The Global 1980s

People, Power and Profit

Jonathan Davis

• Publisher: Routledge
• Year: 2019
• eBook ISBN: 9780429624360
• Topic: History
• Subtopic: 20th Century History
• Index: History

The Global 1980s takes an international perspective on the upheaval across the world during the long 1980s (1979–1991) with the end of the Cold War, a move towards a free-market economic system, and the increasing connectedness of the world.

The 1980s was a decade of unimaginable change. At its start, dictatorships across the world appeared stable, the state was still seen as having a role to play in ensuring people's well-being, and the Cold War seemed set to continue long into the future. By the end of the decade, dictatorships had fallen, globalisation was on the march and the opening of the Berlin Wall paved the way for the end of the Cold War. Divided into four chronological parts, sixteen chapters on themes including domestic politics, the global spread of democracy, international relations and global concerns including AIDS, acid rain and nuclear war, explore how world-wide change was initiated both from above and below. The book covers such topics as ideological changes in the liberal democratic west and socialist east, protests against nuclear weapons and for democratic governance, global environmental worries, and the end of apartheid in South Africa.

Offering an overview of a decade in transition, as the global order established after 1945 broke down and a new, globalised world order emerged, and supported by case studies from across the world, this truly global book is an essential resource for students and scholars of the long 1980s and the twentieth century more generally.

PART 1

1979–1982

1

Revolutions in east and west

Iran and Nicaragua

Revolution was a key theme of the long 1980s, and the era began with two revolutions in 1979. The consequences of the first, which ended the Shah of Iran’s reign, were felt in different ways across different parts of the globe for many years. The formation of an Islamic theocracy under Ayatollah Khomeini’s leadership set in motion the start of a new challenge to western liberal democracy, ultimately replacing that of Soviet socialism. The consequences of the second insurrection of the year, which saw the Sandinistas overthrow the Somoza dictatorship in Nicaragua, were initially confined to the local region of the Americas. However, President Ronald Reagan perceived this as part of the global threat of communism, only made worse by the fact that it occurred in an area the US saw as its sphere of influence. His aggressive response pushed the new government in Managua into closer relations with Havana and Moscow than it originally intended at the same time as Iran was moving out of Washington’s orbit. This chapter assesses why these two revolutions occurred, the consequences for the people of Iran and Nicaragua, and the ways in which they helped to shape the nature of global politics after 1979.

The Shah’s Iran: scattering revolutionary seeds

In 1971, the Shah of Iran, Mohammad Reza Pahlavi, celebrated his thirtieth anniversary in power with a party at which dozens of heads of state gathered to join the festivities. It just so happened that this occurred at the same time as the country marked the 2500th anniversary of the Persian Empire. There was little reason to think that this dynasty should come to an end in the near future, or to think that the Shah would not be there to enjoy his fortieth year in power.

Over the course of the 1970s however, many of the reforms made throughout the Shah’s long reign came back to haunt him. His goal had been to create a more modern country, and he achieved this in some ways through his ‘White Revolution’ which included land reforms, education policies designed to end illiteracy, and the extension of voting rights to women. His ambitious industrial programmes were aided by the sharp increase in oil revenues from 1973, and Iran became a prosperous and powerful country. Within the wider arena, Iran had also long been a crucial part of the West’s regional network which would block Soviet expansion. The US increased its presence in the Middle East in general and in Iran specifically during the early Cold War years to counter the Soviet threat. After the nationalisation of the Anglo-Iranian Oil Company in 1951, the Anglo-American coup in 1953 toppled the elected Prime Minister, Mohammad Mosaddeq, and Washington’s support for the Shah grew. He had a key role to play in ensuring stability in the region and American security needs. This means that when this pro-American leader needed the President’s help in the late 1970s, Jimmy Carter would not, and perhaps could not, turn his back on him.

