A Study Guide

compiled by Roberta McNair

for A Place in the World

California Film Institute

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Table of ContentsAbout the Film...........................................................................................................................................3

Persepolis (2007) 96 minutes................................................................................................................3Awards..............................................................................................................................................3Directors' Vision...............................................................................................................................4Review of Persepolis........................................................................................................................4

About the Filmmakers................................................................................................................................6Marjane Satrapi.................................................................................................................................6Vincent Paronnaud............................................................................................................................7

About Iran..................................................................................................................................................8Persepolis..........................................................................................................................................8Modern Iran....................................................................................................................................101779 to 1979...................................................................................................................................10The Islamic Revolution..................................................................................................................14

About Tehran and Iranian Society............................................................................................................17The Upper Classes..........................................................................................................................17The Middle Classes........................................................................................................................17The Working Class..........................................................................................................................18The Lower Class.............................................................................................................................19Traditional Attitudes Toward Segregation of the Sexes.................................................................19Impact of Western Ideas on the Role of Women............................................................................20Female Participation in the Work Force.........................................................................................20

About Political Prisoners.........................................................................................................................21Questions for Research and Discussion...................................................................................................26

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About the Film

Persepolis (2007) 96 minutes

Directors Vincent Paronnaud, Marjane Satrapi

Producers Xavier Rigault, Marc-Antoine Robert

Writers Marjane Satrapi (comic), VincentParonnaud (scenario)

Editor Stéphane Roche

Cast (Voices)

Chiara Mastroianni–Marjane 'Marji' Satrapi, as ateenager and a woman Catherine Deneuve–Mrs. Satrapi, Marjane's mother Danielle Darrieux–Marjane's grandmother Simon Abkarian–Mr. Satrapi, Marjane's father Gabrielle Lopes Benites–Marjane as a child François Jerosme–Uncle Anouche

Storyline

In 1970s Iran, Marjane 'Marji' Statrapi watchesevents through her young eyes and her idealisticfamily of a long dream being fulfilled of the hatedShah's defeat in the Iranian Revolution of 1979.However as Marji grows up, she witnesses firsthand how the new Iran, now ruled by Islamicfundamentalists, has become a repressive tyrannyon its own.

With Marji dangerously refusing to remain silentat this injustice, her parents send her abroad toVienna to study for a better life. However, thischange proves an equally difficult trial with theyoung woman finding herself in a different cultureloaded with abrasive characters and profound

disappointments that deeply trouble her.

Even when she returns home, Marji finds thatboth she and homeland have changed too much. Shethen makes the heartbreaking decision to leave herhomeland for France, optimistic about her future,shaped indelibly by her past.

http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0808417/fullcredits#casthttp://www.sonyclassics.com/persepolis/main.html

Awards

80th Academy Awards

•Nominated: Best Animated Feature

65th Golden Globe Awards

•Nominated: Best Foreign Language Film

César Awards

•Won: Best First Work (Vincent Paronnaudand Marjane Satrapi)

•Won: Best Writing–Adaptation (VincentParonnaud and Marjane Satrapi)

•Nominated: Best Editing (Stéphane Roche)

•Nominated: Best Film

•Nominated: Best Music Written for a Film(Olivier Bernet)

•Nominated: Best Sound (Samy Bardet, EricChevallier and Thierry Lebon)

2007 Cannes Film Festival

•Tied: Jury Prize

•Nominated: Palme d'Or

2007 European Film Awards

•Nominated: Best Picture

2007 London Film Festival

•Southerland Trophy (Grand prize of thefestival)

2007 Vancouver International Film Festival

•Won: Rogers People's Choice Award forMost Popular International Film

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Persepolis_(film)#Awards http://www.sonyclassics.com/persepolis/

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Directors' Vision

Marjane Satrapi applied her art skills to creatingcomics (graphic novels) drawing from herexperiences growing up in Iran.

The Persepolis comics detail Satrapi's life duringthe war between Iran and Iraq. Persepolis depictsSatrapi's childhood in Iran, and Persepolis 2 depictsher high school years in Vienna, Austria, and herreturn to Iran where Satrapi attended college,married, and later divorced before moving toFrance, where she now lives.

Awards won by Persepolis 2 include theAngoulême International Comics Festival Prize forScenario in Angoulême, France, for its script and inVitoria, Spain, for its commitment againsttotalitarianism. It has been translated into English,Spanish, Portuguese, Italian, Greek, Swedish, andother languages, and has sold 1,500,000 copies.

When she decided to adapt her multi-partmagnum opus Persepolis into a film–alongsideFrench comic artist Vincent Paronnaud–in 2007, itmade sense to translate Satrapi's spare butexpressive drawings into animation.

Satrapi and Parannaud wrote the script together,after which they focused on the animation.Paronnaud concentrated on designing the décor andbackdrops, while Satrapi adapted the drawings fromher comics into guides for the animators to use.Rather than opt for computer-generated animationtechniques, the film used traditional, drawnanimation with individual cels. Though more timeconsuming and labor intensive, the result heldclosely to the feel and density of the publishedcomics.

http://newyork.timeout.com/arts-culture/film/1971985/toronto-q-a-marjane-satrapi-and-vincent-paronnaud http://twitchfilm.com/interviews/2007/12/persepolisinterview-with-vincent-paronnaud.php

Review of Persepolis

By Roger Ebert, January 17, 2008

I attended the Tehran Film Festival in 1972 andwas invited to the home of my guide and translatorto meet her parents and family. Over tea and elegantpastries, they explained proudly that Iran was a"modern" country, that they were devout Muslimsbut did not embrace the extremes of other Islamicnations, that their nation represented a new way.Whenever I read another story about the clericalrule that now grips Iran, I think of those people, andmillions of other Iranians like them, who do notagree with the rigid restrictions they live under,particularly the women. Iranians are no moremonolithic than we are, a truth not grasped by ourown zealous leader. Remember, on 9/11 there was ahuge candlelight vigil in Tehran in sympathy withus.

That was the Iran that Marjane Satrapi was borninto in 1969, and it was the Iran that ended in thelate 1970s with the fall and exile of the shah. Yes,his rule was dictatorial; yes, his secret police wereeverywhere and his opponents subjected to torture.But that was the norm in the Middle East and in anarc stretching up to the Soviet Union. At least mostIranians were left more or less free to lead the livesthey chose. Ironically, many of them believed thefall of the shah would bring more, not less,democracy.

Satrapi remembers the first nine or 10 years ofher life as a wonderful time. Surrounded by aloving, independently minded family, living in acomfortable time, she resembled teenagerseverywhere in her love for pop music, her interest infashion, her Nikes. Then it all changed. She and hermother and her feisty grandmother had to shroudtheir faces from the view of men. Makeup and otherforms of Western decadence were forbidden. At herage she didn't drink or smoke, but God save anywomen who did.

Satrapi, now living in Paris, told her life story intwo graphic novels, which became best sellers andhave now been made into this wondrous animatedfilm. The animation is mostly in black sand white,with infinite shades of gray and a few guestappearances, here and there, by colors. The style isdeliberately two-dimensional, avoiding the illusionof depth in current animation. This approach may

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sound spartan, but it is surprisingly involving,wrapping us in this autobiography that distills anepoch into a young women's life. Not surprisingly,the books have been embraced by smart teenagegirls all over the world, who find much they identifywith. Adolescence is fueled by universal desires andemotions, having little to do with governmentdecrees.

Marjane, voiced as a child by Gabrielle Lopes andas a teenager and adult by Chiara Mastroianni, is asprightly kid, encouraged in her rambunction by herparents (voiced by Catherine Deneuve and SimonAbkarian) and applauded by her outspokengrandmother (Danielle Darrieux). She dotes on thestories of her spellbinding Uncle Anouche (FrancoisJerosme), who has been in prison and sometimes inhiding, but gives her a vision of the greater world.

In her teens, with the Ayatollah Khomeini underfull steam, Iran turns into a hostile place for thespirits of those such as Marjane. The society shethought she lived in has disappeared, and with itmuch of her freedom as a woman to define herselfoutside of marriage and the fearful restrictions ofmen. Sometimes she fast-talks herself out of tightcorners, as when she is almost arrested for wearingmakeup, but it is clear to her parents that Marjanewill eventually attract trouble. They send her to livewith friends in Vienna.

Austria provides her with a radically differentsociety, but one she eventually finds impossible tolive in. She was raised with values that do not fitwith the casual sex and drug use she finds amongher contemporaries there, and after going a littlewild with rock 'n' roll and acting out, she doesn'tlike herself, is homesick, and returns to Iran. But itis even more inhospitable than she remembers. Sheis homesick for a nation that no longer exists.

In real life, Marjane Satrapi eventually found acongenial home in France. I imagine Paris offeredno less decadence than Vienna, but her experienceshad made her into a woman more sure of herselfand her values, and she grew into–well, the authorof books and this film, which dramatize someaningfully what her life has been like. For she isno heroine, no flag-waving idealist, no rebel, notalways wise, sometimes reckless, but with strongfamily standards.

