Investigating modernisation in Iran in relation to the changing

fifth news filter of Herman and Chomsky’s ‘Propaganda

Model’

By

Lianne Godfrey

Submitted in fulfilment of the requirements for the degree of

Magister Artium in the Faculty of Arts at the Nelson Mandela
Metropolitan University

December 2013

Supervisor: Prof. A. Konik

Declaration

I, Lianne Godfrey, hereby declare that Investigating modernisation in Iran in relation to the
changing fifth news filter of Herman and Chomsky’s ‘Propaganda Model’ is my own work,
and that it has not previously been submitted for assessment to another University or for
another qualification. Further, all the sources that I have used and/or quoted within this work
have been clearly indicated and acknowledged by complete references.

6 December 2013

Lianne Godfrey

_________________________
Contents
Abstract 1
Acknowledgments 2
Introduction 3
Chapter One: Modernisation theory, Iran and the mass media 8
1.1 Introduction 8
1.2 European Orientalism 9
1.3 The early American encounter with the Orient 11
1.4 Post-World War II factors underpinning American interest in the Middle East 14
a. New consumer markets 16
b. American exceptionalism 18
c. Religious presidential rhetoric 19
d. Oil 22
e. Global political security and the strategic geographical location of the
Middle East 23
1.5 Daniel Lerner’s The Passing of Traditional Society 24
a. Context 24
b. Content 27
c. ‘Iran: In a Bipolar World’ 33
1.6 The discursive legacy of Lerner’s The Passing of Traditional Society 38
1.7 Conclusion 41
Chapter Two: Anti-modernisation theory within the context of Iran 46
2.1 Introduction 46
2.2 Iran and the West in the modern era 48
2.3 The context of Iran during the 1940s 53
2.4 Ahmad Fardid 54
2.5 The context of Iran during the 1950s 56
a. Iranian political parties 61
b. Public discontent 63
c. Ruhollah Khomeini 66
2.6 Jalal Al-e Ahmad 67
2.7 The context of Iran during the 1960s 75
2.8 Ali Shari’ati 80
2.9 Conclusion 83
Chapter Three: From anti-Communism to anti-Islam – The transformation of the fifth news
filter of Herman and Chomsky’s Propaganda Model 85
3.1 Introduction 85
3.2 Herman and Chomsky’s propaganda model 86
3.3 The transformation of the fifth filter 93
3.4 The ascendancy of the fifth (anti-Islam) news filter 96
a. The portrayal of Mohammad Mossadegh in the US press 96
b. The Shah as the ‘great liberator’ 100
c. The Islamic Revolution and Ayatollah Khomeini 104
3.5 Conclusion 107
Chapter Four: Reflections of the anti-Islam filter in Ben Affleck’s Argo (2012) 110
4.1 Introduction 110
4.2 The hostage situation 111
a. The cause of the hostage crisis 111
b. The hostage crisis as a historico-discursive juncture 114
c. US media portrayal of the hostage crisis 118
4.3 Ben Affleck’s Argo (2012) 122
a. Context 122
b. The historical underpinnings of Ben Affleck’s Argo (2012) 126
c. Formal and thematic features of Ben Affleck’s Argo (2012) 128
4.4 Conclusion 138
Chapter Five: Conclusion – The framing of Iran as a nuclear threat by the American mass
media 140
5.1 Introduction 140
5.2 A brief history of Iran’s nuclear programme 141
a. The 1950s and 1960s – US collaboration with the Shah 141
b. The 1970s – Regime change and problems 143
c. The 1980s – The rekindling of Iran’s interest in nuclear power 145
d. The 1990s to the first decade of the 21st century – Iran as a nuclear
‘threat’ 147
e. Iran’s nuclear ambitions today 150
5.3 Concluding Remarks 150
Bibliography 153
 1

Abstract

The focus of this dissertation falls on the transformation of the fifth news filter of the
propaganda model identified by Edward S. Herman and Noam Chomsky in their
Manufacturing Consent: The Political Economy of the Mass Media. This transformation
entails a shift from an anti-communist orientation, to an anti-Islamic orientation, and while
this shift has been alluded to by several theorists, in what follows it will be dealt with more
systematically.
In this regard, it will be traced from its roots, in the tension between modernisation
theory – as espoused by figures such as Daniel Lerner – and the anti-modernisation theory of
Iranian scholars such as Ahmad Fardid, Jalal al-e Ahmad and Ali Shari’ati. Following this,
the development of the anti-Islamic orientation of the fifth news filter, in the wake of the
Islamic Revolution in Iran, and the ensuing Iranian hostage crisis, will be explored. This will
be done as a precursor to examining the continued reflection of the related tropes and
stereotypes in US mainstream film, with particular focus falling on Ben Affleck’s Argo
(2012). Finally, this dissertation will conclude with a consideration of the possible effects of
such representations on the tensions between the US and Iran over the latter’s nuclear
ambitions.

Key words: propaganda model, anti-communism, anti-Islam, Iran, modernisation theory, anti-
modernisation theory
 2

Acknowledgments

First and foremost I would like to thank my supervisor, Prof. Adrian Konik, for his
motivation, enthusiasm, patience and immense knowledge. Particularly his criticisms in terms
of writing style and his ideas on structure have been extremely helpful.
My parents’ belief in the importance of a good education eventually influenced me to
pursue an academic career. Importantly, their generous financial contributions and emotional
support during the tougher stages of my university career have been imperative.
The extension of the financial services of the Dutch governmental organisation Dienst
Uitvoering Onderwijs (DUO – formerly Informatie Beheer Groep) to Dutch students studying
abroad could not have come at a better time. Similarly, the NMMU Research Centre, which
awarded me an NMMU Postgraduate Research Scholarship earlier this year, proved to be
excellent timing as my savings had just run out. Without their respective financial
contributions, I would not have been able to study for the past six years.
Many friends and family members have shown an interest in my Master’s and offered
their words of support. This was extremely encouraging, especially during the more
challenging times while writing this paper.
Last but not least, I would like to thank my husband Shawn Paul Godfrey, my main
source of support, both emotionally and financially. If it weren’t for his encouragement, I
don’t know if I would have completed this Master’s degree. Shawn believed in me even when
I didn’t believe in myself.
 3

Introduction

In Edward S. Herman and Noam Chomsky’s book entitled Manufacturing Consent: The
Political Economy of the Mass Media, it is advanced that the mass media, among other things,
function to “inculcate individuals with the values, beliefs, and codes of behaviour that will
integrate them into the institutional structures of the larger society.” In terms of this, it is
asserted that, as we live in “a world of concentrated wealth and major conflicts of class
interest, to fulfill this role requires systematic propaganda.” Accordingly, their propaganda
model comprises of a set of five news filters, namely, (1) concentrated ownership, (2)
advertising, (3) experts, (4) ‘flak’ as a means of disciplining the media, and – most
importantly for this dissertation – (5) ‘anticommunism’ as a national religion and control
mechanism (Herman & Chomsky 1994: 1-2).
As Rick Hayes-Roth points out, “after the Soviet Union disintegrated, Chomsky
predicted terrorism and Islam would replace communism in the fifth filter” (Hayes-Roth
2011: 46-7). Related to this, as early as 1985, Edward W. Said elaborated in his Covering
Islam: How the Media and the Experts Determine How We See the Rest of the World, on how
the media portray any message to do with Islam as negative, using a recurring rhetoric of
pejorative terms such as ‘terrorist,’ ‘fundamentalist’ and so on. More importantly, he also
maintained that “Iran…[, w]ith the end of the Cold War,…has come to represent America’s
major foreign devil” (Said 1985A: 7). Yet, while Chomsky and Said both allude to the above
potential change of focus in the fifth news filter, other scholars have similarly, for the most
part, only intimated that such a change in focus is taking place. In contrast, in what follows,
the transformation of the fifth news filter will be approached more systematically.
In the interest of exploring the above, firstly, with specific reference to Daniel Lerner’s
The Passing of Traditional Society, the rise of modernisation theory within the context of
post-World War Two America, will be considered, along with its relationship to changing
American attitudes towards the Middle East in general, and Iran in particular. Secondly, the
rise of the anti-modernisation will be explored. Thirdly, it will be shown how the ensuing
discursive conflict precipitated the transformation of the fifth news filter of Herman and
Chomsky’s propaganda model. Fourthly, and with a view to investigating how this new anti-
Islam filter is a continuing phenomenon in the American mass media, the acute manifestation
of its dynamics in Ben Affleck’s Argo (2012), will be elaborated upon. Finally, the role of this
anti-Islam filter in the establishment of international pressure on Iran to abandon its nuclear
 4

programme will be explored, along with the problematic consequences of the continued
representation of Iran in primarily pejorative terms.
That is, in Chapter One, modernisation theory will be traced from its roots in American
‘Orientalism’ – which differed in certain ways from its European counterpart – to its
flowering in the post-World War Two era. In the latter regard, the United States became
increasingly interested in the Middle East for a number of reasons, ranging from the potential
consumer markets which the region offered, to its strategic geographical location and oil
resources, all of which became increasingly important as Cold War tensions grew. And as will
be discussed, the ensuing neo-colonial attitude towards the Middle East was fuelled by a
sense of cultural and religious superiority. Arguably, this attitude is most succinctly expressed
in the work of pro-modernisation theorist Daniel Lerner, and with a view to establishing the
parameters of modernisation discourse, his book The Passing of Traditional Society (1958),
will be engaged with critically, with specific focus falling on the chapter entitled “Iran: In a
Bipolar World.” After this, the discursive legacy of Lerner’s work, particularly as it is
reflected in Wilbur Schramm’s Mass Media and National Development (1964), and in the
subsequent tensions over UNESCO’s attempt to create a New World Information and
Communication Order, will be considered.
In Chapter Two, after a brief overview of the modern history of Iran, the events of the
1940s, which comprised the context out of which the influential theorist Ahmad Fardid
emerged, will be considered, along with the key features of his renowned anti-modernisation
‘oral’ philosophy. Next, his influence on Jalal al-e Ahmad will be elaborated upon, along with
the ways in which the latter’s ideas were shaped by the events of the 1950s, that is, the
development of Western neo-colonialism in Iran, which led to the establishment of various
political parties opposing the Iranian Pahlavi regime and its US-influenced pro-modernisation
discourse, as well as growing public discontent with the status quo in Iran, and, finally, the
augmenting politico-religious power of Islamic leader Ruhollah Khomeini, whose ideals
resonated with the growing popularity of an anti-modernisation stance in the country. As will
be discussed, Fardid’s notion of gharbzadegi (which translates loosely as ‘weststruckness’),
was not only an idea developed by Al-e Ahmad in his Gharbzadegi, but also a concept that
went on to inform the anti-modernisation theory of Ali Shari’ati, who was active in the 1960s,
and whose death in exile in 1977 helped fan the fires of rebellion, which erupted in the
Islamic Revolution some two years later.
In Chapter Three, Herman and Chomsky’s propaganda model, which entails a set of five
news filters through which information is obliged to travel prior to being published and
broadcast in the mass media, will be introduced. Discussion of this model and its dynamics is
 5

important at this point, since it will be shown that a recent transformation has occurred to
Herman and Chomsky’s original concept of the fifth anti-communist filter, insofar as it has
become anti-Islamic in orientation. As will be argued, this is not only clearly evinced through
the contrast between the positive, intermittent American mass media representations of Iran
before the Islamic Revolution – when the country under the Shah Pahlavi followed an
American pro-modernisation trajectory – and the constantly negative representation of the
country and its people after 1979. In addition, the ascendancy of this transformed fifth filter
can be traced back to the portrayal of Iran’s Prime Minister Mohammad Mossadegh, who,
although democratically chosen and extremely popular among the Iranian public for his
nationalist ideals, was erroneously represented in the US mass media as a communist, or at
least as someone with strong socialist leanings. And while such negative representations were,
for a short time, interrupted by the benign media image of the Shah Pahlavi as the ‘great
liberator,’ after the Islamic Revolution, they emerged once more and coalesced with the
negative characterisation of Iran as dominated by brutal, religious fundamentalism. Indeed,
from an American perspective, the ideals of the two figures of Mossadegh and Khomeini –
despite their differences, came to form the flip-sides of the same coin; a ‘rogue’
communist/Islamic admixture, as it were, against the supposedly magnanimous figure of the
Shah. Arguably, such media associations – regardless of how erroneous they were –
contributed significantly to the transformation of the fifth news filter of the propaganda
model, identified by Herman and Chomsky – from anti-communist to anti-Islamic in
orientation.
Moreover, as will be advanced in Chapter Four, not only did this new inflection of the
fifth news filter grow rapidly in momentum following the Iranian hostage crisis. In addition,
the related propagation of negative stereotypes and tropes to represent Iran and Iranians has
continued right through into the contemporary era, as acutely evinced in Ben Affleck’s
blockbuster film Argo (2012). And with a view to illustrating how this is the case, the primary
focus of this chapter will fall on some of the key formal and thematic features of the film.
This, in turn, will serve as the precursor to the concluding discussion, in Chapter Five, of how
current media representations of Iran have framed the country as a nuclear threat. Importantly
though, as the timeline of historical events behind Iran’s nuclear development shows, Iran’s
initial introduction to nuclear technology was through the United States. That is, through the
American support of the Shah’s modernisation programmes, Iran first developed nuclear
equipment and gained the requisite technical knowledge. And while the Islamic Revolution
brought to power a government resistant to nuclear technology, firstly, because it would keep
them linked to American intervention, and secondly, because it conflicted with their religious
 6

views, it must be recalled that it was the American support for Iraq during the Iran-Iraq war
which rekindled Iran’s interest in nuclear technology. Although, subsequently, the Iranian
government has repeatedly reiterated that their nuclear ambitions are intended for peaceful
purposes only, the US government and media continue to frame Iran as a threat. In relation to
this process, films like Affleck’s Argo play a propagandist role, insofar as the international
prejudice they generate helps to ensure that the terms of Iran’s nationally-orientated
modernisation attempts continue to be prescribed to them by the United States of America.
With regard to methodology, this dissertation will involve a qualitative study. Qualitative
analysis is “a means for exploring and understanding the meaning individuals or groups
ascribe to a social or human problem” (Creswell 2009: 232), with the consequence that its
focus tends to fall on characteristics “that cannot easily be reduced to numerical values”
(Leedy & Ormrod 2010: 94). It thus contrasts with quantitative study, which involves
“numbers and statistical manipulation and analysis” (Takona 2002: 314). As a qualitative
study, the research methods of ‘discourse analysis’ and ‘content analysis’ are particularly
important to this dissertation. Firstly, in a discourse analysis, human language is emphasised
“as a socially contextual performance” (Wertz et al. 2011: 4), and in what follows, the
dynamic of such performance – as it pertains to US mass media representations of Iran – will
be appraised against the backdrop of relevant historical material.
Secondly, a content analysis is defined by Neuendorf as “the systematic,
objective…analysis of message characteristics” (Neuendorf 2002: 2). In this regard, part of
the focus of this dissertation will fall on the messages broadcast by the American mass media
in order to identify their anti-Islamic content, and account for it. This will entail significant
reference to content and discourse analyses previously undertaken by other researchers, the
significance of which will be commented on, as the argument of the dissertation is presented.
In this regard, Ranjit Kumar identifies two kinds of information gathering, that is,
information gathered through the use of primary or secondary sources. In short, “primary
sources provide first-hand information,” and are sources which may be engaged with through
observation, interviews or questionnaires, while “secondary sources provide second-hand
data” and comprise documents – such as government publications, census information, earlier
research, and so on – with which the researcher engages critically (Kumar 2005: 118). In
what follows, secondary sources will initially be referred to, in the interest of establishing the
relevant historico-discursive framework, and only after that will aspects of certain primary
sources be analysed, in relation to the discursive trajectories identified.
This dissertation arguably has a significant generalisability, both because of the
pervasiveness of the anti-Islamic inflection of the fifth news filter of Herman and Chomsky’s
 7

propaganda model, and because of the immense broadcasting network of the American mass
media.
 8

Chapter One: Modernisation theory, Iran and the mass media

1.1 Introduction

The focus of this chapter falls on the modernisation discourse that emerged within America in
the latter half of the 20th century, and its articulation in relation to the Middle East in general,
and Iran in particular. However, although modernisation discourse is often associated with the
figure of Daniel Lerner – because his 1958 work The Passing of Traditional Society
comprises such a succinct expression of its dynamics – neither modernisation discourse nor
Lerner’s text can be understood outside of the context in which they emerged. This context, as
will be discussed, involved not only echoes and reflections of European Orientalism and the
American equivalent thereof, but also both the geo-political pressures of the post-World War
Two era (which derived from the Cold War tensions between capitalist America and the
Soviet Union), and the market needs of the burgeoning American economy itself.
All of these factors contributed significantly to the formation of modernisation discourse,
and the publication of The Passing of Traditional Society, in which modernisation was
defined in terms of heightened consumerism and the unequivocal embrace of the American
‘way of life.’ Moreover, such modernisation was advanced as the only feasible path forward,
in a way that progressively marginalised the indigenous/traditional modes of being in the
countries where it was implemented. And the impetus behind such modernisation processes
subsequently reached unprecedented heights when, under the influence of Wilbur Schramm,
the mass media became a key tool in the articulation of the related ideals. A tool which,
although it initially promised to facilitate a cultural dialogue between the First and Third
Worlds, ultimately succeeded in subjecting the latter to the ideological monologue of the
former. However, as will be discussed in the next chapter, this monologue proved deeply
problematic, as it rendered the Western world deaf to an entire oppositional discourse
growing within Iran.
With a view to exploring the above, in what follows, firstly, with reference to the work of
Edward Said and others, the features and dynamics of European Orientalism will be
elaborated upon. Next, the early American encounter with the Orient will be discussed, along
with the way in which it gave birth to a form of Orientalism considerably different from that
of Europe. After this, the post-World War Two factors underpinning American interest in the
Middle East in general, and Iran in particular, will be considered, before both the context and
related content of Daniel Lerner’s The Passing of Traditional Society – including his
 9

particular focus on Iran – are explored. Finally, the chapter will conclude with consideration
of the discursive legacy of Lerner’s text, a legacy which is arguably reflected in both the
conceptual orientation of Wilbur Schramm’s 1964 work Mass Media and National
Development, and the failure of the proposed New World Information and Communication
Order (NWICO).

1.2 European Orientalism

In Orientalism, Edward Said defines the notion of Orientalism as “a way of coming to terms
with the Orient that is based not only on the Orient’s special place in European and Western
experience” as the source of great fear and intimidation, but also on the Orient as “a set of
constraints upon and limitations of thought,” which was at the same time indissociable from
“a political vision of reality whose structure promoted the difference between the familiar
(Europe, the West, ‘us’) and the strange (the Orient, the East, ‘them’)” (Said 1985A: 1, 42,
43).
That is, firstly, Said points out how, historically speaking, there was an enduring sense of
fear of the Orient in Europe. As Turner elucidates, while the Orient “embraces an ill-defined
geographical zone[,]…Islam and the Islamic heartlands played a peculiarly significant part in
the formation of Western attitudes to the East” (Turner 2003: 38). The Orient worried the
Europeans mainly because of the dominating religion in the region, which was diametrically
opposed to the Christianity prevalent in Europe. This fear was, moreover, progressively
fuelled through the increasing European perception of Oriental superiority. Accordingly, the
Orientals were more advanced in terms of, among other things, their military, education,
science, politics and economics.1 Consequently, as Said maintains, Europe could merely look
on while the “hegemony of Islam grew enormously.” Indeed, until “the thirteenth and
fourteenth centuries Islam ruled as far east as India, Indonesia and China” (Said 1985A: 59).
Esposito confirms this, stating that “Islam’s early expansion and success constituted a
challenge theologically, politically, and culturally which proved a stumbling block to
understanding, and a threat to the Christian West” (Esposito 1999: 23). The growing religion
posed not only a threat to the European belief system, which is clearly evinced by the

1
See Thierry Hentsch’s Imagining the Middle East, specifically the section in which he refers to how the Arab
or Muslim science of the Middle Ages was “considerably more advanced and refined” than that of Europe
(Hentsch 1992: 38). See also David Weir’s American Orient: Imagining the East from the Colonial Era through
the Twentieth Century, in which it is proposed that “various Oriental tongues were superior to European
languages” (Weir 2011: 36). In addition, John L. Esposito explains, in his The Islamic Threat: Myth or Reality,
how such perceptions led the Europeans of the Christian West to view the expansion of early Islam as a threat
(Esposito 1999: 23).
 10

“Catholic Church’s venomous campaign against Islam,”2 but also to their imperial ambitions,
as “Islamic states [like]…the Ottoman and Mughal empires had expanded by creating vast
land-based dominions,” and Christians found themselves progressively struggling “to recover
former Christian territory lost to the Muslim invader” (Ezzati 2002: 69, Gettleman & Schaar
2003: 70, Lewis 2001: 412). Said asserts that, “to this extraordinary assault Europe could
respond with very little except fear and a kind of awe,” and that “where Islam was concerned,
European fear, if not always respect, was in order.” In sum, then, “for Europe, Islam was a
lasting trauma” (Said 1985A: 59).3
Secondly, this fear on the part of Europeans with regard to the Orient, understandably,
served to constrain and limit the comprehension of the latter by the former. That is,
Orientalism functioned to placate European anxiety by representing the Orientals in ways that
rendered them less threatening. In terms of this, Said points out how Orientalism outlines
highly prejudiced parameters of understanding of the Orient, which “allowed Europeans to
deal with and even to see Orientals as a phenomenon possessing regular characteristics” [my
italics] (Said 1985A: 42) – which lent to them a comforting predictability. In other words,
Orientalism provided Europeans with a discursive framework through which the Orient could
be delimited and understood. Said maintains that “without examining Orientalism as a
discourse, one cannot possibly understand the enormous systematic discipline by which
European culture was able to manage – and even produce – the Orient politically,
sociologically, militarily, ideologically, scientifically and imaginatively” (Said 1985A: 3).
Appelrouth and Edles refer to this as “a set of background, taken-for-granted assumptions
projected onto the Orient and its people – in short, a hegemonic dogma.” And, because of
their status as stereotypes, “such assumptions [were] never tested against the reality of the
empirical world; they simply exist[ed] as an unconscious lens through which the Orient [wa]s
seen and understood” (Appelrouth & Edles 2008: 825). As such, for Piterburg, “the
Orientalist discourse...gained the power to determine what should be considered objectively
scientific and valid knowledge, and thus the power to shape the identity, culture and history,
not only of its subjects, but also of its object” (Höfert & Salvatore 2000: 72). This discursive
aspect of Orientalism is a vital part of the definition of the notion, as it served as the
predominant element in the framing of the later European academic Orientalists’ perceptions,
2
Christian ire in this regard was largely the result of the challenge which Islam was thought to pose, insofar as
its adherents saw it as a more advanced version of the Abrahamic tradition. Moreover, as Braswell maintains,
because Muslims “believe they have the superior religion” (Braswell 2000: 62), insofar as Christians thought
that Muhammad was to Islam what Jesus was to Christianity, it was “incumbent upon the Church to declare
Muhammad an imposter” (Akbar 2002: 41).
3
Harrison goes so far as to speak of early ‘European Islamophobia,’ and hints that the fears of Christian Europe
over the Muslim Orient can perhaps be linked to the European lack of confidence, when it came to ultimately
winning the struggle against the Muslim Orient (Harrison 1988: 29).
 11

and hence underpinned the structures that came to define the Oriental in the eyes of such
Orientalists. In this regard, Said confirms the close confines of these conceptual restraints,
when he maintains that Orientalism had such an “authoritative position…that…no one
writing, thinking, or acting on the Orient could do so without taking account of the limitations
on thought and action imposed by Orientalism” (Said 1985A: 3).
The third component of Said’s above definition, namely the “political vision” which
divided the world in overtly Manichean terms, involved the “Western style [of] dominating,
restructuring and having authority over the Orient.” In terms of this, “the relationship between
Occident and Orient is a relationship of power, of domination, of varying degrees of a
complex hegemony” (Said 1985A: 43, 3, 5). Clarke concurs, arguing that “issues of power
and colonial domination must certainly be factored into any account of orientalism” (Clarke
1997: 209). Moreover, Hentsch adds that “colonialism was more than the outcome of
conquest; it represented a particular form of seizure and domination” (Hentsch 1992: 130),
after all “from the mid-nineteenth century up to 1920 more than 450 million people in Africa
and Asia came under direct colonial rule” (Westad 2005: 73). Within this context,
Orientalism, by implicitly promoting a colonialist and imperialist attitude, helped to
legitimate and thereby facilitate the domination and control of the Orient. As Ma asserts,
“Orientalism is war, with East and West pitted against each other ideologically, if not
militarily.” Accordingly, Orientalism is “a Western imagery that subjugates the East, [which]
befits the aims of war perfectly; [while] war, in turn, culminates [in] the Orientalist urge of
domination” (Ma 2012: 123). As such, on account of Orientalism, the two polar opposites are
already in discursive conflict even before an armed conflict is initiated. Thus, Orientalism
must be understood as a “generic term…to describe the Western approach to the Orient.” On
the one hand, “Orientalism is the discipline by which the Orient was (and is) approached
systematically, as a topic of learning, discovery, and practice.” Yet, on the other hand, it also
designates “that collection of dreams, images, and vocabularies available to anyone who has
tried to talk about what lies east of the dividing line” (Said 1985: 2, 73).

1.3 The early American encounter with the Orient

Historically, the American experience of the Orient started through travel – or more
specifically, a form of religious tourism – which began in the latter part of the 19th century.
Accordingly, since few could afford to go abroad themselves, around this time most
Americans learnt about the Orient by reading about other people’s experiences in travelogues.
And of those who could afford to travel, many were Christians who trekked through the
 12

Orient to see the Holy Land, and consequently returned to tell other Christians about their
journeys. In this regard, Jacobs confirms that “most American’ encounters with the Orient
took place through the commentary provided by a variety of…missionaries, tourists and travel
writers” (Jacobs 2011: 13), while Little claims that “what little the average American knew
about the Middle East and its people likely came from two sources: the King James Bible and
Scheherazade’s Thousand and One Arabian Nights” (Little 2008: 11). Thus, while Americans
had numerous different encounters with the Orient, these encounters were seldom personal
and first-hand. Nevertheless, they helped to create an American vision of the Orient that
differed from the European Orientalist view (McAlister 2005: 13-5, 20-25). That is, no fear
was involved; rather the inhabitants of Middle Eastern nations were generally seen and
portrayed as incompetent and notably backward, and hence as no threat whatsoever to the
United States (Little 2008: 11).
Moreover, in addition to their lack of fear when it came to dealing with the Middle East,
the Americans also felt a sense of religious superiority over the Orientals. This was because,
in many cases, Americans believed they were “the literal inheritors of God’s favour,” and
generally “presume[ed] that white Christians were in possession of a rationality, historical
consciousness, and purposiveness that was denied to the Oriental.” Moreover, with the Holy
Land located in the Orientals’ domain, many Americans felt affiliated with the Middle East,
and through this repeated the historical examples of many before them – from an array of
different religious backgrounds – who have “claimed the spaces and histories of the Middle
East as their own” (McAlister 2005: 3, 13, 14). Indeed, “driven by a spiritual connection to
the Holy Land and a complex reading of both the Bible and history more generally, American
Protestants saw the creation of the United States as the fulfilment of the biblical prophecy of a
new Jerusalem” (Jacobs 2011: 15). Islam, in contrast, while dominant in the region, was
looked down upon as an “‘imposter’ religion” and the “‘bad’ alternative to Christianity”
(McAlister 2005:10). As such, while the medieval Crusades can be regarded as the particular
point in history when Europeans made Muslims their enemy, it was only in the late 19 th and
early 20th centuries that the Americans began to perceive Islam in a vaguely similar light.
However, unlike the Europeans, the Americans’ bold attitude of religious superiority and their
sanctimony over the Orientals was in part fuelled by a sense of machismo, insofar as they
remained undaunted and unintimidated, where Europe had previously trembled (Mastnak
2002: 96-116).
In fact, it became almost customary for Americans to express disdain for the Orientals,
particularly since it was believed that they had not looked after their religious heritage. That
is, the Orient had an immense religious significance for the predominantly Christian
 13

Americans, because of the location of the Holy Land therein. Yet, while many Americans felt
a “sense of religious attachment” to the region, after undertaking the long voyage there, many
of them also “expressed shock at what they described as the ‘filthy’ and degenerate state of
the local population, who, after all, were supposed to be serving as exemplars of biblical
customs” (McAlister 2005: 3, 14-15, 32). The result of this was that, not only did “American
Protestant pilgrims…treat Holy Land locals with indifference or even disdain” (Stidham
Rogers 2011: 147), but also, upon their return home, they tended to propagate such prejudice
in a rather powerful way, because their travels tended to imbue them with authority.
Yet, the corollary of such denigration was that Orientals became characterised, in many
cases, as the epitome of self-indulgence and self-absorption;4 characterisation which in time
would prove to have its own charms for an American public, as it shed the last vestiges of its
historical Puritanism, in response to growing economic strength. Indeed, from the 1920s
onwards, there emerged a growing trend of “shopping the orient.” This was a result of
growing “anxiety about the saturation of white settlement in the American West,” and the
corresponding “economic limits of the nation.” In other words, while the Americans realised
that the opportunity for imperialism was rapidly disappearing, they also understood that
industrialisation allowed for a great increase in production. Consequently, it was felt that “the
overproduction dilemma” could only be surmounted by increasing the consumption levels of
the American citizens. In this regard, “the ‘Orient’ became a highly visible symbol in the
emerging structures of a consumer culture,” as “images of the Orient [were used] to sell
consumer goods” (McAlister 2005: 13, 20, 21). While Ghosh confirms that “Orientalism in
advertising has been common in the United States since the late 19th and early 20th centuries”
(Sanjukta Ghosh in Dines & Humes 2003: 275-276), Brody speaks of the “intertwining
matrices of consumerism and Orientalism” (Brody 2010: 75), when he explains that ‘The Art
Amateur’ featured decorative Orientalist interiors to promote the US magazine. In addition,
Leach advances that it was not only at the tangible level of consumer items and architecture
that the influence of the Orient could be felt, since even “movies and the commercial
theatre…turned to the Orient to drum up trade” (Leach 1994: 104). For example, The Sheik
(1921), Kismet (1927), The Thief of Baghdad (1939), Arabian Nights (1942) and the Ali Baba
and the Forty Thieves (1943), were all informed by this aesthetic. Since Hollywood movies
primarily functioned to entertain, Oriental subjects were “diligently cultivated, and all their
possible variants and potential mystifications assiduously explored.” The Thief of Baghdad
not only resulted in “many more ‘Islamic’ sets[, but also] clearly inspired the ‘Oriental’

4
There was significant impetus from European Orientalism to support this, insofar as this discourse had long
characterised Orientals as prone to licentiousness and excess (Kabbani 1986: 51).
 14

designs of some monumental movie palaces appearing in cities across the nation” (Ramírez
2004: 146, 147).5
This novel appropriation, however, was quite understandable, because “there was no
deeply invested tradition of Orientalism…in the United States[, and] knowledge of the Orient
never passed through the refining and reticulating and reconstructing process…that it went
through in Europe” (Said 1985A: 290). That is, while in Europe there had been a deep and
enduring fear of the Orient, in America there had, at best, been a general sense of disdain for
the Orientals. Correlatively, while Europeans had compensated for this fear by framing the
Orient in a particular prejudicial fashion, as something dominated, no such restraints inhibited
the American framing of the region. The latter point is important because, while for Europe,
Orientalism had an effect on its history of power, in particular its colonial domination, and
therefore required a significant level of academic consistency, the United States “was not a
colonial power” (Weir 2011: 3). As such, its use of the Orient for the purposes of
consumerism had no limits, and indeed functioned as a precursor to the later extension of
American consumerism to the Orient itself – which will be discussed in the following section.
On account of the above, although McAlister maintains that Said’s Orientalism is a
valuable text, she also advances that his concept of “Orientalism does not adequately explain
all the diverse ways that Americans came to represent the Middle East,” but rather describes
only “one important version of that encounter” (McAlister 2005: 12). In this regard, European
Orientalism informs only a limited aspect of American ‘Orientalism,’ namely the privileging
of the religious history of the Middle East over its contemporary social reality. For the rest,
the Americans encapsulated and creatively rearticulated that history in kitsch consumer
products, based on imagined ‘Oriental’ design and marketed for profit.

1.4 Post-World War II factors underpinning American interest in the Middle East

Although France and Britain dominated the Orient politically “from the beginning of the
nineteenth century until the end of World War II[;] since World War II America has
dominated the Orient, and approaches it as France and Britain once did” (Said 1985A: 4, 73).
In this regard, “the United States suddenly became a power in the Middle East during World
War I, only to virtually disappear and then return during World War II” (Khalidi 2005: 10).
As such, the American contribution to the history of Orientalism “can be dated roughly from

5
The Oriental on Mattapan Square, Massachusetts, and the Oriental in Milwaukee (Naylor 1991: 98), are just
two of many examples of movie theatres with designs inspired by ostensibly Oriental architecture.
 15

the period immediately following World War II, when the United States found itself in the
position recently vacated by Britain and France” (Said 1985A: 290).
The geographic location of the Middle East understandably contributed to America’s
minimal involvement in the domain prior to the Second World War. That is, while Europe
shares direct borders with some Middle Eastern nations, the vast Atlantic Ocean divides
America and Europe, and concurrently also creates a natural divide between the United States
and the Middle East. As a result of these geographical circumstances, the Americans only had
relatively superficial contact with the Middle East prior to the Second World War, which
explains why the American attitude towards the Middle East was vastly different to the
European attitude towards the region. As Weir explains, “the American Orient was quite
unlike the European one that Said describes, mainly because the United States was not a
colonial power.” He rightfully points out that, “colonial subjugation was itself a part of the
American experience” (Weir 2011: 3), and thus it is not surprising that the United States did
not take part in immense colonial endeavours like those of Europe.6 And after Europe powers
began to grant independence to the majority of its colonies, the United States took centre
stage in the region; “with Britain and France no longer in a position to maintain control of the
Middle East, the United States deemed it necessary to step in and assume the mantle of the
former colonial powers as the guarantor of stability” (Lockman 2004: 116). Yet, “during the
first decades after World War II, American encounters were most often posited as affiliations”
(McAlister 2005: 2), in an effort to evade the association with colonialism, which by that
stage had already become a pejorative term. That is, directly after the Second World War, the
Orient became an administrative issue, “a matter for policy” for America, and out of this
“modern American Orientalism derive[d] from such things as…sudden government and
corporate interest in the non-Western world during the post war period[, and] Cold War
competition with the Soviet Union” (Said 1985A: 290-1).
Although a concern for America since the late 19th century, for the reasons outlined
above, “the Middle East…loomed large as a US interest...[after] 1945, when the United States
became a global superpower and the Middle East became one of the most contested regions in
the world” (McAlister 2005: 2). The reasons for this are relatively well known. The Second
World War ended as the result of the actions of the Grand Alliance of the British Empire, the
Soviet Union, and the United States. And although the Allied forces had been successful in
their joint battle against their mutual enemy of Nazi Germany, as World War II drew to a

6
Admittedly, the United States was involved in some colonial activity. For more on such US colonial
endeavours, see Silva, N. K. 2004. Aloha Betrayed: Native Hawaiian Resistance to American Colonialism.
Durham: Duke University Press; and Go, J., and Foster, A. L. 2003. The American Colonial State in the
Philippines: Global Perspectives. Durham: Duke University Press.
 16

close, the distinct differences in the ideologies of Soviet Russia and the United States made it
impossible for the nations to continue their partnership in a post-war era (Grogin 2001: 87-
104). Indeed, these tensions led to the subsequent Cold War, and a new era of geopolitical
division, in which the Soviet Union’s communist ideology and the United States’ capitalist
ideology were pitted against each other. That is, the desire for global power shared by both
the Soviet Union and the United States, led to a protracted tension between the two as it
became clear that, ultimately, only one superpower could emerge victorious, and the ensuing
tensions turned the former allies into enemies (Gann & Duigan 1996: 1). Even though this
conflict of interest never escalated into a full-blown Third World War, the possibility thereof
remained acute for a long time, until the disintegration of the Soviet Union towards the end of
the 1980s (Trachtenberg 1999: 3). And the reasons for growing US interest in the Middle East
after the Second World War drew to a close were strongly related to this threat.
Firstly, the region’s large population was a factor at a time where American companies
needed to seek out new consumer markets. Secondly, the culture of American exceptionalism
drew them towards the Middle East to spread their way of life, which they considered not
only universally applicable, but also universally desirable. Thirdly, through a composite of
Christian rhetoric and modernisation theory, such extension of the American way of life
became imbued with the status of a deontological imperative. Fourthly, Middle East oil
reserves turned America’s attention towards the region, because of the importance of oil in the
industrial/arms race with the Soviet Union. And fifthly, the strategic geographical location of
the Middle East, combined with issues of global political security, contributed to the US
government’s concentration on the region. In what follows, all five factors will be discussed.

a. New consumer markets

While industrialisation and mechanisation had made it possible to mass-produce goods,

production costs significantly decreased, which eventually led to the problem of
overproduction (McAlister 2001: 20). And although American companies tried to promote a
consumerist society, the supply of products still outgrew the domestic demand (Moch 1956:
115). Consequently, the US market became saturated and American companies were forced to
seek markets abroad to sell their excess merchandise. However, because the United States had
previously failed to join Europe in its colonial endeavours,7 the superpower had not been able
to take the same kind of advantage as the Europeans, who established early trade relations
with their colonies that they were often able to maintain even after decolonisation (Lockard
7
See note 6.
 17

2011: 804). Yet, once the United States became aware that they had missed such opportunity,
the superpower followed the route of economic imperialism. In other words, rather than
establishing formal colonies as the Europeans had done in previous centuries, America started
expanding their markets abroad (Domosh 2004: 456). This global corporate expansion, which
included providing Western Europe with economic aid in the form of the Marshall Plan,8 as
well as aid extended to Japan,9 was coined the ‘American challenge’ (Carnes 2007: 433).
Within this context, the large population in the Middle East was attractive to the United States
not only because of the potential to convert them into new consumers who would buy the
products of American companies, but also because such conversion would entail their
growing affinity for capitalism, and their corresponding aversion to communism. All of which
would, in turn, help to ensure US access to Middle Eastern oil. In other words, as the
‘American Dream’ became ready for export, the United States looked to the Middle East as a
new commercial haven for their merchandise, the development of which would, in turn, lead
to closer politico-economic ties with the countries of the region with all the mineral benefits
that stood to accompany the formation of such an alliance. In this regard, American products
comprised “a primary instrument for the spread of American influence,” something supported
by overwhelming evidence for the “historical importance of market expansion to imperial
pursuits” (Domosh 2004: 453).
In short, the kind of modernisation the Americans endeavoured to implement was also
orientated around turning the various citizens of the Middle East into obedient consumers,
loyal to American products. As Slater and Taylor elaborate, “the projection of American
power has been predominantly conceived as the diffusion and adoption of the ‘American way
of life,’ of mass consumption and material prosperity” (Slater & Taylor 1999: xi). Thus, it
was “not the conquest of foreign territories [that was seen] as the key to US expansionism,”
but rather, “access to foreign markets.” Consequently, “the United States forged an ‘informal
empire’…based on the quest for foreign markets and the search for investment outlets for US
capital” (Burbach & Tarbell 2004: 37).

