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]]]]]]]]]]]]]]] IN MEMORY OF IRAN [[[[[[[[[[[[[[[[[[[[
By Roger Scruton (10/12/88)
From UNTIMELY TRACTS (NY: St. Martin's Press, 1987), pp. 190-1
(This originally appeared in the TIMES (London), 6 November 1984)
[Kindly uploaded and provided with notes by Freeman 10602PANC]
Who remembers Iran? Who remembers, that is, the shameful
stampede of Western journalists and intellectuals to the cause of
the Iranian revolution? Who remembers the hysterical propaganda
campaign waged against the Shah, the lurid press reports of
corruption, police oppression, palace decadence, constitutional
crisis? Who remembers the thousands of Iranian students in
Western universities enthusiastically absorbing the fashionable
Marxist nonsense purveyed to them by armchair radicals, so as one
day to lead the campaign of riot and mendacity which preceded the
Shah's downfall?
Who remembers the behaviour of those students who held as
hostage the envoys of the very same power which had provided
their 'education'? Who remembers Edward Kennedy's accusation
that the Shah had presided over 'one of the most oppressive
regimes in history' and had stolen 'umpteen billions of dollars
from Iran'?
And who remembers the occasional truth that our journalists
enabled us to glimpse, concerning the Shah's real achievements:
his successes in combating the illiteracy, backwardness and
powerlessness of his country, his enlightened economic policy,
the reforms which might have saved his people from the tyranny of
evil mullahs, had he been given the chance to accomplish them?
Who remembers the freedom and security in which journalists could
roam Iran, gathering the gossip that would fuel their fanciful
stories of a reign of terror?
True, the Shah was an autocrat. But autocracy and tyranny are
not the same. An autocrat may preside, as the Shah sought to
preside, over a representative parliament, over an independent
judiciary, even over a free press and an autonomous university.
The Shah, like Kemal Ataturk [umlaut over the 'u'], whose vision
he shared, regarded his autocracy as the means to the creation
and protection of such institutions. Why did no one among the
Western political scientists trouble to point this out, or to
rehearse the theory which tells us to esteem not just the
democratic process, but also the representative and limiting
institutions which may still flourish in its absence? Why did no
one enjoin us to compare the political system of Iran with that
of Iraq or Syria?
Why did our political scientists rush to embrace the Iranian
revolution, despite the evidence that revolution under these
circumstances must be the prelude to massive social disorder and
a regime of terror? Why did the Western intelligentsia go on
repeating the myth that the Shah was to blame for this
revolution, when both Khomeini and the Marxists had been planning
it for 30 years and had found, despite their many attempts to put
it into operation, only spasmodic popular support?
The answer to all those questions is simple. The Shah was an
ally of the West, whose achievement in establishing limited
monarchy in a vital strategic region had helped to guarantee our
security, to bring stability to the Middle East and to deter
Soviet expansion. The Shah made the fatal mistake of supposing
that the makers of Western opinion would love him for creating
conditions which guaranteed their freedom. On the contrary, they
hated him. The Shah had reckoned without the great death wish
which haunts our civilisation and which causes its vociferous
members to propagate any falsehood, however absurd, provided only
that it damages our chances of survival.
For a while, of course, those vociferous elements will remain
silent on the embarrassing topic of Iran, believing that the
collapse of Iranian institutions, the establishment of religious
terror, the Soviet expansion into Afghanistan and the end of
stability in the region are all due to some other cause than the
Iranian revolution. Those who lent their support to this tragedy
simply turned their back on it and went elsewhere, to prepare a
similar outcome for the people of Turkey, Nicaragua, El Salvador,
Chile, South Africa -- or wherever else our vital interests may
be damaged.
Of course, it is difficult now for a Western
correspondent to enter Iran, and if he did so it would not be for
fun. He could not, like the ghouls who send their despatches
from Beirut, adopt a public posture of the front-line hero. He
would have to witness, quietly and in terror of his life, things
which beggar description: the spontaneous 'justice' of the
revolutionary guards, the appalling scenes of violence, torture
and demonic frenzy, the public humiliation of women, the daily
sacrifice of lives too young to be conscious of the meaning for
which they are condemned to destruction.
