What are the causes of the Islamic Revolution of Iran?

Answer 1

Answer 1

The Iranian people, most of them traditional or secular Muslims revolted all across Iran. The Religious Fundamentalists were a minority of those Iranians who were protesting. When the Shah abdicated, there was an intent to create a Republic that represented the Iranian People. However, between April and October of 1979 (after the Shah had already departed the country and the Islamic Republic of Iran declared) the Ayatollahs were able to consolidate power and create the Constitution of the Islamic Republic of Iran which vested the Religious Fundamentalists with political power.

Iranians in general were opposed to the Shah and opposed him from nearly every political perspective. These include:

• Some said that the Shah was not religious enough
• Some believed that the Shah's policies were too oppressive
• Some believed that the Shah was modernizing without preserving Iran's cultural heritage and others were angry that he was moving too slowly
• Some believed that the Shah was a sellout to foreign interests and others believed his foreign focuses were too narrow.
• Some believed that the Shah did not grant women enough rights and others thought that women had too many rights.
• Some believed that the Shah should have encouraged more middle class growth and others believe he should have put more capital into industry.
• Some wanted more privatization and others wanted more nationalization.

As concerns the specific reasons for the Iranian protests and the eventual revolution, they were numerous:

Wealth & Employment Issues: Most importantly was the wealth inequality between the Shah and the nobility and common Iranian citizen. There was immense poverty throughout the country and high unemployment, underemployment, low wages, and few protections for laborers.

Religious Conservatism: Most Iranians were religiously conservative (similar to the American Bible-belt as opposed to the Fundamentalists) and resisted the Shah's Westernization and Secularization movements in Iran. The Shah made clear that religion was not important to him as a ruler, whereas it was a concern among the people.

Puppet to Foreigners: The Shah was also seen as a Western puppet, especially when the CIA overthrew the Iranian President Mossadegh in 1953 to re-install the Shah of Iran and considering how Iran profited very little from its own petroleum.

Brutal Secret Police: The Shah had a notorious secret police called the SAVAK which harassed people and killed scores of others.

Authoritarianism: Iranians wanted to be in control of their own affairs. Iranians wanted some form of self-government or democracy. The Shah was an authoritarian who prevented people from expressing their own opinions.

Issue for Fundamentalists: Particularly in the fundamentalist camp, the fundamentalists in Iran felt that the Shah epitomized a Western culture of greed and materialism, because he tried to establish a more secular government. As with many rulers, he accumulated vast personal wealth. He also employed various means to suppress political dissent. It was ultimately the exiled Ayatollah Khomeini who in 1979 succeeded the Shah and established an Islamic religious government.

Note: The fact that these grievances existed does not mean that the Islamic Republic of Iran afterwards "fixed" these problems.

Answer 2

It is thought that the Islamic revolution was caused by such factors as:

- a disconnection between the imperial house and the population, caused by the shah's Westernizing lifestyle and his equally Westernizing reforms of the country, which were combined with a repressive attitude to communist and conservative religious opposition;

- the repression, especially by SAVAK, the secret police, that angered large swathes of the population;

- the Shah's increasingly weak level of control over the country in the 1970s;

- the highly populist (i.e. effective and popular, not necessarily opportunistic) rise of conservative Islam, much of it masterminded by Ayatollah Khomeini and his supporters;

- the inability of the Shah to fulfill promises of increasing wealth and well being to a country that seemed too large to let benefits of oil revenues reach the population quickly. Wealth is well known to trickle down, not to wash over a country and Persia/Iran was a case in point

Answer 3

First of all people were tired of Dictatorship and dependency to US. So they started protesting against Shah (the king). Shah made some bad mistakes and it made people more furious and you know the result.

But how the revolutionary regime turned to be a much worse one? The reason was simple, I believe: people knew what they didn't want it but didn't know what they wanted! As a matter of fact, it was socialist and nationalist forces (not mullahs) who started the movement but the mullahs took the control in the final stage and took the advantage of the revolution (partly due to the fact that Shah considered them too dumb to be taken care of!). Most people trusted mullahs and kept trusting them for some years, and when they awakened it was too late and the new regime was too powerful.

And a final remark: I personally blame US to some degrees for that crazy revolution. You know why? There was a powerful democratic government in Iran two decades before the Islamic revolution. But US arranged a coup d'etat (Google 1953 Iran coup d'etat) and overthrew that government in favor of Shah. US also supported Shah in suppressing all opposition forces and it made people so desperate that they appealed to the worse scenario. It is easy to say that if US did not interfere, Iran would have been a big democracy in the heart of Middle East now.