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Menc, mene, tekel, upharsin 319

recreating the Persian empire of old and bestriding western Asia like a Colos­
sus. In the end his regime proved no match for the anti-monarchical forces
which have been loose in the Middle East these past twenty-five years and
more. He was, to a considerable degree, responsible for his own downfall; and
to the extent that he was the victim of circumstances, these circumstances were
in large measure brought about by the conduct of the Western powers, and of
the United States in particular.
It is from the loyalty of the rural and religious classes that the legitimacy of
the institution of monarchy in Persia fundamentally derives. The shah, by

deliberately encouraging the growth of an industrial proletariat and a technoc­
racy in a primarily agricultural country, by employing the financial resources
of Persia so as to allow rhe cities and towns to reap the principal benefits from
the recent burst of prosperity, succeeded in undermining the loyalty of the
peasants without gaining that of the urban population. Although the standard
of living of the inhabitants of Tehran and the other major cities - many of
whom, and especially the unskilled and semi-skilled labourers, were recent
migrants from the rural areas - materially improved during the 1970s, the
improvement was bought at the cost of considerable disruption to their family
lives, their social habits, their religious feelings and their ties to their tra­
ditional communities. The familiar and inevitable temper produced by heigh­
tened expectations appeared among them - of sullen dissatisfaction with what
had so far been gained and a fractious insistence upon acquiring yet more, and
quickly. Such feelings among the urban masses were only strengthened by the
sight around them of the official, merchant and landowning classes ostentati­
ously, and in many cases corruptly, enjoying the spoils of the oil boom. When
declining oil revenues forced financial retrenchment upon the shah, it was the
urban masses, already smarting from real and imagined grievances (the most

galling being galloping inflation and cynical exploitation by property
speculators), who were the most rapidly and adversely affected. Their mood
was scarcely improved by the sight of the shah continuing to lavish money
upon his armed forces, money which might have been better spent, for
instance, in providing Tehran with a sewerage system, something which it,
alone among the major capitals of the world, entirely lacked.
An urban proletariat in such a mood was highly susceptible to political
agitation, especially as legal outlets for the expression of discontent were closed
by the ban on political parties, by censorship, by the intimidation of intellectu­
als and by the constant surveillance exercised by SAVAK. The majlis was a
cipher, and so, too, was the only permitted political organization, the Ras-
takhiz or ‘Resurgence’ Party, which was brought into being by the shah in
March 1975. Although it was presented to the Persian people as a vehicle
through which they could make their voices heard, the Rastakhiz Party, which

was alleged to have a membership by the end of 1976 of some five million, was
solely intended to serve as a means of drumming up mass support for the