President Donald Trump recently said that the war in Iran is “going very well.” The regime, he warned, was being “decimated.” It’s far too early to clearly see who, or what, will emerge from the war’s ashes. But history is clear: “Regime change” happens frequently in Iran, often driven by Iranians themselves, and often with foreign powers not far from the scene.
The objective of Operation Epic Fury, the joint U.S. and Israel military campaign against Iran, is to destroy missiles, missile production, and security architecture, and to ensure that the regime “never has nuclear weapons.” The Trump administration, while calling for “unconditional surrender,” has left the door open on who will run Iran when those objectives are considered achieved.
Trump called on the Iranian people to “rise up and seize your country” during the conflict’s opening salvo. Notably, Iranians have a long history of doing precisely that. Indeed, when one surveys the long and often tragic history of Iran, known as Persia until 1935, one standout feature, beyond the rich culture, cuisine, and civilization, is the number of violent protests and palace coups.
Those who care about the future of Iran, along with those who foolishly try to read the tea leaves, can look to the past for some answers. What emerges is both a long-standing trend of leaders being deposed or pushed aside, often violently, and a people who, every few decades or so, rise up and demand change.
The 1979 Islamic Revolution was a seminal event in world history, forever changing both Iran and the broader Middle East. Ayatollah Ruhollah Khomeini and his fervent band of followers seized power, eventually installing a rigid theocracy intent on creating a new Islamic epoch with Iran at its center. Early alliances made with leftists were quickly discarded, and dissenters, critics, and innocents alike were left to hang from construction cranes.
The results have been indisputably tragic, both for Iranians and the world. In 1970, less than a decade before the revolution unfolded, Iran had the second-biggest economy in the Middle East, and the most advanced. Now it has one-fifth the GDP of Turkey or Saudi Arabia. Under rule by backward clerics with a messianic vision, Iran has literally gone backward, prioritizing the pursuit of nuclear weapons and exporting terrorism that has destabilized the region.
A DIFFERENT WAR IN THE MIDDLE EAST
As Andrew Scott Cooper and others have shown, the mullahs who took charge did so thanks to an odd confluence of events, including Western incompetence, a weak and ailing ruler in Mohammad Reza Shah, and a world that refused to believe that a country embarked on progressive reforms could turn instead to the dark ages and a medieval barbarism.
The 1979 Islamic Revolution, while inarguably the most consequential event in modern Iranian history, is not the only example of mass upheaval in the country. Far from it.
1953 is another year that might ring a bell to those familiar with Iran’s history. This was the year of the fabled “coup” in which British and American agents ousted a democratically elected ruler named Mohammad Mossadegh and installed the despotic shah in his place — all to preserve unfettered access to oil. Or so the story goes. This tale has been repeated ad infinitum by both the Islamic Republic and the Western Left, both of which hope to place the blame for what has unfolded in Iran in the past half-century at America’s doorstep.
In fact, Mossadegh had been appointed by the shah as prime minister, an act approved by the country’s parliament. Mossadegh was a nationalist and a radical, and one more favorably disposed toward the neighboring Soviet Union, which had all but attempted to occupy the country permanently less than a decade prior. Mossadegh was not a democrat, however, and he soon began amassing power and violating both the nation’s constitution and tradition, leading to calls for his ouster from everyone from Iranian businessmen to many of the country’s influential clerics. To be sure, U.S. and British agents, concerned with Iran and its oil falling to the Soviets, sought Mossadegh’s ouster. But as historians such as Ray Takeyh have documented, their efforts weren’t determinative — it was Iranians who overwhelmingly wanted the shah back.
But Iranian history is more than just the past 70 years. There are numerous other examples of tumult.
The Persian Constitution of 1906, for instance, was born as a result of a revolution that lasted from 1905 to 1911. It was signed by ruler Mozaffar ad Din Shah Qajar in 1906. His successor, Mohammad Ali Shah Qajar, both abolished the constitution in 1908 and bombarded the recently created Majlis, or National Consultative Assembly. That bombardment was done with Russian and British support, but it eventually resulted in Mohammad Ali Shah Qajar abdicating in favor of his son, Ahmad Shah Qajar, who reestablished the constitution in 1909 but was himself pushed aside in a military coup in 1921 by Col. Reza Khan, the war minister who made himself shah of Iran in 1925 and who ruled until his forced ouster in 1941. His successor and son, Mohammad Reza Shah, faced numerous mass protests and assassination attempts before he was toppled in 1979.
His wife, Queen Farah, was later to tell a biographer that she “always had in mind the Romanovs,” the ill-fated Russian dynasty that was also toppled by a band of small, but ideologically committed, revolutionaries.
This, of course, is but the last century or so — a blink of the eye in a country with a long, fabled, and often bloody history. Long before the modern era, both upheavals and palace coups were the norm, not the exception, as historians such as Homa Katouzian have noted. Stability was rare. Interventions by foreign powers frequent. When Naser al Din Shah, a long-ruling modernizer and reformer whose 48-year reign parallels that of Mohammad Reza Shah, was assassinated in 1896, it opened the door for even more involvement by Russia and Great Britain, the superpowers of the day.
It would be another 130 years before an Iranian ruler was killed. Ayatollah Ali Khamenei was not a modernizer or reformer, but a backward-looking despot. The circumstances of his own death, killed as part of the largest decapitation strike in modern history, are certainly unique, even if he’s far from the first Iranian leader to meet a violent end.
Khamenei’s own rule witnessed an Islamic Republic whose empire expanded only to crumble under its delusional overreach. Now the edifice of the Islamic Republic, an aberration in Iran’s long history, looks to come apart next. What emerges will be anyone’s guess. His son, Mojtaba Khamenei, was named the new “supreme leader,” but he was missing at the ceremony — a mere framed picture in his stead.
Indeed, the United States and Israel have reportedly taken out most of the high-value military and leadership targets and are moving to infrastructure and other top assets. Various “day after” scenarios have been bandied about, with many wondering who will rule at war’s end. Some have speculated that the U.S. might seek peace with an unnamed regime figure that might be willing to play ball and accede to American demands. Others have said that perhaps the late shah’s son can return from his exile in America. Or perhaps another figure, still unknown, may emerge.
NETANYAHU SAYS IT’S UP TO IRANIAN PEOPLE TO THROW OFF THE ‘YOKE OF TYRANNY’
One thing is clear when surveying the course of Iranian history: State building is hard and often perilous. A vast territory with hinterlands, faraway provinces, and a restive population, Iran, like its allies Russia and China, has never been an easy country to rule. That is an unmistakable lesson with import for today.
The Iranian people, far more familiar with their own story than the average Westerner, know this better than most. In Iran, heavy is the head who wears the crown. And it has always been thus.
