The Iranian Revolution at 30

Axworthy...
and feature in politics. The regime continues to abuse human rights and to bully and intimidate those who bravely still
try to defend them, including dissidents like Akbar Ganji and the Nobel Peace Prize winner Shirin Ebadi. The regime
has such a bad image in the West that almost anything can be laid at its door. For some, it is the prime supporter of terrorism
in the world, an agent for destabilizing the Middle East as a whole, the hidden hand behind the insurgency in
Iraq and Afghanistan, and on track to acquire nuclear weapons. Not all these accusations are fair or well-judged, but the
extremism of some of Iran’s politicians seems to legitimate them.
Many Iranians, and
even some exiles
that bitterly oppose
the Islamic regime,
acknowledge that
Iran, finally, has
achieved real independence.
For some Iranians at least, there is another side to the story. The revolution gave many
people opportunities that would probably never otherwise have come their way. It removed
one elite and replaced it with another. It placed many clergy in powerful positions,
and reconfirmed their authority as a class — an authority that had been steadily
eroded over the previous hundred years as their responsibilities as teachers, arbitrators,
and judges had been removed by Westernizing reforms. The influential bazaar traders
and artisans, often very pious and closely linked as an urban elite with the clergy, also
benefited greatly from the revolution; in fact, some have suggested that the country has
been largely run for their benefit. But others benefited too. Pious families from poor backgrounds, if they were lucky,
might find that the regime trusted their fathers and sons and put them in good jobs. This was particularly the case for
some veterans from the Iran-Iraq War. This phenomenon was also facilitated by the success of the regime in spreading
education, finally, to all — even to the remotest villages and to women.
For women the outcome of the revolution has been particularly paradoxical. Khomeini’s imposition of the veil meant
that Iranian fathers felt able to let their daughters go to school. Those girls fed through the system and took to their
educational opportunities to such an extent that over 65% of university entrants are now female, and many Iranian universities
humanities classes are 80% or more female. Many of these educated women go on to take important jobs in the
Iranian economy. Indeed, Iranian women are more active and visible in offices and businesses than their counterparts
almost anywhere else in the Middle East (though many women graduates struggle, like other young Iranians, to find
jobs). So women suffer restrictions in the dress code and at law (particularly over divorce and child custody), and are
still kept out of many more important jobs, especially in government and in politics; but overall their position has improved
in important ways since the revolution. Despite the many necessary caveats, the development in the social and
economic role of women and their progress in education, in a country with a strong and deep-seated cultural respect
for learning and intellectual attainment, is one of the positive aspects of contemporary Iran.
Despite the many failures, disappointments, and disillusionments since the revolution — especially with respect to economic
development, given that large numbers of Iranians still languish in poverty — many Iranians, and even some exiles
that bitterly oppose the Islamic regime, acknowledge that Iran, finally, has achieved real independence. To appreciate
the importance of this achievement to Iranians, one has to have some sense of the past humiliations heaped on Iran in
the 19th century by Britain and Russia, and in the 20th century by Britain and the United States (most notably, the British
42 The Middle East Institute Viewpoints: The Iranian Revolution at 30 • www.mideasti.org