8
The Marshall Plan (1948) was also referred to as the European Recovery Programme (ERP). That is, orientated
around facilitating the “economic recovery” of continental Europe, it “began by emphasizing the need to raise
gross production,” and “soon changed to focus upon raising productivity” (Slater & Taylor 1999: 6, 9). In effect,
the Marshall Plan was designed “to supply Europe with the necessary dollars in the short-run, while requiring it
to accept America’s long-term prescriptions on how to enlarge Europe’s home market and become more price-
competitive in the world market” (McCormick 1991: 78).
9
The aid to Japan took the form of the ‘Dodge Plan’ (1948), which “aimed at reviving Japanese industrial
productivity, making export goods competitive in world markets, and putting the economy on a self-sustaining
basis.” The Japanese Dodge Plan differed from the European Marshall Plan in that “Japan’s reindustrialization
was focused more single-mindedly on production for export,” while “European reindustrialization was geared as
much to the enlargement of an integrated domestic market as it was to giving European nations a greater share of
the world market” (McCormick 1991: 89).
 18

b. American exceptionalism

Understandably, the above was indissociable from a belief in American exceptionalism,

defined by Patman as “the informal ideology that endows Americans with the conviction that
their nation is an exemplary one” (Patman 2006: 964). While Nederveen Pieterse refers to this
‘American Bubble’ or ‘superpower syndrome’ as “the ingrained self-perception of the USA as
arbiter of the world” (Nederveen Pieterse 2006: 991), Patman adds that this ideology “endows
Americans with a pervasive faith in the uniqueness, immutability and superiority of their
country’s founding liberal principles, and also with the conviction that the USA has a special
destiny among nations” (Patman 2006: 964). More precisely, Chapman defines it as “the
centuries-old idea that the United States is a unique – and superior – entity in the world, in a
class separate from other nations and blessed by the divine (or marked by destiny) in an
extraordinary way for a special mission” (Chapman 2010: 21). Whether this destiny is to
protect other nations from the evils of communist ideology, or to ‘modernise’ developing
nations, the United States “sees itself as a beacon of hope for other nations” (Patman 2006:
965).
According to Fousek, the Cold War was a struggle that “was believed to threaten
fundamental American values, most notably freedom of enterprise and freedom of religion.”
Correlatively, the best defensive strategy was understood as the “spreading [of] those values,
which were deemed universal, to the rest of the world, which longed for them.” As such, the
Cold War conflict was very often presented as a struggle between the “US-led ‘free world’
and the Soviet-controlled communist totalitarianism,” and this “enabled most Americans to
feel pride in being citizens of a great nation that wanted only to protect its own way of life and
to defend ‘free peoples everywhere’ from totalitarian aggression.” Moreover, “after the US
and its allies won the war, many Americans came to believe that in some fashion the
American Way of Life, the American Dream, or the American Creed held the solutions to
problems that plagued a war-ravaged world” (Fousek 2000: 10, 187, 191).
The perception was, of course, quite ironic. After all, “in the early American republic[,]
precious few bonds of history were shared, and the new nation lacked all the traditional
cultural affinities – a national literature, a common religion, or the authority of a monarchy”
(Bodnar 1996: 21-22). Similarly, in his 1957 study American Nationalism, Kohn reminds us
that the United States of America “was not founded on the common attributes of
nationhood…but on an idea which singled out the new nation among the nations of the earth.”
Nevertheless, as Fousek confirms, “this notion that the United States has a unique and
 19

universal message of benefit to all the world” persists as “a core theme of American
nationalism” (Fousek 2000: 5). Arguably, this is neatly evinced in the preface of the patriotic
Liberty Inherited: The Untold Story of America’s Exceptionalism, when author John L.
Hancock maintains that, “you never hear people talk of the ‘Danish Dream,’ the ‘Australian
Dream,’ or the ‘Mexican Dream,’” while the ‘American Dream’ is known all over the world.
Accordingly, he asserts that this is because “there is no other place on the face of the earth
that offers the average people the same freedom to succeed as America does” (Hancock 2011:
4, 5).
What the above precipitated was the widespread belief that the American ‘civilised’
lifestyle was the one that should be upheld as a standard throughout the world, which imbued
the export of American consumer products with ideological value. That is, the related
American assumption was that every self-respecting world citizen should aspire to the
American Dream, which incorporated an American way of life. In this regard, the United
States saw the Middle Eastern nations as largely ‘undeveloped’ relative to American
standards, and expressed eagerness to ‘help’ the Middle East develop into a modernised
region, in a generally unselfconscious philanthropic gesture.

c. Religious presidential rhetoric

Within the above context of supernation rhetoric, the presidential discourse in particular is
significant, since the president is readily construed as the most important actor within
American politics – given his status as elected representative. In short, he “is always ‘the
Number One Voice’ in the national conversation about foreign affairs” (Fousek 2000: 13).
That is, because the public decides through the presidential elections which candidate will
become the next president, what he expresses while in office is largely understood as
communicating the sentiments of the majority of Americans at that time. Moreover, “the
president generally has the first word in announcing and explaining major international
developments to the American public,” and thus the presidential rhetoric tends to provide
valuable insights into the prevailing issues in the United States (Fousek 2000: 13-4).
As Germino points out, not only was “the United States…at the time proclaimed in
presidential rhetoric to be a supernation” (Germino 1984: 23); in addition, this rhetoric was
infused with many religious references. This is because American exceptionalism, as a
discourse, “includes a complex assemblage of theological and secular assumptions out of
which Americans have developed the lasting belief in America as the fulfilment of the
national ideal to which other nations aspire” [my italics] (Pease 2009: 7). Indeed, because the
 20

nationwide belief in America’s superiority has theological, or at least religious connotations,

Chapman refers to it as “American Civil Religion,” describing it as “a sociological and
political construct that consists of the intertwining of religion and patriotism and whose
expression…is much related to notions of American exceptionalism” (Chapman 2010: 20).
To demonstrate the presence of religious rhetoric in the presidential discourse, a cursory
overview of the presidential discourse from around the beginning of the Cold War suffices.
While the following does not comprise an attempt to perform a discourse analysis of the
presidential rhetoric during this time, it does provide a general impression of the various overt
and covert references to the Christian belief system made by the Cold War presidents Harry S.
Truman and Dwight D. Eisenhower.
Harry S. Truman became the US president after the death of Franklin D. Roosevelt on 12
April 1945, and as Edwards advances, Truman “is arguably one of the most, if not the most
important president in modern American foreign policy” (Edwards 2009: 455). This is
because, at this point in history, the Second World War was drawing to a close, and the Cold
War was beginning, within the context of which Truman’s “inaugural…speech [was] an
archetype of supernation rhetoric” that had long-lasting effects (Ryan 1993: 144).
In this regard, Truman’s “public discourse continuously linked US global responsibility
to anticommunism and enveloped both within a framework of American national greatness.”
In particular, during the 1948 whistle-stop campaign tour, “he repeatedly referred to the US as
‘the greatest nation the sun ever shone upon’ while asserting that this greatness brought with
it the obligation to check communist expansion around the world” (Fousek 2000: 2).
Arguably, this idea of superiority, combined with an aspect of religious subordination, proved
a particularly effective means of engendering authoritarian personalities.10 And in many
respects, the simultaneous presence of two related contrasting features, that is, a combination
of superiority and subordination, formed the ideological glue that held the American nation
together. Accordingly, in addition to his supernation rhetoric, Truman’s “presidential
addresses were infused with religious imagery” (Kirby 2003: 77). His penchant for religious
rhetoric was, of course, already apparent in his inaugural address, in which his closing words
were: “With God’s help, the future of mankind will be assured in a world of justice, harmony,
and peace” (Ryan 1993: 147). However, beyond this, Truman later “made religion an integral

10
According to Adorno, Frenkel-Brunswik, Levinson and Sanford’s research, articulated in their text The
Authoritarian Personality (1950), “a basically hierarchical, authoritarian, exploitative parent-child relationship is
apt to carry over into a power-oriented, exploitatively dependent attitude towards one’s sex partner and one’s
God[,] and may well culminate in a political philosophy and social outlook” that is fascist in orientation (Adorno
et al. 1950: 971).
 21

part of his Cold War campaign to persuade the American people to abandon isolationism,
embrace globalism and world leadership, and roll-back communism” (Kirby 2003: 77).
Dwight D. Eisenhower, who was president from 1954 to 1961, equally saw the United
States of America as a supernation, but went further by intimating that the country had been
chosen as a tool of divine providence, when in 1953 he claimed that “destiny has laid upon
our country the responsibility of the free world’s leadership” (Stanley 2012: 5). Interestingly,
the president did not appear to have a strong religious conviction before he went into office.
In fact, as Kirby points out, he “was not known to have joined a church until he entered the
White House.” Yet, it appears that the President soon realised the powerful influence he could
have through using religious rhetoric, and early within his presidency, “in addition to [his]
personal manifestations of religiosity, the rhetoric and symbolism of the period leave no doubt
but that religion remained a strategic weapon in the Cold War arena” (Kirby 2003: 96).
Eisenhower admitted this himself, stating that he wanted to reaffirm “the transcendence of
religious faith in America’s heritage and future[, in order to] strengthen those spiritual
weapons which forever will be [the] country’s most powerful resource, in peace or in war.”
From analysis of these and other statements, Duncan and Jones derive that “Eisenhower, like
most prominent twentieth century political leaders, viewed religion…as a generic moral
resource that served to secure the basic democratic premises of the American experiment”
(Duncan & Jones 2008: 123). Among some of the notable related changes Eisenhower made
during his presidency, were the inscription of the phrase ‘In God we Trust’ on the nation’s
currency, as well as the change of the nation’s official motto ‘E Pluribus Unum’ (one out of
many) into ‘In God we Trust.’ Additionally, the phrase ‘under God,’ was added to the Pledge
of Allegiance (Rock 2011: 48). Regarding the second revision, Chapman surmises that this
was “to contrast theistic America with atheistic communism” (Chapman 2010: 20).
In addition, when the United States’ foreign interest turned towards the Middle East,
where Islam predominated, the lines between Christianity and Islam appeared to be blurred.
Admittedly, some “pointed to certain features that Islam and communism allegedly shared
that might make the Middle East more susceptible to communist influence” (Jacobs 2011:
81). For example, in 1956, the associate director of Harvard’s Centre for Middle Eastern
Studies, Richard Frye, saw Islam as “a rigid system, like communism, controlling all man’s
activities and even his thoughts,” and he therefore concluded that “the parallel between Islam
and communism is valid insofar as both are all-inclusive,” and tend to demand “more from
their adherents than the church, or the state, or any other institution in the West does from its
members” (Frye as quoted in Jacobs 2011: 81-82). Yet, with both Christianity and Islam
being part of the Abrahamic tradition, with God existing as part of their respective frames of
 22

reference, it was also argued that the two religions are equally opposed to the atheism of
Communism. A 1957 report on Islamic organisations emphasises this similarity in its opening
statement,11 maintaining that “Islam and Christianity have a common spiritual base in their
belief that a divine power governs and directs human life and aspirations[,] while communism
is purely atheistic materialism and is hostile to all revealed religion” (as quoted in Bulliet
2004: 99-100). Nevertheless, despite the similarities between the two religions, the United
States could obviously not use Christian rhetoric to influence the Middle Eastern population,
and instead endeavoured to prevent communist dissemination (or, in American terms,
communist ‘contamination’) in the region, through a process of ‘modernising the Middle
East’ – the exigency of which derived from the issue of oil.

d. Oil

The strategic importance of the Middle East was compounded by the oil reserves available in
the region. After World War II, oil became the most important commodity in the world in
general, and for the United States in particular, since the continuation of the country’s global
superiority depended on its supply. This was because “World War II had demonstrated the
crucial importance of oil to modern warfare” (Painter 1999: 25). Indeed, in 1944, an
American official even noted that “oil…is the greatest single prize in all history” (Yergin
1992: 393) while Cole points to the fact that “the United States’ status as a global superpower
was built on the basis of cheap energy,” and that even in domestic terms, “petroleum
underpins America’s entire transportation system, and hence [its citizens’] way of life” (Cole
2009: 7). In the post-World War II period, industrialisation had gone into full swing and oil
had become, as Halberstam puts it, “the new currency of the industrialized world”
(Halberstam 1986: 22). Consequently, the demand for oil increased tremendously, and “oil
factored prominently during the Cold War” (Yetiv 2011: 27). This was because, already “by
1945[,] both the United States and the Soviet Union were aware that their economies’ rapidly
growing need for oil, stoked by increased wartime demand, might soon outstrip their
respective domestic supplies” (Khalidi 2009: 47). This concern was also the result of the fact
that the two Cold War competitors began a de facto space race, as well as a subsequent
nuclear arms race. Consequently, the two superpowers were obliged to compete in a
corresponding ‘oil race,’ which helped “oil-producing countries develop their industries.”

11
The classified document in question was entitled “Inventory of US Government and Private Organization
Activity Regarding Islamic Organization as an Aspect of Overseas Operations.” This report was issued by a
working group from the Operations Coordinating Board, which was established by President Eisenhower in 1953
(Bulliet 2004: 99).
 23

Falola and Genova maintain that “the Cold War is the perfect example of two major powers
using oil to fulfil their own political agendas and the newly independent states taking what
advantage they could of the situation” (Falola & Genova 2005: 89).
Even though the United States, during the early 20th century, globally both produced and
consumed the most oil, “in the 1950s, American oil production had slowed while overall
global demand for oil had increased.” Despite their previous success in supplying oil to other
nations, the United States soon failed to keep up with this increasing global demand. The
Middle Eastern region, on the contrary, was “credited with at least 60 percent of the world’s
proven oil reserves, [with] a potential…for future discoveries” (Reich as quoted in Shaked
Rabinovich 1980: 61). And when new oil reserves were discovered in the Middle East, the
United States and the Soviet Union realised once again that the region was of the utmost
strategic importance. Khalidi confirms that “this was the crucial background to uncanny
parallel moves relating to Middle Eastern oil made by the leaders of both countries
[from]…the…end of World War II” (Khalidi 2009: 47) onwards, as they realised that “good
relations with Arab states were important” (Yetiv 2011: 29). As such, “American energy
dependence on foreign oil play[ed] a critical role in making the Middle East region of great
strategic importance” (Rosati & Scott 2011: 50, 51) as “petroleum’s ‘centre of
gravity’…shift[ed] to the Middle East” (Yergin 1992: 422). David too confirms that
“preserving access to Middle Eastern oil” was one of the key interests of the US during the
Cold World era. And the more the geo-political status quo was seen as hanging in the balance,
the more the United States attempted to tighten its control over the Middle East, to make sure
their access to the valuable resource would not be jeopardised (Rosati & Scott 2011: 237).

e. Global political security and the strategic geographical location of the Middle East

Within the context of the Cold War, the United States feared the realisation of the ‘domino
theory,’ which was based on the speculation that if any additional nation turned to
communism, its surrounding nations would soon follow. With conviction in the righteousness
and global applicability of capitalism, the United States desperately tried to prevent the spread
of the Communist ‘virus’ through such means. However, as Bernard Reich explains, “located
at the hub of Europe, Asia and Africa, the Middle East is a crossroads and a bridge,” because
its trade and shipping routes link to the seas and oceans surrounding the Middle Eastern
region, which made it of immense strategic importance in the above regard. In relation to this,
while Reich refers to “the overriding American strategic-political interest in the Middle East”
(Reich as quoted in Shaked & Rabinovich 1980: 59, 58), Khalidi points out that “from the
 24

moment the Western powers…began to focus seriously on the Middle East[,]…the region’s
strategic importance to them was almost self-evident” (Khalidi 2009: 43). In other words, it
rapidly became apparent that whoever succeeded in gaining control over the Middle East,
would find themselves in a position to contemplate extending their control over the world.
Because of this, according to Kemp and Saunders, the Soviet Union and the United States
“viewed the Middle East as a chessboard for global domination throughout the Cold War”
(Kemp & Saunders 2003: iii), which effectively rendered the domain “a theatre of fierce
rivalry and high stakes” (Dobson & Marsh 2007: 110), as geo-political tensions between the
two superpowers grew. Indeed, even US President Dwight D. Eisenhower “noted in his
memoirs that, from 1955 onward, ‘no region in the world received as much of my close
attention and that of my colleagues as did the Middle East’” (Nichols 2011: xvi).
Consequently, the Middle East became “an area where the proxy conflict between
Washington and Moscow was manifested through the pursuit of regional allies” (Covarrubias
& Lansford 2007: 63). Although armed conflicts did occur,12 the Cold War was primarily
ideological in orientation, as each superpower endeavoured to disseminate their conflicting
political principles, because of the understanding that the superpower that succeeded in
spreading its politico-economic doctrine worldwide would achieve hegemonic status. When
the Soviet Union expanded its power and influence into central and Eastern Europe, US
leaders were alarmed, as they “feared that Soviet domination of Eastern Europe could limit
access to needed markets, foodstuffs, and raw materials” (Painter 1999: 17). Correlatively, the
US aim for economic domination made the dissemination of opposing capitalist ideology
vital, and pro-modernisation texts such as Daniel Lerner’s The Passing of Traditional Society
emerged to cater for this need.