It might seem that her story is too large for one98-minute film, but Persepolis tells it carefully,

lovingly and with great style. It is infinitely moreinteresting than the witless coming-of-age Westerngirls we meet in animated films; in spirit, ingumption, in heart, Marjane resembles someone likethe heroine is Juno–not that she is pregnant at 16, ofcourse. While so many films about coming of ageinvolve manufactured dilemmas, here is one about awoman who indeed does come of age, andmagnificently.

http://rogerebert.suntimes.com/apps/pbcs.dll/article?AID=/20080117/REVIEWS/801170305

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About the Filmmakers

Marjane Satrapi

Written work:

In French

•Persepolis (2000), Paris: L'Association

•Persepolis v2, (2001), L'Association

•Persepolis v3, (2002), L'Association

•Persepolis v4, (2003), L'Association

•Sagesses et malices de la Perse (2001), withLila Ibrahim-Ouali and Bahman Namwar-Motalg, Albin Michel

•Les monstres n'aiment pas la lune (2001),Nathan Jeunesse

•Ulysse au pays des fous (2001), with Jean-Pierre Duffour, Nathan Jeunesse

•Adjar (2002), Nathan Jeunesse

•Broderies (2003), L'Association

•Poulet aux prunes (2004), Paris: L'Association

•Le Soupir (2004), Bréal Jeunesse

In English

•"Persepolis" The Story of a Childhood (2003),New York: Pantheon Books

•"Persepolis" The Story of a Return v2, (2004),New York: Pantheon Books

•Embroideries (2005), Pantheon

•Chicken with Plums (2006), New York:Pantheon Books

•Monsters Are Afraid of the Moon (2006),Bloomsbury

•The Sigh (2011), Archaia

Films:

•Persepolis (2007), 2.4.7. Films, France 3Cinéma, Sony Picture Classics, and others

•Chicken with Plums (Poulet aux prunes)(2011), Celluloid Dreams in association withThe Manipulators, uFilm, Studio 37, Le Pacte,

Lorette Productions, Film(s), Arte FranceCinema, ZDF-Arte

Marjane Satrapi grew up in Tehran in a familywhich was involved with communist and socialistmovements in Iran prior to the Iranian Revolution.She attended the Lycée Français there andwitnessed, as a child, the growing suppression ofcivil liberties and the everyday-life consequences ofIranian politics, including the fall of the Shah, theearly regime of Ayatollah Ruhollah Khomeini, andthe first years of the Iran–Iraq War. She experiencedan Iraqi air raid and Scud missile attacks on Tehran.According to Persepolis, one Scud hit the housenext to hers, killing her friend.

Satrapi's family are of distant Iranian Azeri ancestryand are descendants of Nasser al-Din Shah, Shah ofPersia from 1848 until 1896. Satrapi said that "Butyou have to know the kings of the Qajar dynasty,they had hundreds of wives. They made thousandsof kids. If you multiply these kids by generationyou have, I don't know, 10-15,000 princes [andprincesses]. There's nothing extremely special aboutthat." She added that due to this detail, most Iranianfamilies would be, in the words of SimonHattenstone of The Guardian, "blue blooded."

In 1983, at the age of fourteen, Satrapi was sent toVienna, Austria by her parents to flee the Iranianregime. There she attended the Lycée Français deVienne. According to Persepolis, she stayed inVienna through her high school years, staying infriends' homes, but spent two months living on thestreets. After an almost deadly bout of pneumonia,she returned to Iran. She studied visualcommunication, eventually obtaining a master'sdegree from Islamic Azad University in Tehran.

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During this time, Satrapi went to numerous illegalparties hosted by her friends, where she met a mannamed Reza, a veteran of the Iran-Iraq War. Shemarried him at the age of 21, but divorced himroughly three years later. Satrapi then moved toStrasbourg, France.

Satrapi is married to Mattias Ripa, a Swedishnational. They have no children, and they live inParis. Apart from her native language Farsi, shespeaks English, Swedish, German, French, andItalian.

http://www.literalmagazine.com/es/archive-L13satrapi.php?section=hive&lang=arces http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Marjane_Satrapi http://en.qantara.de/Yearnings-for-a-Lost-Homeland/17541c18094i1p169/index.html

Marjane Satrapi: Graphic novels & her family's influencehttp://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7i9Vs97x7IU Persepolis 1 and 2: Islamic Revolution and the Iran-Iraq Warhttp://www.youtube.com/watch?v=UTFLTkbPbj4&feature=related Marjane Satrapi: "Persepolis” is a pro-Iranian humanist talehttp://www.youtube.com/watch?v=aMwfzqEqVLk&feature=relmfu Persepolis–Exclusive: Marjane Satrapihttp://www.youtube.com/watch?v=v9onZpQix_w&feature=related Axis of Evil–Persepolis, by Marjane Satrapihttp://www.youtube.com/watch?v=UjdBt5fBTEI Barbican Screentalk: Marjane Satrapihttp://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xZ6JVXvRfis&feature=related

Vincent Paronnaud

Vincent Paronnaud was born Pascal Stadler in LaRochelle, France, in 1970. For his work as a comicsartist, he is known as Winshluss. With MarjaneSatrapi, Paronnaud has made two films, Persepolis(2007) and Chicken with Plums (Poulet aux prunes)(2011).

WWorking regularly for revues and anthologies suchas Jade, Ferraille, or Comix 2000, Paronnaud asWinshluss has proven to be an amoral, macabrehumorist. With his expressionistic line and thesimplicity of his narration, Winshluss found his ownspace in the comics field. He is the author of thecomics "Monsieur Ferraille," "Pat Boon Happy End,""Super Negra," "Welcome to the Death Club,""Smart Monkey," and "Wizz et Buzz." He hasworked alone or in collaboration with scenarist Cizofor such publishers as Les Requins Marteaux, 6Pieds sous Terre, and Delcourt.

http://lambiek.net/artists/w/winshluss.htm http://www.imdb.com/name/nm1749112/bio http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Vincent_Paronnaud http://twitchfilm.com/interviews/2007/12/persepolisinterview-with-vincent-paronnaud.php http://newyork.timeout.com/arts-culture/film/1971985/toronto-q-a-marjane-satrapi-and-vincent-paronnaud

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About IranIran and ancient Persia have a long, creative, and

glorious history. Unlike many other Middle Eastcountries, Persia managed to remain independentthroughout much of its history. Today, Iran has apopulation of about 70 million persons. Principalethnic groups are Persian 51%, Azeri 24%, Gilakiand Mazandarani 8%, Kurd 7% and Arab 3%. Iranis a Muslim country, with 89% Shi'a and 10% SunniMuslims. The remaining 1% belong to Jewish,Bahai, and Zoroastrian faiths. The Bahai andZoroastrian faiths originated in Iran. Majorlanguages of Iran are Persian (Fars) and Persiandialects 58%, Turkic and Turkic dialects 26%,Kurdish 9%, Luri 2%, Baluchi 1%, Arabic 1%, andTurkish 1%. Since 1979, Iran is an Islamic republic.

Iran is situated east of Iraq, beyond the TigrisRiver, Shatt Al-Arab waterway and east of thePersian Gulf, across from Saudi Arabia. To thenorth, it borders on former Soviet Central Asiancountries, including Armenia, Turkmenistan, andAzerbaijan, and the Caspian Sea. It also borders onAfghanistan and Pakistan in the east, and Turkey tothe west.

Persepolis

Although there are some indications that the siteof Persepolis was already a seat of governmentunder Cyrus the Great (559-530 BCE) and his sonCambyses II (530-522 BCE), archaeologicalevidence gives Darius the Great the distinction asthe true founder of Persepolis. Darius madePersepolis the splendid center of the Achaemenidempire, worthy of royal receptions and festivals.The wealth of Persia was to be visible in everyaspect of its construction. Persepolis was ashowcase for the fewer than 200 years it remainedintact.

Aerial view of Persepolis

The first building phase may have lasted from518 to 490 BCE. Darius' men leveled the rockyground and created a terrace of nearly 1,500 by1,000 feet, with a complex system of water channelsand drainage was cut into it. On this terrace stood alarge treasury and an audience hall. In the treasury,the booty of the conquered tribes and states and theannual tribute sent by the king's loyal subjects onthe occasion of the New Year's festival were stored.By 467 BCE, no fewer than 1,348 people wereemployed in the treasury.

The square audience hall, which was at the heartof the terrace, is usually called the Apadana. Itseastern stairs depict the people of the empire. Thehall could contain hundreds, probably thousands, ofpeople at the same time. It was the largest andprobably the most beautiful of the buildings atPersepolis. The seventy-two columns that supportedthe roof were twenty-five meters high, and thirteenstill exist. The founding inscription reads:

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Darius the great king, king of kings, king ofcountries, son of Hystaspes, an Achaemenian,built this palace.

The second phase fell between 490-480 BCE,with buildings started by Darius but completed inthe first years of the reign of his son and successor,Xerxes (486-465 BCE). Ultimately, Persepolis ismostly the work of this king. He tells us in aninscription:

When my father Darius went away from thethrone, I became king on his throne by the graceof Ahuramazda. After I became king, I finishedwhat had been done by my father, and I addedother works.

