Frederick Douglass once said, “If there is no struggle, there is no progress” (“Frederick Douglass”.) This quote perfectly paints the picture for what occurred during the 1979 Iranian revolution. There were many struggles during that time, and clearly, they made much progress. Their problems were many, including poor leadership, a sub-par economy, and the control of their people. The poor leadership came from the Shah of the time, and he made bad decisions pertaining to wasteful spending and limiting the people. Since these problems arose, the citizens took action, taking their basic freedoms back and attempting to create a new and better country in Iran. They might have thought they fixed everything, but many outsiders say their decisions …show more content…
His rule took a turn south because of westernization. He want to westernize Iran as much as he could, which he did. He wanted to become the United States of the Middle East by growing their economy and making classes more powerful than others. Because of this, a new figure took rise, who was Ayatollah Khomeini (Yaghmaia 8). Ayatollah Khomeini was born in 1902 and became the main face of the Iranian revolution. His ideas stood very well with the citizens who were not happy with the current regime in control. His radical ideas and anti shah speeches gathered many people and created many riots in Iran. These riots grew bigger and were occurring on a daily basis. Because of this, the Shah arrested him. It felt like this could have ended the revolution, but it just made it stronger (“The Iranian Revolution” …show more content…
Iran was invaded by Iraq, and short after the invasion began, the Iraqi forces already occupied a large amount of land. This led to a counterattack by Iran, which ultimately almost lead to the end of the war. They didn’t agree, and the Iran-Iraq war continued for another seven years (“Iran-Iraq War”). There were many effects of the Iran-Iraq war that came directly from the Iranian Revolution. One is it strengthened and continued the reign of Ayatollah Khomeini, who which many still saw as better as the Shah, but still had the same bad habits as him. This eventually kept their economy not great, and wasteful spending was occurring, just like from the Shah before and during the Iranian Revolution. Their economy was also hurt because of the oil industry. Many of their oil fields were continuously targeted by Iraqis. This allowed them to make less oil than normal, and less money overall