Imagining a Revolutionary Iran: National Narratives in the Revolutionary Discourse of the Mojahedin-e Khalq

Abstract: Skocpol’s States and Social Revolutions, first published in 1979, was a hugely influential book encapsulating what has become known as the “Third Generation” of theories of revolution. In it, she argues that “revolutions are not made, they come” (Skocpol, 1979, 17), insisting that structural factors such as pre-revolutionary social structure and state breakdown were primarily responsible for the outbreak of revolutions. In that same year however, showing history’s sense of irony, the shah of Iran fell to a revolutionary coalition unlike any discussed in Skocpol’s work, forcing her to concede three years later that “if ever there has been a revolution deliberately ‘made’ by a mass-based social movement aiming to overthrow the old order, the Iranian Revolution against the shah surely is it” (Skocpol, 1982, 267). One of the groups committed to “making” this revolution was the Mojahedin-e Khalq, an Iranian Marxist-inspired “revolutionary Islamic” guerrilla organisation formed in the 1960s, which committed itself to an armed insurrection against the ruling dictatorship of Mohammed Reza Shah Pahlavi. Prior to carrying out any major attacks, however, the bulk of its leadership and members were rounded up by the shah’s security forces, SAVAK, and put on trial. They used the opportunity of a court trial to denounce the regime, outline their ideology, and build the case for revolutionary action. Through an analysis of seven of these speeches, I argue that Mojahedin contested the regime not only through arms, but through the elaboration of an alternative narrative of the nation. Specifically, drawing on the notions of the cultural toolkit and narrative genre wars, I argue that the Mojahedin reinterpreted the lessons of Islamic and Iranian culture and history to build a narrative making the case that revolution was not only just and legitimate, but inevitable. In this way they sought to build revolutionary solidarity with the Iranian people and encourage them to join in challenging the shah’s regime. By centring narrative and culture in the study of revolution, I argue we can better appreciate agency and the role of revolutionary groups in the “making” of mass-based social revolutions.