way he tried to gain legitimacy was to act as a strong man I he is now making Iran as a powerful state that people can have respect for by building up a military and to do that he became water is known as Nixon's policeman in the Middle East and this again backfired because in Iranian language when you're a John darm or someone you're working for someone so it was perceived in Iran that all this money that was going into building up was to become a puppet of United States this reinforced already the the lack of credibility because the more he spent on the military the more he became powerful not in the Persian Gulf but in the Indian Ocean he was seen among Iranian innate nationalists well this confirms our conviction that he was brought into power to serve American interests and so on how many okay so for me the intriguing thing is that this was obviously the Achilles heel of the regime the fifth three lack of credibility but when you look at the documents both the State Department and the Foreign Office there is all this mention of inequality and other problems they never mentioned 53 it's like a taboo subject you can play around with it but you can never mention that the problem is the coup of 53 this actually raises to me an interesting problem why didn't they mention this these are you know rational intelligent people how come they don't mention 53 years a problem and some speculation for that one is it may be a legal purple reason that if you are in the government the government did denies that there was a CIA mi6 in coup then if you certainly say that you're actually technically breaking the official secrecy act in England not wreaths not long ago their top scientists revealed when during the Saddam Hussein weapon of the mass destruction he was the top scientist he knew what was going he happened to say tell the journalists that the government was the terming users sexing up the dose here and this was seen as breaking the secrecy act and he was actually suicided whence he said that so it was a serious offence to actually say something that goes against your government if you're a government official so I would think there's a reason people in the State Department the white and the foreign office don't have any mention of this 2:53 cool I've found a document in when the Iranian Revolution was at its peak 78 there was a Labour Party conference in England and the Labour Party was in the government at that time Labour MP writes to the Foreign Office saying there's an Iranian here circulating a pamphlet saying that we were responsible 53 cool is there any truth in this so the Foreign Office says society had young intern says go and look at the archives what do we have on our archives about the 53 coup and this a young not too smart a intern comes back and says I can't find anything you know I looked everywhere there's no record of anything about us this I the intern didn't look too well because if you look at certain carefully enough there are things but notic implicitly explicitly implicitly for instance you would in 15th soon after 53 when the British reestablished their Embassy in Tehran the Ambassador writes a cryptic note to to London saying they're also so wild rumours in Iran that the Americans had something to do with the cool not saying that we're okay with this somehow the Americans it's a public notion obviously he knew that there was involved but he didn't want to mention it there's also America a British ambassador in 54 writes to other ambassador's saying if you want to know really what happened here look at these articles in The Times of India and The Times of India had a journalist a socialist deputy known as ready and he happened to be friends with the ambassador so he was in Tehran rapport as a journalist living ambassador and he had kept his eyes open ears were open and he wrote a series of articles and if you write read those articles they actually have a very accurate sequence of events leading up to the cool there's no nothing wasn't hidden about it so what the British ambassador was saying is if you want to know about mi6 CIA coup read these articles so he's not saying we did it a coup but it's saying you know there's the evidence if you want to look at it so there there was this knowledge of those people in in 54:55 later on when the diplomats came other younger diplomats they they would not have had that personal knowledge they only had written documents and in the written written documents would have not have referred to the 53 coup I think legally there would all be psychological reasons you know we don't want to say that the real problem about this draw is the United States or Britain so that's a psychological reasons we're not doing just to give you two vignettes when I was writing the book on the coup I got an email from a former American diplomat who told me that he before being sent to Iran in the late fifties early sixties he was actually well trained I think your diplomats were better trained then these days so he was given courses on Iranian history he was studied Iranian a person to go there and he said I he the first time he heard about the coup was in 1960 when he was talking to a student in Mashhad and the Mashhad student told him about the cool is that he had never heard about that here is a diplomat you know this guy has been trained there and there was obviously nothing in the files that he would have opened up to him that here there was a coup another story from a very senior diplomat who later became ambassador elsewhere he's he recounts that when he was in the embassy in Tehran he was studying Persian and he was taking lessons from a well-heeled aristocratic lady and then one day after class this tutorial he asked this aristocratic lady who's your favorite Iranian and she said without hesitation it's more sad there and he said but he's been gone for ten years she said well yes you Americans took him away from Lhasa and so he says he thinks if this aristocratic lady thinks that way I wonder what other mirror rognons think in the public so these are actually what later on can be admitted but much later until really 2000 the year 2000 the official line of the American government was that US had nothing to do with the coup in Britain still the official line is the you it Britain had nothing to do with the coup so there's still the inhibition legal inhibition in it Britain abouts mentioning it in America that inhibition has actually broken thanks to Albright because in the year 2000 Madeleine Albright said we had something to do with the coup well but then she also said well it was in the context of the coup of the cold war but that's a different story I'd won't go into that I think anything the coup had nothing to do with the cold war as far as I'm concerned but it's all usual it's it's a good justification to put it in the context of the Cold War so since then you do find people former diplomats occasionally mentioning that the problems were 53 just to give you two examples john stemple who was the second man in the embassy during the revolution 78 79 he wrote a book called inside the Iranian Revolution and he admits that the problem the Shah had was that whenever he tried to negotiate with the opposition no one in the opposition considered him legitimate so how can you negotiate with people who don't could usually legitimate so admits that the real Achilles will heel of the of the Revolution was origins of the the state but he doesn't he's not willing to actually go and link it to fifty three so he his book came out before two thousand so he could have been inhibited by that a later book in 2009 written by William Polk who used to be in the foreign policy State Department's group and I suspect he had a role because an older man would have been there in 53 he has a book it's a short book introduction to Iran but he there as for me it's very revealing he says that the 53 coupe really did legitimize the regime and from then on the regime was weak so the people like him former State Department people who had been there fifty-three were quite aware of the problem but they couldn't really articulate it until basically after 2000 um so here you have an interesting actually academic interest if you are studying something just by written sources you look at the State Department's Ortiz for a foreign office sources for the origins of the coup you're never going to find 53 coup it's not because it wasn't important it was I would say exact opposite it was so important that it couldn't be mentioned it was a taboo topic but this was a something that people the shore knew the public around Iranian public knew and it was the main cause of the weakness other factors of course came in but just to put it in sort of distance course all the problems the Shah had could have easily been solved but to have solved those problems you needed to have some legitimacy and lacking the legitimacy mean like even if you tried to that's a autocracy is too much you try to open up the system as soon as you open up the system sooner or later guys someone is going to say you know what's your legitimacy so at the end of the revolution and in 78 the Shah made this famous speech to the public you know apologize to the public he said now I'm a constitutional monarch I appoint the Prime Minister I'll listen to you and this was seen as a joke you've spent the last 25 years making a mockery of the Constitution suddenly you become a constitutional monarch we know that basically you get got power out of a military coup in that military coup was engineered for you by their my6 and CIA so this basically becomes I would say the long-term cause of 1979 so although there's a big gap in terms of eight dates there isn't or in terms of historical memory there is a strong in Iran a strong link between 53 and 79 I'll stop there okay well thank you very much everyone I want to get the I mean those were wonderful insightful you know retrospective reflections on the Iranian Revolution its causes and I completely agree with you that the question of political legitimacy of the Shah was the key essential factor in explaining the Revolution I was wondering if I could get you to reflect for a moment and compare the crisis of legitimacy that the Shah faced with the crisis of legitimacy that the Islamic Republic today is facing in the eyes of its own citizens so just to give you an example about two months ago a prominent clerical authority the head of Tehran's Revolutionary Court a man by the name of Musa Asin fatto bode gives a speech where he explicitly talks about young people in Iran sort of not supporting the revolution and he explicitly says that if we ever reach a moment where things are getting desperate for the Islamic Republic we will have to invite into Iran various non Iranian Shia militia that we have supported throughout the region and he actually lists the names of these groups to come into the country to defend the Islamic Republic and just a few weeks ago in the context of this flood crisis these Iraqi Shia militia known as the hush tishambia have actually come in to Iran to provide flood relief and this has generated controversy within Iran I mean the crisis of legitimacy of the Islamic Republic I would argue particularly among young people particularly in the urban sectors is so vast in so deep that you have this situation where after 40 years of the Islamic Republic trying to cultivate an ideal Muslim citizen and raising people on a diet of Islamic teachings and beliefs you have vast an extent expansive social secularization people don't pray anymore people don't fast people don't observe the normal rituals in ways that you know speak to I think highlight I mean there's a lot of other things that I could mention here so what are the comparative similarities and differences I guess in terms of the crisis of legitimacy that these two authoritarian moments in Iran the Shah and then the Islamic Republican period are facing there obviously are similarities but there's obviously differences and if you could begin by maybe commenting on those similarities and differences we would benefit from your insights there a lot of parallels in that it's the Islamic Republic especially in the last 10 years has become very unpopular among certain groups in Iran so there is this alienation and people then could see it there's another sort of cycle that there are other revolutions duplicating the 79 revolution I think the complications there is that the 79 revolution even now you can say losing support it still was a very popular revolution it ready it was involved with massive people Hersman who's written a book on the Iranian Revolution he argues that there was more popular participation in the Iranian Revolution than any other any other revolutions and if revolutions by definition are popular movements then this was quite something so that still resonates among people that you note there there is some legitimacy because the origin of the Rev the Republic is after all a popular revolution while the origin of the Shahs regime was a CIA coup so it that difference then there's another factor I think this because that the legitimacy of the evolution then of course the war has helped because the revolution in God's fort against Iraq he invasion this gives the Revolutionary Guards the passage some sort of legitimacy they may not be liked by educated middle class but they still have some strength especially in the rural countryside in fact they're often recruited from the countryside from families who have had marches in the war or their or the revolution so there is a network of people who have or their personal faith is linked to the regime under the Shah actually although he had a huge army and had been trained by the Americans since 1942 actually that army was very unreliable when it came to dealing with public protests and I think that's his way another way the Shah was actually quite much more savvy about the situation then foreigners were because he knew that most of his army were in fact rank-and-file citizens doing conscripted so if you ask them to shoot onto crowds they would be shooting on to their relatives and throughout the demonstrations actually 17 months of demonstrations although the public perception was that thousands of people were killed the official figure given was 60,000 martyrs in the demonstrations I've calculated from official figures actually instead of 60,000 it's more like 600 so you have to remove carpet quite a few zeros real figure was probably 600 and the reason for that was that rank-and-file soldiers were were asked to shoot when there was any shooting it was done by officers and this ensures that implicate they're actually there implications that the shareddi couldn't accept a big crackdown oh and if he had except he wanted a quick crackdown it would have either led to a civil war or did the complete disintegration of the army so he never resorted to that well in fact people like presents ki were saying well you have a huge army just cracked down get rid of them arrest everyone killed some people everything will end up and actually the Sullivan the American ambassador poo-pooed all that he gave a very realistic situation that he discharged us couldn't do that there was a little army was not something he could do the Islamic Republic you know however bad it is it does have the people who were willing to break heads and even shoot people if necessary why because they from their perception the regime is legitimate so how much opposition there is unless there is some reason for a breakdown of the guards I can't see a repetition of 79 yeah yeah actually I'm good - very good points in my talk actually one of the jaws somersaults I had I didn't have time and to get this was exactly the white revolution it was again very much trying to get new legitimate saying saying well you know the others may have national but I'm a great revolutionary I'm going to completely reform the countryside and so again this back far because for actually the National Front there their argument was that reform yes dictatorship no so that you know you can make economic reforms but their real issue is legitimacy political change which you couldn't do because as soon as if he opened up the question of legitimacy and a lot of the land reform again in a way back far because although in theory it would have created a base for the regime and this was the American thinking that if you have peasants who are now small farmers they've got the land from the state this they'll be obliged to support the state it works in some places like in South Korea and so on but in Iran it didn't work well because it wasn't follow through our son Johnny who started the reform had a fairly good idea but the show got very jealous of him got rid of him and then though it fizzled out because they supplied this support system that farmers needed was never given so they were left with land and a lot of people peasants didn't get land so they flooded into the cities and this created an added problem which they didn't expect out of the white revolution so that there's that product that the white revolution I would say yes is they just summer so which didn't help it just backfired the question of voting is I think very important because I think the main legitimacy the regime has it often talks about well Islam and so on but often if you look carefully their argument is that we have elections and we have mass participation and if I was them I would actually lecture the Obama not Obama but the Trump administration you know what's your democracy at most you get fifty five percent of the pellagra to participate what sort of election democracy is that we can have as much as eighty percent and it's not coerced into it actually it's not like a Stalinist election where people are told to go and vote people genuinely vote eighty percent if you get actually a 50 percent 60 percent this is considered a bad reflection on the regime so the high participation is their way of saying we are legitimate but to have that high percentage you need to have competition to have competition you have to have rarely someone who is a conservative and someone who's somewhat more moderate or reformer so they won't accept of course anyone from the monarchist or leftist because that would be outside the parameters but we didn't that comp perimeter of reforms islam or conservative islam you have to have that to get people to vote if there isn't that vote then people stay home and then the legitimacy of the regime is then fold and that's where i would say actually if that happens if future elections are completely controlled and only one candidate is running or diddle-dee and tiddle domino running exactly the same people have the choice to stay home so if there lack for voting goes down to 50 percent then that loses the de credibility of the regime and then I would say so since I'm going to phrase what you're saying by the way and we could ask ourselves what was it in the circumstances of actually there was even the sonic so n historical - to how the moon perhaps in addition to just is well the usual answer to that given actually not just by monarchies leftist know is that the Revolution was hijacked so it was many people involved and then the clique one kind who may need took over I think this is a simplistic interpretation well what you do get is yes those people in a way had more lead ties to 53 you could say that had a longer history of opposing the shop but it was how many and his circle that it basically took over now then why I don't think it's just a hijacking when the state broke down or the top of the state what you get is in the local level you know village neighborhood level people who took over it was very grassroots people usually high school students young college grad students they recall batch aha it has our lats and local lads they were and they became the core of the Revolutionary Guards they gravitated much more to Khomeini they considered people like Bazar gone former National Front is basically too liberal too bourgeois and so on so that I think the secret the secret answer explanation to why those grassroot people looked at home a knee as the their God their leader and I think the clergy already their own structure but interesting the clergy really didn't come into the revolution till pretty late you have actually oral histories from these kids one of them says you know they were tried in 77 early 78 they were trying to organize their local mosque against the Shah the mosque bullet threw them out of the mosque they didn't want any with this so they arranged the demonstration stuff basically outside and then at the final days he he was surprised to see the the bulla who turned around in the street with a Kalashnikov you know calling for the death of the Shah so they came in very late but of course that once they came in they had already their structures so they could take over but I think they in intellection there's another aspect that's often forgotten is Max Weber actually comes in useful here Max Weber promised to write something on revolutions he didn't because most of his work is actually on stability continuty longevity and but he obviously struggling how to can you have revolutions when you know you have institution stability and the only thing he wrote about revolutions was 1905 when the Russian Revolution broke out those articles have just been published and interesting if you look at those articles they're not verb Arian they're actually Marxist he adopts a Marxist analysis to understand what happened in Russia in 1905 but still Max is a Weber of ever is interesting for Iran on the issue of charisma because for Weber just to remind you for him legitimacy authority comes from on one level tradition custom then the modern level he goes you could say institutional rational he would call it but when you have a breakdown of traditional legitimacy and I would say in Iran that was broke down precisely cause of 53 what you get is a vacuum and in a vacuum you four Weber you get the emergence of charisma so it's not a charisma that creates revolution it's a revolution situation that creates a car's ematic person so that here when the old order ready the digitus e breaks down here someone emerges who is the charismatic figure and in history actually very rare to find such figures even Lenin really didn't have our charisma the charisma was created posthumously with Mao you can say yes that charisma is there Ho Chi Minh but usually it's very rare to have one person who appears as the epitome of sort of the nation and who made he does that I don't think so much because of himself but because there is this vacuum and he is able to use that because of shiism so the XI culture there is very important so the fact that he appears as someone who is interesting that he's not described by his followers as a Ayatollah or grand IATA busy Imam a term that was never used in Iran for political figures because Imams are infallible in bombs are somewhere between us and God but applying that term for haumene II was something that his you could say grassroot followers really did and for him he was the war so again going to Weber he says with charisma you know the charismatic factor says the law says unto you do