IRAN IN THE AFTERMATH OF REVOLUTION

This February heralded the 42nd anniversary of the Iranian revolution: 15,330-odd days since my homeland was lost to chaos, daily turmoil as the result of a revolution proclaimed by Western media as the promise of a new dawn. An age of justice, democracy and social progress a la Islam. Which has, instead, turned into an unimagined nightmare for generations of Iranians to date.

Wasted generations, lost opportunities. Lost national promise and pride.

The Shiite religious oligarchy, aided and abetted by Iranian intellectuals, liberals, leftists and Mohammad Mossadegh’s followers, promised heaven on earth in 1979. Mossadeghists, under the banner of the National Front, effectively becoming handmaidens to revolution. Helping deliver Iran into the hands of an alien subculture imposing its diktat through wholesale terror. A corrupt theocracy unique in its contempt for Iran’s splendid pre-Islamic culture, its 2500-year tradition of monarchy and 20th century norms of modernism. Resulting in four decades of national turmoil, economic regression, environmental devastation, unparalleled corruption and widespread, heart-breaking poverty.

And yet, and yet … each week we hear (see) Western media (digital, print, film) carp on about the Pahlavi Shahs. Crocodile tears shed in mourning for the loss of democracy at the hands of the late-Shah, as if democracy ever existed in Iran. The country’s present predicament, we’re told superciliously, is a direct consequence of fanciful coup scenarios in 1953. Orchestrated by British and American intelligence (oxymoronic in itself). Setting the stage, according to the grousing commentariat, for the rise of Khomeini’s brand of Islam etc.

Why, one wonders, aren’t the snoops shining a light on America’s role in midwifing Khomeini’s power-grab in the months before the collapse. Secret discussions with the Ayatollah in Paris. Egging the Shah to leave under false pretences, promise of safe-haven. Neutering the armed forces, sending US General Robert E. Huyser to threaten a wavering, indecisive, rudderless High Command. Forcing the top brass into declaring neutrality (read surrender) under fallacious strategies. Again, with deceptive promises of protection offered by Khomeini himself through opposition leaders Mehdi Bazargan (Khomeini’s shadow premier), and Mohammad Beheshti (the Ayatollah’s clerical second-in-command).

Guess who brokered the accord? US Ambassador to Teheran: William Sullivan.

The Pahlavi’s transformed Iran in just 53-years, from one of the most backward nations on earth, into the 16th global power-economy in terms of GDP at the time of revolution. Why doesn’t the media give a fraction of the critical scrutiny and negative attention lavished on the Shah to the present kleptocracy? Facts and figures are out there plain to see. Murder, torture, ethnic cleansing, slaughter of writers and intellectuals. Systemic, institutionalised corruption; economic turmoil, strategic mayhem and a human rights record which makes the Shah’s SAVAK look faintly saintly.

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There’s not been a single economic achievement of worth in 42-years: the country survives largely on the legacy of the economic and administrative infrastructure created by the Pahlavi Shahs. Iran’s GDP – six times South Korea’s in 1979 – has been declining ever since: today it’s one-tenth S. Korea’s GDP. Its currency devalued forty-five hundred times. The mullahs wasting almost two trillion US dollars in oil revenues on feathering their nests since the revolution. Propping-up terrorist networks worldwide, spending the nation’s wealth arbitrarily on rocketry, nuclear and such. In comparison, the Pahlavi Shahs’ accumulated oil revenues over 50-years amounted to less than US $100 billion!

Was there oppression, corruption, excess and dislocation in the Shah’s time? Yes. But nothing as compared to the region generally, and the mullahs in particular. Did the Shah perpetrate or perpetuate regional conflict and international chaos? No. Did the West benefit from its close alliance with the Shah’s regime? Plenty. But benefits were mutual, and mutually reinforcing. Helping to steer the Middle East towards peaceable prosperity. Did the Shah advance the cause of political reform? No. But goodness me, look what we’ve been witness to since.

What, pray, has been payback for Western media in creating a bogeyman of the Shah? Praising Khomeini as champion of the oppressed when it was patently clear from the outset he was anything but. Where is the international outcry for justice? Tens of thousands of my compatriots tortured, executed, exterminated. Hundreds of thousands incarcerated since the revolution. Nearly a million slaughtered in wars of choice triggered by this anti- nationalist, fascistic Islamic regime. A regime which thrives on generating internal chaos, projecting outwards as a means of strategic defence. Reverse-engineering excuses for the imposition of tyrannical internal controls with lame, self-perpetuating claims of defence against imperialist aggressors. Threatened from within and without as a consequence of malevolent policies, the regime seizes on any excuse turning it into an existential threat as alibis to impose their distinct brand of oppressive despotism. The Mullahs and their cohorts have proven themselves incapable of conducting business in a normal manner, viewing the outside world in permanently hostile terms. Inflicting cruelties they cannot rule without, forcing daily sacrifice on the nation: sacrifices in which they do not share, or care one jot. The Islamic regime’s foreign policy speaks for itself: supporting democratic exemplars like Syria, Hezbollah, Hamas, Venezuela and other oddball entities ready to suck Iran’s national coffers dry. While Iranians suffer degradations, hunger, deprivation.

Journalistic ignorance and academic stereotyping have helped serve to buttress Teheran’s totalitarian cabals, reinforcing the Islamic regime’s martyr-complex, its sense of victimhood. Unvoiced Iranians are demeaned by media-types who’ve made a cottage industry from blaming the Shah and his regime for all the nation’s ills, forty-two years after his demise.

© Hossein AMIRSADEGHI (author, editor, publisher, documentary film maker, witness to history): 11 February, 2021 (910-words)

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