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WEEKLY NEWSLETTER
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Iran
Index
By late 1976 and early 1977, it was evident that the Iranian
economy was in trouble. The shah's attempt to use Iran's vastly
expanded oil revenues after 1973 for an unrealistically ambitious
industrial and construction program and a massive military buildup
greatly strained Iran's human and institutional resources and
caused severe economic and social dislocation. Widespread official
corruption, rapid inflation, and a growing gap in incomes between
the wealthier and the poorer strata of society fed public
dissatisfaction.
In response, the government attempted to provide the working
and middle classes with some immediate and tangible benefits of the
country's new oil wealth. The government nationalized private
secondary schools, declared that secondary education would be free
for all Iranians, and started a free meal program in schools. It
took over private community colleges and extended financial support
to university students. It lowered income taxes, inaugurated an
ambitious health insurance plan, and speeded up implementation of
a program introduced in 1972, under which industrialists were
required to sell 49 percent of the shares of their companies to
their employees. The programs were badly implemented, however, and
did not adequately compensate for the deteriorating economic
position of the urban working class and those, who, like civil
servants, were on fixed salaries. To deal with the disruptive
effects of excessive spending, the government adopted policies that
appeared threatening to the propertied classes and to bazaar,
business, and industrial elements who had benefited from economic
expansion and might have been expected to support the regime. For
example, in an effort to bring down rents, municipalities were
empowered to take over empty houses and apartments and to rent and
administer them in place of the owners. In an effort to bring down
prices in 1975 and 1976, the government declared a war on
profiteers, arrested and fined thousands of shopkeepers and petty
merchants, and sent two prominent industrialists into exile.
Moreover, by 1978 there were 60,000 foreigners in Iran--45,000
of them Americans--engaged in business or in military training and
advisory missions. Combined with a superficial Westernization
evident in dress, life styles, music, films, and television
programs, this foreign presence tended to intensify the perception
that the shah's modernization program was threatening the society's
Islamic and Iranian cultural values and identity. Increasing
political repression and the establishment of a one-party state in
1975 further alienated the educated classes.
The shah was aware of the rising resentment and dissatisfaction
in the country and the increasing international concern about the
suppression of basic freedoms in Iran. Organizations such as the
International Council of Jurists and Amnesty International were
drawing attention to mistreatment of political prisoners and
violation of the rights of the accused in Iranian courts. More
important, President Jimmy Carter, who took office in January 1977,
was making an issue of human rights violations in countries with
which the United States was associated. The shah, who had been
pressed into a program of land reform and political liberalization
by the Kennedy administration, was sensitive to possible new
pressures from Washington.
Beginning in early 1977, the shah took a number of steps to
meet both domestic and foreign criticism of Iran's human rights
record. He released political prisoners and announced new
regulations to protect the legal rights of civilians brought before
military courts. In July the shah replaced Hoveyda, his prime
minister of twelve years, with Jamshid Amuzegar, who had served for
over a decade in various cabinet posts. Unfortunately for the shah,
however, Amuzegar also became unpopular, as he attempted to slow
the overheated economy with measures that, although generally
thought necessary, triggered a downturn in employment and private
sector profits that would later compound the government's problems.
Leaders of the moderate opposition, professional groups, and
the intelligentsia took advantage of the shah's accommodations and
the more helpful attitude of the Carter administration to organize
and speak out. Many did so in the form of open letters addressed to
prominent officials in which the writers demanded adherence to the
constitution and restoration of basic freedoms. Lawyers, judges,
university professors, and writers formed professional associations
to press these demands. The National Front, the IFM, and other
political groups resumed activity.
The protest movement took a new turn in January 1978, when a
government-inspired article in Ettelaat, one of the
country's leading newspapers, cast doubt on Khomeini's piety and
suggested that he was a British agent. The article caused a scandal
in the religious community. Senior clerics, including Ayatollah
Kazem Shariatmadari, denounced the article. Seminary students took
to the streets in Qom and clashed with police, and several
demonstrators were killed. The Esfahan bazaar closed in protest. On
February 18, mosque services and demonstrations were held in
several cities to honor those killed in the Qom demonstrations. In
Tabriz these demonstrations turned violent, and it was two days
before order could be restored. By the summer, riots and
antigovernment demonstrations had swept dozens of towns and cities.
Shootings inevitably occurred, and deaths of protesters fueled
public feeling against the regime.
The cycle of protests that began in Qom and Tabriz differed in
nature, composition, and intent from the protests of the preceding
year. The 1977 protests were primarily the work of middle-class
intellectuals, lawyers, and secular politicians. They took the form
of letters, resolutions, and declarations and were aimed at the
restoration of constitutional rule. The protests that rocked
Iranian cities in the first half of 1978, by contrast, were led by
religious elements and were centered on mosques and religious
events. They drew on traditional groups in the bazaar and among the
urban working class for support. The protesters used a form of
calculated violence to achieve their ends, attacking and destroying
carefully selected targets that represented objectionable features
of the regime: nightclubs and cinemas as symbols of moral
corruption and the influence of Western culture; banks as symbols
of economic exploitation; Rastakhiz (the party created by the shah
in 1975 to run a one-party state) offices; and police stations as
symbols of political repression. The protests, moreover, aimed at
more fundamental change: in slogans and leaflets, the protesters
attacked the shah and demanded his removal, and they depicted
Khomeini as their leader and an Islamic state as their ideal. From
his exile in Iraq, Khomeini continued to issue statements calling
for further demonstrations, rejected any form of compromise with
the regime, and called for the overthrow of the shah.