1.5 Daniel Lerner’s The Passing of Traditional Society

a. Context

According to Pooley, a “wave of sometimes clandestine federal sponsorship swept through

the behavioural sciences in the mid-1950s onward as part of the new, postcolonial Cold War
campaign for Third World heart and minds” (Pooley 2011: 1449-1450). In this regard, Pooley
explains that “Daniel Lerner’s (1958) The Passing of Traditional Society was only one among

12
Some of the most notable armed conflicts during the Cold War are the Korean War that was waged between
1950 and 1953 (Harbutt 2002: 80-90), the Vietnam War between 1955 and 1975 (Westad 2005: 36-7), and the
nearly-catastrophic Cuban missile crisis of 1962 (LaFeber 1991: 224-227).
 25

many covertly funded Cold War studies that were repackaged as international communication
research and modernisation theory.” Yet it arguably remains one of the key texts to consider
when researching the United States’ relationship with the Middle Eastern region (Pooley
2011: 1450). This is because, as Shah points out, Lerner’s Passing “was among the first book-
length publications to set out a psychosocial theory of modernisation” (Shah 2011: 1), and the
key region of the modernisation process in question was the Middle East. As such, because of
its status as a propaganda tool, through a close consideration of this text, one readily
encounters reflections of the above five principal issues underpinning America’s interest in
the Middle East. Yet before a critical appraisal of the text can be undertaken, the context of
Lerner’s The Passing of Traditional Society needs to be taken into account, because of the
light this sheds on the orientation of its dynamics.
At the age of twenty-five, Lerner was inducted into the American army, and, after getting
injured in battle, he was appointed as chief editor in the Intelligence Branch of the
Psychological Warfare Division (PWD), where he became a propaganda specialist. Thus, “a
significant portion of Daniel Lerner’s military career was devoted to the analysis of
propaganda” (Shah 2011: 26-27, 31). He also wrote the doctoral dissertation ‘Sykewar, ETO:
An Account of the Psychological Warfare Campaign against Germany, Conducted in the
European Theatre of Operations from D-Day to V-E Day by PWD/SHAEFF (Psychological
Warfare Division, Supreme Headquarters Allied Expeditionary Forces) 6 June 1944-8 May
1945,’ which was subsequently printed as the book Sykewar: Psychological Warfare against
Germany, D-Day to V-E Day in 1949 (Shah 2011: 34). As such, The Passing of Traditional
Society, published less than a decade after Sykewar, in many respects comprised less of an
objective academic study, and more of a culmination of Lerner’s “early involve[ment] in the
use of communication for propaganda purposes” (McAnany 2012: 18). Indeed, not only was
Lerner extremely familiar with the method of psychological warfare; in addition, he soon
became recognised as a leading “US propagandist.” Furthermore, “in Lerner’s works, one
finds sufficient evidence…that…his development communication research [wa]s an extension
of his propaganda research,” in other words a “continuation of his career as World War II
Allied propagandist” (Bah 2008A: 187, 191). In terms of this, it must be remembered that
propaganda is the widespread dissemination of information with the purpose of promoting a
particular political cause or ideological view. Even though this information is a manipulation
of the ‘truth,’ it is presented as fact. And because of this, Rohan Samarajiwa maintains that
Daniel Lerner’s The Passing of Traditional Society “must be read together with the details of
the underlying research that Lerner failed to report in the book and in relation to the forces
that shaped the research and the theory” [my italics] (Samarajiwa 1985: 5).
 26

The most important omission in this regard was that the work “was clandestinely funded
by the CIA” (McAnany 2012: 16). Admittedly, at the start of his book, Lerner does
acknowledge that it was “sponsored jointly by The Centre for International Studies,
Massachusetts Institute of Technology and the Bureau of Applied Social Research, Columbia
University.” Furthermore, it is even stated that “the field studies were conducted by the
Columbia Bureau” (Lerner 1985: vi). Yet, what the author fails to mention – Samarajiwa
refers to this as “the decision to lie by omission” (Samarajiwa 1985: 9) – is that these social
science research institutes were established as a result of generous government funding for the
purpose of overt or covert promotion of American (anti-Soviet) campaigns (Bah 2008A: 186).
As Bah points out, the Centre for International Studies at MIT “was created to provide
‘materials for American foreign policy’ in the areas of ‘political and economic development,
international communication, communist studies and international security’” (MIT as quoted
in Bah 2008A: 187). Moreover, in the ‘Origins of the Centre’ document, it is acknowledged
that “the MIT Centre for International Studies was founded in 1952 as a direct result of the
Cold War struggle between the United States and the Soviet Union.” In fact, the “Central
Intelligence Agency was the primary funding source for the Centre’s first two years, and a
sponsor of various research projects until 1966” (McBride 2002). Consequently, “Lerner’s
study was [effectively] funded by the United States Department of State” (Melkote as quoted
in Bah 2008A: 188).
Another significant fact that Lerner conveniently omits is that his book was based on the
outcomes of an audience research project funded by the Voice of America (Samarajiwa 1987:
6 as cited in Park & Pooley 2008: 56).13 Lerner calls his book the ‘outcome’ of the ‘historic
shift’ of “modernist inspiration from the discreet discourse of a few…to the broadcast
exhortations among the multitudes” (Lerner 1985: 45). However, this testimony has been
considered suspect by many contemporary theorists – Samarajiwa in particular – who for
example points out, among other things, that “the correspondence in time-period and
countries leaves little doubt that the data on which the book was based, was originally
produced as audience research for the Voice of America” (Samarajiwa 1985: 7). And in his
“The Murky Beginnings of the Communication and Development Field: Voice of America
and The Passing of Traditional Society,” Samarajiwa elaborates on this, claiming that “the
federal government’s official broadcasting institution wanted to identify target audiences for
US propaganda in the Middle East” (Samarajiwa 1987: 6-7 as cited in Park & Pooley 2008:

13
Voice of America (VOA) is an international broadcasting organisation founded in 1942. As Krugler points
out, during the post-World War II period, “the VOA was part of a broad-based, bipartisan offensive to stop the
spread of communism abroad and to win economic and military allies for the United States” (Krugler 2000: 2).
In other words, VOA was a propaganda tool used to gain support for the American expansionist ideal.
 27

56). Related to this, on 18 May 1949 “the International broadcasting Division of the US
Department of State entered into a contract with the Bureau of Applied Social Research
(BASR) of…Colombia University,” in order to “conduct intensive field work and analysis on
the building of audiences to broadcasts sponsored by the government in a certain number of
foreign countries’” (Samarajiwa 1985: 7).
Samarajiwa argues that “placing Traditional Society within the framework of
commercially oriented BASR [Bureau of Applied Social Research] research,” and
establishing “the connections with psychological warfare research helps to form a fuller
understanding of the communication and development field” (Samarajiwa 1985: 9), as it
related to the geo-political and ideological tensions of the time. Further evidence of the above
emerges through a critical appraisal of the content of Lerner’s text.

b. Content

As mentioned, Daniel Lerner’s The Passing of Traditional Society is a landmark text that
exemplifies the heyday of modernisation theory, and accordingly, the five principal reasons
for America’s interest in the Middle East – discussed earlier – are reflected in Lerner’s text.
That is, the work is clearly written, firstly, in relation to cognisance of the commercial value
of the region’s large population, at the moment when American companies needed to seek out
new consumer markets, and secondly, against the backdrop of the culture of American
exceptionalism. Thirdly, it is simultaneously couched in terms akin to those of the religious
presidential rhetoric prevalent at the time, through which the transformation of society from
traditional to modern in orientation is readily conflated with salvation. And beyond this, of
particular importance in Lerner’s text, is the increasing mention of, and indeed emphasis
upon, Iran as the most important domain within the region. An importance that derives,
fourthly, from appreciation of Iran’s oil reserves, and fifthly, recognition of the strategic
geographical location of country, within the context of global political security concerns.
To begin with, in the preface of his text, Lerner introduces the kind of modernisation that
the United States has in mind for the Middle East. The modernisation process, to be initiated
by America, is based upon the principle that income must be raised “fast and high enough so
that poor people, while raising their own consumption to acceptable levels, will still have
something left over to save.” Lerner leaves it up to the reader to guess what the so-called
‘acceptable levels’ of consumption are, yet the implication is that this is a continuously
changing level, benchmarked against US levels of consumption. This certainly seems to be
the case when the scholar goes on to argue that “these savings...will then go into investment
 28

that raises production levels, which in turn will again raise both consumption and saving
levels.” Lerner believes that, in doing so, “there will be generated a self-sustaining cycle of
growth to replace the vicious circle of poverty in which most traditional societies still live”
(Lerner 1967: vii).
Importantly, though, while Lerner refers to this “vicious circle of poverty in which most
traditional societies still live” (Lerner 1967: vii), he fails to mention that poverty also exists in
modern society. While it is suggested that the problem of poverty in traditional societies can
be overcome by turning them into a modern consumerist society – like that of the United
States – this assumption is deeply problematised when one considers the significant number
of Americans living in poverty at the time. That is, although, admittedly, the end of the
Second World War was followed by a period of economic growth, “the benefits of post-war
prosperity were not universally shared.” While “the 1950s may have seemed prosperous
compared to previous decades, in that year one-quarter of factory operatives, 37 per cent of
those in service occupations, and 18 per cent of craftworkers[,] lived in poverty.” Moreover,
“in 1950, two-thirds of farmers lived in poverty, at a time when the highest rate among urban
occupations was for labourers, at 41 per cent.” Lerner’s supposition that modernisation
automatically brings prosperity to all can thus easily be disproven, for in the United States in
the 1950s, poverty “clearly remained the lot of a very large share of Americans” (Mink &
O’Connor 2004: 35). Indeed, while primarily the “prevalence of affluence” was stressed in the
post-war period rhetoric – including in Lerner’s text – it was only in the 1960s that “a coterie
of social analysts, journalists and politicians…rediscovered and began to publicize the
persistence of poverty in the United States” (Mangum et al. 2003: 1).14
As such, Lerner’s idea of modernisation as a “process of social change in which
development is the economic component” really entailed “the creation of a culture of
relentlessly augmenting consumerism” (Lerner 1967: vii, and Lerner as quoted in Desai 1971:
184). Understandably, this dove-tailed neatly with the existing need on the part of American
companies to seek out new consumer markets during the post-war period. Domosh neatly
sums up this situation by explaining that, “as United States’ companies capitalized on their
competitive advantages in the mass production of commodities to effectively export and
market their products overseas, the United States government pursued a foreign policy that
enabled these endeavours” (Domosh 2004: 456). Thus the kind of modernisation described by
Lerner, aspired to by the United States, and magnanimously imposed by the latter upon

14
In contemporary American society, poverty has remained a problem. Statistics show that “there were 31.1
million poor persons in the nation in 2000, up from the low of 23.0 million in 1973” (Mangum et al. 2003: 5). In
other words, rather than being solved by a process of modernisation, the problem of poverty seems to be
escalating even in ‘successfully modernised’ countries such as the United States.
 29

‘undeveloped’ nations, is closely associated with the process of engendering a culture of

consumerism and materialism, which was promoted in the United States itself after
mechanisation and industrialisation caused overproduction (McAlister 2001: 20).
Accordingly, while in the United States, the promotion of a consumer society was seen as a
solution to this problem, it was believed that by raising the income of the poor in the Middle
East, a similar consumerist society could be introduced into this region.
In this regard, Lerner sees “the individual citizen’s behaviours (such as the need for
achievement, deferred gratification and empathy) as the primary cause of a
nation’s…development.” Indeed, for Lerner, ‘empathy’ is an essential element in
modernisation, yet he defines the term in a rather idiosyncratic sense. That is, he identifies
someone with empathy as someone “distinguished by a high capacity for identification with
new aspects of his environment,” thereby substituting the original meaning of empathy (i.e.
the ability to understand and share each other’s feelings compassionately), with homogeneity
(or uniform desires and the desire for uniformity). Thus, when he speaks of an individual’s
willingness to adopt new behaviours, this has less to do with radical cosmopolitanism and
more to do with the adoption of ‘American’ behaviours, like consumerism and materialism.
As Bah puts it, for Lerner, “empathic people are people who aspire to acquire American
consumeric values and lifestyle” (Bah 2008A: 187, Lerner 1967: 49, Bah 2008B: 815).
That this process of homogeneity leads to the fading of individuality and cultural
differences is, importantly, not seen as problematic; on the contrary, while Lerner does not
elide this issue, he endeavours to valorise such effects as a worthy societal goal. In fact,
Lerner goes so far as to argue that “Western society still provides the most developed model
of societal attributes (power, wealth, skill, rationality) which Middle East spokesmen continue
to advocate as their own goal,” and arrogantly claims that “what the West is…the East seeks
to become,” or more specifically, “what America is...the modernizing Middle East seeks to
become” (Lerner 1967: 47, 79). Demanding acquiescence to processes of homogenisation and
the loss of traditional cultural identity are thus not seen as problematic; instead, these changes
are deemed necessary in order for any nation or society to ‘modernise.’
And this idea of American modernisation as a development that nations worldwide
should aspire towards, was indissociable from the attitude of American exceptionalism. In
terms of this, as already discussed, the United States was seen by the Americans as a
developed nation that provided all the other nations the world with an example that they
should follow. In the context of the Middle East, it was anticipated that this would entail an
abandonment of traditional lifestyles, and that this abandonment was an important factor in
the continuing development of this region. Because of this, in many respects Lerner’s book
 30

can be read as a “mission civilisatrice to convert the so-called autocratic, unprogressive and
unimaginative Arab/Muslim mindset to a democratic, progressive and innovative
western/Christian ethic.” Moreover, Daniel Lerner’s The Passing of Traditional Society is
subtitled Modernizing the Middle East, and Samarajiwa rightfully points out that this
‘modernising’ – rather than ‘modernisation’ – is “presumably [done] by the Americans”
(Samarajiwa 1985: 8). This idea is, in effect, confirmed by the second epigraph of the second
chapter, which explicitly refers to this process as a direct result of American agency, via a
quote from French political writer André Siegfried: “The United States is presiding at a
general reorganization of the ways of living throughout the entire world” (Lerner 1985: 43).
In his text, Lerner furthermore deals with the Middle Eastern leaders’ distrust of
westernisation by advancing the term ‘modernisation’ as preferable, because it allays their
fears of colonisation (Lerner 1985: 45). Yet, through his rhetoric, it becomes clear that the
process of American ‘modernisation’ of the Middle East has as its objective the socio-cultural
and politico-economic domination of the region. This is confirmed in Daniel Lerner’s text
“Modernisation: Social Aspects,” where he defines modernisation as “the process of social
change in which development is the economic component” (Lerner 1968: 388). In other
words, the kind of development he wanted to see in the Middle East was one geared towards
the American culture of consumerism and materialism. Even after the publication of his The
Passing of Traditional Society, Lerner reiterated “his belief that the only path to development
is the wholehearted assumption of American/Western values and lifestyle.” In short, in terms
of Lerner’s modernisation theory, “to be developed is to be modern is to be beautiful is to be
American” (Bah 2008A: 191, Bah 2008B: 815).
As such, critics of Lerner’s text rightfully argue that “what was proposed was not
independence and progress, but continued dependence on, and domination and control by, the
West.” Consequently, his text has received strong censure “for its ethnocentrism and
propagation of continued domination by the West of the rest of the world” (Bah 2008B: 797;
2008A: 189). From this perspective, the American objective was not only to keep the
communist ideology away from the Middle Eastern nations, but also to do so through
transforming the ‘developing’ countries into mirror images of itself.
Yet, within the context of America, this attitude was not regarded as totalitarian in
orientation, but rather as underpinning a remedial, and indeed humanitarian, endeavour, that
had to be pursued because it was linked to a deontological imperative. As Fousek contends,
America sees itself “as a redeemer nation, whose higher purpose is to bring the rest of the
world (particularly the Old World) out of its sinful state of self-created chaos and back to the
light of civilization, American-style” (Fousek 2000: 21). The term ‘sinful’ is particularly
 31

relevant, as it is in line with Lerner’s religious rhetoric in The Passing of Traditional Society.
Rhetoric which draws into conspicuousness an underlying assumption within the text that
God has destined the United States to lead others towards the path of modernisation, such that
the latter is couched in salvific terms. The deeply problematic corollary of this, is that those
who do not yet follow this path, are therefore sinful and in need of American salvation. The
historical precedent for this, of course, was the American victory in the Second World War.
Their conquest strengthened the US’s perception of itself as a ‘liberating nation,’ operating
under a deontological imperative to supply all non-American countries with the industry and
consumerism that would allow them to become like America. Following this, as McMahon
confirms, often, “many American statesmen…found divine sanction for the conceit that the
United States had a global mission to share its superior values, institutions, and cultures with
others” (Medhurst & Brands 2000: 233). And in relation to this conceit, Lerner’s work
became “the bible of the modernisation/dependency/media imperialism paradigm of
development communication” (Bah 2008A: 189).
In fact, Lerner uses religious rhetoric from the outset, when he entitles the first chapter
‘The Grocer and the Chief: A Parable.’ Ecclesiastical ‘parables’ originate from the Bible, in
which it is described how Jesus used them as pedagogical means to teach spiritual lessons to
his followers (Bah 2008A: 189, Bah 2008B: 795). Thus, by aligning his text with this sacred
work, Lerner thereby implies that his ideas are consonant with those found in the Bible, and
hence that they are in agreement with God’s word, and for that matter, His ultimate ‘plan.’ In
effect, Lerner thereby tries to convince his American (and predominantly Christian) readers
that his points-of-view are not in conflict, but rather in concord with their belief system, and
in certain respects, even the fulfilment of prophecy. Similarly, the first epigraph of Chapter
Two, ‘Modernizing Styles of Life: A Theory,’ contains a religious statement from the
American author Mark Twain: “I am thankful that the good God created us all ignorant. I am
glad that when we change His plans in this regard we have to do it at our own risk” (Lerner
1985: 43). With this quote, Lerner clearly suggests that while the process of modernising the
Middle East may be seen as a risky undertaking, as they are changing God’s natural way, it is
not necessarily a bad thing. That is, because iconoclastic hubris would run counter to the
religious subtext of his work, the tenable corollary of this is the implication that America is
invested with the requisite divine authority to do so.
Moreover, Lerner refers in a highly partisan and co-opting manner to Johannes
Gutenberg, who “activated his printing press” (Lerner 1985: 52) in the 15th century, and
whose discovery constituted a “remarkable invention that would serve mankind and God.”
Gutenberg was the first to print the Bible, replacing the time-consuming practice of copying
 32

books by hand (Rees 2006: 10), and hence is lauded for his contribution to spreading the
Christian doctrine. However, from Lerner’s argument that the contemporary mass media is a
continuation of Gutenberg’s technology, it is intimated that the Gospel in the Bible has
similarly been continued through Lerner’s gospel concerning the modernisation of the Middle
East, with the mass media as a means through which it will be achieved. As Bah summarises,
in terms of Lerner’s The Passing of Traditional Society, “if modernisation is the religion, The
Passing is its bible, ‘The Grocer and the Chief’ is its chapter, Lerner is its prophet, and Tosun
is his disciple.”15 In line with this, Bah elaborates that “to convert the Grocer is,
metaphorically speaking, to convert the entire Middle East” (Bah 2008B: 812).
Yet, notwithstanding the impression that arises from the above, not all of the Middle East
was regarded as equally valuable, because certain domains in particular soon emerged as
more crucial than others. As already mentioned, although the presence of oil in the Middle
East drew the United States’ interest long before the Second World War, their relationship
with specific areas within this domain only developed substantial momentum after the war
drew to a close, at which point the United States began to augment its nascent desire to
become influential over the region. In this regard, in his text, Lerner admits that “the familiar
stakes of Persian geography have been augmented by the flow of Iranian oil” (Lerner 1985:
353). This was because Iran was “the first country in the Persian Gulf and the Middle East
where oil was found.” Following this under British influence, “Iranian oil facilities were
rapidly expanded during World War I…[, so that] by the early 1950s [they] were still the best
developed in the Persian Gulf region” (Bahgat 2003: 105, 106). Consequently, around the
time when Lerner was writing The Passing of Traditional Society, namely “during the early
1950s, Iran supplied around 6 percent of world oil demand” (Halabi 2009: 33).
In addition to its oil reserves, Iran was also in a strategic location, “on the…waters of the
Gulf and the strategic Strait of Hormuz” (Abdulghani 1984: 216), with the result that trade
relations with the nation were eagerly sought after. At the same time, in their ideological
conflict against communism, the United States had further strategic interests, namely the use
of Iran “as a bulwark against Soviet expansion” (Bahgat 2003: 107). In particular, the fact that
Iran and the Soviet Union have a “contiguous border of 1,250 miles” (Sindelar & Peterson
1988: 65), made Iran even more susceptible to Soviet influence, and hence augmented US
concern over the ideological orientation of the country. Taking all of this into account, it is
not surprising that Daniel Lerner devoted an entire chapter of his The Passing of Traditional
Society to Iran.