Apadana ruins

Darius had the Apadana finished and a smallpalace added to its south. This is usually calledDarius' palace, although he probably did not live tosee the building finished. The ancient Persian namewas Taçara, "winter palace." To the north of theApadana, the Gate of All Nations (also known asXerxes' Gate) was built, which was guarded by apair of large bulls in the west and lamassus in theeast (a lamassu is a bull with the head of a beardedman). Walls were constructed on the northern ridgeof the terrace fortification. In front of Xerxes' gatewas a monumental double-ramped stairway, whichwas designed in such a way that one could onlyproceed slowly and with dignity.

Lamassu from Gate of All Nations

Above these lamassus, an inscription waswritten:

A great God is Ahuramazda, who created thisearth, who created yonder sky, who created man,who created happiness for man, who made Xerxesking, one king of many, one lord of many.

I am Xerxes, the Great King, King of Kings, Kingof countries containing many kinds (of men),King in this great earth far and wide, son of KingDarius, an Achaemenian.

Proclaims Xerxes the King: By the favor ofAhuramazda I built this Gateway of All Nations. Ibuilt many other beautiful things in Persia. I builtthem and my father built them. All beautifulthings we built, we have built by the favor ofAhuramazda.

Proclaims Xerxes the King: May Ahuramazdaprotect me from harm, and this land, and whateverwas built by me as well as what has been built bymay father.

In the next decade came the third phase, 480-470BCE. Xerxes' palace was built between the treasuryand the Apadana, with the Persian name Hadiš, or"dwelling place." It was twice as large as the palaceof Darius. Meanwhile, the western part of thetreasury was reconstructed; this part became knownas the Queen's Quarters. The women lived in theirown rooms, situated around a spacious courtyard. Inthese years, the treasury–probably not big enough tostore the booty of Xerxes' successful wars–wasenlarged to the north. Many other buildings were

built on the southern edge of the platform; they mayhave been magazines.

The Eastern Stairs

In the fourth phase, the Palace of Artaxerxes Iand the Hall of Hundred Columns were added. Itwas Persepolis' second largest building, measuring

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230 by 230 feet. This throne hall was finished byXerxes' son Artaxerxes I Makrocheir (465-424BCE). At some point its function was changed andit became a store room, probably because thetreasury was again too small to contain everything.

In about 450 BCE, the complex was more or lessfinished and there was probably no building activityfor almost a century.

King Artaxerxes III Ochus (358-338), who wasin a sense the last ruler of the Achaemenid empire,added a Hall of Thirty-two Columns, a corridor, thetomb of Artaxerxes II, and his own tomb. The rock-cut tomb has a relief, which shows the kingworshiping before a fire altar; this is inspired by thetombs of Darius the Great and his successors atNaqš-i Rustam, which is one hour's walk north ofPersepolis. The corridor connected the Gate of AllNations with the Hall of a Hundred Columns,through which delegations from the subjectcountries passed to bring their tribute to their ruler.

Gate of All Nations

Artaxerxes III Ochus' successors Artaxerxes IVArses (337-336) and Darius III Codomannus mayhave done something to build a large gate; but thisgate was still unfinished when the Macedonian kingAlexander the Great captured Persepolis in the firstweeks of 330 BCE. He destroyed several but not allpalace buildings in April, because he was not yetsole ruler of the Persian empire, and it was toodangerous to leave the enormous treasures behind,where his enemies could recapture them. The Palaceof Xerxes seems to have received a specialtreatment, because it was damaged more severelythan other buildings; it is likely that the Greeksoldiers in Alexander's company had their revengefor the destruction of Athens in 480 BCE. WhenAlexander returned several years later and saw theruins, he regretted this act.

Damaged frieze of Xerxes

Modern Iran

For over 100 years, the domination of Iran hasbeen deeply woven into the fabric of globalimperialism, enforced by the U.S. and other powersthrough covert intrigues, economic bullying,military assaults, and invasions. This historyprovides the backdrop for U.S. hostility toward Irantoday–including the real threat of war, even nuclearwar. European imperialists waged a rivalry, upthrough World War 1, over who would control Iranand its oil. The U.S. Participated in the overthrow ofthe nationalist secular government of MohammedMossadegh in 1953 and restored its brutal andoppressive–the Shah–to power. The U.S. andWestern powers feared the influence the SovietUnion could wield over an elected government inthe Cold War climate. The 25 years of U.S.influence under the Shah’s reign paved the way forthe 1979 revolution and the founding of the IslamicRepublic.

1779 to 1979

After the death, in 1779, of Mohammad KarimKhan Zand, who was the Zand dynasty ruler ofsouthern Persia, Agha Mohammad Khan, a leader ofthe Qajar tribe in the north, reunified the country,defeated numerous rivals and brought all of Iranunder his rule, establishing the Qajar dynasty. By1794 he had eliminated all his rivals, and hadretaken former Iranian territories in Georgia and theCaucasus. Agha Mohammad established his capitalat Tehran, a village near the ruins of the ancient cityof Ray. In 1796 he was formally crowned as Shah,but he was assassinated in 1797 and was succeededby his nephew, Fath Ali Shah.

Fath Ali Shah went to war twice against Russia,which was expanding from the north into theCaucasus Mountains. Iran suffered major militarydefeats in both wars, necessitating ceding to RussiaGeorgia, the north Caucasus, and the eventually the

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the entire area north of the Aras River, whichincludes present day Armenia and Azerbaijan. FathAli Shah died in 1834 and was succeed byMohammad Shah. He died in 1848 and wassucceeded by Naser o-Din Shah.

Naser o-Din Shah was the ablest of the Qajarrules. He introduced Western science, technology,and educational methods and began themodernization of Iran. He tried to play off theimperial powers, Great Britain and Russia, topreserve Iran's independence, but he was not able toprevent Britain and Russia from encroaching intoregions of traditional Iranian influence. In 1856Britain prevented Iran from reasserting control overHerat, and helped make Herat part of Afghanistan.By 1881, Russia had conquered present-dayTurkmenistan and Uzbekistan, bringing Russia'sfrontier to Iran's northeastern borders and severinghistoric Iranian connections to Bukhara andSamarqand. Trade concessions by Iran put theIranian economy largely under British control.Naser o-Din Shah was assassinated in 1896 byMirza Reza Kermani in 1896, and his son Mozaffaro-Din assumed the throne.

Mozaffar o-Din Shah was a weak and ineffectualruler. Public anger was fueled by the shah'swillingness to grant concessions to Europeans inreturn for generous payments to him and hisofficials. The shah failed to respond to protests bythe religious establishment, the merchants, andother classes and instituted repressive measures. InAugust 1906, the shah was forced to issue a decreepromising a constitution. In October an electedassembly convened and drew up a constitution thatprovided for strict limitations on royal power, anelected parliament, or Majles, with wide powers torepresent the people, and a government with acabinet subject to confirmation by the Majles. TheShah signed the constitution on December 30, 1906,but died five days later. SupplementaryFundamental Laws approved in 1907 provided,within limits, for freedom of press, speech, andassociation, and for security of life and property.The Constitutional Revolution marked the end ofthe medieval period in Iran.

Mohammad Ali Shah, son of Mozaffar o-Dintook office in 1907. With Russian backing, heattempted to rescind the constitution and abolishparliamentary government. In June 1908 he used his

Russian-officered Persian Cossacks Brigade tobombard the Majlis building. He arrested many ofthe deputies, and closed down the assembly.Resistance to the Shah, however, coalesced inseveral cities, and elsewhere. In July 1909,constitutional forces marched from Rasht andEsfahan to Tehran, deposed the Shah, and re-established the constitution. The ex-Shah went intoexile in Russia.

The upheavals of the Constitutional Revolutionand civil war had undermined stability and trade.The ex-Shah, with Russian support, landed troops inIran in July 1910 in an attempt to regain his throne.The hope that the Constitutional Revolution wouldinaugurate a new era of independence from thegreat powers ended when, under the Anglo-RussianAgreement of 1907, Britain and Russia agreed todivide Iran into spheres of influence. The Russianswere to enjoy exclusive rights to pursue theirinterests in the northern sphere, the British in thesouth and east; both powers would be free to

compete for economic and political advantage in aneutral sphere in the center.

A crisis was precipitated when Morgan Shuster,a United States administrator hired as treasurergeneral by the Persian government to reform itsfinances, sought to collect taxes from powerfulofficials under Russian protection. He attempted tosend members of the treasury gendarmerie into theRussian zone. The Russians issued an ultimatumdemanding Shuster's dismissal, Russian troops,already in the country, moved to occupy the capital.To prevent the Russian takeover, on December 201911, Bakhtiari chiefs and their troops surroundedthe Majles building, forced acceptance of theRussian ultimatum, and shut down the assembly,

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once again suspending the constitution. A period ofgovernment by Bakhtiari chiefs ensued until AhmadShah, who was 11 when he acceded to the throne,came of age.

Ahmad proved to be incompetent and wasunable to preserve the integrity of Iran. Theoccupation of Persia during World War I (1914-18)by Russian, British, and Ottoman troops was a blowfrom which his government never effectivelyrecovered.

