We’re still living with the fallout of the Iranian Revolution back in 1979 — and we still don’t really understand how the West got its reaction to events so wrong, or what could have been done differently.
We’re still living with the fallout of the Iranian Revolution back in 1979 — and we still don’t really understand how the West got its reaction to events so wrong, or what could have been done differently. The fall of the Shah and rise of the Ayatollah is an object lesson in the powerlessness of Western might against cool-headed strategic thinking, and the negative impact of non-intervention. On the BBC World Service there’s been a series of programmes looking back at the revolution that changed not just Iran but also the global political situation. Iran and the West (Mondays) set out to make the connections that should have been made 30 years ago by drawing on the memories of those involved, either as military officers under the Shah, as political (and intriguingly PR) advisers to the Ayatollah Khomeini, or as American politicans and diplomats.
A much more complicated picture began to emerge than was reported at the time, showing the shilly-shallying that went on before the US government decided who they were supporting — the Shah, the Ayatollah or even Saddam Hussein. We also discovered how the Ayatollah had not originally supported the students’ plan to take over the US embassy in Tehran, but had responded astutely to events, realising their propaganda significance.
This series was so cleverly put together, letting the very complicated political events unfold through the voices of those who were eyewitnesses — such as the Ayatollah’s young relative (who was one of his chief advisers), Warren Christopher, Walter Mondale, Zbigniew Brzezinksi, and former President Jimmy Carter. Significantly, the only woman’s voice (apart from the narrator) came from the Shah’s widow. It was originally made for television (by Brook Lapping) and reshown on BBC4 to coincide with the June elections in Iran. Watching the television version gave us some extraordinary footage of the Shah’s government, his officials festooned with badges of honour and gold braid. It was also very surprising to see the student leaders of the hostage situation, now nicely aged into benevolent senior citizens, dressed Western-style in open shirts and with not a beard in sight.
But on radio, although the footage had to be compressed by the producer Norma Percy into 22-minute segments to fit the rigid requirements of the World Service schedule, there was a real sense of urgency about the drama as the Shah and his government realised the revolution had gone too far for them to be able to stop it. Without those images from history, the details of what actually happened were brought more clearly into focus.
We’ve been told many times that the current President of Iran, Mahmoud Ahmadinejad, had been among the student leaders of the revolution in Iran. But who remembers now that he had actually opposed the hostage-taking plan — on the grounds that the real enemy of Iran was not America but Soviet Russia and the Communists? Or that when the Ayatollah left exile in Paris to return in triumph after the Shah had fled Tehran he invited Western journalists to travel with him on the plane to ensure that no government would attempt to shoot it down.
The American hostages in Tehran were eventually held for 15 months, until just before Jimmy Carter, who had so unwisely supported the Shah before the revolution and then allowed him to stay in New York after he had fled his country, stepped down as President. Even then the Ayatollah proved his strategic ability to control a situation. The plane, taking the hostages home to Washington, was held on the tarmac at the airport in Tehran until Reagan officially became President. ‘Roughly five minutes after I was no longer President a secret service agent came and whispered in my ear that the hostages were free,’ Carter told us.
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