Word: shah
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Dates: during 1980-1989
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Some observers distinguish two stages in the entire upheaval: the first a popular revolt that overthrew the Shah, then a "Khomeini coup" that concentrated all power in the clergy. The Ayatullah's main instrument was a stream of elamiehs (directives) from Qum, many issued without consulting Bazargan's nominal government. Banks and heavy industry were nationalized and turned over to government managers. Many of the elamiehs were concerned with imposing a strict Islamic...
...Shah as a stable and valuable ally. Washington was annoyed by the Shah's insistence on raising oil prices at every OPEC meeting, yet that irritation was outweighed by the fact that the Shah was staunchly anti-Communist and a valuable balance wheel in Middle East politics. Eager to build up Iran as a "regional influential" that could act as America's surrogate policeman of the Persian Gulf, the U.S. lent the Shah its all-out support. President Richard Nixon and Secretary of State Henry Kissinger allowed him to buy all the modern weapons he wanted. Washington also gave...
...depth of its commitment to the Shah apparently blinded Washington to the growing discontent. U.S. policymakers wanted to believe that their investment was buying stability and friendship; they trusted what they heard from the monarch, who dismissed all opposition as "the blah-blahs of armchair critics." Even after the revolution began, U.S. officials were convinced that "there is no alternative to the Shah." Carter took time out from the Camp David summit in September 1978 to phone the Iranian monarch and assure him of Washington's continued support...
...late. Demonstrations and protest marches that started as a genuine popular outbreak grew by a kind of spontaneous combustion. The first parades drew fire from the Shah's troops, who killed scores and started a deadly cycle: marches to mourn the victims of the first riot, more snooting, more martyrs, crowds swelling into the hundreds of thousands and eventually millions in Tehran. Khomeini at this point was primarily a symbol of the revolution, which at the outset had no visible leaders. But even in exile the Ayatullah was well known inside Iran for his uncompromising insistence that the Shah must...
Khomeini now became the active head of the revolution. Cassettes of his anti-Shah sermons sold like pop records in the bazaars and were played in crowded mosques throughout the country. When he called for strikes, his followers shut down the banks, the postal service, the factories, the food stores and, most important, the oil wells, bringing the country close to paralysis. The Shah imposed martial law, but to no avail. On Jan. 16, after weeks of daily protest parades, the Shah and his Empress flew off to exile, leaving a "regency council" that included Prime Minister Shahpour Bakhtiar...