If you line up...
the English Civil War (NOT the Glorious Revolution unless you want to consider the entire period from 1640-1688)
the French Revolution
the Russian Revolution
the Iranian Revolution
...certain common patterns appear.
Below the fold, I'll trace out those patterns and try to make the case that the Iranian Islamic Revolution is of equal importance with those others.
- The Revolution happens when the existing government stops working. "The people" do not rise up and overthrow the government. It. Does. Not. Happen. Charles I and Louis XVI both ran out of money and had to resort to their traditional legislatures to get more. The pressure of World War I exposed the inadequacy of Tsarist Russia. Withdrawal of U.S. support (his patron, always) and wavering support of the military left the Shah no option but to back off.
- Broad-based revolutions tend to get suborned by hard-line groups who are share a number of traits: internal discipline and cohesion, willingness to go to any extreme to secure the Revolution and their power, a charismatic leader as focus, and AT LEAST TEMPORARILY, a perception of maximal popular legitimacy by appearing uncompromised. Cromwell's New Model Army Roundhead fanatics; Robespierre and the Jacobins; Lenin and the Bolsheviks; Khomeini and the velayat-faqih (theocrats).
- Meet the new boss, same as the old boss. The Hard-liners don't always stay in control, but the promises of the Revolution tend to fall by the wayside. The government imposed by the hardliners is usually no less tyrannical than the one they overthrew. Theirs just works better. Cromwell was made Lord Protector. The Jacobins were pushed out, but within a few years Napoleon was a more powerful monarch than any ancien regime Bourbon. Trotsky lost out in the post-Lenin power struggle; Stalinist Russia was more brutal than any Tsarist regime. The difference between SAVAK and the Revolutionary Guards is kinda hard to see from a distance.
- As a result, Revolutions tend to be failures in the terms of the people who launched them. In particular, with reference to Iran, only a minority of those participating in the struggle against the Shah were interested in establishing the Islamic Republic theocracy they got.
- Still waters run deep. Social and class analysis of revolutions links them to the decline of feudal or other traditional forms of social organization and the "rise of the middle class." The middle class has been rising in every analytic piece of historiography ever written, except for the Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire, so that may not be particularly helpful. Nevertheless, within a generation or 2, the dominant social and political paradigm becomes oriented to support middle class ambitions and needs. In England, the supremacy of Parliament and the instituion of the Prime Minister emerged by the early 18th century. In France, weaker monarchs were more aligned to the needs the middle class, the Second Empire, and finally the Third Republic were progressively more closely aligned with the interests of the middle classes. The Russian revolution broke the power of the nobility; while not exactly replaced by a meritocracy, what grew up in place was much more open to all (provided you played by Party rules).
This is what I am actually hopeful about here. What you are seeing in the streets are not woolly-headed students, religious fanatics, or the working classes. That is the solid block of the Iranian middle class. This is the creative energetic heart of the Iranian nation. I have hope this is the next turn of the wheel.
Finally, I want to make the argument that the Islamic Revolution in Iran needs to be seen by Westerners as equal in scope and importance as the English Civil War (the wellspring of US ideas about liberty and constitutional government), French Revolution, and Russian Revolution. Popular sovereignty in Muslim-majority countries must find its own sources in the history and culture of those countries, just as representative democracy found its source in the collective experience of, well, Latin Christendom-majority areas. This revolution is the great narrative of that process. We are watching the Iranian people struggle to find a way to establish "Government of the people, by the people, for the people" in terms consistent with their own rich history and culture.
We should honor them. We should aid them where appropriate. But MOST OF ALL, we should strive to understand their Revolution and their struggle on their terms and not try to see it through our eyes.