The Progressive Romance
The rise of the Islamic Republic in Iran in 1979 stands as a stark illustration of how progressive intellectuals and political figures can inadvertently enable authoritarian regimes.
A widely circulated photograph captures this irony: two young women, beneficiaries of the Shah’s modernization reforms, including expanded education and women’s rights, celebrating the fall of the monarchy and the arrival of Ayatollah Ruhollah Khomeini.
At the time, many Western academics, journalists, and leftist commentators portrayed Khomeini as a progressive, anti-imperialist leader, likening him to Mahatma Gandhi. Reality proved otherwise. One of those women was later executed by the new regime; the other was forced into exile.
This was not an isolated misjudgment. It reflected a broader ideological reflex on the Western left: hostility toward existing power structures, combined with a romantic faith that any force opposing them must be emancipatory. In Iran, that reflex proved catastrophic.
Carter’s Moralism
President Jimmy Carter, whose foreign policy emphasized human rights and democratic ideals, came to view Mohammad Reza Shah Pahlavi’s government as insufficiently democratic and ripe for change. Acting on this belief, the United States withdrew critical political support from one of its most reliable allies in the Middle East.
Yet the Shah was far from a mere Western puppet. He pursued a vision of Iranian modernization rooted in national pride, education, infrastructure development, and economic integration with the world. Between 1963 and 1977, Iran achieved an average annual GDP growth rate of approximately 10.5 percent, with per capita income rising dramatically. Land reforms reshaped rural life, women gained unprecedented legal and social rights, and industrialization accelerated at a remarkable pace.
Had this trajectory continued, Iran might well have emerged as one of the world’s ten or eleven largest economies and the dominant power in the Persian Gulf. Instead, the Islamic Republic has delivered decades of economic stagnation, repression, brain drain, and international isolation, an outcome made possible in part by Western moral posturing detached from geopolitical reality.
The Road Not Taken
In contrast to the prevailing leftist narrative, one of the few Western leaders who genuinely understood Iran’s strategic importance, and the value of the Shah’s reforms, was President Richard Nixon. Nixon cultivated a close relationship with the Shah, recognizing Iran as a cornerstone of regional stability and a critical counterweight to Soviet influence.
His administration offered consistent backing for the Shah’s modernization efforts and treated Iran as a sovereign partner rather than a disposable client. Even after leaving office, Nixon remained steadfast in his assessment. He was the only senior Western leader to attend the Shah’s funeral in exile in Egypt in 1980, a symbolic gesture of loyalty and foresight.
Nixon repeatedly warned that abandoning the Shah would lead not to democracy, but to chaos and radicalism. He predicted the rise of an anti-Western, theocratic regime, a prediction that history has borne out with chilling accuracy. These warnings were dismissed by left-leaning students, activists, journalists, and policymakers as relics of “imperialist thinking.” The cost of that arrogance is still being paid today.
Mossadegh as a Moral Alibi
By the time the consequences of 1979 became undeniable, many of those who had cheered the revolution sought to evade responsibility. Rather than confront their own role in enabling Khomeini, they constructed a retrospective narrative centered on an earlier figure. Mohammad Mossadegh became their moral alibi.
Mossadegh, prime minister from 1951 to 1953, is routinely described as a “democratically elected” leader overthrown by a CIA-backed coup. This simplified story is used to explain everything that followed, including the Islamic Revolution itself. The implication is clear: Iran’s tragedy is the fault of Western imperialism, not revolutionary naïveté.
The facts tell a different story. Mossadegh was not elected by popular vote. Under Iran’s 1906 constitution, the Shah appointed the prime minister, subject to confirmation by the Majlis. Mossadegh came to office through this same constitutional process, as had more than twenty prime ministers before him, none of whom are described as democratically elected martyrs.
In 1953, the Shah exercised his constitutional authority to dismiss Mossadegh, whose policies had pushed Iran to the brink of economic collapse. Mossadegh had aligned himself with Soviet interests, promised to distribute Iran’s oil wealth to “Islamic nations,” and moved systematically to weaken the monarchy. Opposition to him was widespread and domestic: the military, the merchant class (bazaaris), and many clerics supported his removal.
Crucially, the events of 1953 were not a central grievance in 1979. Neither Islamist revolutionaries nor leftist militants invoked Mossadegh as a rallying cry at the time. His elevation to mythic status came later, after the revolution failed, when blame needed to be reassigned.
Economic Reality
Mossadegh’s popularity rested largely on his campaign to nationalize the Anglo-Iranian Oil Company. The Shah appointed him in part because his popularity could strengthen Iran’s hand in negotiations with the British. Contrary to caricature, the Shah was economically pragmatic. His approach was closer to that of leaders like Lee Kuan Yew than to any caricature of autocracy: attract investment, develop infrastructure, integrate into global markets, and grow national wealth.
Mossadegh, by contrast, framed nationalization in emotionally charged terms, Britain was “stealing” Iran’s wealth, and reclaiming oil would bring instant prosperity. What he failed to explain was Iran’s lack of technical capacity. The country had no engineers, no refineries, no tankers, no insurance systems, and no independent access to global markets. Oil revenues funded the state budget, the military, and essential imports.
The result was predictable. A British-led boycott caused oil production to collapse from 242 million barrels in 1950 to just 10.6 million in 1952. The state verged on bankruptcy well before any decisive foreign intervention occurred.
Adding to the irony, Mossadegh himself was no man of the people. He hailed from the Qajar aristocracy, was married into the royal dynasty, and was among Iran’s largest landowners. The structural problems he confronted were inherited from his own class and era, yet he recast them as moral crimes of the monarchy.
History Without Myths
The Mossadegh narrative endures because it is useful. It allows critics of the Shah to minimize the tangible achievements of his era - modernization, education, women’s rights, and economic growth - while deflecting attention from the Islamic Republic’s record of repression, corruption, and failure.
A serious understanding of Iranian history requires confronting both the complexity of 1953 and the catastrophic misjudgments of 1979. Selective memory and ideological myth-making serve only one purpose: absolving those who helped unleash a theocratic dictatorship from responsibility.
History’s lesson is not subtle. When ideological vanity overrides realism, when economic ignorance is weaponized as moral righteousness, and when “progressives” mistake reactionary forces for liberation movements, the result is not justice but ruin. It is time to abandon the myths, confront the facts, and learn before the same people enable the next monster.
Shalitha Bandara
Political Commentator
