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Towards an Anti-Western Stance: The Economic Discourse of Iran's 1979 Revolution

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  01 January 2022

Evaleila Pesaran
Evaleila Pesaran*
Affiliation:
Emmanuel College and New Hall, University of Cambridge
*
ep336@cam.ac.uk
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Abstract

The Iranian Revolution of 1979 saw the mobilization and cooperation of a variety of groupings that were brought together by their shared determination to overthrow the Shah. However, it was not only opposition to the Pahlavi regime, but also suspicion of and disdain for that regime's Western backers that united these revolutionary groups. Religious leaders (ulama), merchants (bazaaris), intellectuals and students alike all espoused the strong anti-Western sentiments that had been developing in Iran over the previous two decades. But what particular factors can be seen to have encouraged the adoption of these sentiments in the lead-up to the revolution, and in what ways were they articulated and subsequently put into practice by the leaders of the new regime? This article suggests that various domestic and international influences can be seen to have shaped the emergence of Iran's revolutionary discourse of “economic independence.” In particular, the paper argues that a peculiar blend of Shi'i concepts of social justice and Marxist-Leninist discourses of class struggle and anti-imperialism not only informed the economic outlook of Iran's burgeoning revolutionary movement during the period 1953–79, but was also enshrined in the Constitution of the Islamic Republic.

Type
Articles
Information
Iranian Studies , Volume 41 , Issue 5 , December 2008 , pp. 693 - 718
Copyright
Copyright © The International Society for Iranian Studies 2008

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References

1 Ettela'at, 19 Dey 1357/9 January 1979.

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3 In the Fundamental Laws of the National Consultative Assembly and the Senate of Iran (30 December 1906), Article 23 banned the granting of unfair concessions: “Without approval of the parliament, concessions for the formation of any kind of public company or companies shall not be given by the government”; and Article 24 required that “the granting of any commercial, industrial, agricultural or other concession, either to a domestic or a foreign party, must be approved by the parliament.” Source: http://www.abfiran.org/english/document-204-409.php.

4 As Keddie, Religion and Rebellion in Iran, 3, observes, “the West formed a model to be emulated for reformers as well as a threat to be feared by both reformers and conservatives.”

5 Ettela'at, 29 Khordad 1358/19 June 1979. This newspaper then reprinted in full the speech that Mosaddeq had given on the day the oil industry was nationalized, explaining that it did so in order to keep the story alive and relay it to the new generation of Iranian nationalists.

6 See Brumberg, D., Reinventing Khomeini—The Struggle for Reform in Iran (Chicago, 2001), 59Google Scholar, who argues that, “the election in 1944 of a fiery politician named Mohammad Mosaddeq to Iran's Parliament, and his nationalization in 1951 of the Anglo-Iranian Oil Company, transformed Iran's politics in ways that had a profound impact on Khomeini.”

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15 Indeed, Ayatollah Hossein Boroujerdi, the leading marja’-e taqlid (source of emulation) of the time, had a largely apolitical outlook, and he did not encourage political activism. However, the oppositional role of many ulama was revived after his death in 1961.

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18 Confrontation between the Shah and the Ayatollah had been sparked by the former's announcement of the “White Revolution,” which called for land reform and the enfranchisement of women, among other things. When Khomeini then denounced the Shah for trying to destroy religion, comparing him to the Ummayad Caliph Yazid, who had martyred Imam Hossein, he was sent to Turkey, in November 1964. One year later, Khomeini moved to Najaf in Iraq, where he remained until October 1978.

19 Fanon's, F. The Wretched of the Earth, trans. by C. Farrington (London, 1967), 251–252Google Scholar, makes the following call to the Third World: “Come then, comrades, the European game has finally ended; we must find something different. We today can do everything, so long as we do not imitate Europe, so long as we are not obsessed by the desire to catch up with Europe.”

20 See Rahnema, An Islamic Utopian, 287.

21 E. Abrahamian, “The Working Class and the Islamic State in Iran,” in Cronin, Reformers and Revolutionaries in Modern Iran, 269.

22 The extent of this presence was highlighted on 19–20 May 1970, when a group of top American industrialists including David Rockefeller came to Tehran to discuss possibilities for investment in agriculture and industry, mining, tourism, forestry, transportation and petrochemicals (Kayhan, 29 Ordibehesht 1349/19 May 1970). This delegation represented the largest group of foreign investors to ever come to Iran (Kayhan, 7 Ordibehesht 1439/27 April 1970).