A coup d'état in February 1921 established RezaKhan, a soldier who led the coup, as ruler. Aftersuppressing several rebellions, he became Shah in1925, ruling until 1941 as Reza Shah Pahlavi. RezaShah's government transformed Iran in manypositive ways, but his dictatorial politics causedunrest and hatred, and his foreign policy failed tokeep Iran independent, while managing at the sametime to alienate both the Soviets and the British.

Reza Shah had ambitious plans for modernizingof Iran, including large-scale industries, majorinfrastructure projects such as railroads, a nationalpublic education system, a reformed judiciary, andimproving health care. He wanted a strong,centralized government managed by educatedpersonnel to carry out his plans. He sent hundredsof Iranians including his son to Europe for training.Reza Shah's numerous development projectstransformed Iran into an industrial, urbanizedcountry. Public education progressed rapidly, andnew social classes–a professional middle class andan industrial working class–emerged. In 1935, thename of the country was changed from Persia toIran.

Reza Shah Pahlavi

Reza Shah tried to avoid involvement withBritain and the Union of Soviet Socialist Republics.Though many of his development projects requiredforeign technical expertise, he avoided awardingcontracts to British and Soviet companies. Britain,owned of the Anglo-Iranian Oil Company andthrough it, controlled all of Iran's oil resources, butReza Shah shunned Britain and got technicalassistance from Germany, France, Italy, and otherEuropean countries. In 1939, when WW II brokeout, Reza Shah proclaimed Iranian neutrality.However, Britain insisted that German engineersand technicians in Iran were spies and demandedthat all German citizens must be expelled. RezaShah refused, claiming this would adversely impacthis development projects. The suspicion was notabsent that in fact the Shah had concluded a secretagreement with Nazi Germany.

After Britain and the Soviet Union became alliesin WW II, they turned their attention to Iran. Bothcountries eyed the newly opened Trans-IranianRailroad as an attractive route for transport fromPersian Gulf to the Soviet region. In August 1941,because of Iranian refusal to expel Germannationals, Britain and the USSR invaded Iran. Theyarrested and exiled Reza Shah and took control ofIranian communications and railroad. In 1942, theUnited States sent a military force to Iran to helpmaintain and operate sections of the railroad.

The British and Soviet authorities constrainedconstitutional government and permitted RezaShah's son, Mohammad Reza Shah Pahlavi, tosucceed to the throne on September 16, 1941.

In January 1942, Britain and Russia signed anagreement with Iran to respect Iran's independenceand to withdraw their troops within six months afterthe end of the war. The 1943 Tehran Conferencewith the U.S. reaffirmed this commitment. In 1945,the USSR refused to announce a timetable to leaveIran's northwestern provinces of East Azerbaijanand West Azerbaijan, where Soviet-supportedautonomy movements had developed. The USSRwithdrew its troops in May 1946; this episode wasone of the harbingers of the emerging Cold War.

Iran's political system began to mature. Politicalparties were organized, and the 1944 Majliselections were the first genuinely competitiveelections in over 20 years. Foreign influence andinterference remained very a sensitive issue for all

12

parties. The Anglo-Iranian Oil Company (AIOC),owned by the British government (now known asBP), continued to extract and market Iranian oil. Atthe end of the war, Iranians began to demandnationalization of the oil industry, a demand thatbecame the centerpiece of Iranian nationalism.

Despite his vow to act as a constitutionalmonarch who would defer to the power of theparliamentary government, Mohammad Reza Shahincreasingly involved himself in governmentalaffairs and opposed or thwarted strong primeministers.

In 1951, the Iranian Parliament voted tonationalize the oil industry. Legislators backing thelaw elected its leading advocate, Dr. MohammadMosaddeq, as prime minister following theassassination of his predecessor. Britain respondedwith threats and sanctions. However, Britain couldnot persuade the US, under the Trumanadministration, to take any action at the time.Mosaddeq was an aging and eccentric academic,immensely popular because of his stands for thecommon people. He was a nationalist, and not acommunist. Nonetheless, the British and USgovernments were eventually able to persuadethemselves that Mosaddeq was about to align Iranwith the USSR.

Mohammad Mosaddeq

Dr. Mosaddeq took very inflexible positions andwas unable to compromise with Britain, which wonthe support of the major oil companies in imposingan effective global boycott on Iranian oil.

Dr. Mosaddeq became an anti-imperialist hero tothe developing world. Raised by a wave ofpopularity, Mosaddeq showed signs ofdemagoguery and dictatorial government. When the

Shah refused his demand for control of the armyforces in 1952, Dr. Mosaddeq resigned. He wasreinstated in the face of popular riots, as he veryprobably knew he would be. Next he conducted anational referendum to dissolve parliament.

By 1953, General Eisenhower had becomepresident of the United States. Anti-communisthysteria was reaching its peak. An Iranian generaloffered to help in the overthrow of Mosaddeq, andthe British were able to persuade the American CIAto go ahead with the coup in August. With veryscant resources and a shoestring operational plan,the CIA set out to remove Mosaddeq. The planalmost failed, and the Shah, never very resolute, hadfled to Baghdad and had to be enticed to continueplaying his part from there. The army was loyal tothe Shah and Mosaddeq was overthrown andarrested. This coup earned the US and Britain thelasting hatred of large sectors of Iranian publicopinion, uniting communists, nationalists, and Shiaclerics behind enmity to foreign meddling.Mosaddeq became a folk hero of Iraniannationalism.

In the context of regional turmoil and the ColdWar, the Shah established himself as anindispensable ally of the West. In the Middle East,Iran stood out as one of the few friends of Israel, afriendship that allegedly extended to Israeli help inrunning the SAVAK, the hated Iranian secret police.Domestically, he advocated reform policies,culminating in the 1963 program known as theWhite Revolution, which included land reform, theextension of voting rights to women, and theelimination of illiteracy.

These measures and the increasing arbitrarinessof the Shah's rule provoked both religious leaderswho feared losing their traditional authority andintellectuals seeking democratic reforms. Theseopponents criticized the Shah for violation of theconstitution, which placed limits on royal powerand provided for a representative government, andfor subservience to the United States. The Shah sawhimself as heir to the kings of ancient Iran. In 1967,he staged an elaborate coronation ceremony, stylinghimself "Shah en Shah"–King of Kings. In 1971, heheld an extravagant celebration of 2,500 years ofPersian monarchy. In 1976, he replaced the Islamiccalendar with an "imperial" calendar, which beganwith the foundation of the Persian empire around

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500 BC. These actions were clearly aimed atsidelining the Islamic religion and excited theopposition of Muslim groups, which rallied aroundthe Ayatollah Khomeini.

Mohammad Reza Shah and Reza Shah

The Shah suppressed and marginalizedopponents with the help of Iran's security andintelligence organization, the SAVAK, usingarbitrary arrest, imprisonment, exile, and torture,and exciting profound and widespread discontent.Islamic leaders, particularly the exiled clericAyatollah Khomeini, channeled this discontent intoa populist Islamist ideology. Ayatollah Khomeinihad been exiled in 1964 and had been living Najaf,Iraq, since 1965, and from 1978 in France. In Najaf,Khomeini expounded his ideology of absolutisttheocratic rule, Velayat e Faqih, led by a supremeleader, an authority worthy of emulation, the Marjal Taqlid. This ideology was spread through booksand cassettes smuggled into Iran. However,beginning about 1978, Khomeini began publicizingmore democratic views and pretended that heenvisioned democratic rule in Iran and that hewould not be a leader of the government. Riotserupted in Iran, ignited by various real ormanufactured pretexts.

Mohammad Reza Shah Pahlavi and wife

Suffering ill health, the Shah left Iran on January

16, 1979. He announced that he was leaving for aneighteen-month leave of absence. He had appointedShapour Bakhtiar as Prime Minister. Bakhtiar wasunable to keep order, even with the help of SupremeArmy Councils. Inexplicably, Bakhtiar not onlyallowed the Ayatollah Khomeini to return to Iran, hepublicly invited him to return. Bakhtiar waseventually exiled to France and was assassinated,probably by Iranian agents, in 1991.

The Islamic Revolution

Ayatollah Khomeini returned to Iran onFebruary 1, 1979, by invitation of ShapourBakhtiar, prime minister of the interim government.Bakhtiar had invited the means of his owndestruction. He soon went into hiding, and waseventually exiled in Paris. Mass purges ofsupporters of the Shah began, and hundreds wereexecuted. A revolutionary court set to work almostimmediately in a school building in Tehran.Revolutionary courts were established in provincialcenters soon after. The Tehran court passed deathsentences on four of the Shah's generals onFebruary 16, 1979, and all four were executed byfiring squad. More executions, of military andpolice officers, SAVAK agents, cabinet ministers,Majlis deputies, and officials of the Shah's regimefollowed.

In March of 1979, a referendum was heldregarding the new form of government to beestablished in Iran. Only one form of government,the Islamic Republic, appeared on the ballot, and itwas approved by 98% of the voters in non-secretelections.

A revolutionary and anarchic situation grippedIran. Semi-independent revolutionary committees,not answerable to central authority, took overvarious governmental tasks. Factory workers, civilservants, white-collar employees, and students wereoften in control, demanding a say in running theirorganizations and choosing their chiefs. Governors,military commanders, and other officials appointedby the prime minister were frequently rejected bythe lower ranks or local inhabitants. At the sametime, the Ayatollah Khomeini, who headed theRevolutionary Council, ran his own version of thegovernment, pushing Iran in the direction of anIslamist theocracy. He mobilized street mobs toforce his program on the government.

