ABSTRACT
The last ten years of Mohammad Reza Shah’s reign witnessedthe consolidation, growth and extension of the Pahlavi state and the apogee of the Shah’s personal power. The political and economic power of the state, exaggerated by a dramatic increase in oil revenues in the 1970s, masked the weakness of its social foundations. Echoing his father’s regime, the Shah constructed a state organisation centred on his own person, one increasingly insular in its orientation. Far from successfully penetrating society, the Pahlavi state sought to create an alternative ‘modern’ society in its own image and, cocooned within this social parody, was increasingly divorced from the growing discontent of a politically (and increasingly economically) marginalised and alienated society. That
the Pahlavi state remained powerful despite these structural weaknesses reflected the relative autonomy of a state cushioned by substantial oil revenues and supported by an increasingly intimate military-industrial complex allied to the United States. Furthermore, both the Shah and his opponents recognised to varying degrees that the ‘White Revolution’ had effectively dismantled the structures of the traditional state, principally the patrician landowners, and as the Shah certainly believed, the ulema. The growing external strength of the state convinced the Shah that the remaining threat to his dynasty, that of ‘red revolution’ could be accommodated and co-opted within existing state structures. It is important to remember that whatever its weaknesses – and these were to be highlighted with the benefit of hindsight – the belief in the strength of the Pahlavi state and the Shah in particular was widespread and growing. While some groups certainly predicted its ‘imminent’ fall, there was nothing inevitable about the eventual collapse of the Pahlavi regime. The reasons for the Shah’s fall, while varied, reflected the increasing centralisation of power in his hands. The economic and social problems resulting from the White Revolution were compounded by a series of politically inept decisions administered by the Shah; these served to further widen the gulf between him and his people, and fatally break the last vestiges of trust. That the latest and greatest crisis to hit the Pahlavi regime was transformed into revolution was the immediate consequence of the Shah’s inability (or incapacity) to lead in a crisis, and the absence of anyone with political credibility to seize the initiative on his behalf. The revolution was in many ways an intensely personal failure, for while the ‘Shah left’, ‘the Pahlavi state’ founded by his father to all intents and purposes survived.
