The Iranian revolution: a landmark
for the future
In Tehran’s Niavaran Palace the 1978 New Year’s Eve party was unusually sumptuous – one of those million dollar affairs which had made the Shah of Iran and the Empress Farah the world’s legendary hosts to the global elite of the powerful and the wealthy. The special guest was the President of the United States, whose toast for the occasion would become memorable for its lack of prescience:
Iran under the great leadership of the Shah is an island of stability in one of the most troubled areas of the world. This is a great tribute to you, your Majesty, and to your leadership and to the respect, admiration and love which your people give to you. In the splendour of the white marble palace, Jimmy Carter’s words may have sounded appropriate. Yet a popular uprising had already begun in Iran. Two months before Carter toasted the Shah, Iran’s security forces had brutalised a dissenting poet’s defiant reading to an unexpectedly large audience in Tehran. Ten days after the palace celebration, the Shah’s forces killed ten protesters and wounded 300 in the city of Qum. From there the uprising spread like prairie fire throughout Iran, neither newly-appointed prime ministers, nor royal promises and concessions, nor martial law and military repression succeeded in quelling it. A year later, on 16 January 1979, Shah Mohammed Reza Pahlavi, the self-styled ‘King of Kings’, ‘Shadow of God’ and the ‘Light of the Aryans’ fled Iran. Less than a month later, on 11th February 1979, the government of Shahpour Bakhtiar, the last
EQBAL AHMAD is a fellow of the Transnational Institute, Washington and Amsterdam, and a member of the editorial board of Afrique-Asie, and Race & Class.
Race & Class, XXI, 1 (1979)
Samuel Rubin 1901-1978
The Iranian revolution
Guest EDITOR
Eqbal Ahmad
EDITOR
A. Sivanandan
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