He would also have to confront the truth which has been
staring him in the face for years, and which he could still
recognise had the habit of confessing his errors been preserved:
the truth that limited monarchy is the right form of government
for Iran, which can be saved only by the restoration of the
Shah's legitimate successor. But such a result would be in the
interests not only of the Iranian people, but also of the West.
Hence few Western journalists are likely to entertain it.
(6 November 1984)
[The following notes are not part of the original article.]
Selective Chronology
1977: 20 Jan, Jimmy Carter inaugurated.
1978: Violent public disorder in Iran; 8 Sep, martial law
declared in 12 cities.
1979: 16 Jan, the Shah (1919-1980) leaves Iran; 31 Jan, Khomenhi
(1900-), in exile since 1963 and living in Paris since 1978,
returns from exile; 4 Nov, Iranian militant students seize U.S.
embassy, take 90 hostages of whom 62 (eventually reduced to 52)
are Americans, demand return of Shah.
1980: 24 Apr, U.S. rescue attempt fails; 27 Jul, Shah dies in
Egypt; 22 Sep, war with Iraq begins.
1981: 21 Jan, American hostages freed, after 444 days of
captivity, in exchange for release of frozen Iranian assets; 22
June to end of year, over 2,000 people, reportedly members of
Majahedeen-i-Khalq and smaller Marxist-Leninist/Maoist factions,
die before revolutionary firing squads.
1984: Iraq, and later Iran, attack several oil tankers in the
Persian Gulf.
1988: 20 Aug, war with Iraq ends.
The Left is opportunistic: it is drawn to where there is
wretchedness. Its failing is that, when it succeeds, it replaces
a large wrong with a great evil. The tragedy of Iran is that the
intellectual classes of the West would only direct their energies
to the destruction of the Shah: they preferred revolution to
reform. It is unfortunate that those killed by the revolutionary
government cannot express proper thanks to the intellectuals who
were so successful on their behalf.
Since the 1960s the Iranian crown was busily creating the
circumstances in which the cancerous influence of intellectuals
would flourish. The Shah's great contribution to his downfall
was his effort to impose modernity on Iran within his lifetime.
Paul Johnson, in Modern Times (1983), observes that "[The Shah]
destroyed himself by succumbing to the fatal temptation of modern
times: the lure of social engineering. ... The planners, educated
abroad and known as massachuseti (after the famous Institute of
Technology, MIT), had the arrogance of party apparatchiks and a
Stalinist faith in centralized planning, the virtues of growth
and bigness. ... [A]gricultural planners ... behaved with all the
arrogance of the party activists Stalin used to push through his
programme, though there was no resistance and no actual
brutality. ... Iran's horrifying experiences illustrated yet
again the law of unintended effect. The Shah's efforts to force
a nation into modernity produced atavism. The state road to
Utopia led only to Golgotha [(pp 704-708)]."
Some popular support of the Islamic fundamentalists may have
been a reaction against the family-planning program of the Shah's
government, which worked with American universities and
foundations:
Jacqueline Kasun, The War Against Population
(Harrison, NY: Ignatius Press, 1986), p. 89. :
With support of the control system -- AID [Agency for
International Development], International Planned
Parenthood, the Pathfinder Fund, the Universities of North
Carolina and Chicago, and the Ford Foundation -- the Shah
and his sister became enthusiastic proponents of family
planning .... The ministries of health and education
redesigned the school curriculum, rewrote the textbooks,
and retrained thousands of teachers to emphasize
``population education'' and sex education.... All
methods of reducing births were legalized, including
abortion and sterilization.... Upon seizing power, the new
government threw out the family planning apparatus, threw
out the law allowing abortion and sterilization, and, in
short order, threw out the United States. (Interestingly,
the Iranian birth rate, one of the highest in the world,
showed little decline during the family planning years.)
_______________
For an interesting account of the death-wish as an influence
on the thought of the Left see Igor Shafarevich, The Socialist
Phenomenon (New York: Harper & Row, 1980).
* * *
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