However, the US’s involvement in Iran’s domestic affairs provoked challenges to the Shah’s rule as Iranians grew concerned about, and suspicious of, Western involvement and foreign domination. The close relationship between the Shah and successive American presidents was interpreted as cultural imperialism. Capitalism had created western dangers such as secularism, social injustice, moral laxity and an obsession with money and these added fuel to the fire of the growing anger many Iranians felt towards the Shah and his authoritarian style of government. He may have been modernising the country in some ways, but he held it back in others, and he constructed an undemocratic system enforced through the corrupt use of the enormous financial wealth brought into the country through oil sales, the central control of the press, universities and labour force, and the repressive tactics of the CIA-backed secret police, SAVAK (Organisation for Intelligence and Homeland Security). Rival political factions were also outlawed and there was no extension of democracy or human rights – two causes that both Iranian liberals and Jimmy Carter focused on.

But opposition emerged in different quarters, and the Shah’s monopoly on power was destabilised over time by a diverse religious opposition and by political rivals who sought political change. Mohja Kahf records how the Shah’s ban on the Islamic hijab became ‘symbolic of the violence his right-wing Persian nationalist ideology perpetrates through brutal state apparatus such as SAVAK’, and that anti-Shah protests grew as women joined together against him, wearing the veil ‘as a symbol of resistance to the shah’s regime.’¹ Liberal intellectuals argued for free elections and political liberties and by the late 1970s were organising protest meetings against the Shah. The communist Tudeh Party involved itself in the growing strikes, demonstrations and political activity amongst Iran’s workers and students, seeing this as evidence of a turn towards socialism.

However, it was not liberalism or socialism that would win the day, but rather a radical, political strand of Islam as the momentum was with the Islamic resistance. This developed throughout the decade and by 1978/79 it responded to calls from Ayatollah Ruhollah Khomeini, the religious leader whose outspoken criticism of the Shah led to his exile in 1964. The Iranian revolution had a more religious than political nature because of the successful fusing of religion and politics into what Vanessa Martin refers to as ‘political Islam.’ She defines this ‘not as a religion but as a kind of political ideology used as a means to interpret, mobilize and organize society.’ This grew during Khomeini’s exile in Turkey and Iraq and led to a ‘battle with the laity for control of political Islam.’ This was largely fought by ‘perhaps his most brilliant student, Murtaza Mutahhari.’ He was ‘Khomeini’s emissary’ and an ‘outstanding political theorist, reformer and radical activist in his own right’ who ‘principally … devised an Islamic alternative to Marxism and socialist Islam that could win the hearts and minds of the young.’²

The mass anti-Shah movement fell in behind the flag of political Islam. This denounced modernity, unevenly distributed wealth and the lack of spiritual leadership as anti-Islamic and anti-Iranian. Pahlavism continued to be criticised for its over-dependence on, and fascination with, the West, and this was expressed in various ways in the term gharbzadegi as Iran was ‘westernstruck’ and suffered from ‘westoxication’ and ‘Occidentosis’, the latter being the title of the book Iranian secular intellectual Jalal Al-i Ahmad wrote about a ‘plague from the West.’³ And whilst working as a teacher in Isfahan in the 1970s, James Buchan witnessed the disorienting effects of the Shah’s modernisation and his desire to impress the West. He concluded that ‘Pahlavism was a blunt saw across the very grain of Iranianness.’⁴ He also suggested that ‘the model of personal liberty and material progress promulgated in Europe and America in the eighteenth century had been suspect among Muslims ever since French armies attempted to force it on Egypt in 1798.’ By 1979, Iranians thought that ‘Mohammed Reza and his Western allies were destroying a civilisation they held dear.’⁵ And Khomeini used the growing discontent to mobilise his supporters against this Western influence, the embodiment of which was the ‘Great Satan’ – the USA. The revolution of 1979 thus emerged out of the widespread rejection of various aspects of western modernity, and it created a new challenge for liberal democratic capitalism in the 1980s.

The fall of the Shah and the hostage crisis

By late 1978, it was clear that the Shah’s regime was in serious trouble. His support was shrinking as fast as Ayatollah Khomeini’s was growing, and even the new military government installed in November could not control the situation. In January 1979, what Jimmy Carter once referred to as an ‘island of stability in one of the more troubled areas of the world’⁶ descended further into chaos. Mass demonstrations were held to protest against rising living costs, the lack of political reform and social justice, and for the removal of the Shah. The opposition movement lined up against the government, the military, SAVAK and the Americans. The US’s ambassador to Iran, William Sullivan, had urged Carter to cut his ties with the Shah, advising the president that Iran’s leader and his generals should leave the country and that talks should be opened with Khomeini. A reluctant Carter initially rejected this suggestion but as the crisis worsened he reconsidered and told the Shah to leave Iran. At the same time, the US opened lines of communication with Khomeini.

