Pre-Mamdani Election Reading: King of Kings

King of Kings: The Iranian Revolution: A Story of Hubris, Delusion and Catastrophic Miscalculation by Scott Anderson is a new-ish book that is relevant to the upcoming election of New York Mayor Zohran Mamdani (one more month!).

In both the opening and closing sections, the book explains that terrorism has nothing to do with Islam, the Religion of Peace. The world’s terrorists are Christian, white, Hindu, and/or Jewish. The pages in between describes Iranian Muslims burning alive other Iranian Muslims, in the name of Islam, for the un-Islamic act of going to the movies (Cinema Rex fire, in which hundreds died).

As with Mamdani backers, elite progressive Iranians who had thrived under the Shah were eager supporters of the Islamic Revolution proposed by Ayatollah Ruhollah Khomeini (they imagined that he would defer to credentialed elites when he picked ministers). Part of their motivation seems to have been jealousy that members of the Shah’s inner circle were getting far richer than they were (kind of like elite New Yorkers who aren’t in rent-stabilized apartments are jealous of those who are and New Yorkers who earn $300,000/year are envious of those who earn $30 million/year). Like Andrew Cuomo, Shah Mohammad Reza Pahlavi, last in the line of 2,500 years of monarchy, was fond of partying with young females. Another parallel is that the current U.S. government is accused of being disorganized while the author describes the Carter administration as exhibiting “colossal incompetence”. The author blames Jimmy Carter and friends for Iran becoming an Islamic dictatorship, rather than transitioning to a post-Shah parliamentary democracy, and also for the U.S. Embassy being held hostage for more than a day. The book describes Ayatollah Khomeini’s initial reaction to the embassy takeover as a direction to get the students out immediately. After Jimmy Carter signaled a willingness to negotiate rather than threatening a traditional military response to what the author describes as an “act of war”, the Ayatollah changed his mind and told every Iranian to support the “students”. Carter was, therefore, the cause of the 444-day “crisis” (the world’s longest prior to the Maskachusetts, California, and New York governors’ states of emergency for coronapanic?). Carter eventually transferred to Iran $25 billion in today’s mini-dollars (previously frozen assets) to secure the hostages’ release.

The author says that American Democrats were happy to see the Shah go and the Ayatollahs take over partly because of false information about the Shah promulgated by non-profit organizations and U.S. media. Amnesty International, today famous for its anti-Israel propaganda, said that the Shah was holding 100,000 political prisoners when, in act, the number was less than 3,000. The Shah and agencies under his command had executed roughly 100 opponents of his regime over the years, but U.S. media reported that thousands of Iranians opposed to the Shah were being killed. (The book notes that thousands of Iranians were ultimately killed for their political views, but nearly all of them were killed by the Islamic government that took over from the Shah.)

Iran is a fascinating case study in how far an empire can fall. The Persians were empire builders in the same league as the Romans and Chinese. They got taken over by Arabs during the Muslim Conquests and lost their religion (Zoroastrianism) and could no longer use their own language for religious purposes. After about 1400 years of Persian-style government, which was tending towards westernization, combined with Arab-originated religion they ended up with an Arab-originated government (Islamic theocracy). The Arab-inspired theocracy took over shortly after the Pahlavis and friends celebrated 2,500 of Persian Empire. Today the non-Arab Iranians are the primary military supporters of Arabs (since the 1960s, calling themselves “Palestinians”) fighting to destroy the Zionist entity and they suffer much of the Israeli military action formerly directed at Arab states such as Egypt and Jordan.

The Islamic Revolution in Iran is a fascinating study in how westernized elites who’ve been huge beneficiaries of a system can turn against it.

Fun fact: Shah Mohammad Reza Pahlavi was a qualified Boeing 707 pilot who often flew left seat until the plane was in cruise. Not-to-fun fact: Mohammad Reza Pahlavi was diagnosed with lymphoma in 1974 and died 1.5 years after fleeing from the Islamic Revolution in Iran. In other words, the Iranians who hated the Shah needn’t have done anything to get rid of him other than wait a couple of years.

Related:

• Ebrahim Yazdi, U.S.-educated founder of the Muslim Students Association, who became the interpreter for Ayatollah Khomeini in Paris for the foreign journalists who showed up unable to understand Farsi and who didn’t bring their own interpreters (Yazdi considerably softened Khomeini’s anti-West/anti-Jew message while interpreting). Yazdi imagined a progressive Shah-free future for Iran with an Islamic flavor and ended up falling out of favor with the government of Mullahs. He was ultimately imprisoned.
• Reza Pahlavi, the Shah’s son, has been living in the D.C. suburbs and received pilot training from the USAF (his web site)

Grok’s attempt at showing Mayor Mamdani in an Iranian ayatollah’s robes:

Ayatollah Khomeini: