The Iranian Revolution • 373Imagine the revolutionary potential of a growing army of unemployed
(or underemployed) intellectuals concentrated in Tehran. SAVAK watched
dissidents, censored their writings, and imprisoned thousands. Amnesty
International reported that many jailed artists, writers, and ulama were tor¬
tured, mutilated, and even killed. As for the peasants, the White Revolution
gave few of them any share of the great estates. Its rural cooperatives did
not provide seeds, fertilizer, tools, or draft animals to the farmers who most
needed them. Historically a grain exporter, Iran became a net importer, as
agribusiness firms turned farmlands into fields of fruits and vegetables to
sell to Europe. Farmers flocked to the cities to seek lucrative factory jobs.
Corruption spread among government employees and contractors, who
opposed the White Revolution's aims but tried to enrich themselves and
their families. All envied the thousands of American advisers, who were im¬
ported by the shah's regime and rewarded with princely wages.
The shah's opponents, especially Iranian students in Western universi¬
ties, often portrayed him as an authoritarian dictator or a puppet of US im¬
perialism. His ambitions were indeed presumptuous. He dreamt of raising
Iran's industrial output to the level of Italy or France by 1990. He assem¬
bled a huge armory of guns, tanks, and planes, hardly enough to stop a hy¬
pothetical Soviet invasion of his country but adequate to placate his elite
officers, to cow his civilian critics, and to make Iran the policeman of the
Persian Gulf after Britain withdrew in 1971. The shah revealed his megalo¬
mania in the elaborate ceremonies for the coronation of himself and his
wife in 1967 and for the 2,500th anniversary of the Iranian monarchy in
1971 (at a reported cost of $200 million). Although the shah deserves a
share of the blame for the failure of his White Revolution, other factors
contributed as well, including the following: (1) Iran's bureaucratic elite
had less experience with westernizing reform than did those of Turkey and
Egypt, and it faced greater resistance from traditional leaders such as the
rural landlords, tribal chiefs, bazaar merchants, and ulama; (2) the bur¬
geoning oil revenues created more wealth than the economy could absorb;
(3) both the traditional elites and those individuals or groups that rode the
oil boom to power became divided and corrupt; and (4) materialist values
challenged religious belief among all social classes.
Although Western observers knew about these problems, they tended to
play down the domestic opposition to the shah. In fact, US Embassy per¬
sonnel were forbidden to meet with politicians from Mosaddiq's National
Front, even though they were milder than the shah's truly strong oppo¬
nents. The vociferous ones were the Iranian students abroad; they were
discounted as inexperienced, infiltrated by SAVAK agents, and often too