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Iran was soon plagued by ethnic unrest as Kurds,Arabs, Turkomens, and other minorities demandedvarying degrees of autonomy. Beginning in August1979, the revolutionary courts tried and passeddeath sentences on members of ethnic minoritiesinvolved in these disturbances.

In May 1979, Ayatollah Khomeini created thePasdaran (Pasdaran-e Enghelab-e Islami, the IslamicRevolutionary Guard Corps or RevolutionaryGuards or IRGC). The Pasdaran was conceived as aforce loyal to the Revolution and the clericalleaders, as opposed to the regular army, which wasthought to be loyal to the civil government. Soonafter, Khomeini also ordered the creation of theBasij volunteers. These two groups were to functionboth as internal police protecting the governmentand as a politically reliable army against foreignfoes. The IRGC was also used to foment revolutionand "resistance" abroad, particularly in Lebanon,where it helped to found and train the Hezbollah.

The revolutionary government began veering tothe right as power was concentrated around theclerics. Leftist newspapers were banned, and ralliesof the National Democratic Front were broken up.Opposition leaders were arrested. As the powers ofthe clerics increased, the state began a program ofnationalization and also of religious repression inparticular against women. Students and others whothought they were eliminating the Shah to bringdemocracy to Iran would eventually be bitterlydisappointed.

Ayatollah Khomeini

The Ayatollah Khomeini and other clericsdelivered extremist and threatening speeches againstthe United States and against its Persian Gulf allies.On the other hand, the government was stillnominally headed by Mehdi Bazargan, who hadbeen appointed prime minister upon the Shah'sdeparture. Bazargan tried to maintain good relations

with the United States, especially as the US supplyof spare parts for the army and the oil industry wasdesperately needed.

Whatever good will remained between Iran andthe US was shattered on November 1, 1979, asBazargan met with US President Jimmy Carter'snational security advisor, Zbigniew Brzezinski toconfirm continued US cooperation, and the Shah–still on "leave"–sought and received medicaltreatment in the US for his cancer. Fearing this wasan opportunity to enlist US support to overthrow theIslamic Republic, hundreds of thousands of Iranians

demonstrated in Tehran, demanding the extraditionof the Shah.

Revolution, 1979

The Iranian press denounced Bazargan formeeting with a key US official. On November 4,Iranian Islamic students stormed the US embassy,taking 66 hostages, mostly Americans. Fourteenwere released before the end of November. PrimeMinister Mehdi Bazargan resigned, and no primeminister was named to replace him.

The Revolutionary Council took over the primeminister's functions until Abolhassan Bani Sadr, anindependent associated with Ayatollah Khomeini,was elected. Initially he had the support ofKhomeini, but as he tried increasingly to reassertthe rule of law and civil rights, he clashed withMohammad Ali Rajai, a protege of therevolutionary council, who was appointed PrimeMinister. Fresh waves of purges gutted the civilservice and the army.

Meanwhile, the hostage crisis was exacerbatingpoor relations with the United States and westernEuropean countries. President Carter froze severalbillion dollars of Iranian assets held by Americanbanks in the United States and abroad. Bani Sadr'svarious attempts to resolve the crisis failed. TheShah made his way to Panama. Bani Sadr andForeign Minister Qotbzadeh attempted to arrangefor the Shah to be arrested by the Panamanian

15

authorities and extradited to Iran. But the Shah leftPanama for Egypt on March 23, 1980, beforeanything could be done.

In April, 1980 the United States tried to rescuethe hostages by secretly landing aircraft and troopsnear Tabas, along the Dasht-e Kavir desert ineastern Iran, at a base known as "Desert 1." Theattempt was bungled however. Two helicoptersmalfunctioned, and when the mission commanderdecided to abort the mission, a helicopter and a C-130 transport aircraft collided, killing eight USservicemen. Fresh plots against the Iraniangovernment, real or imagined, were discovered inthe army and wide purges followed.

Negotiations for release of of the hostages beganon September 14, 1980, in West Germany, and theywere successfully concluded in January 1981.Possibly to humiliate outgoing President Carter, thehostages were released only after Ronald Reagantook the oath of office as president on January 20,1981.

Persepolis http://www.livius.org/pen-pg/persepolis/persepolis.html Brief History of Modern Iranhttp://www.mideastweb.org/iranhistory.htmHistory of Iran: A short account of 1953 Couphttp://www.iranchamber.com/history/coup53/coup53p1.phpThe U.S. & Iran: A History of Imperialist Domination, Intrigueand Intervention http://revcom.us/a/089/iran-en.htmlBackground to Confrontation: The U.S. & Iran: A History ofImperialist Domination, Intrigue and Intervention, Part 2: TheU.S. Siezes Control in Iran: The CIA'S 1953 Coup D'etathttp://revcom.us/a/090/iran-pt2-en.htmlBackground to Confrontation: The U.S. & Iran: A History ofImperialist Domination, Intrigue and Intervention: Part 3http://rwor.org/a/092/iran-pt3-en.html Part 1: History and Geography of Iran http://www.faculty.fairfield.edu/faculty/hodgson/Courses/so191/Projects2010/Aliya_Roginiel/Final%20-%20Part%20I%20History%20and%20Geography.html

1978-1979: The Iranian Revolutionhttp://libcom.org/history/1978-1979-the-iranian-revolution An Anti-Democracy Foreign Policy: Iranhttp://www.fff.org/comment/com0501i.asp Iran http://www.enotes.com/iran-reference/iran Iranian Revolution - Wikipedia, the free encyclopediahttp://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Iranian_Revolution History of Iran: Islamic Revolution of 1979http://www.iranchamber.com/history/islamic_revolution/islamic_revolution.php US Overthrows Iranian Gov in 1953 (1 of 2) – YouTubehttp://www.youtube.com/watch?v=QBs8WFNdSdQ US Overthrows Iranian Gov in 1953 (2 of 2) – YouTubehttp://www.youtube.com/watch?v=QBs8WFNdSdQ&feature=relatedOperation Ajax: Iran and the CIA Coup in 1953 Pt. 1/2 –YouTube http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=pzS5Y1f8zVM&feature=related Operation Ajax: Iran and the CIA Coup in 1953 Pt. 2/2 -YouTube http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8rhgdiV7GlE&feature=fvwrel Democracy in Iran, Dr. Mossadegh, Shah and AyatollahKhomeini http://www.angelfire.com/home/iran/

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About Tehran and Iranian SocietyPrior to the Revolution of 1979, political

connections were considered a key measure ofone's social status. In other words, the amount ofaccess that one was perceived to have to the highestlevels of decision making was the majordeterminant of prestige. Wealth was important, butacquiring and maintaining wealth tended to beclosely intertwined with access to political power.Consequently, members of the political elite weregenerally involved in numerous complexinterrelationships. For example, some members ofthe Senate (the upper house of the parliament, orMajlis), a legislative body that included manymembers of the political elite appointed by theshah, were also on the boards of several industrialand commercial enterprises and were owners ofextensive agricultural lands. Since being part of anelite family was an important prerequisite for entryinto the political elite, marital relationships tendedto bind together important elite families.

Iran Green

The other classes attempted to emulate thepolitical elite in seeking connections to those withpolitical power, whether on the provincial, town, orvillage level. By the 1970s, however, the noneliteof all classes perceived education as important forimproving social status. Education was seen asproviding entry into high-status jobs that in turnwould open up opportunities for makingconnections with those who had political power.Despite a great expansion in educationalopportunities, the demand far outstripped theability or willingness of the elite to provideeducation; this in turn became a source ofresentment. By the late 1970s, the nonelite groups,especially the middle classes, rather than admiringthe elite and desiring to emulate them, tended toresent the elite for blocking opportunities tocompete on an equal basis.

As a result of the lack of field research in Iran

The Upper Classes

The postrevolutionary upper classes consisted ofsome of the same elements as the old elite, such aslarge landowners, industrialists, financiers, andlarge-scale merchants. They remained part of theupper class by virtue of having stayed in Iran andhaving retained a considerable part of their wealth.For the most part, however, such persons no longerhad any political influence, and in the future theabsence of such influence could impede theacquisition of new wealth. The element of the upperclasses with greatest political influence was a newgroup, the senior clergy. Wealth was apparently nolonger an attribute of authority, as the example ofKhomeini demonstrated. Religious expertise andpiety became the major criteria for belonging to thenew political elite. Thus, key governmentadministrators held their positions because of theirperceived commitment to Shia Islam. They werepart of the new political elite, although not membersof the old social elite.

The Middle Classes

After the Revolution of 1979, the composition ofthe middle class was no different from what it hadbeen under the monarchy. There were severalidentifiable social groups, including entrepreneurs,bazaar merchants, professionals, managers ofprivate and nationalized concerns, the higher gradesof the civil service, teachers, medium-scalelandowners, military officers, and the junior ranksof the Shia clergy. Some middle-class groupsapparently had more access to political power thanthey had had before the Revolution because the newpolitical elite had been recruited primarily from themiddle class.