15
Tosun B was a Turkish interviewer (Phillips & Christner 2012). Daniel Lerner narrated the chapter ‘The
Grocer and the Chief’ using survey transcripts from Tosun (Bah 2008B: 807).
 33

c. ‘Iran: In a Bipolar World’

In the chapter ‘Iran: In a Bipolar World’ from his The Passing of Traditional Society, Lerner
maintains that Iran is a significant “subject and object of global politics,” because it has
“seldom, in the Cold War era, been far outside the spotlight of world attention” (Lerner 1985:
353). And from the outset, Lerner admits that Iran has always been “a gambit in contests
among great nations,” with geography and oil named as the main motivations, or “strategic
necessities” (Lerner 1985: 353, 355) for Iran’s position as such. Moreover, his use of chess
metaphors in relation to the country continue when he advances that because of this, America
has handled “Iran as just another strategic pawn on her global chess board.”
Yet, at the same time, Lerner recognises growing Iranian hostility towards America on
account of the latter’s related policies; policies which even then were viewed as subterfuges
behind which lurked American hunger for power over and influence within Iran. As one of
the respondents in Lerner’s survey rightly expresses, America “pretends to be a friend of Iran,
but its purpose is finding some influence in Iran” (Lerner 1985: 380).
However, Lerner goes to significant trouble to blunt the edge of such criticism, by
characterising American interest in the country as underpinned not by imperialistic ambition,
but rather by paternalistic concern. In this regard, Iran’s need for guidance is hinted at when
he asserts that “Iranian modernisation...follows the leads of external power,” and that “the
American purse and power have...become available when British primacy has faltered”
(Lerner 1985: 353, 354). And such paternalism is advanced as necessary in the case of Iran,
on the basis of Lerner’s characterisation of its people, as unruly, desirous of the benefits of
modern life but unable to facilitate the change that will make them available, and plagued by a
poisonous combination of painfully low business initiative and excessively high
intellectualism. According to him, this intellectualism, in turn, engenders among the young a
penchant for radical politics, informed by either emotive nationalism or myopic socialism.
Understandably, when the latter issue is emphasised, it brings into action the full weight of
American prejudice against communism, as justification for the extensions of US influence
and control over Iran.
To begin with, Lerner depicts the Iranians as a troubled people, quoting Professor Frye,
who characterises the Persians as a “‘people of extremes’ and [suggests that] a basic condition
of modernisation” is required “to remedy ‘the Persian’s lack of confidence in his fellow
man.’” Lerner then goes on to support this with a reference to Hoskins, who “notes the
political relevance of the character and behaviour of the Iranian peoples, who are…given to
 34

extremes in temperament,” which accordingly “leads to extremist politics, in which violence

and the frenzy of mobs play a role” (Lerner 1985: 359). According to Lerner, it is this
emotionality and misdirection which continue to augment “the great gap between aspirations
and capabilities” in Iran. In terms of this, though, the assumption is again that Iranians want to
become like Americans. As Lerner puts it, desires “have been stirred among Iranians by the
same gusts of ideology that have dispersed the symbols of modernity over all the lands of the
earth,” and “these winds of doctrine have inseminated a substantial portion of its population
with the aspiration toward a modern style of life for themselves and their fellows” (Lerner
1985: 360). Against the backdrop of Lerner’s above assertions, this ‘modern style of life’
equates to an American lifestyle yet, in his description of Iran and its demographics, Lerner
emphasises how such fledgling aspirations invariably meet with frustration, when “urban
migrants...encounter unemployment, undercompensation, and the miserable conditions of
slum life” (Lerner 1985: 389) in Iranian cities. Furthermore, Lerner explains that “there are
few signs of a growth phase in the Iranian economy,” even referring to Iran as a “non-growth
economy.” This is significant as he attests that economic growth leads to happiness defined in
terms of “a modernizing economy” (Lerner 1985: 362). Accordingly, part of the reason for
this is the backwardness of the Iranian people, who “remain locked in the ancient round of
daily life, eking from their old soil with their antique tools (some antedating the Christian era)
their immemorial produce.” In sum, Lerner maintains that “regarding the new world stage, on
which their national drama now unfolds, they are uninformed and uninvolved” (Lerner 1985:
361); a situation from which they desperately need to be rescued.
This salvation – rather predictably – is advanced as comprising of a concomitant increase
in consumerism and a decrease in critical thought. That is, on the one hand, Lerner notes how
in Iran, “advertising is stillborn and the mass media abortive,” and in relation to such deficits
he poses the rhetorical question “Where, in Iran, is ‘the man in the gray flannel suit’?” (Lerner
1985: 363). In other words, the lack of businessmen in Iran bewilders him, because of the
status of commerce as the raison d’être within America. In short, a suit signifies importance,
success, status, and most importantly, education and modernisation, and the dearth of such
attire in Iran implies for Lerner that the Iranian people have yet to make even rudimentary
achievements in this regard. And while this is held out as the goal for Iran, on the other hand,
the obstacle to its realisation is explicitly identified as the pervasive Iranian culture of critical
thinking. Lerner unequivocally advances that “Iran suffers from an over-production of
intellectuals,” whom he regards as useless because they don’t stimulate the economy; that is,
for him, “intellectuals are being produced in quantities far exceeding Iran’s capacity to
consume” [my italics] (Lerner 1985: 363).
 35

Indeed, Lerner even cites this culture of critical thinking as a factor in the political
instability of the country, when he suggests that “all dressed up with no place to go, these
frustrated young men go looking for excitement,” and thereby turn into ‘radicals’ as they
“form the hard core of political extremism in Iran today” (Lerner 1985: 363). He then
attempts to back up these sweeping statements by saying that “this was indicated by the 1951
survey and confirmed by subsequent interviews which the author conducted in Tehran four
years later” (Lerner 1985: 363-364). Although, politically speaking, “the political extremists
were consistently the most Modern group in the Iranian sample,” at the same time, Lerner
notes “a comparable prevalence of unhappiness among the Extremists” (Lerner 1985: 364).
And he argues that “what makes the Extremists so much unhappier...is that they ‘want more’
and believe they deserve more.” As Lerner explains, “this produces the phenomenon of
‘relative deprivation,’ whereby a person’s discontent with his lot is set by the standard to
which he aspires” (Lerner 1985: 368). Next, Lerner refers to the psychology of extremism in
terms of ‘alienation’ (Lerner 1985: 369-374). That is, he argues that the extremists alienate
themselves as they have a lack of family, religious, and friendship types, and tend to exhibit
individualistic recreational patterns (Lerner 1985: 369-370).
It can scarcely be missed that, through the above Lerner effectively describes as
pathological any political stance critical of US ambitions in the country, and through
reference to the weak religious ties of extremists, prepares the way for his later identification
of them as either neophyte nationalists who have naively separated themselves from tradition,
or as a potential socialist threat. That is, in order to imbue such radical associations with an
aura of fear and loathing, under the Iranian extremist parties, Lerner lists “the Tudeh Party,
[as] a lightly camouflaged Communist movement...and the extremely nationalistic Pan-
Iranian Party” (Lerner 1985: 366), which together symbolised the two main obstacles to the
extension of American influence over the country – namely socialism and nationalism.
On the one hand, the nationalists are characterised as little more than ungrateful children,
who spitefully lament US assistance as they did the British assistance which they received
earlier. As evidence Lerner quotes a government supervisor who “explains that he does not
like BBC programmes because they emphasize the service which they believe they have
rendered Iran,” while “in their 150 years of dominance they have done nothing except ruin the
entire political, social, moral, and economic structure of the country’” (Lerner 1985: 377).
Equally important, Lerner refers to a student who expressed his/her dislike for “certain Tehran
newspapers because their editors ‘work for a group of parasites and are servants of obnoxious
imperialism’” (Lerner 1985: 377).
 36

On the other hand, the socialists are targeted by Lerner in his reference to the VOA
broadcasting organisation. Accordingly, he notes that during the AIOC crisis,16 pro-
Americanism “faltered and was slightly weakened,” while “pro-Sovietism...gained a massive
consolidation among its adherents.” Yet Lerner sees this change in attitude as “largely a
communication process – for most Iranians had little direct knowledge of events, but judged
the issue by ‘what they were told’ through the mass media” (Lerner 1985: 381). In this way,
Lerner suggests that by using the mass media differently (i.e. as a propaganda tool), such a
negative change in the Iranian attitude towards America could be avoided. Moreover, as
propaganda is typically used to promote a particular point of view, the mass media could also
be used to promote a positive attitude in the Iranians towards the United States. And this is
advanced as an absolute necessity because, in terms of the “war of the airwaves,” Russian
radio stations had the most Iranian listeners. Related to this, Lerner warns that the respondents
identified as “pro-Russians [have] put their superior knowledge of international broadcasting
to the service of their political bias,” insofar as they “have concentrated on ‘poisoning’ rival
sources of information” (Lerner 1985: 383). Admittedly, in the section of the chapter that
focuses on bipolarity and extremism, Lerner acknowledges that “the survey was American-
sponsored...[and that this] probably biased [the] results,” yet he simultaneously draws the
controversial conclusion that “pro-Sovietism goes with extremism, [and] pro-Americanism
with moderation” (Lerner 1985: 379, 378).
What follows from this, is the idea that the Iranians are simply unable to “manage their
own affairs[, and] that Uncle Sam must step in to restore order, and save them from
themselves” (Kisatsky 2008: 178). Indeed, Mattelart and Mattelart point out that Lerner even
“proposed a typology of attitudes towards ‘development,’ [as]…a process of transition from a
‘traditional’ state to a ‘modernised’ state” (Mattelart & Mattelart 2004: 35), which entailed a
shift from dissatisfaction to happiness, from defencelessness to empowerment, from the
relative to the universal, and from non-Western to Western in orientation.
Understandably, Lerner’s above sentiments have been met with significant critical
responses from within the Arab world, and beyond. According to Al-Buraey, Lerner assumes
“that Islam is an obstacle to development,” and “clearly and explicitly dismisses Islam
altogether as an ultimate goal if Middle Eastern societies are to modernise.” In this regard, Al-
Buraey quotes Lerner as stating “that ‘the top policy problem, for three generations of Middle

16
AIOC is an acronym for the Anglo-Iranian Oil Company. As will be discussed in the next chapter, the crisis
Lerner refers to was a result of Prime Minster Mohammad Mossadegh’s decision to nationalise Iran’s oil. The
nationalisation led to a global boycott of AIOC oil under pressure from Great Britain, who foresaw Iran’s oil
nationalisation as damaging to Britain’s influence over the Middle Eastern nation, and as something that would
lead to loss of profits (Zahrani 2002: 94, Saikal 1980: 40-41).
 37

Eastern leaders,’ has been whether one must choose between ‘Mecca or mechanization.’” Al-
Buraey, however, contests Lerner’s assertion, maintaining that Lerner “knows very little
about Islam,” because Middle Eastern societies do not have to choose between them but “can
have both[, as] there is nothing in Islamic theory and doctrine to make the two incompatible”
(Al-Buraey 1985: 13). Taghavi agrees, saying that “the straightforward formulations, such as
Daniel Lerner’s ‘Mecca or mechanization’ have long been replaced by nuanced and
sophisticated analyses of tradition and modernity” (Taghavi 2008: 73).
With regard to Lerner’s binary of dissatisfaction and happiness, Rahnema and Behdad
refer to Lerner’s conviction that “modernizing individuals are considerably less unhappy,”
while “the more rapidly the society around them is modernised the happier they are.” A false
conviction, the scholars argue, because there is significant evidence that “‘the more
modernised’ souls [were no] less unhappy than those who were, for one reason or another, left
behind.” In addition, they point to the fact that an “anti-establishment intellectual current”
soon developed “in the Middle East, as well as in the rest of the Third World,” which
emphasised “the superficiality and inadequacy of modernisation theory” (Rahnema & Behdad
1996: 6).
Similarly, in relation to Lerner’s binary of defencelessness and empowerment, Durham
Peters and Simonson maintain that “the hubris of the modernisation story is captured in an
amazing moment in this excerpt: against ‘a rational and positivist spirit,’ Lerner approvingly
quotes, ‘Islam is absolutely defenceless.’” Yet, as the scholars rightfully point out, “the
Iranian revolution of 1979, the Salman Rushdie fatwa, and the September 11 terrorist attacks
suggest a very different view of the contours of modernity” (Durham Peters & Simonson
2004: 426).17
Analogously, Keshavarzian criticises Lerner’s call “on Middle Easterners to study the
western historical sequence to understand the steps and path to be taken,” for its promotion of
the “model of western experience” as “the universal model for change, both analytically and
normatively.” That is, Lerner advances that the West provides “the only possible model for
modernisation, thanks to the presence in Western culture of empathy…which had enabled

17
While the Iranian Revolution (also referred to as the Islamic Revolution), in which the Ayatollah Khomeini
came to power, will be discussed in detail in the following chapter, the Salman Rushdie fatwa is related to this,
insofar as the execution of the author was called for by Khomeini, because his literature was perceived as
insulting to Islam (Appleby 1997: 148). The attacks on New York City’s World Trade Centre on 11 September
2001 by members of the Islamic terrorist network Al-Qaeda, generated a great deal of fear and suspicion of
Muslims because of the associated threat of further Islam-fundamentalist attacks. Concurrently, the then-
President George W. Bush declared the ‘War on Terror’ (Gani & Mathew 2008: 1). This is “not a war in any
conventional sense,” but rather “extends beyond battlefields and national frontiers” (Winfield 2007: 1). Fear
plays a major role within it, insofar as it is fear that encourages Americans to support their “government to
employ more radical measures against the perceived threats” (Gani & Mathew 2008: 116); yet this fear runs
counter to Lerner’s ideas of Islamic ‘passivity’ and ‘defencelessness.’
 38

Western people to shake off the yoke of passivity and fatalism.” After all, “these were hardly
innocent concepts,” articulated as they were “five years after the coup d’état against
Mossadegh” (Keshavarzian 2007: 46). Rather, Lerner’s concepts “tended to legitimate a
particular conception of development,” one which itself was highly relativistic (Mattelart &
Mattelart 2004: 35).18
Lastly, Keshavarzian points out that, “until recently, the majority of the scholarship on
Iran followed the modernisation theory approach,” an approach that stemmed from the
assumption that “Iran is transitioning from traditional to modern forms.” It was believed that
this shift would culminate with Iran’s complete adoption of Western culture (Keshavarzian
2007: 46). Yet, the Iranian transition did not progress according to Lerner’s expectations, and
the expectations of those informed by his arguments.

1.6 The discursive legacy of Lerner’s The Passing of Traditional Society

Strongly informed by Daniel Lerner’s perspectives, the theorist Wilbur Schramm also had a
great impact on modernisation theory, and thus his work cannot be ignored in the present
discussion. In this regard, it must not only be remembered that the two scholars co-edited
Communication and Change in Developing Countries, which was published in the same year
as Lerner’s The Passing of Traditional Society (1958). In addition, it must be recalled that it
was only after “Daniel Lerner, Wilbur Schramm, and a few others in the 1950s and 1960s
[defined] ‘development.’..as economic wealth and political democracy” (Okigbo & Eribo
2004: 90-91), that the idea became construed by so many in the capitalist West as self-evident
and incontestable.
That is, heavily influenced by Daniel Lerner’s ideas concerning modernisation and
development, Schramm’s theories both built upon and followed on from Lerner’s
perspectives. And the credence with which his sentiments were imbued was soon evinced –
rather dramatically – “during the late 1950s and early 1960s, [when] the UN promoted the
possibility of using mediated communication to stimulate development” (Perry 2002: 182). In
this regard, “in 1958, the General Assembly of the United Nations called for ‘a programme of
concrete action’ to build up press, radio broadcasting, film, and television facilities in
countries in process of economic and social development” (Schramm 1964: vii). Moreover, in
turn, when “UNESCO was delegated to carry out this task,”19 Schramm was asked “to write

18
Again, this coup, which unseated the democratically elected Iranian Prime Minister, despite his immense
popularity among the Iranian public, will be referred to in detail in Chapter Two.
19
UNESCO is an acronym for the United Nations Educational, Scientific, and Cultural Organization. During the
Second World War, the Conference of Allied Ministers of Education (CAME) was held in the United Kingdom,
 39

up their efforts of data gathering from three continental meetings held from 1958 to 1962”
(McAnany 2012: 25). More specifically, “in 1962, the UNESCO General conference
authorized a major study concerning the practicalities of media development;” a study
conducted by Schramm and subsequently “published under the title Mass Media and National
Development,” in 1964 (Perry 2002: 182).
In Schramm’s Mass Media and National Development, his admiration for Lerner’s work
surfaces rather saliently when he valorises the latter, attesting that he “has written better than
anyone else” about the developing of the quality of empathy in developing nations, as well as
referring to Lerner’s “eloquent passage” about literacy (Schramm 1964: 43, 128). In addition,
a significant number of the ideas that can be identified in Wilbur Schramm’s Mass Media and
National Development are based on Daniel Lerner’s concepts, as outlined in his The Passing
of Traditional Society. That is, like Lerner, “Schramm focused on the dichotomy between
traditional and modern societies and promoted the classic modernisation theory belief that
traditional societies could abandon their counterproductive mores and structures.” In this
regard, for Schramm “mass communications was the most effective instrument to turn
traditional social structures into modern ones.” This is because, as “mass media...increase[d]
the flow of information from industrialized countries and create[d] a climate of change by
raising people’s aspirations” (Lindo-Fuentes & Ching 2012), citizens of developing nations
could be made accustomed to the ‘American way of life,’ thereby readying these foreign
markets for export. In his text, Schramm puts “communications theory in the framework of
modernisation theory,” unequivocally valorising the use of the media in the process of
modernising ‘traditional societies.’ Accordingly, it was believed that, in order to “overcome
politically dangerous backwardness[,] the citizens of poor countries had to change their
traditional mores” (Lindo-Fuentes & Ching 2012) and acclimatise themselves to American
culture (Godykunst & Mody 2002: 484). As such, according to Sloan, “this book
represents…Schramm[’s]…attempt to figure out ways that mass communication could help
underdeveloped countries develop more quickly” (Sloan 1990: 242). Indeed, in his text,
“Schramm promoted the merits of rapid social change because ‘swift change is often less
painful than slow and gradual change’” (Lindo-Fuentes & Ching 2012). It is, however, also

and attended by representatives of the different European countries. The purpose of this gathering was to discuss
“ways and means to reconstruct…systems of education once peace was restored.” After the proposal put together
by CAME in 1942, the United Nations held another conference to discuss the establishment of an educational
and cultural organisation – and at the end of this conference UNESCO was created
(http://www.unesco.org/new/en/unesco/about-us/who-we-are/history/). As an institution, UNESCO “had a strong
mass media focus from its founding in 1945, and by 1964 it was working directly with almost all independent
developing countries at the time and those in Africa and parts of Asia that were being decolonized, a total of 130
client countries” (McAnany 2012: 25).
 40

the case that the United States needed the developing nations to be ready to accept American
products sooner rather than later, as overproduction was already a domestic problem within
the country. Hence this comprised an additional reason for widespread US support of
Schramm’s ‘rapid social change.’
In short, Schramm’s Mass Media and National Development was a decisive work, first,
in advancing “his ideas in the dominant paradigm of modernisation theory, and second, in
skilfully placing them in the agenda of international development” (Lindo-Fuentes & Ching
2012). And the book proved significantly “influential in recommending and planning the
mass media programs in the developing world during the 1960s” (Godykunst & Mody 2002:
484). As such, Schramm himself is often construed as one of the “most important early mass
communication researchers,” and referred to as “a founder of the field of communication,” as
well as “the single most influential person in establishing communications research as a
discipline” (Glander 2000: xii, Wells & Hakanen 1997: 51, Butsch 2008: 124). The reason for
this is that, as Sloan maintains, Schramm “probably did more to define and establish the field
of communication research and theory than any other person,” insofar as he “created the
dominant paradigm used in communications research for decades.” Because of this, it has
been argued that Schramm himself “is perhaps...a better candidate than any of the four men
whom he named to be the true ‘founding father’ of communication theory” (Sloan 1990: 239,
245, 248).20
However, Schramm’s perspectives were by no means universally embraced; on the
contrary, they received stern censure from certain critical quarters (Sloan 1990: 245). For
example, Robin refers to Schramm as a “pedestrian scholar,” whose intellectual
accomplishments were “mostly derivate,” and whose academic work remained “somewhat
conventional.” In addition, Schramm has also been criticised for the fact that all his texts
“were in one way or another tied to psychological warfare[,]...government propaganda, ...and
information management [as]...normative aspects of modern society” (Robin 2001: 89, 90,
91). Furthermore, British sociologist Tunstall criticises Daniel Lerner, Ithel de Sola Pool,21
and Wilbur Schramm, suggesting that the three development scholars “in the 1960s became a
sort of travelling circus[,]...advising first this Asian government and then that US federal
agency.” Accordingly, while “Daniel Lerner was the intellectual leader of the circus,” and

20
Schramm saw Lasswell, Lewin, Lazarsfeld and Hovland as the “four fathers” of communication study (Park
and Pooley 2008: 172). Everett Rodgers concurs with Sloan, identifying Schramm as “the one true father of
communication study” (Berger et al. 2010: 24), while Singhal also suggests that perhaps Schramm “should be
considered a fifth founder of communication research” (Singhal 1987: 18).
21
Ithel de Sola Pool was involved at the Centre for International Studies at the Massachusetts Institute for
Technology (MIT), which also funded Lerner’s research for The Passing of Traditional Society (Newman et al.
2006: 83).
 41

“Ithel de Sola Pool was the commissar of the group – one of the US Department of Defense’s
most vigorous academic spokesmen, and a vigorous anti-communist,” Schramm, as
“UNESCO’s favourite mass media ‘expert,’” was “the travelling salesman” (Tunstall 1977:
208).
Yet, for the most part, within the American context, such criticisms were drowned out by
a discursive deluge of support for Lerner and Schramm. This was because, from the mid-
1960s onwards, the United States saw an upsurge of modernisation scholars – for whom
Lerner and Schramm comprised a theoretical point of departure – as part of a “considerable
expansion of interest in modernisation as a way for the United States to fulfil its mission in
the world” (Ekbladh 2011: 153). That is, to help “‘backward’ nations become ‘modern,’
Americans hoped to alleviate the conditions that made communism an attractive option and
thus secure these nations’ participation in the ‘free world’ alliance” (Engerman 2003: 136).
Following Schramm, many modernisation theorists argued that the mass media should
play a significant role in the modernisation process. After all, Schramm in particular felt that
“the role of the mass media accorded a central position in the modernisation paradigm”
(Melkote & Steeves 2001: 27). According to the development communication pioneer, “the
task of the mass media of information and the ‘new media’ of education is to speed and ease
the long, slow social transformation required for economic development, and, in particular, to
speed and smooth the task of mobilizing human resources behind the national effort”
(Schramm 1964: 117). Hence the mass media was to be used as a tool to enable the
modernisation process to take place as swiftly as possible.
Among the development scholars at the time, “development was equated with
modernisation, and modernisation was seen as a process of diffusion of Western social
structures and values.” From this perspective, “it was only a short step to proposing that mass
media were important channels of diffusion and powerful tools for development.” Both
Lerner and Schramm considered the mass media as a tool to “help to create the empathetic
‘mobile personality’ and promote economic consumption and political participation that
development required,” and subsequent development scholars followed this doctrine
(Sreberny & Mohammadi 1994: 4).

