economic dream. Within two years, Iran was reeling under
crushing inflation—40 percent annually. Iran did not have the
skilled workforce to stoke industrial expansion. Foreigners
had to be brought in, and they commanded higher salaries than
Iranians, which worsened the inflation cycle. More than sixty
thousand foreign industrial and military advisors and workers
were in Iran by 1977.
Rather than a moneyed paradise, Iran quickly became a
quagmire of problems. Khomeini was correct in his charges of
corruption within the Pahlavi government. With a huge, oil-
generated income to spend, some administrators used it wrongly,
seeing to personal rather than national interests. People in many
walks of life—scholars and laborers, educators and religious
leaders, those in poverty and even some of the wealthy—became
unhappy with the state of their nation. But they felt helpless.
Although Iran technically had a multiparty political system,
the shah held firm control. Opposition groups were sharply
divided. There was the National Front (NF), which had defied
government assaults during the unrest of the early 1960s. But
many university radicals scowled at the NF, deeming it too tame
to bring about a revolution.
There was also the Communist party, Tudeh. It was not
particularly popular in Iran, for the simple reason that atheistic
communism does not fit in with Islamic fundamentalism. Nor did
the Tudeh set well with Shah Pahlavi when it showed support
toward Prime Minister Mosaddiq during the upheaval of the
early 1950s. The Tudeh in time was largely subdued by the
SAVAK, the government’s secret security force.
Radical students organized political movements of their own
and engaged not only in demonstrations but in urban terrorism.
One organization that emerged in 1971 from a union of earlier
groups was the Fedai-ye Khalq-e Iran. Its primary interest
was not Islam but Marxism, in which communism is rooted.
Another, organized in the mid-1960s, was the Mojahedin-e
Khalq-e Iran. It began as a militant Islamic organization but in
the mid-1970s splintered into two groups: Islam-oriented and
The Shah’s Government Collapses 45