Students at the University of Tehran

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Prior to the Revolution, the middle class wasdivided between those possessed of a Westerneducation, who had a secular outlook, and thosesuspicious of Western education, who valued a rolefor religion in both public and private life. Ingeneral, the more secularly oriented tended to befound among those employed in the bureaucracy,the professions, and the universities, while the morereligiously oriented were concentrated amongbazaar merchants and the clergy. Amongentrepreneurs and especially primary and secondaryschool teachers, the secular and religious points ofview may have had roughly equal numbers ofproponents. Since the Revolution, these twooutlooks have been in contention. The religiousoutlook has dominated politics and society, but itappears that the secular middle class has resentedlaws and regulations that were perceived asinterfering with personal liberties.

The middle class was divided by other issues aswell. Before the Revolution, an extremely highvalue had been placed upon obtaining a foreigneducation. The new political elite, however,regarded a foreign education with suspicion;accordingly, many members of the middle class whowere educated abroad have been required toundergo special Islamic indoctrination courses toretain their jobs. In some cases, refusal to conformto religiously prescribed dress and behavior codeshas resulted in the loss of government jobs. As aresult of these tensions, thousands of Western-educated Iranians have emigrated since 1979.

The Working Class

The working class has been in the process offormation since the early twentieth century. Theindustrialization programs of the Pahlavi shahsprovided the impetus for the expansion of this class.By the 1970s, a distinct working-class identity,kargar, had been established, although those whoapplied this term to themselves did not actuallyconstitute a unified group. The working class wasdivided into various groups of workers: those in theoil industry, manufacturing, construction, andtransportation; and mechanics and artisans in bazaarworkshops. The most important component, factoryworkers, numbered about 2.5 million on the eve ofthe Revolution, double the number in 1965, andthey accounted for 25 percent of Iran's totalemployed labor force.

Iranian workers

The workers within any one occupation, ratherthan sharing a common identity, were dividedaccording to perceived skills. For example, skilledconstruction workers, such as carpenters,electricians, and plumbers, earned significantlyhigher wages than the more numerous unskilledworkers and tended to look down upon them.Similar status differences were common amongworkers in the oil industry, textile manufacturing,and metal goods production. The heaviestconcentration of unskilled workers was inconstruction, which on the eve of the Revolutionemployed 9 percent of the entire labor force. Inaddition to relatively low wages, unskilledconstruction workers had no job security.

The unions played only a passive role from theviewpoint of workers. Under both the monarchy andthe Republic, union activity was strictly controlledby the government. Both the shah and thegovernment of the Islamic Republic consideredstrikes to be unpatriotic and generally suppressedboth strikes and independent efforts to organizeworkers. Although strikes played an important rolein undermining the authority of the governmentduring the final months of the monarchy, once theRepublic had been established the new governmentembraced the view of its royalist predecessorregarding independent labor activities. Thus thegovernment has considered strikes to be un-Islamicand has forcibly suppressed them. A long history offactionalism among different working-classoccupational groups and between skilled andunskilled workers within an industry traditionallyhas contributed to the relative success ofgovernments in controlling the working class.

The Lower Class

Members of the urban lower class can be

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distinguished by their high illiteracy rate,performance of manual labor, and generallymarginal existence. The lower class is divided intotwo groups: those with regular employment andthose without. Those who have regular workinclude domestic servants, bath attendants, porters,street cleaners, peddlers, street vendors, gardeners,office cleaners, laundry workers, and bakeryworkers. Thousands work only occasionally orseasonally at these or other jobs. Among themarginally employed there is much reliance onbegging. In the past, some members of this groupalso resorted to prostitution, gambling, smuggling,and drug selling. Since the Revolution, there havebeen severe penalties for persons convicted of moraloffenses, although newspaper reports of theuncovering of various crime rings would indicatethat the new codes have not eliminated suchactivities.

Tehran bazaar

At the time of the Revolution, it was estimatedthat as much as one-third of the population ofTehran and one-quarter of the population of otherlarge cities consisted of persons living on themargins of urban society. Life was typified bysqualid slums, poverty, malnutrition, lack of healthand educational facilities, and crime. In 1987 therewas no evidence of measures undertaken by the newgovernment to alleviate conditions in the urbanslums.

Traditional Attitudes Toward Segregation ofthe Sexes

With the notable exception of the Westernizedand secularized upper and middle classes, Iraniansociety before the Revolution practiced publicsegregation of the sexes. Women generallypracticed use of the chador (or veil) when in publicor when males not related to them were in thehouse. In the traditional view, an ideal society was

one in which women were confined to the home,where they performed the various domestic tasksassociated with managing a household and rearingchildren. Men worked in the public sphere, that is,in the fields, factories, bazaars, and offices.Deviations from this ideal, especially in the case ofwomen, tended to reflect adversely upon thereputation of the family. The strength of thesetraditional attitudes was reflected in the publiceducation system, which maintained separateschools for boys and girls from the elementarythrough the secondary levels.

Iran in the 1970s

The traditional attitudes on the segregation ofwomen clashed sharply with the views and customsof the secularized upper and middle classes,especially those in Tehran. Mixed gatherings, bothpublic and private, were the norm. During thePahlavi era the government was the main promoterof change in traditional attitudes toward sexualsegregation. It sought to discourage veiling ofwomen at official functions and encouraged mixedparticipation in a variety of public gatherings. Theresult was to bring the government into socialconflict with the Shia clergy, who sought to defendtraditional values.

Iranian woman wearing burka

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Impact of Western Ideas on the Role ofWomen

Among the ideas imported into Iran from theWest was the notion that women should participatein the public sphere. The Pahlavi governmentencouraged women to get as much education aspossible and to participate in the labor force at alllevels. After 1936, when Reza Shah banned thechador, veiling came to be perceived among theminority of elite and secular middle-class women asa symbol of oppression. Before the Revolution,Iranian society was already polarized between thetraditionally minded majority and a minority ofinvolved women who were dedicated to improvingthe status of women. As early as 1932, Iranianwomen held a meeting of the Oriental FeminineCongress in Tehran at which they called for theright of women to vote, compulsory education forboth boys and girls, equal salaries for men andwomen, and an end to polygyny. In 1963 womenwere given the right to vote and to hold publicoffice.

Female Participation in the Work Force

Prior to the Revolution, three patterns of workexisted among women. Among the upper classes,women either worked as professionals or undertookvoluntary projects of various kinds. Whereas secularmiddle-class women aspired to emulate suchwomen, traditional middle-class women workedoutside the home only from dire necessity. Lower-class women frequently worked outside the home,especially in major cities, because their incomeswere needed to support their households.

Women and revolution

Women were active participants in theRevolution that toppled the shah. Most activistswere professional women of the secular middleclasses, from among whom political antagonists tothe regime had long been recruited. Like their malecounterparts, such women had nationalist

aspirations and felt that the shah's regime was apuppet of the United States. Some women alsoparticipated in the guerrilla groups, especially theMojahedin and the Fadayan. More significant,however, were the large numbers of lower-classwomen in the cities who participated in streetdemonstrations during the latter half of 1978 andearly 1979. They responded to the call of Khomeinithat it was necessary for all Muslims to demonstratetheir opposition to tyranny.

Following the Revolution, the status of womenchanged. The main social group to inherit politicalpower–the traditional middle class–valued mosthighly the traditional role of women in a segregatedsociety. Accordingly, laws were enacted to restrictthe role of women in public life; these laws affectedprimarily women of the secularized middle andupper classes. Hejab, or properly modest attire forwomen, became a major issue. Although it was notmandated that women who had never worn a chadorwould have to wear this garment, it was requiredthat whenever women appeared in public they hadto have their hair and skin covered, except for theface and hands. The law has been controversialamong secularized women, although for themajority of women, who had worn the chador evenbefore the Revolution, the law probably has hadonly negligible impact.

Women at demonstration

Iran - Social Class http://countrystudies.us/iran/48.htm Iran - Gender Roles http://womenshistory.about.com/library/ency/blwh_iran.htm Social class in Iranhttp://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Social_class_in_Iran#The_middle_class Education in Iran - Wikipedia, the free encyclopediahttp://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Education_in_Iran Iran Chamber Society: Iranian Society: Women in Iran Since1979http://www.iranchamber.com/society/articles/women_iran_since_1979.php

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About Political PrisonersThe turbulent history of modern Iran begins with

the fall the Qajar dynasty's traditional polity in1925, followed by the westernizing policies of RezaShah and Muhammad Reza Shah, who ruled untilthe Islamic revolution in 1979. The revolutionintroduced a new ruler, Ayatollah Khomeini, whocreated an Islamic republic that was a hybrid oftradition and modernity.

The Qajar Shahs had ruled autocratically in atraditional Iran where due process of law wasunknown and punishment was swift, involvingphysical torment and at times violent death. Hardlyanyone was sentenced to prison. Torture was a partof the process by which the guilt of the accused wasestablished. With the arrival of European-style"modernity," the Pahlavi dynasty adopted newpolicies. Reza Shah, who ruled from 1926 to 1941,created a centralized administration, a standingarmy, a police force for cities, and a gendarmerie forthe countryside. In the absence of legal safeguards,however, these paraphernalia of a modern state wereabusive of the rights of citizens.

