ABSTRACT
The Iranian state in several important ways contributed to the occurrence of the 1978-79 revolution, both because of the historical trajectory in which it had led Iran by the late 1970s and because of the manner in which it had developed over the years. Despite its image as ‘an island of stability in one of the more troubled areas of the world’,1 the Pahlavi state had long suffered from a number of fundamental systemic difficulties. Following a series of highly damaging internal and international developments in the 1970s, the deceptively strong state soon started to crumble. It was within the context of a collapsing state, and largely because of it, that the Iranian revolution developed and eventually succeeded.