this but I say are do you do that ie what I say is overcomes what the law says this is precisely what Khomeini was saying and in fact he was contradicting a lot of XI traditions by by saying you know these traditions which maybe have been there but I telling you something else and what I tell you is more important because his followers look looked upon him as a charismatic figure you couldn't go against his word so I think that complication comes in to explain why and even you know people like Baz are gone who were very critical or privately of his policies publicly couldn't go against him because if they went against him it was destroying their political career they would be then smeared as anti Shi anti-revolutionary the u.s. involvement 1953 - and then where do you see me the opportunities for improvement well I made the the best optimism is if US goes back to the Obama administration policy oh yeah the question was you know what are the prospects are the possibilities overall improved relations between the two countries they're only eyeing possibilities if we return back to the Obama because I think Kerry and Obama had the realistic evaluation of the situation they may not want these atomic Republic but it's there the best thing is to be able to negotiate and so on the Trump administration has the policy clearly that they want to do the regime change so that the choice is whether economic pressures will bring regime change which they hope with if that doesn't work out then I'm sure their escalate to more confrontational maybe even military ventures so we could see a replay of the situation I do I'll do the historians catch out you know not in prophecy I can't predict the future because there's so many unpredictable okay the question what water possibilities reform or change so much depends on outside forces you know Iran is only a player in it and the Bajor gorilla in the room is basically United States so depends what United States do I think if the Obama administration had continued and the dispo the policy had continued there would have been much more prospect for their moderates rouhani to concerts consolidate economic improvements and then that could not didn't inevitable that get but that could have led to more opening up and I think the actual rev the Constitution itself is flexible enough to permit changes as long as it remains a nominally Islamic Republic there are enough clauses in the Constitution to have referendums and bring about changes but the diehards that hack and control basically they're the court system the judiciary they are that I would say the strongholds for conservatism but the Reformers could challenge that if there was basically there International context for it and there I think I mean there is enough pressure in Iran of le I wouldn't call it secularism but basically a change of Islam to conform basically to with modern concept of legality and law so it's it's not the you can find plenty of religious leaders whose interpretation of the Sharia is quite concrete a bold way to a Western concept of law so it's the diehards who basically say no we have to remain faithful to the traditional interpretations yeah okay it's a good point because the question is you know the Shahs actually hubris or arrogance by 7778 he started lecturing the West at the West was too promiscuous too lazy the wasting money that they deserved to higher oil prices and stuff that this was then undermined him because the West was less supportive of him it's the public image is often that because that had headlines you trouble the looking at the actual government documents you get a different picture so the apex of the of the hubris was when the Treasury secretary Simon of the Nixon administration called the show and not case and people remember that's because here the American government is quoting the Shah not because he's calling for higher oil prices and so that remains in the image public image specially in in Iran that the Shah was actually very militant on oil prices and this is why he was undermined not necessarily the oil companies conspired to bring him down but this alienated the West because he was lecturing the west and calling for what I found us are surprised in that dark government documents is the Shahs militancy on prices only lasted a few months within a few months actually the British were saying the chars no longer calling for oil prices in private and our Moo cigar who was the oil and go he hated to be called a hawk on oil prices so you have two levels the public image private in it if in the private dealings the Shah was actually very double-talking very dishonest he was he was willing to fill up American oil reserves you know these caves where oil was - and prices well below the OPEC prices and he was when he was talking about criticism of Israel he made it clear that there was no way he wanted a Palestinian state and he was the main seller of oil to Israel so again privately was doing something very different and his talk about you know criticism of the West you'll find that he often worked for the the American administration in Africa so when South Africa was on the sanctions but South Africa was supporting guerrilla movements in Mozambique Angola learned stuff the Shah was secretly funding those movements so he was doing things a dirty work for the West so people like Kissinger actually knew that and they were very thankful for the Shah for all he did so there's one level the public image that his critical of the West but in private he was actually the best friend the US could have had so that I wasn't that issue that undermined him back here at night [Applause]

Channel: DU Center for Middle East Studies

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Id: OJLPE5Ja0qU

Length: 82min 52sec (4972 seconds)

Published: Thu May 16 2019