The Iranian Revolution and Modernization

To many observers in the West, events in Iran leading up to the revolution in 1979 took a mystifying and seemingly irrational course. In this National Security Essay, Jack Miklos, a foreign service officer who served in several key assignments in Iran, discusses the Iranian Revolution. He looks at theories of social modernization as applied to the history and culture of Iran, and then focuses in depth on the effects of land reform and the pervasive influence of what he identifies as the Iranian national character. His purpose is to examine social science theorizing with a case study of US-aided modernization which exploded in a traditional counter-reformation. Based on firsthand observations as well as theory, the author offers insights into how modernization may have contributed to the Iranian Revolution. These insights can broaden our understanding of nations culturally much different from our own and perhaps help us appreciate the complexity of national behavior and some of its determinants.