In 1963, the Shah of Iran, Mohammad Reza Pahlavi, announced the beginning of the "white revolution" - a program to modernize all spheres of life, designed to make his country the fifth most powerful economic power in the world (after the USA, USSR, Japan and Germany) by 2000.
After 16 years, the shah was forced to flee the country as a result of a popular revolution, and Iran became an Islamic republic that exists to the present day and occupies (in 2017) the 29th largest GDP in the world.
Of course, if the Islamic revolution in Iran had not broken out, then it is far from a fact that all of the Shah's plans would have been realized as he intended. Life would inevitably make its own adjustments. It is also clear that the Shah's revolution was triggered and accelerated precisely by his policy. However, it is always important to compare what a country has gained and what has lost as a result of a revolution.
Modernization of Iran
The main directions of the "white revolution" were approved by a popular referendum on January 26, 1963 (6 Bahman in 1341 according to the Shiite calendar adopted in Iran). These were: agrarian reform by eliminating large landlord latifundia and allotting land to landless and land-poor peasants, nationalizing forests and pastures, privatizing part of state enterprises to create a monetary fund for reforms, encouraging private entrepreneurship, introducing free universal secular schooling for children of both sexes, endowing men and women with equal civil and political rights.
In parallel with this, the Iranian leadership has been steadily taking measures to withdraw the main export branch of the economy - oil production - from foreign control. The state took an increasingly strong position in the corporatization of oil companies mixed with foreign capital and by 1973, even according to the always picky Soviet economists in such matters, achieved complete national control over the oil industry.
Such data testify to the rapid economic development of Iran during this period. For 15 years (1960-1975) Iran's GNP has grown fivefold. Its annual growth exceeded 10%. In 1962-1972. the share of industry in Iran's GDP increased from 33% to 41%. By the end of the 1970s. less than 20% of the national income was produced in the countryside, while in 1950 this figure exceeded 75%.
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Thanks to the increased revenues from oil in Iran, foreign exchange reserves rose sharply, and the country's annual budget increased in 1962-1977. 15 times, amounting to 20 billion of the then dollars. Over 60% of the peasants received land free of charge thanks to the agrarian reform. The Shah renounced his personally owned lands, transferring them to the fund for the allotment of landless peasants.
Changes in social life were unusually sharp. Millions of young people have completed secondary education. All those who passed the exams were provided with free education in state universities. State scholarships were paid to students, the most capable were sent at state expense to study at the most prestigious universities in the United States and Western Europe.
Changes in everyday life were also stormy. According to the observations of contemporaries, Tehran of the 70s turned into a European city with an abundance of advertisements and supermarkets, with new cars and young people dressed and hairstyled in the western way. It has become almost impossible to find a woman in a veil or hijab on the streets of the Iranian capital.
Pitfalls of change
But not everyone liked the changes that were taking place. The land reform affected the interests of the Shiite clergy, who, with the help of leaders such as Ayatollah Khomeini, waged an uncompromising struggle against the Shah's regime, inciting anti-Jewish and anti-Christian prejudices among the mass of the people. The clergy were outraged by the emancipation of women. Not all peasants were able to prudently dispose of the land they received, went bankrupt and replenished the urban lumpen-proletariat. With the general rise in the standard of living, the nouveau riche began to stand out sharply, causing hatred among the people.
After several years of extremely favorable conditions in the oil market, a natural recession began in 1976, and the pace of economic development slowed down. Here the Shah's regime fell into the trap of deceived expectations of eternal welfare growth. In addition, in the political sphere, the shah was constantly "tightening the screws." Back in 1957, the SAVAK political police was created, which won universal hatred, and in 1973 the shah introduced a one-party regime, canceling the freedom of elections. In addition, the Shah's secret police, guided by US recommendations, fought exclusively against leftist forces and paid little attention to opposition from conservative religious groups.
What happened is pure regression
By the time of the spontaneous popular revolution against the Shah's regime, the left and liberal opposition was crushed, and the resulting political vacuum was filled by supporters of Islamic fundamentalism, opponents of Western transformation. But let’s assume that the Shah’s regime would either undertake liberalization in time or suppress mainly conservatives. What could Iran be like now?
It is impossible to predict what place he would take in the world in terms of economy. But Iran would be a secular state, and Islamic fundamentalism would not have received such a development anywhere in the world. There would be no Taliban, no ISIS, or the many terrorist attacks that have shaken the world in the past two or three decades. In the foreign policy sphere, Iran would have remained an ally of the United States, but indirectly this could have a positive effect on the USSR. Because then the Soviet Union would hardly have decided on the fatal introduction of its troops into Afghanistan, next to an American ally. The bloodiest Iranian-Iraqi war in the world after 1945 would not have happened.
Iran could become the first Muslim state in the world to modernize not only the country's technology and infrastructure, but also the entire social and political system. The mainstays of the Islamic revolution were the remaining centers of traditional ways and the authority of the Shiite clergy, and they would have been eliminated if the “white revolution” had been brought to an end. There is every reason to believe that the quality of the entire world civilization, and not just life in Iran itself, would now be different, higher in many respects than is observed in our reality. The Islamic revolution has thrown back not only Iran, but the entire Middle East and all of humanity.
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Yaroslav Butakov