Mohammad Reza Pahlavi, last Shahanshah of Iran, dreamed of a “Great Civilization.” In his pursuit of this, he led a number of reforms, bringing Iran into the modern age while also fostering reverence of Iran’s pre-Islamic past, a time where the Persians had united the world under their rule.
His dream, however, did not come to pass under his rule. His reforms had been coupled with political repression, and the brutality of his SAVAK secret police was too much to bear. In 1979, Iranians rose up and replaced the Shah with clerics led by Ayatollah Khomeini. Khomeini, a fiercely pious Shi’ite, proved to be an extremely conservative force in Iranian cultural life, undoing much of Pahlavi’s opening to the West. Khomeini, a complicated figure, also liberalized politics and instituted more elements of democracy into the Iranian system. He, and after his death other Shi’ite clerics, were nevertheless in total control of Iran.
Yet, even as Iran seemed to be shying away from Pahlavi’s dream of an ascendant, active Iran, the influence of the Iranian state only grew outside its borders. After repelling the invasion of Iraqi dictator Saddam Hussein shortly after the Islamic Republic’s birth, the Iranians were delighted to see him toppled in 2003. Roughly a decade later, with America retreating from the Middle East, Iran stepped up to fill the vacuum.
Iran is now intimately tied to a number of Middle Eastern states, including Iraq, Syria, and Lebanon. Iran has begun to form a core of power of itself, which is challenging the pro-Western group of Egypt and Saudi Arabia. This “Middle Eastern Cold War” is currently being fought as a proxy war in Yemen, with the Saudis and Iranians vying for control of the geopolitically critical nation.
Thus, Iran is ascendant once more, its influence reaching far beyond its borders. As the 40th anniversary of the Revolution approaches, the Iranians have embraced a syncretic vision of their nation, the glory and strength sought by Mohammed Reza Pahlavi, and the Islamic jurisprudence and zealotry of Khomeini. This duality is not out of the ordinary for Iran – from the duality of the good Ahura Mazda and the evil Angra Mainyu in Zoroastrianism, or of the Arab-influenced Islamic religion and the aboriginal Persian culture, the Iranians have a culture of blending. It is thus appropriate that the new “Great Civilization” would be no different.