23 Hyperinflation, overheating of the economy, and failure of an overburdened infrastructure became apparent from 1973. In the lead-up to the revolutionary upheavals of 1977–79, there were bottlenecks in the ports and transportation networks, and shortages of electricity caused frequent blackouts. For further details, see Abrahamian, E., Iran Between Two Revolutions (Princeton, 1982)Google Scholar; Keddie, N., Roots of Revolution: An Interpretive History of Modern Iran (New Haven, CT, 1981)Google Scholar; and Pesaran, M.H., “Economic Development and Revolutionary Upheavals in Iran,” in H. Afshar, ed., A Revolution in Turmoil (London, 1985)Google Scholar.

24 Pesaran, M. H. and Gahvary, F., “Growth and Income Distribution in Iran,” in Econometric Contributions to Public Policy, ed. by R. Stone and W. Peterson (London, 1978), 238Google Scholar, observed that, “rich regions have relatively a more unequal distribution as compared with the poor regions, and the income gap between these two sets of regions has been increasing over time.” Hakimian, H., “Industrialisation and the Standard of the Working Class in Iran, 1960–79,” Development and Change, 19/1 (1988): 29CrossRefGoogle Scholar, comments that, “as wealth poured into some urban sectors, … its transparent lack in others … visibly heightened growing social contrasts and a deepening image of social stratification.”

25 Keddie, Religion and Rebellion in Iran, 14–15, discusses how Iranian reformers were pro-Russian when British influence appeared to be dominant, pro-British when the government was pro-Russian, and pro-German when both the Russians and the British were perceived to be equally strong.

26 Keddie, Iran: Religion, Politics and Society, 109, explains that, “Iranian religion through the ages has been characterized as one of ‘opposition, martyrdom and revolt’.” E. Abrahamian, in his “The Guerrilla Movement in Iran, 1963–77,” in Afshar, A Revolution in Turmoil, 163, notes that ever since the banner of revolt was raised by the Shi'a Imams, especially Ali, Hassan and Hossein, the struggle between oppressor and oppressed had remained a potent symbol in Iran: “For Shariati, as for the Mojahedin, the Prophet planned to establish a ‘classless society’, Imam Hosein exemplified man's inalienable right of resistance, and true Muslims had the duty to fight against despotic rulers, foreign exploiters, greedy capitalists and false clergymen who used Islam as an opiate to lull the masses into subservience.”

27 Sahabi, E. in B. Ahmadi-Amui, Eqtesad-e Siyasi-ye Jomhuri-ye Eslami [The Political Economy of the Islamic Republic] (Tehran, 1383/2004), 12Google Scholar.

28 Sahabi in Ahmadi-Amui, Eqtesad-e Siyasi-ye Jomhuri-ye Eslami, 10.

29 A. Matin-Asgari, “From Social Democracy to Social Democracy: The Twentieth Century Odyssey of the Iranian Left,” in Cronin, Reformers and Revolutionaries in Modern Iran, 38.

30 See Katouzian, H., “Shi'ism and Islamic Economics: Sadr and Bani-Sadr,” in Religion and Politics in Iran—Shi'ism from Quietism to Revolution, ed. by N. R. Keddie (New Haven, CT, 1983)Google Scholar.

31 M. Rowqani Zanjani in Ahmadi-Amui, Eqtesad-e Siyasi-ye Jomhuri-ye Eslami, 143.

32 Written in 1961 by an Iraqi Shi'i theologian, it was translated into Persian and first published in Tehran in 1971. For details on its influence on Iranian clergy, see Nomani, F. and Rahnema, A., The Secular Miracle: Religion, Politics and Economic Policy in Iran (London, 1990), 129Google Scholar.

33 Tripp, C., “An ‘Islamic Economics’? Problems in the Imagined Reappropriation of Economic Life,” in K. Dean, ed., Politics and the Ends of Identity (Aldershot, 1997)Google Scholar.

34 Brumberg, Reinventing Khomeini, 76–77.

35 Rahnema and Nomani, The Secular Miracle, 224.

36 Rahnema and Nomani, The Secular Miracle, 224.

37 Mottahedeh, R., in The Mantle of the Prophet—Religion and Politics in Iran (Oxford, 2004), 325Google Scholar, notes that, “Taleqani wrote that socialism and religion were compatible, because God had not intended for mankind to be divided into the exploiters and the exploited.”

38 Ayatollah Azari-Qomi was one of Ayatollah Khomeini's students, he sat on the Council for the Appraisal of the Constitution of the Islamic Republic of Iran, and in the 1980s, he went on to become publisher of the pro-bazaar Resalat newspaper.

