By Roger Scruton (10/12/88)

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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. (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).

https://www.fortfreedom.org/l14.htm

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