Protest against nuclear development

The state built prisons and created the categoryof political prisoners. The new elite who employedWestern-designed instruments of power withoutmuch hesitation, were much more distrustful ofWestern-style safeguards such as constitutionallimits of authority, representative assemblies,individual liberties, and due process of law. TheShah felt comfortable with adopting Westerninstruments of power for he did not see them as acultural imposition much different from what wasknown in the past. Their safeguards, however, wererejected as Western cultural intrusions. The same

selective borrowings in the interests of those whowield power have continued under the Ayatollahsinto the twenty-first century.

Under Reza Shah, the number of politicalprisoners was small, although a few men weremurdered for political reasons. However, politicaland economic abuses of the modernizing elitegenerated resentment among the country's relativelysmall, modern middle class. Thus emerged a counterelite of nationalistic and populist persuasions. Theensuing political confrontations did not create anevolutionary process toward a more democraticstate. Instead, they increasingly engendered politicalviolence. As the severity of the challenge increased,so did the use of torture and execution. At thebeginning of this process under Reza Shah, theconfrontations lacked the intensity that they laterassumed under his son, Mohammad Reza Shah. Thelatter's rule, in turn, appears far less violent whencompared with what awaited the people under theAyatollahs. There seems to be a correlation betweenthe increasing commitment to conflicting ideologiesand the escalating level of violence.

Faced with the state's forceful modernization ofeducational norms and the Westernization of thepublic space (e.g., the removal of the veil),traditionalist Shiite clerics offered some resistance.This was put down with little killing and a relativelyminimal use of torture. When a group of Marxistsarose in 1938 to present a secular challenge, thestate charged them with antistate sedition. None ofthem was executed, and after the initial harshinterrogations, accompanied by the use of physicalpressure, the prisoners settled into routine,monotonous prison life. Iranian prisons lacked thebrutalities that were associated with militarydictatorships throughout the Third World in thesecond half of the twentieth century. The regime didnot torture its imprisoned opponents. In the wordsof historian Ervand Abrahamian, the regime "wasmore interested in keeping subjects passive andoutwardly obedient than in mobilizing them andboring holes into their minds. Reza Shah hadcreated a military monarchy—not an ideologicallycharged autocracy" (1999, p. 41).

After Reza Shah's abdication in 1941, thecountry experienced a period of political openness,during which the influential leftist Tudeh Party("Masses" party) was formed. The CIA induced a

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coup in 1953 that brought the almost-deposedMohammad Reza Shah back to Iran, but which alsoended the period of openness, forfeiting thepossibility of a gradual democratic process. Theleftists were prosecuted without due process of lawand were subjected to torture. Overall, whatevermistreatments and physical abuses the nationalistsand leftists experienced from 1953 to 1958, theseproved to be only a dress rehearsal for the array ofstate-sanctioned tortures that were imposed in the1970s.

Both Mohammad Reza Shah and his opponentsbecame increasingly ideological. The Shah's newdoctrinaire drive to recreate the greatness of ancientPersia moved him far away from the liberaltendencies of modernization theory and into theintolerant impulses of single-party authoritarianism.Across the deepening ideological divide of the1970s, the apparently overconfident Shah faced anew generation of leftist activists whose politicalleanings were enmeshed in the rising tide ofrevolutionary movements throughout the ThirdWorld. Young and inexperienced, these activistsannounced their arrival on the political scene with amarked militancy in the mid-1970s, when the Shah'sadministration was being hailed as a model ofprogress by his conservative backers in Washington.Nevertheless, the number of dissidents and therange of their activities remained relatively small,compared with what was being seen in some LatinAmerican countries at the time. By the time that thecountry was going through the seismic politicalchanges that led to the Islamic Republic in 1979,some 400 guerrillas had lost their lives, andhundreds of others were imprisoned and tortured.

The Shah's political police, known by theacronym SAVAK, was designed to strike fear in thehearts of the regime's young opponents. A newgeneration of torturers creatively honed their craft.It appeared as if SAVAK was deliberately flauntingits brutality. Tehran's Evin Prison symbolizedSAVAK's merciless image. It is not clear how muchof SAVAK's brutality actually occurred and howmuch was the result of the deliberately cultivatedimage of SAVAK violence or the creativeallegations of political opponents. In the end, thebrutality and the reputation of SAVAK fed uponeach other.

Torture was used to extract confessions and

recantations. More significantly, torture began tocast a dark shadow over the lives of the leadingactivists. The torture-induced confessions, broadcastnationally, were meant to break the resolve of theactivists and dissuade university students fromentering the forbidden political arena. In manycases, however, it had the opposite effect. In thisconvoluted world, which would outlast the dynastyand continue into the Islamic Republic, having beentortured—and not any independent act of bravery ora prolonged service to political causes—became thearbiter of who would rise as heroes and who wouldfall into infamy. Dying under torture created realmartyrs.

Executed prisoners

Martyrs' photos adorned the revolutionarybanners of the organizations that helped tooverthrow the Shah in 1979. In this time ofconfession and recantation, Evin Prison linked theShah's regime with that of the Ayatollah's.Interestingly, the man who shaped the prison lifeunder the Ayatollah's regime had been himself aprisoner in Evin during the Shah's rule. When themonarchy was overturned, the prison was quicklyemptied of the Shah's opponents and packed insteadwith high officials who had previously served themonarchy.

The Ayatollah presented his revolutionary stateas Islamic and thus unlike any other in modernhistory. However, in the early years of theconsolidation of the Islamic Republic, many ofhuman rights violations had very little to do withIslam, or even with the politicized clerics' reading ofit. The politically shrewd mullahs movedaggressively to eliminate any real or imaginedchallenges to the legitimacy of the newlyestablished state. Their actions corresponded withthe revolutionary patterns that had been created bytotalitarian states elsewhere in the world. The

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mullahs merely added their own Islamicterminology to rationalize actions whosemotivations lay in the realities of the contemporarynation–state in the context of an illiberal politicalculture. For political prisoners who crowded theprisons in the 1980s, the judiciary was characterizedby the absence of justice, Islamic or otherwise.

Summary executions are the signature of allrevolutionary states, as are torture-inducedconfessions and repentance. The tactics used by theAyatollah's mullahs to extract information and tobreak the resolve of political prisoners were thusalmost identical to those used by otherrevolutionary states, from the Stalinist SovietUnion, to the U.S.–supported juntas in LatinAmerican countries during the cold war. TheIslamic Republic's ideological fervor, however, wasmatched by an unprecedented intensification ofexecutions and torture, and in their wake, manycame to absolve the Shah of his own unsavoryrecord, which paled in comparison.

Prisoners being held in Evin Prison

The young activists who opposed AyatollahKhomeini were ill-prepared for what awaited themin prison. They based their expectations on theirown experiences in the Shah's prisons, or on whatthey had heard from previous generations ofpolitical prisoners. The Shah's tactics of repressionoffered no realistic measure of what followed withthe rise of Ayatollah Khomeini to power, however.By 1985, approximately thirteen thousandindividuals who politically opposed the Ayatollahhad been executed.

In a creative interpretation of medieval Islamiclaws, the clerics found a way to justify torture asIslamic Ta Ezir ("discretionary punishment" inShiDite jurisprudence). A prisoner who "lied" tointerrogators could receive Ta Ezir of as many as

seventy-four lashes until the "truth" was extracted.Many well-known individuals of all ideologicalpersuasions were displayed on national televisiongiving "voluntary interviews": confessing,recanting, denouncing their past politicalassociations, and praising the Ayatollah as the"Leader of the Islamic Revolution." In thesebroadcasts, the mullahs far out-performed theshowmanship of the Shah's SAVAK. By extractingformal recantations, the clerics intended to showthat God was on their side, and that history, with itsteleological direction and ultimate destiny, hadvindicated them. Captives were forced to deliver aversion of history that rendered them, prior to theirrepentance and return to Islam, as the essence of allevils, ancient and modern.

Thousands of rank and file activists whose"interviews" had no additional propaganda value,were nonetheless subjected to a crude combinationof physical torture, psychological pressure, Islamic"teachings," and public confession, all aimed atremolding their thoughts and conscience. TheIslamic Republic added a new term with clearreligious undertones to Iran's prison lexicon:Tawaban (singular tawab) were prisoners who hadrecanted. In fact, the clerics wished to turn the entiresecular population of Iran into tawaban. The resultwas a severe violation of the right of politicalprisoners to freedom of thought, conscience, andreligion, as well as the freedom to hold opinionswithout interference.

Prior to his death, Ayatollah Khomeini'scrowning achievement was the prison massacre of1988, unique in the annals of the country'sbrutalities. For reasons not entirely clear, theAyatollah decided to dissolve the category of"political prisoners" by dispatching them to death orsetting them free. The political prisoners faced aninquisition that had no proper judicial task otherthan inquiring about their thoughts on Islam and thecentral institution of the Islamic Republic. Noconsideration was given to the prisoners' allegedcrimes or to the sentences under which they hadbeen serving since the early 1980s. Instead, theinquisitors passed judgment on the prisoners'apostasy. Each prisoner was asked, "Are youMuslim, and do you perform your daily prayers."The prisoners understood the true meaning of thequestion: "Will you renounce your conscience andlive?" Many held fast to their beliefs, and were

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hung the same day.