39 Afshar, H. “The Iranian Theocracy,” in Afshar, ed., A Revolution in Turmoil, 221Google Scholar.

40 Speech made 12 Bahman 1357/1 February 1979. Published in Ettela'at, 14 Bahman 1357/3 February 1979.

41 Quoted in Behdad, S., “Winners and Losers of the Iranian Revolution: A Study in Income Distribution,” International Journal of Middle East Studies, 21 (1989): 327CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

42 Ettela'at, 16 Dey 1357/6 January 1979.

43 Zubaida, S., Islam, the People and the State—Political Ideas and Movements in the Middle East (London, 1993), 81Google Scholar, comments that the “network of clergy and their students and supporters … was able to hegemonise the multitude of forces which were eager for revolutionary transformation … providing common symbols and slogans for diverse forces.”

44 Milani, M., “The Ascendency of Shi'i Fundamentalism in Revolutionary Iran,” Journal of South Asian and Middle Eastern Studies, 13/1 (1989): 5Google Scholar.

45 Moghadam, V., “The Left and Revolution in Iran: A Critical Analysis,” in Post-Revolutionary Iran, ed. by Amirahmadi, H. and Parvin, M. (Boulder, CO, 1988), 28–29Google Scholar.

46 In March 1979, a referendum was put to the people of Iran, asking if they wanted to replace the Pahlavi monarchy with an Islamic Republic, and in spite of some opposition, the new government was able to announce a 98.2 percent majority in favor of the Islamic state. See Bakhash, S., The Reign of the Ayatollahs: Iran and the Islamic Revolution (London, 1985)Google Scholar.

47 S. Behdad, “The Political Economy of Islamic Planning in Iran,” in Amirahmadi and Parvin, Post-Revolutionary Iran.

48 Pesaran, “Economic Development and Revolutionary Upheavals in Iran,” 37.

49 In doing so, the two men “intended to break the clerical monopoly over religion and develop a new Islam that would synthesise the mild features of European socialism with the progressive ideals of early Iranian Shiism, and the advantages of industrial technology with the cultural values of their own traditional society,” Abrahamian, “The Guerrilla Movement in Iran, 1963–77,” 161.

50 Pesaran, M. H. “The System of Dependent Capitalism in Pre- and Post-Revolutionary Iran,” International Journal of Middle East Studies, 14 (1982): 514CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

51 Ali Akbar Mo'in-Far in Saffarian, G. A. and Dezfuli, F. M., Soqut-e Dowlat-e Bazargan [The Fall of Bazargan's Cabinet] (Tehran, 1382/2003), 280Google Scholar.

52 Bazargan, for example, was opposed to the proposal supported by Bani-Sadr before his return to Iran from Paris that banks as well as the oil industry should be nationalized (Ettela'at, 14 Bahman 1357/3 February 1979), as he believed that the implementation of such a large task in a short space of time would disrupt the banking system and only serve to place a heavy debt on the shoulders of the state (See Sahabi in Ahmadi-Amui, Eqtesad-e Siyasi-ye Jomhuri-ye Eslami, 30–31).

53 Rahnema and Nomani, The Secular Miracle, 239.

54 An editorial in Ettela'at newspaper (2 Mehr 1357/24 September 1978) refers to the “flood-like” flight of those “parasites and thieves,” whose “dirty” money had been “like a thorn in the eye of the nation,” and would now be replaced by “patriotic” and “beneficent” investments in the national economy.

55 Ettela'at, 20 Khordad 1358/10 June 1979.

56 Ettela'at, 29 Khordad 1358/19 June 1979.

57 Published in Ettela'at, 16 Tir 1358/7 July 1979.

58 Rahnema and Nomani, The Secular Miracle, 242.

59 In fact, an editorial in Jomhuri-yi Eslami newspaper (19 Aban 138/10 November 1979) argues that the economic articles of the constitution are the most important, for “if we are not aware of the complicated relationship that the imperialistic age has with Iran's economic problems, our revolution will be put off course.”

60 Preamble to the Constitution of the Islamic Republic of Iran, 24 October 1979; amended 28 July 1989, “The Price the Nation Paid,” Source: International Constitutional Law, http://www.oefre.unibe.ch/law/icl/ir00000_.html.

61 Preamble to the Constitution, “Woman in the Constitution.”

62 Preamble to the Constitution, “The Form of Government in Islam.”

63 Constitution, Article 3, Item 5.

64 Not to be mistaken for the Assembly of Leadership Experts, which determines and monitors the leader(s) of the Islamic Republic, this “Assembly of Experts” had 72 members, of whom “55 were clerics who, with few exceptions, followed the so-called ‘line of the Imam’,” Schirazi, A., The Constitution of Iran: Politics and the State in the Islamic Republic, trans. O'Kane, J. (London, 1998), 32Google Scholar. It spent three months from August to November 1979 revising the draft constitution, which had been prepared by the provisional government of Mehdi Bazargan, to ensure that it conformed to Islam and was not influenced by European thinking. For a full discussion on the “genesis of the constitution,” see Chapter 2 of Schirazi, The Constitution of Iran. The Minutes of the Assembly of Experts are taken from Surat-e Mashruh-e Mozakerat-e Majles-e Barresi-ye Naha'i-ye Qanun-e Assasi-ye Jomhuri-ye Eslami-ye Iran [Proceedings of the Council for the Appraisal of the Constitution of the Islamic Republic of Iran] (Tehran, 1369/1990), and are henceforth cited as AE.

