Iranian+Revolution+of+1979

Iran is a significant country in the Middle East due to its wealth in resources, “[containing] 10 percent of the proven oil reserves of the world,” as well as natural gas (Moshiri 116). Iran is also important because of its large population and geographic position. The Iranian Revolution can be “explained by an approach in which competition for resources among domestic groups is embedded in more general trends of superpower competition” and changes in the global economic climate (Moshiri 116).

__**The Role of the Shah's Policies in the Iranian Revolution**__
 * The shah wanted to accelerate the modernization of Iran by creating stronger bonds with the United States through “heightened commercial, military, cultural, and educational ties” (Sneh).
 * In the 1960s, the shah issued land reforms that were designed to take power away from the wealthy land owner class.
 * The shah wanted to create a large “class of peasant property holders that would support the government” (Moshiri 120).
 * Plan failed and resulted even more citizens (+1 million) without land (Moshiri 120). The shah’s regime then wanted to focus on eliminating religious opposition groups, and by 1978 “the regime had managed to alienate all power groups in Iranian society but… failed to produce any social base of support” (Moshiri 121).
 * Shah's economic policies led Iran to rely heavily on oil revenue.
 * Lack of dependence on internal taxes, which gave the shah the freedom to “[increase] police repression of the opposition,” without fearing major financial turmoil (Moshiri 121).
 * Agriculture was ignored
 * Large national debt
 * Iran was heavily dependent upon US aide, with most of the shah’s “economic policies…largely influenced by the U.S. development theories” (Moshiri 123).
 * The economic reforms were intended to stabilize the government, but they backfired; instead, they “destroyed the former class base of the regime…[and] resulted in massive rural-to-urban migration” (Moshiri 123).
 * Social changes under the shah
 * There was a rather fast migration of the population from rural to urban; the urban population went from 7,200 in 1960 to 12, 348 in 1970. The number of students from Iran studying abroad went from 8200 in 1961 to 40,422 in 1976 (Moshiri 122).

__**The Role of the United States in the Iranian Revolution**__ =**Works Cited**= Moshiri, Farrokh. "6: Iran: Islamic Revolution Against Westernization." __Revolutions of__ __the Late Twentieth Century__. Ed. Jack A. Goldstone, Ted Robert Gurr, and Farrokh Moshiri. Boulder, CO: Westview Press, 1991. 116-131. __Questia__. 23 Sept. 2009 .
 * Until 1940s, U.S.-Iran relationship primarily centered on the import and export of oil from Iran to the United States (Sneh).
 * 1941 brought global fear of German influence in the Middle East, especially in Iran, where the leader, Reza Shah Pahlavi, was pro-Axis (Sneh).
 * Cold War
 * USSR tried to establish itself as the protector of Iran, Turkey, and Greece, from Western interests; post-WWII, Western interests meant the United States (Sneh). The Soviet presence in Iran was the cause of the “first threat of direct U.S. intervention” in the Middle East (Sneh).
 * The Truman Doctrine (March, 1947) “promised support to those resisting Soviet subversion,” which meant that Iran, as “part of the American sphere of influence” was now under the official protection of the United States (Sneh).
 * By 1967, the United States had invested $765 million in Iran in economic aid, in addition to “establishing training facilities and missions for the Iranian military” (Moshiri 119).
 * __Domestic Factors__**
 * The shah’s biggest social threat was the “the wide coalition of social forces including the traditional middle class, the modern middle class, and the working class” banding together to defeat the shah (Workman 43).
 * The Clerics
 * The Bazaaris
 * Working Class
 * Religion
 * Black Friday (1978)

Sneh, Itai. "Iran, Relations with." __Dictionary of American History__. Ed. Stanley I. Kutler. Vol. 4. 3rd ed. New York: Charles Scribner's Sons, 2003. 2 pp. 10 vols. __Gale Virtual Reference Library__. Gale. Upper Arlington HighSchool. 17 Sept. 2009 

Workman, W. Thom. “2: Social Transformation and Revolution in Iran.” __The Social__ __Origins of the Iran-Iraq War__. Boulder, CO: Lynne Rienner, 1994. __Questia__. 8 Oct. 2009 .