Commentariat

Thirty years ago Iran shook the world by unseating its pro-Western monarch and installing a religious regime headed by Ayatollah Khomeini. It was a shock to an international community still wedded to the easy assumption that revolutions could only come from the secular left and not the religious right. But it was also a shock to the Iranians themselves, who had dearly sought change from an authoritarian and corrupt royalist regime, but who little expected the clerical rule that would replace it.