The beginning and the end of Iranian revolution.

I was a kid when Iranian revolution happened. 1978 was very strange year in Iran, people suddenly changed and most of them become very political in support of Khomeini even my father who all his life was a Social Democrat and supported parliamentary democracy, also a year earlier told me that he was not religious had changed in support of Khomeini, however a year later when Khomeini came back to Iran my father understood that he had done a big mistake but by then it was too late.

My father like many others support for revolution was strategic as he believed if all oppositions were united, the Shah would be forced to negotiate with them and allow political freedom and free all political prisoner. In his mind when Shapour Bakhtiar become prime minister in Iran the revolution has won and achieved its objective as Bakhtiar freed all political prisoner and closed the SAVAK[1] and were going to call for new election to allow all political parties to participate in parliament. Unfortunately, Bakhtiar government did not last long as they all misjudged Khomeini intention and plans.

After Bakhtiar government failed, it created a chaos in the country and some prisons facilities that could not manage opened their doors and freed all the criminals, and police and military who were basically paralyzed due to lack of leadership and management could not control the country and as most military base was unmanaged those criminals easily become armed and started looting the cities and called themselves Hezbollah.

Khomeini who was quite popular with mob and had the support of most Islamic clergies did not have much support within the political elite and did not have many in his team who had government experience who could take over the government so he turned to Mehdi Bazargan who was an Iranian scholar, academic and long-time pro-democracy activist to build the government in order to control the country. But as Bazargan putting his cabinet together mostly from secular politicians Khomeini and the clergies around him felt that they are becoming marginalized and started more and more relaying on this new group of Hezbollah as source of power and Hezbollah who needed the clergies to legitimize themselves as new actor in Iranian power structure, started to have a close relationship. Later, as Bazargan resigned his position as prime minister in November 1979, in protest at the US Embassy takeover and as an acknowledgement of his government’s failure in preventing it, Khomeini and clergies used Hezbollah to terrorize all other political groups to take control of the government and it was when Iranian revolution in my opinion failed and ended, a revolution that was started with love for democracy and social justice turned to a corrupt theocracy which is today. Iran-Iraq war was probably the final nail in the revolution coffin as revolution lost many of its true believer in that war. As those good men defending the revolution and the country in the front line those corrupt elements stayed put and capitalized of war and expanded their network in Iran and made sure that the war will not finish soon.

However, I left Iran in 1987 as anti-war and pro-democracy movement was under extreme pressure and many was executed or prisoned, and my family feared my safety and convinced me that was best for me as they could not see any improvement in Iran’s near future. But looking back as many Islamic Scholar believe this political Islam has done the most damage to the image of Islam and its spiritual position in society and after 40 years it seems that the corruption step by step has infected every government organisation in every level and despite varies attempt to eliminate it the country has not been able to stop this corrupt network.

Anyway, if I could take the time back, I would not participating in Iranian revolution even as kid and an observer as it looks that it has destroyed Iran from any angel you look at it, economically, society, environmentally and culturally.