In the prisons, the prosecutors asked those whohad confirmed their faith in Islam to prove it byperforming the required daily prayers. If theyrefused, they would receive twenty lashes for eachof the daily five sets of prayers—a total of onehundred lashes every twenty-four hours. Both maleand female prisoners were subject to this dailyregimen of whippings. One judge told the prisonersthat the punishment for a female infidel was deathunder prolonged whipping. In fact, however, theclerics treated women differently from men. Menwere considered responsible for their apostasy andhad to be killed. Women, on the other hand, werenot believed to be competent enough to take totalresponsibility for their actions, so the clerics wouldpunish them with imprisonment until they repented.Thus, one misogynist rule saved many women'slives. Female members of the Mojahedin—an anti-clerical Islamic organization—were not sofortunate. They were executed for continuing tosupport their exiled leaders.

Political prisoners in Rejaei Shahr prison

In contrast to the early years of the Ayatollah'sregime, the executioners stopped publishing thebody counts for their daily activities in 1988. Anofficial veil of secrecy shrouded the ongoingmassacre, and the rulers denied that mass killingscontinued to take place inside the prisons. Manyscholars accept the estimate of 4,500 to 5,000 deadfor the entire country that year, although some havealleged that the figure was much higher—as manyas 10,000 to 12,000. Opposition publicationsabroad, however, claimed a national death toll of30,000.

Like human rights violators in other ideologicalstates, the Islamic rulers of Iran engaged inextrajudicial activities. Scores of intellectuals andjournalists were killed in this fashion. From 1990

onward, these crimes were committed by membersof the shadowy groups who either worked for orwere loosely associated with the IntelligenceMinistry. These extrajudicial actions made amockery of the due process of law, even whenconsidered in terms of purely Islamic, or shariDah,law. Because of this, the Intelligence Ministry triedvery hard to conceal its murderous, extra-judicialactions from the public. Even the reformistpresident, Khatami, elected in 1997, was unable toput an end to these activities, although theintelligence officials became more circumspect.

Although there were similarities between theIslamic Republic and more secular authoritarianregimes in their use of violence and repression,there were also major differences that created newpatterns of human rights violations. Thesedifferences originated from the invocation of shariEah, or rather from the much larger and looselystructured cultural habits and norms derivative ofthe shari Eah paradigm. One major new category ofhuman rights violations resulted from thereimposition of Islamic punishments such asflogging, amputation, and stoning to death ofadulterers and common criminals.

The Ayatollah's revolution was Islamic, and themajority of its victims were Muslim Iranians, butnon-Muslim Iranians suffered repression andpersecution unlike any in modern Iranian history.Iran's Islamic tradition recognizes followers of threemonotheistic religions—Zoroastrianism, Judaism,and Christianity (Armenians, Assyrians, andChaldeans)—as people of the book. The IslamicConstitution recognizes them, as "the only religiousminorities who, within the limits of the law, are freeto perform their religious rites and ceremonies andto act according to their own canon in matters ofpersonal affairs and religious education." To put itdifferently, they are free to perform their religiousrites and ceremonies, but only within the limits ofIslamic shari Eah. Nonetheless, discriminationagainst non-Muslim people of the book becameblatant. A majority of each community saw nofuture for themselves in Iran and left.

The largest religious community in Iran was notnamed in the constitution, however. This was theBahā'ī, whose faith was never recognized in Iran, itstroubled birthplace. Because Bahā'ī were assumedto have been Muslims before accepting their "false"

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revelation, the Iranian Bahā'īs were considered to beapostates. By omitting them from constitutionalrecognition, the clerics' hoped to destroy theconditions needed for their survival as a communitywith a distinct religious identity. They attackedBaháDís on all possible grounds and in all spheresof public life, from elementary education toprofessional occupations, from marriage ceremoniesto cemeteries. More than 200 of their leaders weremurdered. Although many fled the country, thecommunity endured and survived the harshest yearsof the 1980s.

Iranian actress jailed and lashed for role in Australian movie, 2011

By the beginning of the twenty-first century, Iranhad already defeated Islamic fundamentalism. Amajority of the people were patiently waiting for anonviolent institutional and legal transformationthat would allow the young population toexperience personal freedoms and a measure ofdemocracy. The regime lost its Islamic mooring andits institutions completed with each other. The landof ancient Persia had lost the imperial, monarchicfacade that was once a source of national pride.

Iran: Genocide and Crimes Against Humanityhttp://www.enotes.com/iran-reference/iran Roxana Saberi: Who Are Iran's Political Prisoners? - WSJ.comhttp://online.wsj.com/article/SB10001424052970204524604576610983516265802.html Iran Human Rights Documentation Center – Reportshttp://www.iranhrdc.org/english/publications/reports/index.1.html?gclid=CLqklcS06q0CFWgaQgodwHit6Qhttp://www.iranhrdc.org/english/publications/reports/index.1.html?gclid=CLqklcS06q0CFWgaQgodwHit6Q&pg=2 1988 executions of Iranian political prisonershttp://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/1988_executions_of_Iranian_political_prisoners |People's Mujahedin of Iranhttp://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/People's_Mujahedin_of_Iran

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Questions for Research and Discussion

1. What is the significance of Persepolis as the titleof Marjane Satrapi's comics (graphic novels) andfilm?

Read through the section on Persepolis (pp 8‒10) and learn the significance the city had forancient Persians. Try to draw connections betweenthe historical Persepolis and the meaning you thinkthe name has for Satrapi and other modern Iranians.

2. Mohammad Reza Shah Pahlavi fancied himselfto be a "descendant" of the great Persian kings and"[i]n 1967, he staged an elaborate coronationceremony, styling himself 'Shah en Shah'–King ofKings. In 1971, he held an extravagant celebrationof 2,500 years of Persian monarchy" (p 13).

Imagine that you are a member of the Iranianmiddle class, ared not particularly political, and youare there in 1967, when the Shah crowns himselfKing of Kings. How would you react? Would youstart thinking differently about your country'sgovernment?

Although we live in a democratic republic, notunder a monarchy, our political figures like toinvoke past leaders, from Ronald Reagan, toAbraham Lincoln, to George Washington, drawingconnections between their philosphy aboutgoverning and those leaders of the past. Howdifferent is this from what the Shah did declaringhimself King of Kings? Could we have anythingcomparable to the Shah's self-aggrandizement inthis country? Why or why not?

3. In 1817, English poet Percy Bysshe Shelleywrote the poem Ozymandias about the Egyptianpharaoh Ramses II. Like the Shah, Darius the Great,and Xerxes, Ozymandias (a transliteration of theGreek name for Ramses) declares himself to be theKing of Kings.

Read the poem (a sonnet in iambic pentameter),and pay particular attention to the last three lines.What is the point of the poem? How does it haverelevance to the the legacies of the ancient Persiankings, the Shah, and other rulers who believe theirlegacies are great enough to endure through theages?

Do modern rulers (or presidents) believe theirreigns will have lasting significance? Why or whynot? If so, are they right?

OzymandiasI met a traveller from an antique landWho said: "Two vast and trunkless legs of stoneStand in the desert . . . Near them, on the sand,Half sunk, a shattered visage lies, whose frown,And wrinkled lip, and sneer of cold command,Tell that its sculptor well those passions readWhich yet survive, stamped on these lifeless things,The hand that mocked them, and the heart that fed:And on the pedestal these words appear:'My name is Ozymandias, king of kings:Look on my works, ye Mighty, and despair!'Nothing beside remains. Round the decayOf that colossal wreck, boundless and bareThe lone and level sands stretch far away."

4. Marjane Satrapi's story is a serious one, and yetshe chose to write it in the form of a comic. Eventhough graphic novels have gained respect over theyears since Art Spiegelman wrote Maus, abiography of his father, a Polish Jew and Holocaustsurvivor, in 1992, does the comic book formattrivialize Satrapi's story? Why or why not?

What comics or graphic novels have you readthat should have been written as books instead orcouldn't have gotten their stories across in any formother than a graphic novel?

5. Think about the school scenes in Persepolis. Ifyou lived in the same kind of situation, in whichyou were expected to dress, speak, and act a certainway, could you do it? Why or why not?

If you knew it could make the differencebetween your or your family's life and death, couldyou conform to the kind of society Marjane Satrapifaced in 1979? Would being a boy or a girl in thatkind of society make a difference, and would onegender have an advantage over another? Explainyour opinion.

6. In the film, not much time passes between thetime Marji meets Uncle Anouche and his arrest andexecution. Would life have been easier for Marji ifshe hadn't met Uncle Anouche, so that she wouldn'thave to experience that great loss? Why or why not?

Marji is still a child when she goes to see UncleAnouche in prison. What was your reaction to thatscene? Would your parents have allowed you tovisit a loved one alone, knowing that you might bethe last family member to see them alive? Wouldyou want to go? Explain your answers.

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