| Kurdish Institute – February 4, 2024
Amid the ongoing Kurdish-inspired uprising sparked by Zhina “Mahsa” Amini against authorities that have killed, blinded, raped, arrested and disappeared thousands of people – including minority ethnic groups, who have been extensively targeted – a tentative question remains: what will come after? If these protests can challenge state authority effectively enough to ultimately remove the Ayatollah and President Raisi from their controlling positions in the Islamic Republic of Iran (IRI), we need to look forward to a democratic future – not back to an imagined “peaceful” past under the Shah’s regime.
The Former Crown Prince, Reza Pahlavi, who has been based in the United States since 1979, has recently placed himself on the world stage as one of several high-profile Iranians abroad in active opposition to the Iranian government. It’s key to remember that despite his claimed desire for democratic opening and a merely “temporary” appointment in leadership, the “Crown Prince” has never denounced the crimes of the Pahlavi Dynasty. To rally around the flag and raise nationalism, the self-proclaimed “Prince” released an irrelevant statement to the struggle of Iranians, firmly dedicated to maintaining the territorial boundaries of Iran, but this stance misses a key point – at this moment, Kurds and other minorities in Iran aren’t demanding independence; they’re demanding rights. Further, Pahlavi has not supported the designation of the Islamic Revolutionary Guards Corps (IRGC) as a terrorist organization, claiming instead that they must be part of a new Iran. Given his family’s legacy of Kurdish repression and criminal use of internal security services, this should give us pause. At this critical inflection point, where abuse of a Kurdish woman sparked a nation-wide uprising centered in the Kurdistan Region of Iran (Rojhelat), lionizing Pahlavi neglects the spirit of the Amini Protests: Women, Life, Liberty. Perhaps the 1979 Iranian Revolution wasn’t the revolution that all participants – such as the Kurdish parties – wanted it to be, but it served a necessary function in ending the monarchy.
The Brutality of the Shah Regime
During World War II, Western European and Soviet visions for the future of Iran were bitterly divided but rested on a common necessity: access to Iranian oil and a corridor through which the allies could transfer materiel. The Anglo-Soviet Invasion of Iran took place in 1941 and disrupted Reza Pahlavi Shah’s coordination with Nazi Foreign Minister Hjalmar Schacht’s ‘New Order,’ aimed at prioritizing Iranian economic mobilization and development to maintain German-Iranian economic ties. The Soviet Union, which occupied the northwestern portions of Iran, curried significant favor with ethnic minorities in the region. With local assistance from Baku in the Azerbaijan Soviet Socialist Republic (SSR), Azeris administered the People’s Republic of Azerbaijan. The Kurdish leader Qazi Mohammed capitalized on Soviet support for liberation struggles, weakness of the Iranian central government, proximity of Mustafa Barzani’s Peshmerga in Iraqi Kurdistan, and a modest Soviet commitment to trade and defense, founding the Republic of Mahabad. Mahabad was an independent Kurdish republic founded by nationalists that coalesced around the Democratic Party of Iranian Kurdistan (KDP-I), a still-extent party in modern Iranian politics. The republic’s nationalist character – like so many liberatory states during the Cold War – would be misunderstood by American interventionists, and this lack of comprehension would preclude one of the few moments of independence for the region’s Kurdish population.
Both Mahabad and the Azerbaijan People’s Government were defeated and reabsorbed into the reconstituted Iranian state primarily due to the United States’ and Britain’s diplomatic and military pressure campaigns. Mohammed Reza Pahlavi, son of the former shah, was appointed as Shah in 1941, and he owed his position to the US and UK’s commitment to block expansion of Soviet influence in the region. The second resolution ever proposed in the new United Nations was brought by the United States and it forced the Union of Soviet Socialist Republics (USSR) to withdraw from Iranian territory, paving the way to an easy victory over the liberatory republics in the North for the larger, better-equipped, and western-backed Iranian state forces.
Postwar pre-Revolutionary Iran thus reestablished its footing by oppressing ethnic minorities, revoking oil concessions that had been negotiated by the breakaway republics, and ensuring its success through intimidation and abuse enacted by its Internal Security Service (SAVAK.) We find pictures of women in short skirts attending college, or suntanning at the beach, but Muslim women were forbidden from wearing religious head coverings. A state that legislates women’s dress codes – whether in favor of or against Islamic norms – is a state that doesn’t respect religious freedom or women. From 1946-1953, Pahlavi Iran included an independent legislature – the Majlis – which often gave a voice to dissenters who pushed back against the Shah’s cozy relationship with Washington. To limit the legislature’s independence, in 1949 the Senate of Iran was created, and Pahlavi directly appointed half of the sitting senators, increasing his control over domestic politics.
In 1952, the elected Prime Minister of Iran, Mohammad Mosaddegh, started to square off against the Shah. Mosaddegh sought to audit the Anglo-Iranian Oil Company (bought later by British Petroleum) to ensure accurate payments had been received and the government was fairly compensated. This simple audit was rebuked by the British government and, after a series of escalating conflicts, resulted in a wholesale nationalization of Iranian oil production.
Britain and the United States embargoed Iran in response, causing widespread economic distress that threatened political stability. In 1953, Operations “Ajax” and “Boot” by US and UK foreign intelligence services worked with the Iranian military to overthrow Mosaddegh, and the Shah returned to lead a new, more oppressive government. The common refrain of “Death to America” heard in Iranian politics often displays ongoing resistance to US foreign policy in this period and beyond.
SAVAK received training, information, and resources from the United States and UK, ultimately growing to “15,000 full-time agents and thousands of part-time informants” who developed a reputation for brutality. The White Revolution, as Pahlavi’s attempts at socioeconomic reform were known, introduced a panoply of social and economic programs aimed at broadening gains for the populace, but they projects were often lacking in its results. Notably, though corruption was one target of the state, land redistribution programs enriched corporate agricultural and development interests, including a sizable portion of the Shah’s family. While price stabilization policies, education reform, and public healthcare provisions expanded, SAVAK’s brutality increased as well.
Retrospectively, the picture we have of the Pahlavi Dynasty is highly problematic. Imperial Iran coordinated with Nazi Germany, crushed ethnic nationalist movements, tightened autocratic rule, established itself as a Western client state, overthrew a democratically-elected Prime Minister, managed an intrusive and oppressive secret policing apparatus, restricted religious freedoms, hampered freedom of speech and assembly, and – even in their attempts at reform – ultimately encouraged economic inequality and corruption. By 1979, the Shah’s regime had killed approximately 10,000 political opponents, while the IRI claims 60,000 were killed by the Shah’s regime.
Leading up to the 1979 Iranian Revolution, the people’s calls for freedom and revolution had been ongoing for decades. Liberal freedoms were not solidified in political practice, and billions of dollars were siphoned out of state coffers to members of the Royal Family. Today, while the oppressed people of modern Iran fight for freedom, a small minority outside the country have romanticized what came before, calling for a return of the monarchy. But the Iranian people want democracy. We must put away our rose-tinted glasses when we consider the legacy of the Shah. The Pahlavi name, which has once again become relevant to the Iranian political scene, should remind observers of corruption, clientelism, state crimes, and minority – mainly Kurdish – oppression in the name of an empowered and unified state. We should aim, instead, to empower the whole of the people democratically and ensure that ethnic and religious minorities are protected and celebrated for their diversity, dynamism, and humanity. Undoubtedly, none of those elements will be achieved under an oppressive monarchy. This uprising sparked by Kurds seeks real, revolutionary change; not the exchange of one dictator for another. |
