{"id":29391,"date":"2019-01-16T11:23:32","date_gmt":"2019-01-16T11:23:32","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/qatar-news.org\/qatarnewsEn\/?p=29391"},"modified":"2019-01-16T11:23:32","modified_gmt":"2019-01-16T11:23:32","slug":"syria-kurds-reject-security-zone-under-turkish-control","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/qatar-news.org\/qatarnewsEn\/?p=29391","title":{"rendered":"Syria Kurds reject \u2018security zone\u2019 under Turkish control"},"content":{"rendered":"
\n

\nDUBAI: Forty years ago today, Iran\u2019s then-shah, Mohammed Reza Pahlavi, fled the country after a 37-year reign, in the first stage of a revolution that would replace 2,500 years of monarchy with an Islamic republic.<\/p>\n

\nPrior to the revolution, Iran very much resembled Western countries, with a flourishing economy and tourists flocking to the country for its breath-taking landscapes, beaches and various activities, including hiking and skiing.\u00a0<\/p>\n

\nThe shah\u2019s departure, prompted by mass protests, paved the way for Ayatollah Ruhollah Khomeini to return from exile in France, assuming power on Feb. 11, 1979.\u00a0<\/p>\n

\nIt was \u201ca genuine social revolution against tyranny, domestic and foreign \u2014 the first represented by the shah and the second by\u2026 the US,\u201d said Dr. Albadr Al-Shateri, politics professor at the National Defence College in Abu Dhabi.<\/p>\n

\n\u201cThe revolution went awry when religious leaders dominated the government, imposed its version of Islam and eliminated their partners in the revolution, including Iranian nationalists.\u201d<\/p>\n

\nNot long after Khomeini took over, the world got a taste of the new regime. Fifty-two American diplomats and citizens were taken hostage on Nov. 4, 1979, and were held for 444 days, after a group of Iranian students who supported the revolution took over the US Embassy in Tehran.\u00a0<\/p>\n

\nThe Iran-Iraq war, which began in 1980 and lasted for eight years, contributed to the deterioration of Iran\u2019s situation.\u00a0<\/p>\n

\n\u201cFear of the new regime\u2019s attempt to export the revolution to a Shiite-majority neighbor led Iraq to initiate the war,\u201d Al-Shateri said.\u00a0<\/p>\n

\n\u201cHowever, Iran\u2019s insistence on continuing the war until the toppling of the regime of Saddam Hussein exacted a heavy cost on both countries in human and economic terms,\u201d he added.\u00a0<\/p>\n

\n\u201cIran had legitimate grievances against the US, but the way it tried to redress these gripes was counterproductive.\u201d<\/p>\n

\nThe shah was considered one of the best customers of the US defense industry. But his Western-inspired reforms sparked turbulent social change that aggravated the clergy, while his consolidation of power and the secret police gave him the reputation of a dictator.<\/p>\n

\n\"\"Opposition to his reign and corruption among Tehran\u2019s elite created an influential alliance of radical Islamists.\u00a0<\/p>\n

\nAlthough Pahlavi tried to modernize Iran, driving up oil prices in the early 1970s and implementing reforms in education and health care, he became alienated among Iranians and angered the conservative clergy, who helped drive his exile.\u00a0<\/p>\n

\n\u201cIran changed significantly from before the revolution to after, from a more civil, open and decent Iran to a closed, aggressive and sectarian one,\u201d said Abdulkhaleq Abdulla, former chairman of the Arab Council for Social Sciences.\u00a0<\/p>\n

\n\u201cPost-1979 Iran is deeply sectarian, and is not only responsible for sharpening the Sunni-Shiite divide, but also wholly responsible for politicizing and militarizing it,\u201d he added.<\/p>\n

\nIran \u201chas funded and armed Shiite militias, and has done everything possible to strengthen them so they can challenge the nation-state, Lebanon being a clear example.\u201d\u00a0<\/p>\n

\nPost-1979 Iran does not \u201cplay by the rules of the game,\u201d Abdulla added. \u201cIt became radical, revolutionary and sectarian, and was about to become nuclear, which is deeply destabilizing.\u201d<\/p>\n

\nHe said: \u201cGulf states have lived with Iran for thousands of years, and they knew how to deal with it all along. They had the best possible neighborly relationship, but it has always been a difficult Iran, whether under the shah or Khomeini.\u201d<\/p>\n

\nAbdulla added: \u201cWe\u2019ve never seen an Iran that has become the number-one terrorist country in the world except in the last 40 years.\u201d<\/p>\n

\nMark Katz, professor of government and politics at the Schar School of Police and Government at George Mason University in the US, said: \u201cUnlike the shah\u2019s Iran, the Islamic Republic of Iran sought to export its revolution to other Muslim countries, especially the Arab Gulf ones.\u201d He added: \u201cStill, it must be remembered that the shah\u2019s Iran was also fairly aggressive. It seized Abu Musa and the Tunbs (islands) right when the British were leaving the Trucial States and the UAE was being formed. It had also laid claim to Bahrain.\u201d\u00a0<\/p>\n

\nFurthermore, while the shah\u2019s troops helped defend Oman against a South Yemeni-backed Marxist insurgency in the 1970s, Katz said the presence of those Iranian troops in Oman was unsettling to Saudi Arabia in particular.\u00a0<\/p>\n

\n\u201cThe shah had also got the best of Iraq in their border rivalry \u2014 something that Saddam Hussein sought to reverse after the Iranian revolution,\u201d he added.\u00a0<\/p>\n

\nBefore the revolution, the shah\u2019s Iran often behaved \u201caggressively toward its Arab neighbors, but its close cooperation with the US against the Soviet Union, which Iran bordered and the Gulf Arab states didn\u2019t, meant that Washington wasn\u2019t willing to act against the shah for doing so,\u201d Katz said. By contrast, the rise of an anti-American government after the revolution led to the US working with Arab Gulf states against Iran.\u00a0<\/p>\n

\n\u201cBecause the Islamic Republic behaved in such a hostile manner, both toward the Gulf Arabs as well as the US, the 1979 revolution led to the isolation and containment of Iran for many years,\u201d Katz said.\u00a0<\/p>\n

\n\u201cAlthough it may seem counterintuitive, Iran may have posed a far greater problem for the Gulf Arabs if the\u2026 revolution hadn\u2019t taken place, because if it hadn\u2019t and Western investment in Iran continued or even grew, there would\u2019ve been a tendency for Tehran to assert \u2014 and the US to value \u2014 an Iranian effort to be the leader in the Gulf in collaboration with the US.\u201d<\/p>\n<\/div>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

DUBAI: Forty years ago today, Iran\u2019s then-shah, Mohammed Reza Pahlavi, fled the country after a 37-year reign, in the first stage of a revolution that would replace 2,500 years of monarchy with an Islamic republic. Prior to the revolution, Iran very much resembled Western countries, with a flourishing economy and tourists flocking to the country…<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":10,"featured_media":29392,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[2],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-29391","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-middle_east_news"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/qatar-news.org\/qatarnewsEn\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/29391","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/qatar-news.org\/qatarnewsEn\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/qatar-news.org\/qatarnewsEn\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/qatar-news.org\/qatarnewsEn\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/10"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/qatar-news.org\/qatarnewsEn\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=29391"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/qatar-news.org\/qatarnewsEn\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/29391\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/qatar-news.org\/qatarnewsEn\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/media\/29392"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/qatar-news.org\/qatarnewsEn\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=29391"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/qatar-news.org\/qatarnewsEn\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=29391"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/qatar-news.org\/qatarnewsEn\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=29391"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}