On February 1, 1979, just nine days after Ali Hassan Salameh’s assassination, Ayatollah Ruhollah Khomeini was welcomed home in Tehran by millions of Iranians celebrating the shah’s ouster just two weeks earlier. Over the next eleven days Khomeini mobilized his supporters in the streets. By February 11, Khomeini’s revolutionaries were in full command of the government. The revolution had begun in October 1977 with a few hundred demonstrators. Protests escalated throughout 1978, and by the late autumn it was clear to everyone that the Pahlavi regime could no longer control the streets.

user-inactivated:

Huh. This was an odd piece. It started really micro and then ... never particularly went macro, except for this:

“The tragic irony,” writes Professor Gasiorowski, “is that the radical Islamists who seized the US embassy in early November [1979] did so in part because they thought US officials were plotting a coup or other nefarious activities there. In fact, US officials were warning Iran’s government about Iraqi activities that culminated in the devastating invasion of September 1980.”

That sums the entire article adequately. I can't help but think it wouldn't make a whole lot of sense to anyone who wasn't already familiar with the Middle East in the 20th century.

That said, kleinbl00 and insomniasexx y'all might like this. At least some of it.

posted 3629 days ago