The Guards as a New Tool of Power
“A Revolution is like Saturn; it devours its own children.” —Prussian dramatist Georg Büchner, commenting on the carnage of the French Revolution
Iran remained largely independent and ignored by the West in the aftermath of World War II, as European empires unraveled. By 1945, as the United States and the Soviet Union emerged as the world’s dominant powers, Britain began to divest itself of its colonies and distant obligations, announcing plans to dismantle its military presence in the Persian Gulf and the Far East by 1971.
As the British withdrew, the United States, mired in Vietnam, was constrained by military resources and could not fill the security vacuum they left. The West Wobbles and the Shah Falls. By the early 1970s, the shah’s hold on power was tenuous. Earlier, he had tried to foster reform and promote sustained economic development; indeed, in the 1960s, his White Revolution brought basic social services—hygiene, sanitation, and health care—to many thousands of villages. Literacy rose from 5 percent to over 60 percent. But this rise in literacy also enabled Iranians to read writings hostile to the shah and supportive of his enemies.
Making matters worse, it increasingly appeared that the shah had lost touch with ordinary men and women, many of whom found his tastes effete and exotic. For example, in 1971 he held an extravaganza at the ancient ruins of Persepolis, in which he portrayed himself as the heir of Cyrus. Soldiers were dressed as ancient Medes and Persians. Laborers built a tented city with marble toilets to house foreign dignitaries, who dined on the Shah’s spectacular Persepolis food flown in from Europe. Criticism was not long in coming. He was satirized by Muslim traditionalists and dismissed as kitsch by the Western audience he was trying to impress. His promotion of Western culture further divided the country.
Empress Farah Pahlavi became an icon for modern Iranian women. Her avant-garde tastes attracted progressives but alienated traditional Muslims. When she opened an exhibit at the Tehran Museum of Contemporary Art featuring a painting of naked couples on a bed, a scandal erupted. She built a collection of works by American artists Jackson Pollock and Andy Warhol, and after the revolution, those works languished in the museum’s basement.
In her effort to promote modern values, the empress created a bureau of national culture. In response, traditionalist vigilantes attacked international bookstores and art-house movie theaters. Some attacks were lethal; for example, in August 1978, arsonists torched the Rex Theatre in Abadan, killing more than three hundred people. Khomeini blamed government agents.
In 1979, of the more than five hundred movie theaters in Iran, approximately two hundred were burned down. Clerics disparaged cinema, prompting some acts of arson. According to Khomeini, Westernization included modern theater, dancing, and mixed-sex swimming. He denounced what he termed the “culture of idolatry,” based on his belief that Western capitalism worships materialism rather than God. When he seized power, he directed the Guards to root out and destroy all elements of this Westernization.
Following his father’s model, Mohammad Reza Pahlevi sought to replicate the American model of higher education and funded thousands of young people to study abroad. He also promoted gender equality: “If a woman wants to become a physicist, she should have the opportunity to do so, regardless of sex.” Iranian universities produced scientists, engineers, historians, and philosophers. They also served as cauldrons of revolutionary thought. Many of those students, animated by revolutionary fervor, would later serve as Guards in the 1980s.
