The Iranian RevolutionThe events which are composing the recent history of Iran, are undoubtedly unique. Over the last century, the Iranians experimented great political transformations which caused important changes at the level of political structure. The Iranian Revolution, also known as the 1979 Revolution or the Islamic Revolution, is by far one of the most significant events which occurred within the state and represents a real turning point in the history of Iran. Not only it did overthrow the monarchy but also it was designed ,,from the outset to achieve a complete revolution, by Islamization of all spheres of life.[footnoteRef:1] After long years of fear and repression, the Iranians were able to choose for their own, the referendum organized late in the 70 in order to find out people preferences, was a free one. Thus, the revolution marked the remove of the Reza Shah in favor of the charismatic Ayatollah Khomeini, whose traditional oriented beliefs were about to influence the structure of power in the state. Iran and the world would never be the same. [1: Bhattacharya, Nandini, Iranian Revolution, 1979, in International Encyclopedia of Revolution and Protest, http://www.revolutionprotestencyclopedia.com/fragr_image/media/IEO_Iranian_Revolution_1979, accesed at 4th june, 2015.]

Focusing on the Iranian Revolution, the present essay intends to outline the specific characteristics which belong to this event in order to prove that this revolution is one of the worlds historys pivotal moments. The first part of this paper will analyze the historic context and the origins of the Iranian Revolution. The outbreak and the evolution of the event will make the subject for the next section and finally, it will be presented characteristics which make the Iranian Revolution so special when compared to the others revolutions who took place in the history. I.Historic context and the origins of the Iranian RevolutionKenneth Pollack, a United States government official, was stating in an official declaration from 2004, that although the recent past is of greatest relevance to the near future, when dealing with a nation such Iran, there is no escaping a more distant past. This mean that, in order to be able to understand the origins of the Iranian Revolution, it is necessary to take a look at the history of the state.The roots of the Islamic Revolution and the modern Iran, as author Brendan January argues in his 2008 book called The Iranian Revolution[footnoteRef:2], reach back to ancient times. A nation in the Middle East, Iran represented the center of the Persian Empire, which has been a great power in the 600s B.C. Invaded by the Arabs in the seventh century, Iran was needed to adopt a new religion-Islam. From this moment on, the history of Iran goes hand in hand with the religion of Islam. The Arabs or, better said, the Islamic leaders built an empire that would spread throughout all the Arabian Peninsula and Middle East, and by the mid-eight century, ,,the Islamic Empire stretched from Spain to central Asia.[footnoteRef:3] More than one billion people from all over the world would practice Islam, in the modern times. Iran would separate itself from the Arabian Caliphate during the IXth and Xth century, its following history counting as important moments the establishment of Safavid dynasty, which will reorganize the Iranian state as a centralized one, the decline registered after the wars with Russia and the modernization of the state which came with the XXth century. [2: January, Brendan, The Iranian Revolution. Pivotal Moments inHistory, Twenty First Century Books, Minneapolis, 2008.] [3: January, Brendan, The Iranian Revolution, p. 7.]

But one of the most important events which has direct link to the Iranian Revolution is the change of dynasty within the state. In the early 1920, Reza Khan, a young army officer, seized power from the existing Iranian shah, and he crowded himself shah in 1925, changing the name of the dynasty into Pahlavi. The ambitious Reza embarked on an extensive process to modernize Iran. His intention was to reduce the influence of ancient traditions in Iranian culture because, in his view, these traditions prevented the kind of progress enjoyed by the European states. To understand the modernization implemented by the Reza Shah, we must first make a brief description of the main characteristics of the Islam. There are two main branches, the Sunni and the Shiite. Although the big part of the Muslims around the world are Sunni, the majority of the Iranians are part of the Shiite branch. As a global and comprehensive religion, Islam ,,covers every aspect of the life[footnoteRef:4], governing the social, the economic and even the political life of the society, being characterized by a ,,real system of worship, civil rights, code of behavior, dress code, diet, laws of marriage[footnoteRef:5], providing objective solutions to the individual, social and even international problems. These being said, we can now expose and understand the process of modernization implemented by the Reza Shah. Among the reforms, first there must be mentioned that the foreigners were no longer allowed to use the ancient name Persia but Iran. Also, the government was designed by Reza on the model of the modern European state and the laws of the nation were standardized and written down. Taking into consideration that Iran hold important oil reserves, Reza also allowed European oil companies to operate in Iran, companies which instead exerted significant influence on Irans government. All in all, many of the Shahs reforms involved weakening the power of Islam, which Reza saw as an old-fashioned ideology. [4: http://www.onislam.net/english/shariah/shariah-and-humanity/shariah-and-life/466251-islam-culture-heritage-art-people-muslim-prophet.html?Life=, accessed at 5th june, 2015.] [5: http://www.clemsonmasjid.org/?p=199, accessed at 5th june, 2015.]

