As Iran’s revolution turns 40, a consensus: Things must change
Recirculating more and more these days, as Iranians assess both the sweet and bitter fruit of 40 years of Islamic Revolution, is a video taken on the plane carrying Ayatollah Ruhollah Khomeini in 1979.
He is about to end years of exile and touch down in Tehran.
Known by his followers as bot shekan, the “idol smasher,” Mr. Khomeini was about to sweep away 2,500 years of monarchy in Iran – and a shah who was a staunch American, Israeli, and Western ally.
Khomeini aimed to install instead an Islamic Republic that promised justice, prosperity, and a popular “government of God” that would virulently oppose the United States and Israel.
Today it is clear that Utopia never arrived: The Islamic Republic reels from an ever-growing gap between rich and poor and wide social divisions. It is afflicted by corruption, an economy crippled by US sanctions, and vicious political infighting that has left many Iranians bereft of hope about
A turning pointThe cost of corruption‘At least we have security’