The government's position deteriorated further in August 1978,
when more than 400 people died in a fire at the Rex Cinema in
Abadan. Although evidence available after the Revolution suggested
that the fire was deliberately started by religiously inclined
students, the opposition carefully cultivated a widespread
conviction that the fire was the work of SAVAK agents. Following
the Rex Cinema fire, the shah removed Amuzegar and named Jafar
Sharif-Emami prime minister. Sharif-Emami, a former minister and
prime minister and a trusted royalist, had for many years served as
president of the Senate. The new prime minister adopted a policy of
conciliation. He eased press controls and permitted more open
debate in the Majlis. He released a number of imprisoned clerics,
revoked the imperial calendar, closed gambling casinos, and
obtained from the shah the dismissal from court and public office
of members of the Bahai religion, a sect to which the clerics
strongly objected
(see Non-Muslim Minorities
, ch. 2). These
measures, however, did not quell public protests. On September 4,
more than 100,000 took part in the public prayers to mark the end
of Ramazan, the Muslim fasting month. The ceremony became an
occasion for antigovernment demonstrations that continued for the
next two days, growing larger and more radical in composition and
in the slogans of the participants. The government declared martial
law in Tehran and eleven other cities on the night of September
7-8, 1978. The next day, troops fired into a crowd of demonstrators
at Tehran's Jaleh Square. A large number of protesters, certainly
many more than the official figure of eighty-seven, were killed.
The Jaleh Square shooting came to be known as "Black Friday." It
considerably radicalized the opposition movement and made
compromise with the regime, even by the moderates, less likely. In
October the Iraqi authorities, unable to persuade Khomeini to
refrain from further political activity, expelled him from the
country. Khomeini went to France and established his headquarters
at Neauphle-le-Château, outside Paris. Khomeini's arrival in France
provided new impetus to the revolutionary movement. It gave
Khomeini and his movement exposure in the world press and media. It
made possible easy telephone communication with lieutenants in
Tehran and other Iranian cities, thus permitting better
coordination of the opposition movement. It allowed Iranian
political and religious leaders, who were cut off from Khomeini
while he was in Iraq, to visit him for direct consultations. One of
these visitors was National Front leader Karim Sanjabi. After a
meeting with Khomeini early in November 1978, Sanjabi issued a
three-point statement that for the first time committed the
National Front to the Khomeini demand for the deposition of the
shah and the establishment of a government that would be
"democratic and Islamic."
Scattered strikes had occurred in a few private sector and
government industries between June and August 1978. Beginning in
September, workers in the public sector began to go on strike on a
large scale. When the demands of strikers for improved salary and
working benefits were quickly met by the Sharif-Emami government,
oil workers and civil servants made demands for changes in the
political system. The unavailability of fuel oil and freight
transport and shortages of raw materials resulting from a customs
strike led to the shutting down of most private sector industries
in November.
On November 5, 1978, after violent demonstrations in Tehran,
the shah replaced Sharif-Emami with General Gholam-Reza Azhari,
commander of the Imperial Guard. The shah, addressing the nation
for the first time in many months, declared he had heard the
people's "revolutionary message," promised to correct past
mistakes, and urged a period of quiet and order so that the
government could undertake the necessary reforms. Presumably to
placate public opinion, the shah allowed the arrest of 132 former
leaders and government officials, including former Prime Minister
Hoveyda, a former chief of SAVAK, and several former cabinet
ministers. He also ordered the release of more than 1,000 political
prisoners, including a Khomeini associate, Ayatollah Hosain Ali
Montazeri.
The appointment of a government dominated by the military
brought about some short-lived abatement in the strike fever, and
oil production improved. Khomeini dismissed the shah's promises as
worthless, however, and called for continued protests. The Azhari
government did not, as expected, use coercion to bring striking
government workers back to work. The strikes resumed, virtually
shutting down the government, and clashes between demonstrators and
troops became a daily occurrence. On December 9 and 10, 1978, in
the largest antigovernment demonstrations in a year, several
hundred thousand persons participated in marches in Tehran and the
provinces to mark Moharram, the month in which Shia mourning
occurs.
In December 1978, the shah finally began exploratory talks with
members of the moderate opposition. Discussions with Karim Sanjabi
proved unfruitful: the National Front leader was bound by his
agreement with Khomeini. At the end of December another National
Front leader, Shapour Bakhtiar, agreed to form a government on
condition the shah leave the country. Bakhtiar secured a vote of
confidence from the two houses of the Majlis on January 3, 1979,
and presented his cabinet to the shah three days later. The shah,
announcing he was going abroad for a short holiday, left the
country on January 16, 1979. As his aircraft took off, celebrations
broke out across the country.
Data as of December 1987
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