1.7 Conclusion

In particular, Schramm identified “the three key roles of information” as the watchman role,
the policy role and the teacher role (Reddi 2009: 27). Accordingly, these are the three main
functions the media should have in order to allow for “change and modernisation” (Okigbo
 42

2004: 60). Yet, importantly, while Schramm argued that the watchman role of the media
refers to the media’s role to “widen horizons,” “focus attention,” “raise aspirations” and
“create a climate for development” (Schramm 1964: 127-132), this idea is beset with
contradiction. That is, Western media corporations have arguably not allowed the media of
the modernising nations to take on this role of watchman, in the sense of watching over their
respective societies/communities. Instead, the Western corporations have assumed the
watchman function themselves, even though, by definition, as outsiders they could neither
know the needs of the societies in question, nor have their interests thoroughly at heart.
This soon became problematic, as the possibility of a dialogue between the different
nations was replaced by a one-way Western (mis-)representation of the nations undergoing
the modernising process. In the post-World War II period, though, the recently decolonised
developing nations saw a window of opportunity to respond critically to this situation, on the
basis of their newfound independence. As Nordenstreng points out, “by the early 1970s,
[these] countries had accumulated a great deal of political power and economic potential”
(Nordenstreng 2011: 228), and they became emboldened by the opportunities before them
which seemed endless. It was at this point that “a new chapter in world history” appeared to
be imminent, as “the idea of decolonization had not been applied in an articulated and
authoritative manner to the sphere of information and culture” (Nordenstreng 2011: 228), and
the developing nations demanded remedial dialogic change.
UNESCO appeared to provide the forum for this.22 The organisation had adopted a
“model of communication and development” in the early 1960s (Sreberny & Mohammadi
1994: 5), and this made UNESCO “one of the earliest international development
organizations to experiment with formulating communication for development policies with a
focus on media development” (Mansell & Raboy 2011: 325). The model became “the basis
for media development in many parts of the Third World,” and “UNESCO even suggested a
minimum standard for mass media availability in the Third World” (Sreberny & Mohammadi
1994: 5, Melkote & Steeves 2001: 119).
To be sure, this did not entail a rejection of modernisation theory, but rather – at best – an
attempt to allow Third World countries the media space to develop themselves, instead of
being developed by and through First World media products. That is, while “UNESCO-
funded studies were intended to help the development of relevant media systems for the
developing world…they reflected and were characterized by the modernisation paradigm”
(Mansell & Raboy 2011: 326), in relation to which they sought to establish dialogue between
the First and Third Worlds. Supported by the Western nations, the belief that modernisation
22
See note 19.
 43

would be acquired by people from traditional societies through mass media institutions
prevailed within UNESCO. Consequently, “ambitious projects were launched,” under the
auspices of development programmes, and “in the quest to modernise audiences and mass
media institutions in the underdeveloped and the developing nations of the so-called Third
World.” These projects were initiated “to develop modern media institutions and
programming practices to persuade Third World audiences – particularly the ‘transitionals’ in
Lerner’s scheme of things – to embrace and propagate the ideals of modernisation, and by
extension, the ideology of free enterprise” (Kumar 2006: 101).
Yet, since their respective agendas – underpinned as they were by the desire to maintain
relative independence – “worked against the vested interests of the Western world order”
(Nordenstreng 2011: 228), the aspirations of the developing countries were opposed by the
West. And the consequence of this was that UNESCO as an organisation was soon torn apart
by the opposing viewpoints of two schools of thought: On the one hand, the liberal school,
which was “based on the economic and development theories of Daniel Lerner and Ithiel de
Sola Pool” and which was “determined by economic considerations.” On the other hand, the
structuralist school, which was concerned with “development needs and ideological
considerations” (Fourie 2007: 376, 374).23 These two schools also differed in that the liberal
school of thought saw information as a commodity, while for the structuralist school of
thought information comprised a common good. Both schools “accepted the premise of a link
between economic progress and the availability of information,” and maintained that
“information plenty is concomitant to and predeterminate of economic prosperity” (Brown-
Syed 1993). However, while the liberal school, headed by the United States and followed by
most of the First World, “maintained that national cultures and sovereignty were not
threatened by information concentration,” structuralist analysts – representatives of the Third
World – “argued that they were” (Brown-Syed 1993).
The difference in viewpoints between the liberal and structural schools led to a “serious
conflict” (Fourie 2007: 376) when UNESCO proposed the New World Information and
Communication Order (NWICO). The NWICO debate divided the liberals and structuralists
even more than previously, since the liberal school opposed the proposed establishment of
NWICO, whereas the structural school supported the suggested introduction of the media
system.
Accordingly, the “demand for a new international information order” was initiated by the
non-aligned countries “in the mid-1970s as an extension of already voiced demands for a new

23
Brown-Syed first referred to the two schools as ‘liberal’ and ‘structuralist’ in his text entitled “The New World
Order and the Geopolitics of Information” (Brown-Syed 1993).
 44

world economic order” (Carlsson 2003: 38). In effect, these non-aligned countries “aspired to
be ‘a third force to act as a buffer between capitalism and communism’” (Sing & Gross 1984:
446 as quoted in Carlsson 2003: 38). The first mention of information in the discussions
surrounding the ‘new international order’ that the non-aligned countries wanted to implement,
was made during a meeting in Tunis in 1976, after “the idea had…been in the air from the
beginning of the 1970s.” Yet “it was the Tunis Symposium in March 1976 that finally
provided the platform for its articulation” (Nordenstreng 2011: 228). In the Report of the
Committee, it was stated that “since information in the world shows a disequilibrium
favouring some and ignoring others, it is the duty of non-aligned countries and other
developing countries to change this situation and obtain the de-colonization of information
and initiate a new international order in information” (quoted in Carlsson 2003: 40). And it
was at this meeting that “the phrase and concept of NWICO was born” (Nordenstreng 2011:
228). NWICO addressed a “range of problems” including “cultural dominance, concentration
of media ownership among de facto cartels, trans-border data flows controlled by multi-
national corporations, the effects of tourism and advertising,” along with “the uneven world
allocation of radio, satellite, and telecommunications technologies and infrastructures.” And it
was argued that “all of these relationships ran counter to the interests of the developing world,
threatening self-determination, sovereignty and economic development” (Brown-Syed 1993).
Thus NWICO was the result of an acknowledgment of Third World fears of First World
media dominance.
However while the NWICO movement “began as a protest over the concentration of
print and broadcast media ownership,” it soon “developed into an argument about the cultural
dominance of poor nations by wealthy ones.” That is, NWICO proponents argued that
“Western ownership and control of both the news media and their distribution channels
constituted a form of cultural dominance whose covert goal was capitalist economic
expansion.” Yet, while NWICO proponents suggested that the current media relations were
maintained to allow for a development towards global capitalism, NWICO opponents
similarly accused the NWICO proposals of being “part of a larger communist agenda”
(Brown-Syed 1993). Resultantly, the NWICO debate turned into a familiar conflict of
capitalism versus communism.
Consequently, in 1984, the US withdrew from UNESCO.24 At the same time, the
organisation was “criticized for having politicized information issues, for inefficiency and an

24
The reasons for the US’s withdrawal have been disputed. While the USA “mentioned UNESCO’s work with
NWICO among the reasons for their decision to leave the organisation,” Nordenstremg contests this,
emphasising that “the main reason was not NWICO, the MacBride Report or UNESCO’s Director-General
Amadou Mahtar M’Bow, but a strategic reorientation of US foreign policy” (Nordenstreng 2011: 230).
 45

exceedingly large (and growing) bureaucracy.” In addition, the Director-General, Ahmadou-

Mahtar M’Bow, “was accused of favouring the developing countries.” In effect, some argued
that UNESCO had been “brought…to a standstill [and] in order for the organization to be able
to fulfil its mandate,…change was absolutely necessary.” Great Britain left UNESCO soon
after the US did, and their joint departure “had an impact on UNESCO,” because “the exit of
the two major members…represented a loss of more than 30 per cent of UNESCO’s
revenues,” which entailed “a major blow to UNESCO’s budget and thus to the organisation
per se” (Carlsson 2003: 52, 54).
At the subsequent UNESCO General Conference in 1985, the non-aligned countries once
again “made a concerted effort to push for a NWICO.” Yet “their efforts were in vain,” and
four years later, “the concept of NWICO was stricken from the agenda once and for all,”
which “marked the ultimate failure of the non-aligned countries to bring about new principles
for information and communication in the world (Carlsson 2003: 52, 53).
Thus, while for several decades the verbal protests of the representatives of the
developing nations seemed to have found a voice through UNESCO, the organisation
ultimately failed the Third World when little was done to make the changes requested by their
respective delegates. And UNESCO’s abandonment of commitment to representing the voice
of the developing world culminated in 1985, when the organisation officially withdrew itself
from the proposal for a New World Information and Communication Order. Consequently,
the dialogue between the West and the developing world, which for decades had largely taken
place through the UNESCO, was once again reduced to a monologue, in which only the voice
of the Western world could be heard. However, as will be discussed in the next chapter, this
monologue had already proved deeply problematic, insofar as it rendered the Western world
deaf to an entire oppositional discourse growing within Iran.
 46

Chapter Two: Anti-modernisation theory within the context of

Iran

2.1 Introduction

The upsurge of modernisation theory, which culminated in the 1950s and 1960s with Daniel
Lerner’s The Passing of Traditional Society (1958) and Wilbur Schramm’s Mass Media and
National Development (1964), was not universally lauded. On the contrary, the rise of
modernisation theory was accompanied by the emergence of anti-modernisation theory which
reached its most intense expression around the same time as the circulation of Lerner and
Schramm’s respective texts. As Spaargaren, Mol and Buttel point out, “the 1970s showed
both a renewal of theories of modernisation as [well as] radical alternatives such as theories of
anti-modernisation” (Spaargaren et al. 2000: 189).
That is, not only did the anti-modernisation theorists, who found themselves on the
destabilising and experimental receiving end of modernisation initiatives, argue that this
“process was neither regularly phased nor balanced.” In addition – and in contrast to the
assertions of pro-modernisation theorists – they advanced that the ‘development’ of traditional
societies into modernised ones “did not make ‘the more modernised’ souls any less unhappy
than those who were, for one reason or another, left behind” (Rahnema & Behdad 1996: 6). In
many respects, this was the consequence of the way in which “during the second post war
period, serious ‘reality problems’ began to intrude on modernisation theory in a major way”
(Alexander 2003: 205). And while modernisation theorists found themselves increasingly at
pains to account for these unforeseen crises, anti-modernisation theorists ensured that such
crises were not relegated to the margins of consideration, or swept under the carpet. Instead,
they thematised how such “‘reality problems’ betray modernisation theory” (Choi 2004: 207),
and their criticisms thereby comprised “both a societal and scientific reaction to the unsolved
‘reality problems’ in the modernisation model” (Spaargaren et al. 2000: 189).
In contrast, neither Lerner nor Schramm referred to such ‘reality problems,’ because they
believed instead that such problems were not caused by but would rather be solved by the
process of modernisation. Yet, Alexander identifies poverty, revolutions, wars, dictatorship,
and authoritarianism, among other things, as the unwanted consequences of modernisation. In
fact, he goes so far as to assert that, “the decisive fact in modernisation theory’s defeat…was
the destruction of its ideological, discursive, and mythological core.” Accordingly, this
occurred when “‘modernity’ and ‘modernisation’ moved from the sacred to the profane side
 47

of historical time,” through experimental societal application, at which point “modernity

assum[ed] many of the crucial characteristics that had earlier been associated with
traditionalism and backwardness.” Consequently “this inversion of the sign and symbols
associated with modernity polluted the movements associated with its name,” and in reaction
to the ‘reality problems’ that presented themselves, “antagonistic theories of anti-
modernisation were proposed on the grounds that they were more valid explanations” for the
crises (Alexander 1995: 21, 20).
In many of the traditional societies that had been ‘modernised’ through American efforts,
Islam prevailed as the dominant religion. And many of the Islamic inhabitants who saw their
nations crumble under the weight of modernisation theory, began to demand an ‘Islamic
solution’ (al-hal al-Islami). Indeed, many Islamic organisations had long regarded Islam “as
the way to the liberation of the ‘self’ and community” (Rahnema & Behdad 1996: 6), and
soon an anti-modernisation discourse sprouted through these organisations. For example, in
the 1920s, Ikhwan al Muslemin or the ‘Islamic Brotherhood’ was founded by Hasan al-Banna
in Egypt, and its advocates were the ones who later argued for “a return to the original
fundamentals of Islam,” following the “modern crisis” which had hit the Arab world (Lane &
Redissi 2004: 196). Similarly, in India, Mowlana Abdula Ala Moududi initiated the founding
of Jama’at-e Eslami, or the ‘Islamic Association’ in the 1940s, which later, in response to the
crises associated with modernisation, increasingly lobbied for the restructuring of “the whole
of Indian society on an Islamic pattern” (Jonsson 2006: 58). The 1950s also saw the birth of
Fada’iuan-e Eslam, or the ‘Crusaders of Islam’ in Iran, which was founded by Mojtaba
Navab Safavi (Rahnema & Behdad 1996: 6), and which comprised “a radical organization
devoted to the militant propagation of Islamic ideals” (Dabashi 2006: xix), in the face of the
reality problems which Lerner and Schramm ignored.
Within the context of Iran in particular, the ideas of three anti-modernisation theorists –
Ahmad Fardid, Jalal al-e Ahmad and Ali Shari’ati – became very influential. Since they were
each part of a different generation, insofar as each was a decade younger than his predecessor
(Fardid was born in 1912, Al-e Ahmad in 1923 and Shari’ati in 1933), each theorist
effectively responded to a different context. Nevertheless, these scholars also influenced each
other quite significantly, with Al-e Ahmad building upon Fardid’s theory, and Shari’ati, in
turn, building upon Al-e Ahmad’s theory. Moreover, each of the theorists was not only more
influential amongst the Iranian public than his predecessor, but also more successful in
advocating change, and more articulate and incisive in their strategic approach. And, in turn,
influenced by the theorisation of Fardid, Al-e Ahmad and Shari’ati, Mohammad Mossadegh
attempted to implement political change in Iran. Although through US involvement,
 48

Mossadegh was admittedly defeated and forced off the political stage, as will be discussed,
the Ayatollah Khomeini proved himself highly capable of succeeding where Mossadegh had
failed.
In short, in what follows, the focus will fall on the growth of anti-modernisation theory in
Iran, and to this end, firstly, a short history of Iran in the modern era, focusing particularly on
the country’s relations with the West, will be provided. After this, the respective anti-
modernisation theories of Ahmad Fardid, Jalal al-e Ahmad and Ali Shari’ati will be explored,
each in relation to the historical context to which their work was a response. Finally, the
discursive legacy of their ideas, as reflected in the political success of Ayatollah Khomeini
and the establishment of Iran as an Islamic Republic, will be considered.

2.2 Iran and the West in the modern era

Hundreds of years before the Common Era, the domain which is currently known as Iran
“contained a number of regions of high culture and ancient cities inhabited by different ethnic
groups,” all of which were “from time to time…united by strong and lasting dynasties”
(Hourani 2002: 9). In this regard, the political history of the nation entails a centuries-long
tradition of dynastic rule, from the Safavid Dynasty (1502-1722) through the Zand Dynasty
(1723-1794) to the Qajar Dynasty (1779-1925) (Kambin 2011: 33-37). For the purposes of
this chapter, though, certain dynamics relating to the Pahlavi Dynasty (1925-1979) are of
particular importance (Aldosari 2007: 535), and thus, for the most part, only this era will be
focussed upon.
In this regard, at the beginning of the twentieth century, Iran found itself divided into
“spheres of influence between Russia and Britain,” as a result of Iran’s “unavoidable
involvement” in the ‘Great Game,’ which entailed the “Anglo-Russian struggle for hegemony
in Central Asia” (Karsh 2007: 119).25 In 1907, the two powers agreed “to divide the country
into spheres of influence: a Russian zone in the north, a British zone in the south, and a
‘neutral’ area in central Iran that would provide a buffer zone between the Great Powers”
(Margolies 2012). Yet, apart from “European interest in Iranian trade, and later in concessions
for European economic activity, Britain and Russia had very strong political and strategic
interests in Iran.” As such, between 1918 and 1921, Great Britain tried to “consolidate [their]
control over Iran” by means of British subsidies to the Iranian government. On the one hand,

25
The British officer Lieutenant Arthur Conolly “first coined the famous phrase in a letter to a friend in the early
1840s,” yet the ‘Great Game’ only became widely known “through Rudyard Kipling’s novel Kim (1901)”
(Andreeva 2007: 19)
 49

for Great Britain, Iran “was useful both for oil and against Russia,” and the British wanted to
keep Russia busy in order to “protect the security of its Indian Empire” (Keddie 2006: 34, 75-
76). The Russians, on the other hand, were “concerned about the growing menace of Germany
in Europe and wanted less pressure in the east” (Mojtahed-Zadeh 2004: 13), and they
therefore “tried to make northern Iran an area of overwhelming Russian influence.”
Consequently, the First World War “had a devastating effect” on Iran, 26 and many Iranians
became aware of “the need for a strong and independent government.” Yet the British had
“spent money freely in Iran during the war to ensure the complaisance of tribal and
governmental leaders.” And this strategy seemed to have worked, because “by the war’s end,
[Great Britain] had great influence over Iran’s rulers” (Keddie 2006: 34, 74, 75).
It is important to note that, on the account of the above, although Iran “had never been
colonized formally by any European power…it nevertheless experienced foreign interference
in its international affairs” (Margolies 2012). As Farrokh points out, it was “perhaps the
greatest irony…that Iran was saved from becoming a colony precisely because the two
imperialist powers fighting over it wished to prevent one another from dominating it”
(Farrokh 2011).
Arguably, the ‘Great Game’ dynamics continued to inform the rest of Iran’s modern
history. That is, even after the ostensible conclusion of the ‘Great Game,’ Iran remained the
centre of European attention, because different players took to the political stage at different
times. And it was through growing domestic discontentment with such continuing foreign
interference that the internal political affairs of Iran began to change. To begin with, in the
early 1920s, a “hitherto unknown figure was thrust into the political limelight” (Ansari 2003:
20), when Reza Khan “rose from an obscure military officer to catch the attention of the
higher levels of the Iranian Government and the British Legation.” As Ghani points out,
“probably the most important contributing factor was his role in the removal of Col. Clerge”
through a coup d’état in 1921, after which he reaped the reward of promotion “to the rank of
Brigadier General” (Ghani 2000: 163-164).27 Reza Khan’s involvement in the coup arose
from his desire to “reduce British influence over what he believed was the ‘soul’ of his
country, the Persian army,” and the coup has therefore also been referred to as “the by-
product of British post-war diplomacy in the Middle East” (Khatib-Shahidi 2012: 35-36),
which up until then remained strongly paternalistic.

