"The first Iranian moment was the reign of the Pahlavi monarchy, which began in 1925 with Reza Khan Pahlavi, an army officer, being instated to the throne and ended in 1979 with the outbreak of the Iranian Revolution. It was built around a particular vision of Iran: secular, modernising, and firmly anchored in the dominion of the Western-led camp during the Cold War."
"Central to the Pahlavi project was a deliberate attempt to anchor the monarchy's legitimacy not in Islam, but in the Persian imperial past. Mohammad Reza Shah Pahlavi consciously linked his rule to the ancient Achaemenid Empire the dynasty of Cyrus and Darius that forged the first great Persian civilisation in the fifth century BC."
"The grandiose celebrations of 1971 at the ruins of the ancient capital of Persepolis, marking 2,500 years of Persian monarchy, were the most theatrical expression of this claim: a declaration that the Pahlavi throne was not a modern construction but the inheritor of an unbroken imperial tradition."
Iran's modern history divides into two distinct civilisational identities. The first, the Pahlavi monarchy (1925-1979), pursued secular modernization and Western alignment, positioning Iran as a Cold War ally and regional power. The shah deliberately anchored legitimacy in Persian imperial heritage rather than Islam, exemplified by the 1971 Persepolis celebrations commemorating 2,500 years of Persian monarchy. This strategy attempted to place the monarchy above religious authority, linking it to the ancient Achaemenid Empire of Cyrus and Darius. The second transformation began with the 1979 Iranian Revolution, establishing an Islamic Republic with fundamentally different civilisational foundations. Today, with the Islamic Republic experiencing unprecedented strain, Iran appears positioned for a third major transformation.
#iranian-political-history #pahlavi-monarchy #persian-imperial-identity #cold-war-geopolitics #islamic-republic-transformation
Read at www.aljazeera.com
Unable to calculate read time
Collection
[
|
...
]