But for a great number of Iranian clerics, these reforms were disturbing, causing pressure on the lives of people and poisoning the Iranian people. Among the opponents of the Shah, the most important one is, by far, Ayatollah Khomeini whose name means, in the Islamic culture, a great religious leader who carries great authority due to its extraordinary learning, wisdom and piety. Since the early 1960s, Khomeini opposed to the reforms performed by the Shah from an Islamic moralist standpoint. He attracted in this way much popular attention. Being ,,vehemently opposed to the spread to the spread of the western model of secularization, introduced in Iran by the Shahs reform program[footnoteRef:6], he was considered by the Reza Shah a real danger for the society, and therefore he was repeatedly exiled and imprisoned more than once. Khomeini spent, after being exiled in 1963, about a year in Turkey and the rest of 14 years in Iraq religious city called Najaf, and finally, for a short period of time, in France. [6: Bhattacharya, Nandini, Iranian Revolution, 1979, in International Encyclopedia of Revolution and Protest, http://www.revolutionprotestencyclopedia.com/fragr_image/media/IEO_Iranian_Revolution_1979, accesed at 5th june, 2015.]

Iran will become in short time one of the greatest oil exporters. To the outside world, Iran presented an impressive image. The economy overall was growing and the Teherans hotels and resorts were bringing great numbers of tourists. Underneath this glitter, however, repression reigned as the secret police of the Shah was closely watching peoples every move. But the economic crises which affected the world wide commerce, will mark a significant drop in oil revenues in 1975. The cuts in wages will produce a large discontent among the population, and one may say that the very origin of the Iranian Revolution lies in the popular protests which were manifested against the Reza Shah, who represented the political authority at the moment. The dependence of the Shah on the United States and the ill-considered economic policies served to fuel the protests, while the Ayatollah Khomeini, even though was in exile, continued to exert a great influence on the Iranian population through its writings. One may say that the ,,Irans Islamic revolution was in a way the outcome of a long struggle between two men: Shah Muhammad Reza and Ayatollah Khomeini.[footnoteRef:7] [7: Hoveyda, Fereydoun, The Shah and the Ayatollah: Iranian Mythology and Islamic Revolution, Preger Publishers, Westport, 2003, p. 1.]

II. The Iranian Revolution: outbreak and aftermathThe significant drop in oil revenues in 1975 accompanied by the economic crisis paved the way for widespread popular protests. In 1977 thousands of people protested, for the first time in 14 years, in Teheran, against the Shah. The participants to protests were mainly workers and the urban poor, but soon other sectors of society were to get involved. For example, the intellectuals and mullahs-the traditional clergy who had felt left outside the earlier economic boom and squeezed by the outside companies, soon joined the protests. These movements culminated in one of the largest demonstrations in history, as Nandini Bhattacharya mentions, bringing together two millions people in Teheran, in June 1978. A great number of people, ,,were killed by the government forces in anti-regime protests[footnoteRef:8] due to the imposition of the martial law. As a react to this, more protesters came into streets, specifically targeting the shah and the Westernalization. As more troops were sent into the city, Reza Shah found himself in a downward spiral: more protesters, more police, more fury. It was obvious the the Shah did not know how to react while the political atmosphere was growing more andf more tense. It was obvious that ,,that the shahs regime was about to topple.[footnoteRef:9] In the middle of these events, the prestige and the strength of the shah vanished as more and more protests broke out around the country. All these people who were protesting chanted for the return of Ayatollah Khomeini. [8: http://www.britannica.com/event/Iranian-Revolution-of-1978-1979, accessed at 5th june 2015.] [9: January, Brendan, The Iranian Revolution, p. 40.]

In all this time, Khomeini was coordinating from the exile, this opposition, requiring the shahs abdication. In this tense atmosphere, the Shah and his family left Iran for what it was officially known as ,,vacation. This act proved that even the shah, after more that thirty-eight years as the ruler of Iran, recognized that his reign was ending. On January 16, 1979, the shah boarded an airplane for, what he called, a vacation. The reality was, after more than twenty/five hundred years, the rule of kings in Iran was over. The Regency council whose job was to run the country during the shahs absence, could not work properly, being unable to get to a compromise with the protesters.After the shahs departure, the Iranian people, experiencing an intense state of freedom, were finally able to express their resentment against the existing political order. All over the country, people were attacking military bases and the police stations. They even abruptly sentenced to death the members of the shahs government. All these events meant revolution, a time of high changes when everything could be questioned.Taking the opportunity of the shahs absence, Khomeini appeared in Iran on February 1979. The departure of the shah left a significant hole at the center of the Iranian government, society and culture and the Ayatollah seemed to be the only person who could, at the moment, fill the gap. After fifteen years in exile, Khomeini was coming home. The charismatic personality of the Ayatollah made him an attractive leader who coul give the Iranians the long expected freedom. At his returning, crowds estimated in the millions, gathered along the route as Khomeinis car was riding through the streets.But many people soon wondered: what would the Khomeini do? ,,I shall appoint my own government[footnoteRef:10], declared the Ayatollah right from the beginning, indicating in this way that he was going to play an important role. [10: http://www.bbc.com/persian/revolution/khomeini.shtml, accessed at 6th june, 2015.]

The Iranian Revolution followed the Shiite variant, more exactly, Khomeinis version of Shiism, based on an experimental model of a traditional Islamic brand ideology. The model proposed by Khomeini had to prove that its dogma could cure societys ills, this task becoming also one of the main challenge for the revolutionary regime. The new leaders intention was to bring back into the Iranian society, the traditional values of the Islamism. Both the theological and political power was thus transferred to the highest religious authority, the marja-al-taqulid, abolishing in this way the office of the shah and bringing the political, ethical, cultural and religious responsibilities under a new model of the Islamic rule. Khomeini was also using the Islam as the tool to to contest and combat western political and cultural ideologies. The new constitution of the state, which expressed the ideas of the revolutionary regime, was prepared under the strict and direct supervision of Khomeini. But the changes brought by the new leader seem, in some ways, to combine the traditional view of Islam with some western practices. For example, the women were allowed to vote in local elections, there was manifested a respect towards the private sector in agriculture, trade, services and small industries. The right to private property was also carefully secured.All in all, we can see that the model of the state, as imposed by the Islamic Revolution, is a interesting combination, which talks about Islam and the importance of the traditional values, but also is characterized by a set of western ideas such as the support for the private sector. Nonetheless, the Iranian Revolution was a major turning point in the history of revolutions.III. The Iranian Revolution- a new model The Iranian Revolution plays an unique role in the history of revolutions. Whereas the French Revolution meant radical change towards modernization and the secularization of the state, the Iranian Revolution is considered to be the only great revolution who does not respect the standards imposed by the former. For a great part of the Islamic countries, the laic and nationalist revolutions, after the Second World War, were thought to bring the economic equality, the societys liberty and the equality of the state in what concerns the relationship with the occidental powers. However, the results proved to be disappointing. For many arabs leaders, the experience of the secularization and revolution in the occidental style brought nothing.The Islamic Revolution however, used a very different pattern. Although it brings back into the society the Islamic traditions, it does not mark a returning to then caliphate, to the medieval leaders. Instead, it means a new beginning for the Islam in the Iranian society, who was adopting in the same time the democracy institutions, such as the parliament but which is ruled according to the principles of the culture and the norm of Islamism. The revolutions from 1979 means also the sunrise of a new era, a modern era of the Islamic progress.These being said, it is obvious that the Iranian revolution is something completely new. It signifies a departure from the laic model of occidental world or, in other words, it represents the sign that a progressive revolutionary change is possible within an Islamic context.Within the history of the revolutions, the Iranian one holds a major relevance. It can be said that it represents the incarnation of the post-laic revolution, the proof that the revolution is possible to happen even if it means bringing back the old traditions and values.IV. ConclusionsThe Iranian revolution is by far one of the most important events which occurred in the modern history of Iran. If the reign of the Reza Shah meant the westernalization and of the society, the returning of the Ayatollah Khomeini was about to bring back the old traditions proposed by the Islamism. The success of the hybrid model proposed by the Khomeini is proved if we take into consideration that since the late of the 70 the structure of the state has remained, mainly, the same. Even though the revolution does not seem to have too many things in common with the other revolutions from the Arab world, this is because not only did it refuse the occidental model of the revolution, but also tried to bring back the Islamic traditions.

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