65 Schirazi, The Constitution of Iran, 31.

66 Schirazi, The Constitution of Iran, 33.

67 A report in Ettela'at newspaper (19 Azar 1358/10 December 1979), for example, praises the recent nationalization of the Iranian banking system, as previously “private banks had sought to exploit and dominate,” and private capital had been tied to Western imperialism. With nationalization of this capital, a new system could be established that would serve the Iranian people and the goals of the revolution.

68 This draft article was presented for discussion in the fifty-fifth session of the Assembly of Experts as Article 127.4, which read simply that, “the economic system of the Islamic Republic of Iran is based on three sectors: state, cooperative and private. The criteria for these will be determined by law.” AE, 3: 1523.

69 AE, 3: 1545.

70 AE, 3: 1564.

71 In fact, emulation of the Soviet model was to be avoided. Azadi recommended that, “we should not place agriculture in the hands of the state, as that would take us down the path of the Soviet Union. And that system has clearly failed,” AE, 3: 1536.

72 AE, 3: 1524.

73 Hashemi-Nezhad argued, for example, that the worker must be viewed as the owner of his production, “for if a worker is not the owner of his production, then how can we criticize exploitation?” AE, 3: 1524.

74 AE, 3: 1534.

75 In this regard, see Article 46 of the Constitution of the Islamic Republic, which states that, “everyone is the owner of the fruits of his legitimate business and labor, and no one may deprive another of the opportunity of business and work under the pretext of his right to ownership.” Also see Article 47, which asserts that, “private ownership, legitimately acquired, is to be respected.”

76 AE, 3: 1525.

77 AE, 3: 1561.

78 AE, 3: 1565.

79 AE, 3: 1548.

80 AE, 3: 1561.

81 AE, 3: 1561.

82 AE, 3: 1567.

83 Jomhuri-ye Eslami, 28 Aban 1358/19 November 1979.

84 In making such a decision, the Assembly of Experts received much praise. Ettela'at newspaper, for example, congratulated it on handing the ownership of the means of production from a small group of Western-tied capitalists to the workers of Iran (5 Azar 1358/26 November 1979). Others, however, believed that the new constitution did not go far enough in revolutionizing the economic system: “In the economic articles of the new constitution, there is no mention of the struggle against imperialism and its local base … they say that as it is not capitalism and it is not socialist, it must be Islamic … but there is no talk of an Islamic society” (Jomhuri-ye Eslami, 19 Aban 1358/10 November 1979).

85 Article 66 was itself initially proposed as Article 60 of the Draft Constitution, which stated that, “The giving of concession to establish public companies and organizations and giving of concession for monopoly in trade, industrial, agricultural and mining affairs by the government without parliament approval is forbidden,” AE, 2: 865.

86 In Article 43 of the Constitution of the Islamic Republic of Iran, the “infliction of harm on others, monopoly, hoarding, usury, and other practices forbidden by Islam” are all outlawed.

87 AE, 2: 867.

88 AE, 2: 868. This view was echoed in Ettela'at newspaper, where the elite group of 50 families that had enjoyed a monopoly over Iranian industry during the previous regime to the benefit of “imperialist” international interests was criticized (Ettela'at, 5 Azar 1358/26 November 1979).

89 AE, 2: 868.

90 AE, 2: 869.

91 AE, 2: 868.

92 Comment made by one of the leaders of the IRP, Hassan Ayat, AE, 2: 872.

93 AE, 2: 871.

94 AE, 2: 871.

95 See Jomhuri-ye Eslami, 7 Mehr 1358/29 September 1979.

96 Jomhuri-ye Eslami, 10 Mehr 1358/2 October 1979.

97 AE, 2: 1799.

98 AE, 2: 1800.

99 AE, 2: 874–875.

100 AE, 2: 875.

101 In Iran, lizards are considered to be devious and untrustworthy creatures.

102 AE, 2: 874–875.

103 AE, 2: 892.

104 AE, 2: 876.

105 AE, 2: 876.

106 AE, 2: 876.

107 The final version of Article 82 was passed to read that, “The employment of foreign experts is forbidden, except in cases of necessity and with the approval of the Islamic Consultative Assembly,” AE, 2: 894.

108 AE, 2: 893.