26
This devastation was caused, on the one hand, by “the occupation and/or serious interventions of the Russian,
Turkish, British and German powers” (Katouzian 2006: 56), and on the other hand, through “a famine during
1918-1919,”’ which in turn “led to an economic and political crisis in the country” (Mikaberidze 2011: 412).
27
The coup is often referred to as the ‘White Revolution,’ “since it was almost bloodless” (Khatib-Shahidi 2012:
36).
 50

Reza Khan’s rise to fame commenced on the night of 21 February 1921, when he –
together with his Cossack Brigade forces – entered Tehran “and seized control of the
government.” Importantly, Reza Khan “did not overturn the existing parliamentary structure,
nor did he immediately depose the Qajar dynasty” (Aldosari 2007: 490). Instead, “he
demanded the appointment of [his co-conspirator] Sayyed Ziya al-Din Tabatabai as prime
minister,” and furthermore “gained a seat in the cabinet with the newly created title of Army
Commander” (Ansari 2003: 20). Due to “disagreements over political policy within the new
government, as well as competition for leadership,” Tabatabai was soon removed from his
position as prime minister, while Reza Khan “also encouraged the last Qajar monarch, Ahmad
Shah…to leave the country.” Subsequently, on 28 October 1923, Reza Khan was appointed
Prime Minister and was allowed “to retain his post as Minister of War” (Aldosari 2007: 490),
and with that, “Ahmad Shah essentially transferred the absolute power over [Iran] to Reza
Khan” (Khatib-Shahidi 2012: 36).
Since Reza Khan admired the Turkish modernisation programme, he desired the
transformation of Iran into a republic just like Turkey. However, Iran’s “clergy were a much
more powerful political and social force than their Turkish counterparts, and growing talk of a
republic provoked [their] opposition,” because they “were eager to preserve their social
standing and the religious character of [their] society.” Consequently, Reza Khan settled for a
compromise, “and agreed instead to depose the Qajar dynasty and establish a new dynasty”
(Aldosari 2007: 491). In fact, “by 1925, so complete was his apparent hegemony that a
grateful Majlis…bestowed the royal dignity on Reza Shah Pahlavi, thereby establishing the
Pahlavi dynasty” (Ansari 2003: 20).28 Thus, Reza Khan “crowned himself Shah” (Chehabi
1990: 16), and “took for himself the surname ‘Pahlavi’ in an explicit bid to associate
himself…with the glories of pre-Islamic Iran” (Ansari 2003: 36). In this regard, the Shah
downplayed the importance of Shi’i Islam in Iran, while glorifying “pre-Islamic Iranian
kingship and culture” (Moaddel 1993: 137).29
Although it was claimed that the new Shah’s army had been “created to defend the
country from foreign aggression,” unfortunately, it soon “became the enforcer of Reza Shah’s
internal security policies against rebellious tribes and political opposition groups” (Curtis &
Hooglund 2008: 258). Consequently, in an ironic shift from his initial politics of fending off
external neo-imperial pursuits, the Shah became concerned with maintaining power and

28
The Majlis is the term for the Iranian parliament, which is elected every four years (Holliday 2011: 89).
29
Shi’i Islam globally “emerged in the seventh century” (Ende & Steinbach 2010: 63), and it is “the established
form of Islam in Iran” (Fischer 2003: 4). Indeed, in Iran, “Twelver Shi’a has officially been the ruling
denomination since the early sixteenth century” (Ende & Steinbach 2010: 63).
 51

upholding his totalitarian rule, and this change proved deeply detrimental for the Iranian
public.30
Yet, while the Shah remained unaccommodating towards those foreign powers that were
eager to become influential throughout the Middle East, the reforms he implemented indicated
that he still desired to turn Iran into a modernised society, modelled on the Western world. In
particular, the Iran the Shah was after “would contain European-style educational institutions,
Westernized women active outside the home, and modern economic structures with state
factories, communication networks, investment banks, and department stores” (Abrahamian
1982: 140). To this end, “he sent [Iranians] abroad to study, especially at German and French
universities” (Blair Brysac 2007: 101). Thus, while the Shah appeared to be preventing
external powers from finding their way into his nation, he unashamedly allowed Iran to be
influenced by the West through his policies and reforms. Understandably, many critics felt
that this entailed a “somewhat schizophrenic…government policy,” since the Shah was “at
once antagonistic to all things foreign,” and “at the same time [eager]…to imitate them.” Yet
this discrepancy was generally played down through the argument that, because “Iran and the
West shared common historical origins, Iranians in imitating the West were simply returning
to their roots” (Ansari 2003: 47).
However, the Shah’s rejection of any ‘help’ from the West with the modernisation of
Iran was a strategic move, because he wanted to emphasise “his [own] importance to the
development of a modern Iran.” That is, he wanted the modernisation to be achieved through
his efforts, not those of the West, and on account of this, he is often considered as “the
quintessential moderniser” (Ansari 2003: 40). Related to this, though, during his rule, the
Shah found it necessary to “undermine…the ulema” (Blair Brysac 2007: 101),31 because even
though “Islam had been part of the foundations of Iranian society for centuries,…Reza Shah
wanted to see his country become more Western in orientation” (Rieffer-Flanagan 2013: 22).
A transition which would involve a move away from the traditional Islamic predominance. In
pursuit of this westernisation, the Shah, in March 1935, ordered police “to forcibly remove a
woman’s veil if she appeared in public wearing one,” and in 1936, he secured “legislation
that…officially barred women wearing chadors [in] hotels, restaurants, cinemas, buses and
taxis” (Rieffer-Flanagan 2013: 22, Blair Brysac 2007: 101).32 Although this law was later
revoked, the temporarily forced removal of Islamic symbolic attire was seen as “a direct

30
In effect, Reza Shah’s “totalitarian policies prevented any political liberalization or local autonomy” (Feener
2004: 86).
31
The ‘ulema’ is the body of “Iranian religious leaders” who are regarded as expert in Islamic sacred law and
theology (Echemendia 2009: 26).
32
A ‘chador’ is the “most well-known Iranian clothing item” and is “shaped as a half circle with a radius of the
woman’s height plus four inches,” covering “the whole figure from head to toe” (Koutlaki 2010: 92).
 52

attack on Islam and on Shia clerical authority in Iran” (Rieffer-Flanagan 2013: 22). But such
attempts to encourage a Western style of dress – in the hope that Iranians would begin to think
like Westerners – was just one example of the way in which the Shah’s policies threatened
Islam. Beyond this, the Shah not only tried to influence the Iranian education system, even
though education had traditionally “been the responsibility of clerics and the religious
establishment” (Aldosari 2007: 493), when he “prohibited the teaching of the Qu’ran in
schools” (Rieffer-Flanagan 2013: 22). In addition, the Shah also attempted “to establish a
modern, secular judicial system in Iran.” Since traditionally “the organization and
administration of judicial and educational institutions…had remained largely outside state or
governmental control,” because justice and education were perceived as “the preserve of
Muslim clergy,” this constituted a “very important break with tradition.” And despite
opposition from the Islamic clergy, the reform nonetheless ensued (Aldosari 2007: 492, 493).
Within the midst of these drastic changes, and the unrest they precipitated, the imperial
competition between different foreign powers over Iran remained palpable, and the Shah soon
“began looking to Germany as a potential counterweight to Britain and the Soviet Union.” His
softening stance in this regard derived from the fact that “Iran was still a target for political
intervention on the part of the great powers” and because “Iran’s position [had] become more
complex with the outbreak of World War II.” Correlatively, soon after this move, the Shah
“sought a sharp decrease in trade with [the] ever-more domineering Soviet Union,” which
allowed “commerce with Germany [to] peak” in the years between 1940 and 1941, when
“nearly half of all imports came from the Third Reich, and 42 per cent of all Iranian exports
headed there” (Blair Brysac 2007: 102, Aldosari 2007: 494).
Yet the Shah’s good relations with Germany arguably contributed to his downfall, as
British and Soviet troops invaded Iran in 1941 in protest against “his support for Nazi
Germany” (Thaler et al. 2010: 8). Whether or not the Shah genuinely supported the Nazi
ideology is almost impossible to determine;33 nonetheless, when both British and Soviet
troops attacked Iran, the Shah abandoned his throne, explaining to his son that he could not
“be the nominal head of an occupied land, to be dictated to by a minor English or Russian
officer” (Blair Brysac 2007: 103). However, by the time the Shah’s rule ended, his “decidedly
unpopular ‘modernisation’ projects” (Mirsepassi 2000: 13) had already made their way into
Iranian society and had “brought fundamental changes to Iran” (Aldosari 2007: 493-494).

33
Importantly, it has been said that, on the one hand, the Shah “was not averse to Nazi phrases and methods,”
but on the other hand, it could also be argued that this was merely because it “suited his dictatorial and
nationalistic inclinations” (Keddie 2006: 101).
 53

2.3 The context of Iran during the 1940s

The British at “first considered restoring the discredited Qajar dynasty,” but this was not
possible as next in line for the throne could not speak Persian (Kinzer 2003: 63). However,
this problem was soon overcome when the Majlis proclaimed Reza Shah’s 21-year-old-son,
Mohammad Reza Pahlavi, “the new King of Kings” (Blair Brysac 2007: 103), even though
the young man had precious little political experience. Accordingly, although the first decade
of Mohammad Reza Shah Pahlavi’s rule was “a period of relative openness and democracy in
Iran” (Aldosari 2007: 494), before long, he too began to “pursue…many policies that
alienated his people” (Rieffer-Flanagan 2013: 20). For example, his prohibiting of women’s
use of the veil and deference “civil…instead of Islamic courts” were again seen as “attacks on
Islam and Iranian identity.” And for this reason, “many Iranians…viewed the policies of
[both] Pahlavis as an attack on Islam,” and maintained that both rulers had “embarked on a
programme to remake Iran along Western lines.” For many, this was construed as deeply
problematic, especially since it was believed that “pushing Iran toward the image of the
West…inevitably meant pushing Iran in a more secular direction.” Correlatively, both
Pahlavis “perceived Shi’ism as a stumbling block to their modernizing agenda” (Rieffer-
Flanagan 2013: 20-1, 21, 23), and since 99 per cent of the population in Iran considered itself
Muslim (Coughlin 2006: 89), with his own secular strategy, the second Shah also “alienated
religious Iranians and the Shi’ite clergy” (Katzman 2013: 1).
In response to this growing discontentment and the reverberating sense of alienation it
engendered, many “influential religious reformists appeared” who “supported religious or
social reform,” and who were ready to fight what they perceived as a composite of “despotism
and colonialism” (Hosseini & Tapper 2006: 158). That is, it is crucial to note that they neither
expounded archaic religious fundamentalism nor sought to re-instantiate worn out traditional
prejudices and practices. Rather, they advanced something akin to a form of modern
humanism, as it were, that stood in marked contrast to “the perverted modernity imposed
under the Shah[s],” which they maintained had “betrayed every humanistic principle
modernity is supposed to represent” (Mirsepassi 2000: 10), and which had facilitated the
progressive infiltration of Western neo-colonialism into Iran.34 In this regard, “since the allied
occupation of 1941, there had been growing American influence in Iran [while] the
British…continued to maintain the strongest Western influence in Iran” (Moghadam 1996:

34
According to Basu, neo-colonialism “refers to the involvement of powerful countries in the affairs of less
powerful countries” (Basu 2012: 105), and while it differs from colonialism insofar as it can be economically
implicit rather than militaristically explicit, it still involves an exercise in domination. Neo-colonialism as a
concept and its coinage will be discussed further later in this chapter.
 54

38). Moreover, the Cold War had “entangled [Iran] in a superpower rivalry of much greater
intensity than anything she had experienced in the previous century” (Ansari 2003: 9). This
was because, after the Second World War, the United States and the Soviet Union both saw
Iran as an important asset to their ‘imperial’ portfolio, and consequently both attempted to
pull Iran onto their side.35
One of the most important reformist organisations that sprang up in Iran around this time
was the “Hizb-i Tudehi Iran (The Party of the Iranian Masses),” or the Tudeh Party. It became
“the most progressive political organization in modern Iranian history,” and had “a wide
range of universal impacts on the shape of Iranian political culture” (Dabashi 2006: xv). As
Abrahamian notes, “the Tudeh Party emerged immediately after the abdication of Reza Shah
and the release of the ‘less dangerous’ political prisoners,” many of whom were Marxists who
gathered and formed the new political party. Yet it is important to note that, “although the
founding members of the Tudeh were Marxists…they did not call themselves communists”
(Abrahamian 1982: 281), but rather articulated their position in broadly social-democratic
terms, and in a strongly humanistic idiom.
In 1949, following an assassination attempt on the new Shah’s life, the Tudeh Party “was
accused of masterminding the plot,” and as a result, the “government declared martial law,”
during which it detained “not only Tudeh leaders but also prominent politicians such as
Mossadeq.” After this, “although the government…dropped the assassination charges for lack
of hard evidence,” it also invoked “1931 law to ban the Tudeh as a communist organization.”
However, although the government subsequently declared that the Tudeh party had been
dissolved, as will be discussed in what follows, “it was by no means dead” (Abrahamian
1982: 317-318), and it was in relation to this context that Ahmad Fardid rose to prominence.

2.4 Ahmad Fardid36

Ahmad Fardid, referred to as the “oral philosopher” (Rajaee 2007: 181), because he did not
publish many works during his lifetime,37 “gained distinction through his teaching”
(Mirsepassi 2009: 172) of a version of anti-modernisation theory that was strongly humanist
in orientation.

35
This issue was broached in section 1.3 of Chapter 1.
36
Ahmad Fardid (1912-1994) was born in Yazd to a relatively well-to-do agriculturist family.
37
As Boroujerdi points out, Fardid co-translated Henry Corbin’s essay Les Motifs Zoroastriens dans la
philosophie de Sohrawardi (1946), contributed to Yahya Mahdavi’s translation of Albert Felice’s Cours de
metaphysique (1968), and helped Ehsan Naraqi with his book on the genesis of the social sciences (1969)
(Boroujerdi 1996: 63). Yet importantly, he rarely wrote his own ideas down, as he preferred to convey them
orally to his students.
 55

As already mentioned, Reza Shah sent many Iranians abroad to study at German and
French universities in particular, and Fardid was one of them. After his return to Iran, Fardid
became a teacher and was involved with the Iran Teachers’ Association, and from the late
1960s, he worked as a professor of philosophy at Tehran University. During his time abroad,
though, Fardid was introduced to and deeply “influenced by Heidegger and the German
historicist tradition,” leading him to give the “Orient/Occident dichotomy a philosophical
twist” (Boroujerdi 1996: 64). In this regard, Fardid coined the Greek term “dysiplexia and its
Persian equivalent [gharbzadegi] to denote the anti-modern constructs of Heidegger” (Vahdat
2002: 114-5). In short, the word dysiplexia is a combination of the words “dysis, which means
‘the West,’ and plexia, which means ‘being struck by or afflicted with something,’” and as
Vahdat explains, “dysis (like the Arabic gharb) refers both to the geographical West and to
the place where the sun sets and darkness begins” (Vahdat 2002: 114), with all the negative
connotations that the latter entails.
That is, on account of the increasing Westernisation in his country, Fardid saw
gharbzadegi as “a transitional phase that one has to leave behind.” According to him, as a
result of the modern Western invasion and neo-colonisation of Iran, Iranians were being
‘struck by the West,’ in a way that precipitated their growing sense of alienation.
Consequently, he suggested that “Gharb (the West) has to be abandoned both as an ontology
and as a way of life,” because he was “extremely concerned with the fate Iran faced with an
aggressive Europe [and]…its ‘creed’ of modernity;” a creed which he saw as devoid of
human sensitivity and emphathy, and informed instead by a rampant hubris, underpinned by a
nontheistic and egocentric worldview and philosophy” (Rajaee 2007: 102).
Importantly, though, as Gheissari argues, “Fardid’s main complaint was not with modern
Western technology, but with the very structure of the worldview…of Occidental
epistemology.” For Fardid, this worldview “posits an existential separation between the
human mind as the knowing subject and the external world as the object of study.” And “the
emergence of that kind of perspective, as opposed to the totalizing, harmonious, and
illuminative qualities of Oriental thought, began a period of universal darkness that has since
concealed the original unity and totality of being” (Gheissari 1998: 89). Thus, gharbzadegi
was Fardid’s idea of the current situation, a status quo with which he was very unhappy not
least because of the dehumanisation with which it had become indissociable (Rajaee 2007:
182).
Since both Shahs’ respective political agendas turned away from the tenets of traditional
Islamic society, the emergence of anti-modernisation thinkers who were drawn towards an
Islamic solution is understandable. However, as Nasr and Leaman point out, Fardid is “strictly
 56

speaking not [an] ‘Islamic philosopher,’” although he did “display great interest in Islamic
philosophy,” with which he was well acquainted, and which he saw as imbued with the
humanising tendencies absent in gharbzadegi (Nasr & Leaman 2002: 1042). As such, Fardid
“turned to…Islam for a cure for th[e] disease” of gharbzadegi or Westoxification (Arjomand
2009: 73, 85). At least insofar as he argued that the sense of alienation which Iranians
experienced, was the result of their efforts to “place themselves in the position of God,” which
inadvertently led them to become “alienated from themselves.” Bowering points out that,
according to Fardid, this “desire to act like God…belong[ed] solely to Western civilization,”
and was most acutely expressed in its ruthless drive towards modernisation (Bowering 2013:
595). Consequently, the wide influence of the West, evinced in the way Western culture had
“increasingly dominated the intellectual, social, political, and economic landscape of Iranian
society’” was construed as an “evil and cancerous” influence (Boroujerdi 1996: 68,
Mirsepassi 2011: 33). Yet, while it can be argued that Fardid believed that ‘Islamic truth’
surpassed any alternative ‘truth,’ his avowal thereof surfaced only minimally in his work,
which remained instead deeply informed by existential elements (Mirsepassi 2009: 172).
Although, as a consequence of his own reluctance to write, Fardid has remained one of
the “least known” Iranian anti-modernist theorists, he is nevertheless hailed as “one of
Iran’s…most influential contemporary philosophers” (Boroujerdi 1996: 64). Similarly,
although his preferred medium of the lecture hall arguably did not allow for a widespread
dissemination of his ideas – on account of the relatively small size of the audience he reached
– through their subsequent dissemination of his ideas, which became extremely popular, he
was able to make a “significant contribution to Iran’s intellectual discourse,” particularly
through his neologism of gharbzadegi (Rajaee 2007: 182). Indeed, as will be discussed, it
proved to be one of the seminal concepts around which the emerging anti-modernisation
discourse would rally.

