The Mullahs: The Iranian Revolution

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Introduction
The Iranian Revolution started eighty years before it would climax and produce the Islamic Republic of Iran. Essentially, the revolution was a struggle between the Iranian monarchy and the political Mullahs (Spiritual Leaders). The Monarchy’s ignorance regarding the devoutness of the people and the political desires of the Mullahs led to analytical miscalculations. These errors in judgment helped drive the revolution and blinded them to its final product, an establishment of an Iranian Islamic Republic and the dissolution of a 2500-year-old monarchy. Maintaining power would have been possible if the Monarchy had infiltrated the religious sector and realized the power of Islam and the desires of the Mullahs.
Religious nationalism …show more content…
Through cooperation with the United States, Reza Shah consolidated power and over the next decades he attempted to modernize Iran. The Shah insisted his government was democratic, but it was in fact, his own special autocratic brand of democracy. However, while he attempted to reform Iran he allowed the power of the Mullahs to go unchecked and ignored the persecution of minority religions in Iran. Alarmed by the collapse of monarchies in surrounding countries, the Shah preemptively acted by establishing his own White Revolution (Ansari, p. …show more content…
This lack of awareness led to the mistake of publicly condemning Khomeini in 1977. Had they had any intelligence on the national religious pulse, they would have known the backlash that awaited them. Also, this would have alerted the Monarchy to the political and religious ideologies of Khomeini. Quoting from Khomeini’s fatwah on The Islamic Republic “In any self-respecting Islamic government, the legislative, executive, and judicial branches are replaced by a Religious Planning Council” (Khomeini, p. 7). If they had infiltrated the religious sector they might have been able to counter the Mullahs reach for power. By instituting a theocratic monarchy, the government might have placed the mullahs under the control of the Shah. Alternatively, this may have backfired and diminished the Shah to becoming a figurehead in his own regime, as he was from 1941 to
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