Written by Olivia Norbury
The 1979 Iranian Revolution was a series of uprisings culminating in the overthrow of the Pahlavi dynasty and the establishment of the Islamic Republic. Ayatollah Ruhollah Khomeini is recognised as the driving force behind the revolution due to his central role in shaping its ideology, which rejected the Pahlavi monarchy led by Mohammad Reza Shah. Khomeini unified and mobilised the Iranian people through his notion of political Islam, which resonated with many people, becoming a symbol of opposition against the Shah’s regime. However, other ideologies and actors who are often overlooked were key in initiating discontent towards the Shah’s authoritarian regime that led to the revolution, and laid the groundwork on which Khomeini could implement his Islamic government. Nonetheless, Khomeini’s leadership held unparalleled significance in the consolidation of power as his strategic vision and ideology unified opposition and established an Islamic Republic, signifying the success of the original aim of the revolution.
Grievances towards the Shah’s authoritarian regime existed prior to Khomeini’s rise to leadership and played a crucial role in fuelling the revolution. These frustrations helped sow the seeds of discontent, towards widespread repression and the suppression of freedoms in Iran. For example, The Tudeh Party, founded in 1941 following temporary political liberation after Reza Shah abdicated in 1941, was composed of young, educated Iranians, writers, and intellectuals who were unified by their desire for reform. By the early 1950s, half of Tehran University’s students were members or sympathisers of the party; this figure implies the significance of the Tudeh Party in uniting the revolutionary tendencies of the youth under an ideology opposing the Shah. The dissent of young people and intellectuals against the Shah’s autocracy was thus linked to a broader global movement of liberation and decolonisation through nationalist, anticolonial, and Marxist ideologies seeking to dismantle incumbent regimes. The diasporic student movement of the Confederation of Iranian Students National Union (CISNU) enabled Iranian students in the US to voice opposition to dictatorship and imperialism, motivated by the political concept of Third Worldism which inspired unity among nations that did not want to align with either of the Cold War superpowers. Thus, the broader global context of the power of non-secular ideology was significant in unifying liberal members of Iranian society from the 1940s, harnessing the inspiration of global revolution and anticolonialism into Iranian political activism against the Shah.
Furthermore, Ali Shari’ati’s ideology was central to the Iranian Revolution; Shari’ati was a teacher and a writer who spent five years teaching Islamic history at the University of Mashhad in the late 1960s and then in Tehran, notably lecturing at the Hosayniyeh Ershad in the early 1970s. Shari’ati delivered one of his most well-known lectures, Return to the Self, at Jondishapour University in 1976, which proposed a “Return to the Self” for Iranians. The notion was not a return to Islamic antiquity and tradition, but to Iranians’ ‘powerful…selves, stand[ing] against the cultural imperialism of the West’ through a ‘progressive and dissident Islam’. Therefore, Shari’ati posited the importance of liberation of the Iranian individual through returning to national and indigenous identity through the vessel of political Islam. He employed Islam as a language of liberation, supported by the context of the world intellectual movement and liberation as a task for intellectuals, locating “Return to the Self” among ‘anti-imperialist leaders in the Third World’ rather than purely religious figures.
Acknowledging these various ideologies that contributed to growing dissent against the Shah’s regime, Khomeini became the symbol of widespread opposition to the Shah through his revolutionary ideology that resonated with many Iranians. Khomeini’s hostility towards the Shah’s authoritarian rule originated from his first political book in 1943, Kashf al-asrar (Revealing of the Secrets) where he proposed the ‘government of God’ as the sole legitimate political system. The notion of Islamic kingship indicates the foundations of Khomeini’s later velayat-e faqih (guardianship of the Islamic jurist), exemplifying his early political use of Islam to challenge the Shah’s secularising regime, which Khomeini viewed as illegitimate as it undermined Islamic values. Khomeini’s political project was radicalised in exile as he constructed a concrete theory justifying an Islamic government and the sovereignty of Sh’i jurists. Thus, Khomeini advanced the revolution by cementing political Islam as an ideology that opposed the Shah’s totalitarianism.
