Four decades ago Iran’s then-leader, the western-orientated Mohammad Reza Pahlavi — the Shah of Iran, the self-styled King of Kings — began the last year of his corrupt monarchy.
Iran’s population, 80m today, had enough of their third-world existence in one of the richest countries in that troubled region. They, in the last quarter of the last century, turned to an unlikely figure to lead them to their promised land. By today’s standards, even by the standards of the late 1970s, Ayatollah Khomeini seemed an intolerant, bigoted and dangerous figure. From exile in Paris, the Shia leader called for “the blood of the martyrs to water the tree of Islam”.
After he returned to Iran, he established an Islamic republic that ended 2,500 years of Persian monarchy. Khomeini became the country’s Supreme Leader, a position he held until his death. His immediate successor still rules today. Khomeini established a theocracy hostile to tolerance or inclusion. His Revolutionary Guards were the stormtroopers at the sharp end of his determination to secure an Islamic republic — even if that phrase is an oxymoron.
The demonstrations of recent days show that history is largely cyclical and that, as often as not, absolute power corrupts absolutely. The protests, the largest since 2009, have seen more than a week of intensifying unrest. The death toll is climbing and at least 30 people have died. Today’s Supreme Leader, Ayatollah Ali Khamenei, 78, is the focus of the protests but he is just a figurehead. The protests are a reaction to the struggling economy, rampant corruption, and rising fuel and food prices. The protests are about achieving social change and better economic opportunities. A growing determination to secure women’s rights is very significant too.
Iranians are angry because the dividend expected when sanctions were lifted has not materialised. President Hassan Rouhani is increasingly mistrusted but most of all the system that was supposed to deliver justice has failed. The promised land, a destination that often seems almost within touching distance just before a revolution, has not been reached.
Whether these protests might replace the Islamic regime with a more secular administration remains to be seen but at this point, that prospect seems unlikely. Achieving that ambition would add to the tensions in a fraught region.
President Trump’s dangerous solo run on Jerusalem, the internment of Saudi leaders in a five-star hotel, and even the growing demands in Recep Erdogan’s Turkey that the 1,480-year-old Hagia Sophia — now a museum but a Christian cathedral for 1,000 years — be reconverted to a mosque all play into that ageless, unending conflict.
Iran’s protests have some way to go but they offer obvious lessons. It seems increasingly difficult to sustain a theocracy, political or religious, and, maybe most of all, even a population cowed by Revolutionary Guards will eventually say enough is enough. It might be wise to learn that lesson, especially in a world of zero hours contracts, a housing crisis, a widening chasm between rich and poor, unaccountable banks and state agencies and all but untouchable multinational corporations.