Recently declassified documents show that Khomeini was concerned that the US would lead another coup as they had in 1953, and he began to look for signs that Washington would not obstruct his path home. In friendly tones, his message informed the White House that it would not lose a strategically important long-time ally, that he was not opposed to American interests in Iran, and that he welcomed its presence there to counter the British or Soviet influence. ‘You will see we are not in any particular animosity with the Americans’ he said, and pledged that his Islamic Republic would be ‘a humanitarian one, which will benefit the cause of peace and tranquillity for all mankind.’⁷ The BBC’s Kambiz Fattahi notes that Khomeini’s message was ‘the culmination of two weeks of direct talks between his de facto chief of staff and a representative of the US government in France – a quiet process that helped pave the way for Khomeini’s safe return to Iran and rapid rise to power.’⁸

The Americans thought that the government led by Prime Minister Shapur Bakhtiar could not last. Fearing greater upheaval, Khomeini seemed like a stable figure, especially after he sent assurances to the White House about oil. He said that there ‘should be no fear about oil’, that it was ‘not true that we wouldn’t sell to the US’ and that oil would be sold ‘to whoever purchases it at a just price.’ This, together with the suggestion that Khomeini’s Islamic Republic would need assistance from Americans who ‘are Christians and believe in God’ and not from the Soviets who were ‘atheistic and anti-religion’, encouraged Washington to support him. The CIA also predicted that ‘Khomeini would sit back and let his moderate, Western-educated followers and his second-in-command, Ayatollah Mohammad Beheshti, run the government.’ This suited the White House because

Beheshti was considered by US officials to be a rare bird: a pragmatic, English-speaking cleric with a university education, experience of living in the West, and close ties to Khomeini. In short, he was someone with whom the Americans could reason.⁹

With American backing seemingly assured, Ayatollah Khomeini’s colleagues inside Iran successfully harnessed the social and political unrest. On 13 January 1979, Khomeini declared that a revolutionary Islamic council would replace what he referred to as Iran’s illegal government. Bakhtiar successfully convinced the Shah that he should leave Iran, and on 16 January, he and his wife flew out of Tehran and headed to Egypt. The former monarch died there the following year, although not before inadvertently contributing to another crisis between Iran and the US, discussed below.

Bakhtiar thought that he would have American support for his plans to arrest Khomeini if the Ayatollah left his Parisian exile and went home.¹⁰ Although he chose not to do this, when Khomeini returned to Iran on 1 February 1979, troops and tanks were deployed close to the airport. They could not stop the enormous crowds from welcoming their saviour home though, and Khomeini went to the Cemetery of Martyrs where he rallied his supporters, made passionate speeches denouncing the government and clarified his position. He was there to force a change of government and to usher in a new era. Bakhtiar could not have been more wrong when he said, ‘Don’t worry about this kind of speech. That is Khomeini. He is free to speak but he is not free to act.’¹¹ Khomeini was now in a strong enough position to reject Bakhtiar’s government and set up his own, with the pro-democracy activist and Islamic scholar Mehdi Bazargan as prime minister. For a brief period, two governments claimed the right to rule Iran. But after armed resistance by forces loyal to the Shah failed in early February, Bakhtiar accepted the reality of the situation – that this was now Khomeini’s time.

James Buchan argues that the events in Tehran in January and February 1979 did not represent ‘the routine alteration of ruling persons that up to then had substituted for the ballot-box in the Middle East.’ It was, instead, ‘a revolution, of the nature of the French and Russian revolutions.’ Here,

an autocrat, at the head of well-equipped armed forces, supported ...

Table of contents

• Cover
• Half Title
• Series Page
• Title Page
• Copyright Page
• Dedication
• Table of Contents
• Acknowledgements
• Introduction
• PART 1: 1979–1982
• PART 2: 1983–1985
• PART 3: 1986–1988
• PART 4: 1989–1991
• Conclusion
• Bibliography
• Index