Iran - Andrew Burke [19]
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Following a referendum in March 1979, in which 98.2% of the population voted in favour, the formation of the world’s first Islamic Republic was announced on 1 April 1979. Ayatollah Khomeini became the Supreme Leader.
Almost immediately, the Islamic Republic was viewed suspiciously and accused of adopting confrontational policies designed to promote other Islamic revolutions. In November 1979, conservative university students burst into the US embassy and took 52 staff hostage, an action blessed by Khomeini. For the next 444 days the siege of the US embassy dogged US president, Jimmy Carter. Worse still, a Boy’s Own–style attempt to rescue the hostages ran aground quite literally when the helicopters supposed to carry them to safety collided in the desert near Tabas. Amid the crisis, presidential elections were held and Abol Hasan Bani-Sadr, Khomeini’s friend since the days of his Paris exile, was elected, with Mohammad Ali Rajai as his prime minister.
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Shah of Shahs, by journalist Ryszard Kapuscinski, is a fast-paced yet perceptive account of Iran in the decade leading to the revolution, written in a style that draws attention to the absurdities of a deadly serious situation.
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THE IRAN–IRAQ WAR
In 1980, hoping to take advantage of Iran’s domestic chaos, Iraq’s President Saddam Hussein made an opportunistic land grab on oil-rich Khuzestan province, claiming it was a historic part of Iraq. It was a catastrophic miscalculation that resulted in eight years of war and up to 500,000 deaths on each side.
Ironically, the invasion proved to be pivotal in solidifying support for the shaky Islamic Revolution by providing an obvious enemy to rally against and an opportunity to spread the revolution by force of arms. Iraq was better equipped and better supplied, but Iran could draw on a larger population and a fanaticism fanned by its mullahs.
Fighting was fierce, with poison gas and trench warfare being seen for the first time since WWI. A group of Islamic volunteers called Basijis, many as young as 13, chose to clear minefields by walking through them, confident they would go to heaven as martyrs. By July 1982 Iran had forced the Iraqis back to the border, but rather than accept peace Iran adopted a new agenda that included occupying Najaf and Karbala, important Shia pilgrimage sites. The war dragged on for another six years, ending shortly after an Iranian airliner was shot down by the US Navy over the Persian Gulf.
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Although nominally Reading Lolita in Tehran, by Azar Nafisi, is a work of literary criticism, in reality Nafisi writes a beautiful and powerfully moving memoir of her life in Iran after the revolution.
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During the war Iraq bombed nearly 3000 villages and 87 Iranian cities, virtually obliterating Abadan and Khorramshahr. Millions of Iranians lost their homes and jobs, and some 1.2 million fled the battle zone, many moving permanently to far-away Mashhad. A cease-fire was finally negotiated in mid-1988, though prisoners were still being exchanged in 2003. Iranians refer to the war as the ‘Iraq-imposed war’ and it remains a huge influence on the country. Pictures of martyrs can be seen in every city, and barely a day passes without TV broadcasting interviews with veterans.
While war was raging, different factions within Iran continued to jostle for supremacy. In June 1981 a bomb blast at the headquarters of the Islamic Republican Party killed its founder Ayatollah Beheshti and 71 others, including four cabinet ministers. A second bomb in August killed President Rajai and the new prime minister. The Islamic People’s Mojahedin, once co-revolutionaries but now bitter enemies of the clerics, were blamed. By the end of 1982 all effective resistance to Khomeini’s ideas had been squashed.
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Bashu, the Little Stranger, Behram Beiza’i’s 1986 film, tells the story of a little boy finding a new mother in southern Iran. It was the first