Why Did Israel Strike Iran Now?

Sixth, the Shah's reforms swelled the size of the two classes that posed the greatest challenges to his monarchy: the intelligentsia, and the urban working class. Their resentment of the Shah also grew, as they were now stripped of organizations that had represented them in the past and given them avenues for status, such as political parties, prof

This is not an exhaustive list, but you can see the pattern: An elitist, pro-Western, anti-Islamic leader, propped up by the US, initially succeeded in modernizing the economy, but hit some roadblocks and didn’t act decisively, letting the opposition take over.

Ninth, because the Shah didn’t have riot police, he frequently deployed the army to stop demonstrations, but the army was not prepared for that, and sometimes demonstrators were killed. This fired people up against the regime, but Pahlavi didn’t want to overuse force. The result was a deployment of the army who couldn’t use its weapons to quell dis

The Shah threw himself into a modernization and Westernization of the country, the white revolution: He carried out land reform where land was redistributed to farmers, landlords were compensated for their land by shares of privatized state-owned factories, transport networks were expanded, dam and irrigation projects carried out, malaria eradicate

In the 19th Century, the British and Russia fought for dominance in Central Asia. One of the theaters of this fight was Iran, and Britain generally prevailed. It used this power to create a monopoly on Iranian oil, kept most of the profits, and supported friendly governments, like the 1921 Pahlavi coup d’état, a pro-Western military man. In 1941, d