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How Did Muslim Radicals Gain Power Over Iran?

How Did Muslim Radicals Gain Power Over Iran?

Last updated on: March 17, 2026 at 10:36 am by Richard Ostling

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How Did Muslim Radicals Gain Power Over Iran? 2026-03-17T10:36:33-04:00 Richard Ostling

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Tehran street demonstrations have afflicted both Shah and Ayatollah | Photo by Hosein Charbaghi on Unsplash

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With the American-Israeli war on Iran monopolizing the news – and driving up prices at the gas pump – the full context requires understanding of the surprising 1979 Islamist revolution when the nation lurched from tyranny under Shah Mohammad Reza Pahlavi (and his father before him) to tyranny under the Ayatollah Ruhollah Khomeini. Ever since, a theocracy based upon his radical version of Islam has oppressed the long-suffering Iranians and vexed the Mideast and West with fear of terrorism and future nuclear weapons.

Scott Anderson’s book “King of Kings,” published last August, will probably stand as the best available explanation of how this unique religious faction managed to grasp control of a pivotal nation with a population of 93 million. www.penguinrandomhouse.com/books/690562/king-of-kings-by-scott-anderson The subtitle sums up some conclusions: “The Iranian Revolution: A Story of Hubris, Delusion and Catastrophic Miscalculation.” What follows below is largely based upon his meticulous month-by-month, then day-by-day, account of what happened and why.

Anderson emphasizes America’s longstanding reliance upon the Shah’s regime as a key Mideast ally and a bulwark against a supposed threat from Soviet Communist subversion that was consistently overblown. He lacerates the Jimmy Carter Administration and the “deep state” for ignorance, neglect, confusion, hesitation, disagreement, miscommunication and cover-ups. U.S. officials on the case were bound to be baffled or outfoxed when, for example, hardly any were fluent in Iran’s Farsi language.

Wishful Thinking

One of Anderson’s central figures is Ebrahim Yazdi, a devout Muslim immigrant from Iran and onetime pharmacology teacher at the Baylor College of Medicine in Texas. Before the revolution, he served as Khomeini’s close advisor and English translator, and was the first foreign minister of the Islamic Republic. He played a key role in the wishful thinking that led U.S. officials and reporters to hope Khomeini might be somewhat moderate and operate as a mere religious figurehead. Hardly anyone researched his innovative theory on clergy autocracy or years of sermons full of hatred toward Jews, the West, and modern life. Yazdi broke with the ayatollah when he endorsed the outrageous seizure of the U.S. embassy staff as hostages. In later years, Yazdi was in and out of prison for dissenting and deeply regretted his pivotal support for the ayatollah.

To be fair, the Americans faced an unprecedented mess with no road maps. In retrospect, Anderson’s material suggests, it’s quite likely that no U.S. exertions could have prevented Khomeini’s triumph, even though the idea seemed preposterous until close to the time it actually happened. All that makes this book required 2026 reading for tacticians within Donald Trump’s National Security Council team, his Defense/War and State Departments, and the news media.

More than maneuvers and failings by the Americans, what ultimately mattered in 1979 was the nature of the Shah’s regime, and the nature of Iran.

First, the Shah. Paradoxically, he was both too weak and too strong. Weak because at the pivotal moment in the rebellion against his reign, he and his vacillating generals could not bring themselves to carry out the full military takeover and mass slaughter that might possibly have beaten the Islamists and preserved the hated monarchy for a while.

No Moral Qualms

By contrast, the Islamic Republic had no moral qualms about far outdoing the Shah’s oppression. They broke promises to avoid vendettas, ran absurd kangaroo courts under a “hanging judge,” and madly dispatched democratic critics, servants of the Shah (regardless of guilt), and innocent bystanders to prison, torture chambers and firing squads. Such tyranny has never ceased. Estimates from inside Iran say the regime’s Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps, Quds Force, and Basij militias were fully willing to kill 30,000 or more demonstrators in just two days during the sweeping January 2026 uprising against the brutal, incompetent and hugely unpopular clergy-led regime.

On the other hand, the Shah was too strong. His command over all aspects of public life meant his power-brokers became oblivious to the people’s deep dissatisfaction with conditions, or if they knew this were incapable of telling the truth to the ruler until it was too late. Faced with continual unrest, the Shah time and again considered some form of cautiously representative government but never followed through. He left the SAVAK secret police free to impose arbitrary punishments and deaths pretty much at will. This suppressed even mild whispered criticisms as universal resentment smoldered.

As always occurs with tyranny, the Shah’s inner circle came to consist of timorous toadies unable to speak truth. The ruler was increasingly uninformed and cut off from a citizenry that were deprived of the means to express problems except for mounting public demonstrations with the potential to turn violent. Matters worsened in the 1970s when lavish oil revenues sparked spending sprees that widened the gap between rich and poor and added hostility, especially among youths who flocked to the capital of Iran in search of jobs.

The Shi’a Factor

Then there was a powerful religious factor. Iran is the only nation dominated by Islam’s Shi’a branch, as opposed to the Sunni branch that encompasses the vast majority of the world’s Muslims. The resentful Shi’a population consequently has suffered discrimination throughout history. Shi’ism practices distinctly passionate traditions, including mass public demonstrations on various religious anniversaries. Moreover, it anticipates a golden age upon the apocalyptic return and rule by the hidden Imam.

As a ranking ayatollah, Khomeini enjoyed a mystical bond with believers that did not disappear when the Shah sent him into long exile in Iraq over harsh political opposition. He retained contacts and influence inside Iran with clerics and religious foundations that provided a ready-made network to undermine the Shah when the time came.

The Shah’s zeal to modernize – and thus secularize — Iran left no room for the powerful religious sentiment among his subjects. He never bothered to consider how to personally exemplify, respect and accommodate Islam as his nation’s leader. Consider just one of Anderson’s countless details. The Shah’s extraordinarily lavish celebration of the 2,500th anniversary of the Persian monarchy in 1971 not only fomented hostility from impoverished people but also offended the famously teetotaling Muslim populace by importing 25,000 bottles of fine wine to fuel the festivities.

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