How Iran’s 1979 religious revolution shaped today’s protests and global politics

Iran is once again convulsed by mass protests. From women defying compulsory veiling laws to young Iranians openly challenging clerical authority, the demonstrations rocking the Islamic Republic reflect a society straining against a regime that has ruled through repression, religious authority, and revolutionary myth for more than four decades. While today’s protests are driven by immediate grievances—economic stagnation, corruption, and the suffocating reach of the state—they are also the latest chapter in a much longer story about how Iran’s political order came to be, and why it remains so brittle. To understand the stakes of the current unrest, and mass arrests and killing of thousands of protestors, it is essential to revisit the Iranian Revolution of 1979, not as a simple uprising against dictatorship, but as the first successful religious counter-revolution of the modern era; rejecting liberalism, socialism, and secular nationalism alike. The Hub spoke with author and veteran war correspondent Scott Anderson late last year to unpack how that revolution unfolded, why it surprised both Iranians and Western governments, and how its legacy echoes through Iran’s current moment of crisis. His latest book is King of Kings: The Iranian Revolution: A Story of Hubris, Delusion and Catastrophic Miscalculation. Here are five key takeaways from the conversation: 1. The shah’s fatal contradictions undermined his regime: Despite his brilliance and modernization efforts, Shah Mohammad Reza Pahlavi’s insecurity, reliance on sycophants, and perception as an American lackey fatally weakened his legitimacy among Iranians. 2. Economic boom and bust fueled revolutionary sentiment: The oil-driven prosperity of the mid-1970s raised expectations dramatically, but when the economy overheated and crashed, millions of unemployed young men turned to religion as their one constant. 3. American intelligence failures were catastrophic: Anderson found that a massive U.S. diplomatic mission in Tehran involved virtually no domestic intelligence gathering, relying instead on the Shah’s secret police while ignoring warnings from Farsi-speaking diplomats. 4. Khomeini was underestimated by everyone: Western-educated Iranian intellectuals, Marxists, and American officials all dismissed the elderly Ayatollah Ruhollah Khomeini as a useful figurehead, failing to recognize his ambition and cunning until too late. 5. The revolution pioneered modern religious nationalism: Iran’s Islamic revolution served as a template for religious nationalist movements, which have since emerged across all major world religions, from Christian nationalism in America to Hindu nationalism in India. The shah’s fatal contradictions undermined his regime The shah of Iran embodied profound contradictions that ultimately contributed to his downfall. “He was brilliant. He was vain, horribly insecure, and surrounded, progressively surrounded himself more and more with sycophants and existed in this kind of echo chamber,” Anderson explained. This isolation from reality proved devastating as revolutionary sentiment grew. Most damaging was the shah’s image as an American puppet as he desperately sought American support. “He was seen as an American lackey by his own people. He was referred to as the American shah,” Anderson noted, tracing this perception back to 1953 when the CIA helped restore him to power. Economic boom and bust fueled revolutionary sentiment Iran’s oil boom in the mid-1970s created what Anderson called “the great civilization,” with the shah invoking ancient Persian emperors like Darius and Cyrus. But the rapid economic expansion proved unsustainable. “The economy got superheated, overheated. And within about a year and a half, it had gone into something of a recession,” Anderson said. The economic collapse hit hardest among the countless young men who had migrated from rural areas seeking opportunity. “When the economic malaise set in, you had all these millions of especially young men in the cities who are now jobless or marginally employed. And religion was the one constant thing they could fall back on,” Anderson explained. This created a volatile mix of dashed expectations and religious fervor that would fuel the revolution. American intelligence failures were catastrophic Despite maintaining one of the world’s largest diplomatic missions in Tehran, American intelligence gathering on the ground was virtually non-existent. “The CIA station in Tehran was one of the largest CIA stations in the world. No domestic intelligence at all,” Anderson revealed. The station focused exclusively on spying on the Soviet Union, obtaining domestic intelligence solely from the shah’s secret police. Cultural blind spots compounded the problem. “Probably five or six out of those 300 [American diplomats] actually spoke the local language,” Anderson explained. When a Farsi-speaking former Peace Corps volunteer repeatedly warned superiors about growing anti-American and anti-shah sentiment, not only was he ignored, but he was reprimanded and eventually transferred away from Tehran. This willful blindness reflected a broader false narrative. “There was this narrative in successive American administrations that the shah is secure, he’s beloved by his people, and let’s not go looking for problems where they don’t exist,” Anderson said. Khomeini was underestimated by everyone Ayatollah Khomeini’s rise exemplified how revolutionary figures can be catastrophically misjudged. “He was the guy in the room that everyone discounted,” Anderson said. “He was ferociously ambitious but did not seem it; he just seemed this old guy sitting under an apple tree.” The Carter administration, fixated on Cold War concerns, was reassured when Khomeini’s circle emphasized its anti-communist stance. “Carter, in the late day,s kind of famously or infamously said, ‘If Khomeini takes over, it’s not the worst thing that can happen to us.’ Little did he know…,” Anderson noted. Khomeini’s 15-year exile had kept him free from the shah’s patronage system, making him appear “pure” and “unsullied” compared to other ayatollahs who had accepted government money. The revolution pioneered modern religious nationalism Anderson argues that the Iranian Revolution was the first religious counterrevolution the world witnessed in the 20th century and served as a harbinger of contemporary religious nationalism worldwide. “You can see the carry on from the Iranian revolution, religious nationalism now around the world,” he said, citing Christian nationalists in the United States, Jewish settlers in the West Bank, Hindu nationalists in India, and Buddhist nationalists in Sri Lanka. The revolution represented a broader anti-modernity movement that was “bubbling up in the 1970s throughout the world.” As a war correspondent who has spent most of his career covering the Middle East, Anderson sees “the traces of what happened in Iran throughout the region and again, in this kind of religious militancy.” This commentary draws on a Hub video. It was edited with the use of AI. Full program here.