Khomeini’s vocal opposition is further evident when in 1964, the Majlis (Iranian parliament) granted legal immunity to Americans and their dependents in Iran on American government contracts. He taped a sermon condemning the law as ‘America enslaving Iran, colonising Iran’, which highlighted his anger at the further subjugation of Iranians to foreign powers, enabled by the Shah, and further criticised him for ‘creating chaos’ instead of addressing Iran’s ‘dismal economic situation’. Khomeini accused him of masking Iran’s socioeconomic issues with these capitulations that marked a return to foreign imperial oppression previously experienced in Iran under British rule. His sermon employed both nationalist and religious rhetoric, disrupting the dichotomy between nationalism and religion and foregrounding Iranian sovereignty to unite diverse discontent with the Shah’s regime and lead the revolution as the voice and symbol of dissent.
Khomeini further denounced the regime in 1971 when the Shah planned a celebration of the twenty-five hundredth anniversary of the Persian Empire to legitimise his regime by linking it to a history of Persian kings which predated Islam. Khomeini condemned the celebration of ‘the rule of a traitor to Islam’ whose men ‘beat the students atrociously’. His public defiance of the Shah’s attempt to establish legitimacy evidences the centrality of Khomeini as the voice of criticism of the Shah’s tyrannical rule. Khomeini concluded his 1971 speech by stating that ‘Islam and the Muslims are repelled by the very notion of monarchy’. He identifies the monarchy as the principal issue of the Shah’s rule, suggesting the impact of Khomeini’s revolutionary vision which entailed an overhaul of the entire institution.
Moreover, Khomeini’s leadership was extremely significant to the consolidation of power following the Iranian Revolution and the establishment of the Islamic Republic. His political Islam succeeded in uniting different Iranian actors and ideologies under a revolutionary vision, and his leadership was, therefore, pivotal in providing a viable alternative to the monarchy. The Constitution of the Islamic Republic, ratified in December 1979, consolidated Khomeini’s vision of God’s ‘exclusive possession of sovereignty and the right to legislate’. Furthermore, it stated the requirement for all laws to ‘be based on Islamic criteria’, a concept which governed Khomeini’s ideology. Khomeini’s vision previously mentioned in his Velayat-e faqih, which places sovereignty with God, is explicitly acknowledged in the Constitution of the Islamic Republic. The establishment of the Islamic Republic, therefore, relied on Khomeini’s framework, corroborated by the fact he declared himself Supreme Leader for Life, emphasising the centrality of his role.
Furthermore, his establishment of Islamic governmental structures such as a Revolutionary Council and a Revolutionary Tribunal exemplifies how his ideology of an Islamic government enabled the success of the revolution to be solidified, supported by the referendum on April 1, 1979, when ninety-nine per cent of the electorate voted yes to an Islamic Republic. Khomeini prevailed over Prime Minister Medhi Bazargan’s government, further signifying the relevance of political Islam as a governing ideology. Khomeini’s charismatic leadership was vital in providing strategic guidance to the revolution, which effectively consolidated power once the people were mobilised. His political Islam unified people under a coherent movement against the Shah, and thus, he became a symbolic figure.
Khomeini was undoubtedly significant to the revolution; in the lead-up, his political Islam united various opposition, but other actors created the conditions upon which Khomeini did so. Shari’ati’s ideology provided the intellectual framework for the revolution by uniting Islamists and Marxists. Furthermore, secular ideology was central in driving the revolution, such as communist, nationalist, and anticolonial ideas, appealing to students and intellectuals. A combination of revolutionary actors articulated opposition to the Shah’s regime, but it was Khomeini, as a symbol of the revolution, who united the multiplicity of ideologies into one driving force against the Shah. Khomeini was ultimately crucial in the success of the revolution as he utilised pre-existing discontent with the Shah’s authoritarian regime to enact his ideology of political Islam and an Islamic government which united strands of opposition.
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