Rebellion vs revolution

On Feb. 1, 1979, Ayatollah Ruhollah Khomeini arrived in Tehran after 15 years of exile in Turkey, Iraq, and a little village outside Paris. Millions of Iranians saw him as a spiritual man who would usher in democracy and deliver a better economic life. They welcomed him. Khomeini and his supporters delivered neither. Instead, they gradually transformed the Shah's authoritarian, secular monarchy into a totalitarian theocracy.

- RAMIN JAHANBEGLOO

From the earliest days of the Islamic Republic of Iran, Iranians found themselves confronted with a political theology that defined the ideological contours of the power struggle in their society. The people's sovereignty and capacity for collective action were eclipsed by an uncompromising, monolithic order embodied in Khomeini's leadership and institutionalized through his doctrine of Velayat-e Faqih (the guardianship of the Islamic jurist), which concentrated authority in the hands of a supreme religious jurist.

The doctrine of Velayat-e Faqih allowed Khomeini to supersede the political views of other government officials and the popular will itself. The constitution was thus wrested from the Iranian people and appropriated by a ruling cadre that imposed its own interpretation of Islamic law upon them. Blind obedience to the Supreme Leader's will transformed violence against victims into patriotism and a righteous struggle against “corruptors on earth.”