Anderson, Scott. King of Kings. Doubleday, New York, 2025. NF; 8/25.

The subtitle of this history of the Iranian revolution neatly sums its cautionary message up: “The Iranian revolution: a story of hubris, delusion, and catastrophic miscalculation.” It’s presumed that a Muslim theocratic dictatorship is not a good arrangement for the people in it or for the rest of the world. But whether or not we buy that popular idea Anderson argues that its birth was engendered by an imbrication of mistakes by major players, and those players’ interests didn’t do well. His hindsight blames the Shah Mohammed Rehza Palavi himself and his government, but also to the United States and its leaders including presidents Nixon and Carter.

I won’t narrate the whole detailed history here although most of it was news to me. If you’re interested in a good rundown of Iran’s late 20^th-century political and social events I think you could do worse than read this book, or just chase down the story online.

That story in “high-level” outline: Shah Pahlavi as king of Iran ousted the prime minister in 1953 with the help of the United States and Britain, mostly for control of oil. Cleric Ayatollah Ruhollah Khomeini opposed the Shah and was exiled to Iraq in 1964 where he continued to advocate for Shia Muslim fundamentalism in Iran. A combination of high oil export prices and purchase of American weapons after World War II led to a “gold rush” economic bubble in Iran in the 1970s. The Shah’s push for a secular “western” society developed as well (mainly in the cities) with religious opposition suppressed by secret police. In the late 1970s through dissimulation and misunderstanding by the United States, Khomeini with supporters gathered popular support and moved to France, then back to Iran and successfully and violently established a new dictatorial religious government with himself as supreme leader.

Mr. Anderson is a successful journalist and author and his style and approach is engaging and convincing. I hope I can get away with, in place of a fuller history recitation, providing a few of my notes from reading the book:

It was Nixon and Kissinger who in 1972 visited the Shah and by assuring military and economic support and trade triggered the “gold rush” of the next few years. The reciprocal arrangement with the Shah then and subsequently was often driven by American preoccupation with the cold war and fear of communism. American officials including president Carter were provided with a steady flow of reassurance about Iran’s loyalty and the Shaw’s invincibility. This was never understood and/or explored in practical terms. “…since the CIA’s primary charter is to answer queries put to it by other branches of the American government, it could hardly be expected to find answers to questions not asked.”

It was exceptional in the mid 20^th-century for American diplomats in Iran ever to have spoken to a citizen of the country who didn’t work in the embassy, and to speak any Farsi. Even once knowing they faced opposition, one diplomat remarked “You don’t try to set up meetings with people who want to kill you.”

The culture of defence contracts during the 1970s was extremely corrupt, with contractors gaining access through bribes and fixer fees. The Shah also found he could silence malcontents through financial offers.

Iranian Muslim religious observation focused on anniversaries and rituals. As the enthusiasm for revolution developed, it was both often on special religious days that mass demonstrations occurred, but also when those days passed without a protest the Shah and the Americans presumed everything was fine.

Khomeini had an Iran-born American-trained physician Ebrahim Yasdi as his closest advisor. This man understood American culture and repeatedly presented Khomeini as either moderate or anti-communist. When Khomeini was in France before returning to Iran, Yasdi translated in interviews with American journalists and officials. These translations were not always accurate. And when Khomeini “muttered something incendiary” Yasdi often didn’t translate it at all.

There were bewildering reversals of fortune during the leadup to the change of government in 1979. Air Force equipment technicians for example started an armed conflict with the Iranian military and distributed thousands of stolen firearms to Khomeini loyalists. The well-equipped but poorly-staffed Iranian Army met with an American General and appeared to be in a position to suppress opposition, but this never happened.

As the inevitability and nature of the change of government that was going to happen in 1979 became clear in preceding years, thousands of mostly wealthy Christians, Bahais and others left the country with their families and all the money they could take with them.

On two occasions realistic proposals were made to assassinate Khomeini. In one,“Hussein, adopting the robust approach to problem-solving for which he would become famous… offered to liquidate Khomeini as a personal favor to the Shah, only to have the Iranian leader demur.” An “American general let his Iranian colleagues vent their fears and frustrations, but perhaps it was a positive sign that one of them finally displayed a bit of problem-solving initiative: Why not kill Khomeini?” Of course they didn’t.

It’s hard to overstate Khomeini’s radical Islam and its position in post-revolution Iran. He said about the judicial process for example: “Human rights dictate that we should have killed the “opposition” right from the first day, because they were criminals and it was clear they were criminals…. All one need do with criminals is to establish their identity and once this has been established, they should be killed straight away.” When he was in exile he sent home hundreds of audiotapes promoting theocracy. After he assumed control people in opposition were summarily hanged or shot. Khomeini became “God on earth.”

There were several dramatic and violent events during the leadup to the change of government. “Black Friday” was a confrontation between protesters and the military where a disputed number of protesters were killed. An unimaginably catastrophic fire in a theatre occurred when four unknown people blockaded the door and set fire to the building and 400 burned to death. Much later the attack on the American embassy and escape of some diplomats thanks to a group of Canadians, dramatized in the movie Argo, was typical of the new government’s attitude the United States.

In the end Shah Palavi had become increasingly isolated from reality through unquestioned authority, the use of violent secret police, and a culture of being surrounded by competing underlings who always told him what he wanted to hear. He had according to our author a tendency when confronted with a crisis to dither and to devolve real decision-making to others. He kept secret for many years his chronic lymphocytic leukemia and refused examination and treatment except by French specialists who were flown in many times a year. He died in Cairo Egypt in July 1980 after finally being treated in the United States and then suffering a botched operation in Egypt.

***

My sampling of features of this book’s focus on the failure of the American-supported Shah is piecemeal, but reading about the bewildering and bewildered tangle of events leading to the situation in Iran today encouraged my natural scepticism. No way is it unique in history for monstrous events like violent changes of government, wars, and political mass murders to occur through happenstance, misunderstanding, weakness and stupidity of people in power, and denial of things that are obviously happening or going to happen.

Iran’s recent history suggests to me that a partial and unreliable understanding in high places as well as among most people of what’s going on in our world may be more usual than we imagine. There are all sorts of conceivable disasters occupying people’s minds at any time. But it seems to me that when something really harmful happens it often hasn’t been widely predicted and isn’t caused by anything that could have been foreseen and might have been prevented, except in retrospect. For whichever group of ordinary people is directly involved something just goes wrong and then quite suddenly they are in a different, confusing and dangerous place.

It’s hard not to wonder what’s next. I suspect there are enough nightmare scenarios around that one of them may prove to be prophetic. But which one? Collapse of the world economy? AI malign escape from human control? Nuclear war? Inundation of major cities by climate change? I imagine that characteristics of human nature like economic self-interest, suspicion of others unlike ourselves, belief that an ideology is exclusively real, optimism about technology and belief that we, or someone, has access to full understanding may be leading us away from figuring out what we should and shouldn’t be preparing for.

On the bright side, reading books like this one just might encourage our healthy scepticism and cooperation. 8.8/8.0