This is just a reminder that the 1979 revolution in Iran took over a year to unfold. Here’s a timeline to refresh your memory. One key was that each clash with protesters that resulted in fatalities led to new more impassioned protests as people gathered for funerals and memorials. It’s often said that the revolution advanced in 40-day stages, as forty days is the traditional period of mourning in Iran’s culture. Americans are not accustomed to such slow-motion revolution with massive (over month-long) pauses. Add to this, the new 24-hour news environment, and this feature of Iran’s political and religious tradition should solidly flummox most analysts.
People are being killed today. Even if things calm down and appear to settle out over the next few weeks, forty days from now you could see a seemingly spontaneous re-eruption of street protests. Don’t say I didn’t warn you if that happens.
This attempt at revolution cannot be considered as over until we seem calm sustained for a very long time.
go away for one freakin’ weekend, and all hell breaks loose.
that’s how engaged people react to electoral theft by the way, and i hope they topple the clerics.
here of course, everyone’s too busy watching the fuckin’ teevee to bother when george bush steals an election.
we’re a nation of sheep, in so many ways. as long as we get our teevee, everyone’s happy.
but, dude, we can riot when our favorite sports team wins!!!
When does the next round of The Bachelorette start?
Is that being shot in Shiraz?
No, that’s the next Survivor. The Bachelorette is being shot in Isfahan.
here of course, everyone’s too busy watching the fuckin’ teevee to bother when george bush steals an election.
That’s not terribly fair, actually. Protesting stolen elections is incredibly hard to do anywhere in the world if the guy who the election was stolen from doesn’t lead the charge. Neither Gore in ’00 nor Kerry in ’04 were jumping up and down to challenge the results or calling on folks to take to the street in protest. They were both ready to concede “for the good of the country”, and they explicitly asked their supporters to accept the results of the election. That makes it difficult to believe that protests are going to change anything, and in fact makes it easy to believe that protests are going to be counter-productive and that energy should be directed differently. Had Gore rejected the SC result and told everyone to take to the streets in protest of a corrupt government or hold a general strike like Moussavi has, well, things may have been different. Or not, but at least you’d have something reasonable to compare to.
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VIDEO: 1979 Islamic Revolution of Iran, Black Friday
Many major misjudgments were made by the Shah: he was completely in the dark what was happening on the streets. His request to Saddam Hussein to throw Khomeiny out of Najaf, Iraq. Khomeiny sought refuge in Paris where he enjoyed better communication with his Shia followers in Persia. The massacre of citizens on September 8, 1978 … Black Friday.
"But I will not let myself be reduced to silence."As pseudonymous in nc points out in a post at Matt Yglesias:
My waspy parents were there in ’79… in Iran. They didn’t leave until two weeks after the Shah did. The process was so slo-mo — and they were so insulated by the village where they lived on the outskirts of Tehran — that they never felt any danger until the last month. Then, they were protected by their neighbors; they had the advantage of knowing Farsi and having lived like the natives for a couple of years. The other employees of Bell Helicopter that lived in the “American compound” cleared out a month earlier.
My Pop kept thinking he’d still have a job if he just stuck it out… that the contract would still be valid with the new government. I recall BH telling him, we’ve got one last plane going out and if you’re not on it, you’re on your own. That spooked him into action. They packed up what they could carry and the neighbors shipped the rest a couple of months later.
The description of the neighbors’ behaviour sounds about right.
I’ve told this story at the Pond before but you may not have been around then.
My parents were in their late fifties when my father, an architect, was laid off from his firm. He was unemployed for over a year before getting this “overseas opportunity.” He was going to be overseeing a construction site so he needed to learn the language. Both he and my mother decided to immerse themselves in another culture instead of staying apart in the “American compound.”
Tehran frightened them, overwhelmed them with its “otherness” so they moved into a village suburb. At first they were treated with suspicion and hostility. My mother took great care to dress like the other women and to ask their advice in the market when buying produce and the local ways to prepare it. My Pop went out of his way at the end of his work day to spend some time with the men gathered in the village center.
So someone told him the Spring floods were coming and everyone always moved their stuff to the second floor in preparation. My father went out, surveyed the land and told the men they could dig a trench and avoid the flooding. They ridiculed him and he said, well, I’ll just dig it by myself then. When they saw him working so hard — digging away — in the evenings and on weekends, some began to believe he knew what he was doing and maybe feeling a little sorry for the crazy American decided to help him. Eventually, most of the village was involved in the project. The flood came, the ground floors and streets stayed dry and my father was a local hero!
That’s why the neighbors protected them, brought them food and fuel during the last couple of months when it was dangerous to be an American in Iran. And that’s why the possessions they left behind were carefully packed and shipped. I don’t believe this would have happened if my parents hadn’t become locals.
That’s a great story, sjct. Did you ever go visit them while they were there?
I wish! When they first went over, my son was three and I think the airline tickets were like, $2000 EACH. So it just wasn’t practical…
Couple of years of unemployment later, Mom and Pop ended up in Saudi Arabia! That ended very badly and is a whole ‘nother story…
The only time I got to visit a Muslim country was Morocco in the ’70’s before I had children…