After years of prevailing social, political and economic difficulties, the people of Iran deposed their king, elevated a clerical exile to the seat of power and ushered in a new era: this was the Iranian Revolution of 1979. The king, Mohammed Reza Shah Pahlavi, was the figurehead for the country’s monarchy, a government supported by the West, which had replaced the pro-Axis monarchy under the Shah’s father. International oil interests dating back to 1908 had led to the Western intervention in Iranian politics that was responsible for the Shah’s ascension to power. Under his reign, he assured his Western allies that the country’s oil industry would not be nationalized, as had been attempted by the country’s prime minister in April 1951. The Shah’s policy of promoting modernization and bolstering infrastructure (referred to as the “White Revolution”), though reigning in some prosperity, did not ultimately yield the promised reforms.

National discontent swelled with the Shah’s changing policies. Primarily nonviolent demonstrations by different classes of Iranian society, from intellectuals to clerics to laborers, characterized the resulting popular movement. The demonstrations, combined with labor strikes involving up to nine million Iranians at any one time, crippled the country’s economy and eventually led to the Shah’s abdication in November 1979. Ayatollah Ruhollah Khomeini, once-exiled for his opposition to the Shah’s alignment with the West, returned as the monarchy crumbled, and assumed control of the country. Following a referendum that earned the overwhelming support of the country’s citizens, Iran officially became the Islamic Republic of Iran in 1979. Islamic students, influenced by the revolutionary rhetoric, seized the US Embassy in Tehran in 1979 and held American hostages in what was to be a crucial showdown between the newly born Republic and the country’s former ally under the Shah: the United States. Khomeini, recognizing the potential political and international leverage to be gained, condoned the detainment of the hostages until Ronald Reagan took office in 1981.

When compared with other Western revolutions, the Iranian Revolution stands in stark contrast for the fact that its social upheaval was not characterized by a dichotomy between the rich and the poor or the privileged and the oppressed; it was instead religion that catalyzed the revolution in Iran, and this theological unifier brought the disparate classes together with a common purpose. Understanding the Iranian Revolution from a Western perspective may run the risk, as one source puts it, of oversimplifying a complex historical transformation that does not easily fit the Western understanding of revolution. Further setting the Iranian Revolution apart from analogous movements during the era is that the crucible of conflict produced not a liberal democracy, as it had in other regions of the world (like Nicaragua), but rather birthed another authoritarian regime. This regime, spearheaded by religious elites, altered the very fabric of Iranian society to create what is today the modern state of Iran.