2.5 The context of Iran during the 1950s

While “by 1947, Great Britain was drawing back” from the Middle East, the French were in a
similar situation when, despite their tenacity, they found themselves unable to stop the
decolonisation process (Cohen 1993: 107).38 In turn, the Soviet forces, who had occupied

38
Although the Algerian War for Independence lasted from 1954 to 1962, the anti-colonisation sentiment against
the French occupiers had already begun to appear in the 1940s – see Connelly, M. 2002. A Diplomatic
Revolution: Algeria’s Fight for Independence and the Origins of the Post-Cold War Era. Oxford: Oxford
University Press.
 57

northern Iran from 1941 to 1946, “refused to leave,” until “pressure brought by the US
government” also resulted in their withdrawal (Ganji 2002: xvi).
That is, although the Soviet Union had become relatively “quiescent in the Middle East
in the late 1940s and early 1950s” (Cohen 1993: 107), the United States still perceived the
country as a threat, particularly because the Soviet Union continued to extend aid towards
“various Arab nations in the late 1950s” (Bradford 2003: 226). In particular, the meeting
between the Soviet ambassador and General Ali Razmara on 25 July 1950, raised concern
because the Soviet ambassador told the general “that [the Soviet] government was willing to
offer any kind of assistance to Iran.” Understandably, the US government was alarmed by
these new Iran-Soviet Union negotiations, because an agreement between Iran and the Soviet
Union would “strengthen pro-Communist groups in Iran and destabilize the Shah’s rule.”
Thus it was decided that the US needed to do something to prevent this threat from becoming
a reality. Initially, the American government agreed that “a US loan or grant [was] crucial,” as
this would not only support the Iranian economy, but would simultaneously “hinder Soviet
efforts to draw Iran into their orbit” (Blake 2009: 54). Apart from extending credit, 39 the
United States also set out a mutual defence assistance programme, in terms of the Mutual
Defence Assistance Act (MDDA) of 1949, and “provided grant military aid to the Iranian
armed forces” (Bergquist 1988: 24). This military assistance grant programme was
administered by the Military Assistance Advisory Group (MAAG), and between 1950 and
1965, the US “provided 687 million dollars in grant aid to Iran” which worked out to “an
average of 45 million per year” (al-Saud 2003: 69). Moreover, the US also initiated several
technical assistance programmes, often referred to as ‘Point 4’ as it was the fourth foreign
policy objective announced by President Truman during his inaugural address on 20 January
1949. Significantly, on 19 October 1950, three months after the meeting between the Soviet
ambassador and General Razmara, the first Point 4 agreement was signed “at Abayaz Palace
in Tehran by Ambassador Henry F. Grady and General Ali Razmara,” which adumbrated the
continuation of extensive US aid towards Iran.40
Directly linked to the United States’ increased relations with Iran, was the rapid socio-
economic transformation of the country. In this regard, Boroujerdi speaks of “an era of
tremendous socioeconomic upheaval and political metamorphosis,” which was part of “the
39
The loan was made available by the Export-Import (Exim) Bank, which today is still the official export credit
agency of the US, and assists by “financing the export of US goods and services to international markets”
(www.exim.gov/about/). On October 26, 1950, Exim Bank “announced that it would provide $25 million in
credit to the Iranian government,” in order to help Iran “finance the purchase of US equipment and technical
services” (Blake 2009: 54), and in total, the US paid “$145 million between 1953 and 1957” (Abrahamian 1982:
419).
40
Regarding ‘Point Four’ and Iran, see Warne’s text: Warne, W.E. 1999. Mission for Peace: Point 4 in Iran.
Bethesda: Ibex Publishers.
 58

cultural, socioeconomic, and political transformation” that began in the early 1950s
(Boroujerdi 1996: xiv, xiii). Rightfully so, Halliday connects this transformation to Iran’s
increasing integration into the world market and its inevitable exposure to the economic,
social and cultural influences of the West (Halliday 2003: 65). And Gasiorowski and Byrne
concur, stating that “as a result of its growing contact with the Western world since the mid-
nineteenth century, Iran had experienced profound economic, social, and cultural changes.”
These included the development of a “small but growing educated middle class,…an
industrial working class…and an urban under-class” – all of which, in turn, sparked the
transformation of Iranian politics, and “dramatically affected its social structure”
(Gasiorowski & Byrne 2004: 270).
Between 1955 and 1960, Iran’s annual growth rate was between seven and eight percent
(Bharier 1971: 45), an increase which has been attributed to the “increased oil revenues and
foreign loans and grants.” However, although Iran thus “enjoyed economic growth,” it must
be pointed out that this growth “remained erratic and uneven” (Ansari 2003: 127). This was
not least because the Iranian economic transformation took place within boundaries set by its
Western interlopers. In this regard, the external forces “reinforced…commercial capitalism in
the early to mid-phases of the transition (up to the 1950s),” which involved holding back the
development of industrial capitalism (Amirahmadi 2012: 250). Through this process, Western
nations “managed to ‘disarticulate’ Iran’s industrialization by firmly linking it to their own
industrial needs,” which had a seriously negative impact on the prosperity of ordinary
Iranians, whose products could not compete with foreign goods (Keddie 2006: 119, 120). In
fact, the “luxury products and consumer goods” which were imported effectively “destroyed
domestic production” (St Marie & Naghshpour 2011: 93). Consequently, the economy of Iran
“became underdeveloped and dependent” (Amirahmadi 2012: 250).41
Moreover, as part of their neo-colonialist pursuits,42 the United States – along with
Britain – not only obtained economic control over Iran, but also increasingly tried to influence
Iran’s political landscape. The US, for example, even succeeded in stopping Iran’s Prime
Minister, Mohammed Mossadegh, from making significant politico-economic changes in the
country, through the 1953 coup which unseated him. The US’s involvement in the coup was a
direct response to Mossadegh’s nationalist policies which opposed US interests. Mossadegh

41
The economic situation in Iran in the 1950s is only mentioned briefly in this dissertation, because its focus is
primarily on media representation, not political economy. For more information on the latter, see Bharier, J.
1971. Economic Development in Iran, 1900-1971. Oxford: Oxford University Press.
42
According to its later official definition in 1965, by the first President of Ghana, Kwame Nkumrah, neo-
colonialism refers to situations where countries have “achieved political independence,” yet remain under the
indirect control of “ex-colonial powers and…newly emerging superpowers such as the United States,” who
continue to “play…a decisive role in their cultures and economies” (Ashcroft et al. 2007: 146).
 59

had been involved in politics from a young age,43 and he rapidly emerged “as a leading
nationalist-reformist figure” who persistently emphasised the need for Iran to exercise
“ownership and control over its resources, particularly oil,” and implement “rapid,
fundamental socio-economic reforms” (Saikal 1980: 36-37). His aims were reasonable and
favourable for the citizens of Iran and this aided the growth of his popularity. 44 In line with
his beliefs, Mossadegh “initiated the bill forbidding oil concessions to any power in 1944,”
soon after his re-election, and the Majlis voted Mossadegh Prime Minister on 30 April 1951
(Saikal 1980: 39). On 1 May of that same year, Mossadegh’s oil nationalisation bill and the
takeover of the Anglo-Iranian Oil Company (AIOC) by the (National Iranian Oil Company)
NIOC became a fact (Kinzer 2003: 91). By way of response, the British not only “refused to
recognize the takeover of the oil company” and “rejected the nationalization as illegal and
unacceptable” (Zahrani 2002: 94, Saikal 1980: 41). In addition, it also commenced with
“covert moves to undermine Mossadegh,” insofar as it deployed “the extensive intelligence
network it had built up before and during World War II when it occupied most of Iran” (Hiro
2006: 70). During this time of rising tension, Mossadegh attempted “to obtain US support for
Iran’s oil nationalization” (Ghods 1989: 185). Naively, he still believed that the United States
was “an anti-imperialist nation nursing benign feelings toward Iran” (Hiro 2006: 74). Yet,
while the United States initially appeared to “tacitly support Iran and its right to nationalize its
oil” (Zahrani 2002: 95), Mossadegh’s position as Iran’s Prime Minister was soon regarded as
interfering with US objectives, and the Eisenhower administration went so far as to advance
the opinion that “a reliable alternative to Mossadegh’s administration would be a government
headed by the anti-communist but pro-Western monarchy” (Saikal 1980: 44). Moreover,
unlike the preceding Truman administration, the Eisenhower administration “showed no
compunction in overthrowing governments, nor in being identified with the oil companies”
(Abrahamian 2001: 197).
The American contempt for Mossadegh began to emerge in the negative portrayal of the
Prime Minister in the American mass media, as well as in the Iranian media, which was
heavily influenced by the United States. In the American media, Mossadegh was increasingly

43
Mossadegh started out as the “chief tax auditor for the Khurasan province,” which he became at the age of
sixteen. He was elected to the First Majlis (Iranian parliament) at the age of twenty-four and although he “could
not assume the position due to being under the legal age of thirty” (Moghimi 2008: 21-22), this shows that even
at this young age, Mossadegh’s “political career was under way” (Kinzer 2003: 54).
44
Following this, he was “easily elected” as Member of Parliament in 1924 (Moghimi 2008: 23) and he resisted
Reza Shah’s governance, and found himself forced “into an early retirement that…lasted from 1928 to 1941”
(Ismael & Ismael 2011: 126). Yet, as soon as the Shah was forced to abdicate in 1941, the political climate was
favourable for Mossadegh’s return to the political stage, as it offered him the opportunity to get re-elected on the
Majlis. His popularity had not ceased during the years of his absence, and he was “re-elected with more votes
than any other candidate” (Kinzer 2003: 61).
 60

accused of “communist leanings and designs on the throne.” Not surprisingly, “most of these
tirades were either inspired by the CIA or written by CIA propagandists in Washington.” In
addition, approximately “four-fifths of the newspapers in Tehran were under CIA influence,”
and related articles were also “designed to show Mossadegh as a Communist collaborator and
as a fanatic” (Kinzer 2003: 6). All of this served an important propaganda function, insofar as
it prepared popular political opinion for the coup which the British and United States
government “funded and orchestrated” (Goldsmith 2005: 81, Bellaigue 2012).45 Through
orchestrating the coup, “the United States betrayed its own values by covertly joining with
Britain to depose an elected leader” (Zahrani 2002: 93), and Mossadegh’s removal from the
political arena “inaugurated an era of political repression.” Moreover, his work regarding the
oil nationalisation was undone and the concession that followed was conspicuous in that both
England and the United States gained a considerable portion of the shares (Abrahamian 2001:
211). Indeed, as a result of the coup, the United States “became the dominant foreign power in
Iran,” which was “reflected in the United States taking a 40 per cent share in the oil
consortium in 1954” (Keddie 2006: 133).

45
The detailed plan for the coup was put together by CIA and SIS (British Secret Intelligence Service) officers,
and the British chose General Fazlollah Zahedi as Mossadegh’s replacement, after the latter had approached
them “present[ing] himself as the best coup candidate by boasting a large following in the military” (Abrahamian
2001: 199). It has been claimed that “the CIA spent almost three weeks pressuring Shah Mohammad Reza
Pahlavi to support the coup and accept Zahedi,” yet in a covert CIA report which “inexplicably surfaced” in
2000, “after lying dormant for 45 years” (Abrahamian 2001: 183), the CIA maintains that “it would have carried
out the coup without the Shah’s cooperation, if necessary” (Gasiorowski 2000: 4). Admittedly, the first attempt
at unseating Mossadegh “failed on the night of August 15-16” of 1953 (Gasiorowski 2000: 4), when “an
Imperial Guard…tipped off his party leaders who in turn tipped off Mossadegh” (Abrahamian 2001: 206). But
Operation Ajax – as the plan had been named – was not abandoned; instead, the CIA bribed a large number of
people so that “mass demonstrations supporting the change” were put in place, thereby creating the illusion that
the majority of the Iranian public backed the overthrow of the Prime Minister (Little 2004: 666). The new plan to
overthrow Mossadegh involved deceiving the Prime Minster “into calling in the brigades himself.” The
American ambassador, Loy Henderson, requested a private meeting with Mossadegh, which took place on 18
August. And in this meeting, Henderson told the Prime Minister that he should “establish law and order,”
referring to the “angry crowds roaming the streets denouncing the shah, calling for a republic, and pulling down
royal statues.” He made it sound “like an ultimatum,” suggesting that if Mossadegh did not comply and get the
masses under control, “the United States would cease recognizing Mossadegh as the lawful head of
government.” In this way, Mossadegh was manipulated into believing that if he gave orders to keep the Iranian
public under control, he could count on US support. Consequently, Mossadegh not only “banned street
demonstrations,” but also assigned “General Daftari, his nephew who was secretly working with the coupists,”
as “chief of police as well as military governor of Tehran” (Abrahamian 2001: 207-209). In doing so, he played
into the hands of the United States so completely that the British embassy later referred to Mossadegh’s orders as
“instrumental in his downfall,” because through his actions Mossadegh effectively “disarmed himself” (Kinzer
2003: 176). Once the streets had been cleared, “27 Sherman tanks besieged Mossadegh’s residence” on 19
August 1953, and after a three hour-long battle, in which a hundred people were wounded with three hundred
losing their lives (Abrahamian 2001: 210), soldiers “found the house empty,” as Mossadegh had fled (Kinzer
2003: 185). Victory was called and General Zahedi was named as the new Prime Minister. Mossadegh was
eventually arrested (Goldsmith 2005: 89), and during his trial, he defended himself by saying that his “only
crime was that [he had] nationalized the Iranian oil industry and removed [Iran] from the network of colonialism
and the political and economic influence” of Great Britain (Mossadegh as quoted in Kinzer 2003: 193).
Regardless, the former Prime Minister was sentenced to “three years in prison, followed by house arrest for life”
(Kinzer 2003: 193).
 61

Moreover, subsequent to Mossadegh’s overthrow, the US progressively aided and

abetted “the imperial ambitions of [the] Shah” (Zahrani 2002: 93), who now realised the
gravity of the challenging voices to his leadership and the threat that they posed to his
position of power all of which he reponsed to by ruling in an increasingly more autocratic
manner. In this way, the end of Mossadegh’s government in 1953 “heralded a period of
absolutism under Mohammad Reza Shah” (Hovannisian & Sabagh 1998: 104), insofar as the
latter “gradually increased his power and became the sole decision-maker in Iran” (Rahnema
1996: 211). Indeed, he soon became “largely successful in silencing any democratic
movement and gradually sowed the seeds of what would become his monarchical
authoritarian rule” (Momayesi 2000: 47). Yet, ironically, under his rule, Iran became
increasingly dependent on the US for economic and political aid, and by way of response,
around the same time, many Iranian political parties opposing the partnership between the
Shah and the United States gained increasing popularity, as public discontent with the status
quo grew.

a. Iranian political parties

The emergence of the new classes, as described earlier, began “to transform Iranian politics
by the early 1950s,” and oppositional political organisations started “challenging the
dominance of the shah and the traditional upper class” (Gasiorowski & Byrne 2004: 270). As
Pesaran points out, because “the Shah had adopted a highly pro-Western stance in the post-
1953 period” – in a move to please the United States, to whom he owed his position – “it was
to be expected that opposition to this regime would lean toward a socialist trend” (Pesaran
2011: 27). Yet, to begin with, such opposition was quite limited in its political effect.
In this regard, the National Front was “the most organized and active political
organization” of its time, and “played a great and determining role in Iran’s political and
social developments.” The organisation was less of a political party and more of “a coalition
of…religious and political personalities and groups,” and it was led by Mohammad
Mossadegh until the 1953 coup removed him from the political stage. Perhaps because of its
indistinct nature, “it never functioned concertedly and harmoniously,” but nevertheless the
National Front comprised a persistently adversarial political catalyst at this time (Aghazadeh
2001: 21, 22).
The Tudeh Party, already elaborated upon, remained a prime example of a socialist
organisation supported by the Iranian public in opposition to the ruling Shah. Yet the Tudeh
experienced an internal crisis in the late 1940s and early 1950s. The top leadership was forced
 62

by second-tier leaders to “to convene an emergency plenum of the Central Committee, the
Inspection Commission, and the Central Committee of Tehran province” (Abrahamian 1982:
306). In many respects, Khalil Maleki was one of the key instigators, and not only “had [he]
been a prominent member of the Group of Fifty-Three,”46 he also criticised the Tudeh Party
for, among other things, their political and moral dependency on the Soviet Union.” In
particular, he expressed disdain for the Tudeh Party’s “predominant Stalinist ideology”
(Vahdat 2002: 110). That is, although Maleki was “critical of the capitalist system, he was
even more critical of the Soviet system for denying economic and political freedoms and for
destroying individual freedom” (Vahdat 2002: 111). On the whole, Maleki believed in “a
rejection of both pro-Soviet and pro-Western positions in favour of a uniquely Iranian
development” (Pesaran 2011: 30), and in line with this perspective, Maleki “later criticized
the Tudeh Party for failing to give itself a native and national identity” (Mirsepassi 2000:
100).
Maleki “eventually formalized his criticisms into an extended essay” in 1951 (Gheissari
1998: 67). In this work, entitled Hizb-i Tudeh Cheh Miguyad va Cheh Mikard (What the
Tudeh Party Says and What it Did), Maleki listed “his reasons for leaving the Tudeh,” which
revolved primarily around his accusation that “the party leaders [were]…blindly following the
Russians.” This denouncement did not come as a surprise. Maleki and other dissidents – who
called themselves “the party reformers” – had started debates in late 1946 (Abrahamian 1982:
310), which led to “mounting disagreements concerning the nature of the party leadership and
its submissive attitude toward the Soviet Union” (Pesaran 2011: 27). A second factor stated
by Maleki and his fellow “staunch dissenters” as a reason to resign was their “anticipat[ed]
expulsion” (Abrahamian 1982: 311). The party reformers thus “split from the party in 1948”
(Vahdat 2002: 113). Subsequent to the schism, the strength of the Tudeh Party “declined
drastically after the 1953 coup,” as part of the reaction to the political climate at the time, to
the point where “by the late 1950s[,] the party was a mere shadow of its former self”
(Abrahamian 1982: 451).
Immediately after breaking with the Tudeh, “the Maleki group…sought to organize the
Socialist Tudeh League of Iran” (Dabashi 2006: 49), and in the related communique they
“claimed to be a continuation of the progressive side of the Tudeh…and to believe in
scientific socialism.” However, they also stated that their “programme would suit Iran’s
socio-economic conditions and not simply copy that of other socialist countries” (Behrooz
2000: 32). Although the reformers had previously complained about the Soviet role in the

46
The Tudeh Party was formed by fifty-three members of a “study group” which first came together in 1935 “to
discuss and propagate Marxist ideas” (Vahdat 2002: 95).
 63

Tudeh Party, “its members still believed in the Soviet Union,” and thus with the formation of
the new socialist organisation, they “tried to receive recognition from the Soviets” (Behrooz
2000: 32, Dabashi 2006: 49). However, after they were denounced by Radio Moscow as
traitors (Mirsepassi 2000: 100) and after the Soviet Union expressed disapproval of them,
their “fate…was sealed,” and they virtually ceased to exist as a group (Behrooz 2000: 32).
Following the failure of the Socialist Tudeh League of Iran, Khalil Maleki collaborated
with Mozaffar Baqa’i in the creation of the Toilers Party in 1951. The Toilers Party “was to
become a serious rival to the Tudeh Party in attracting students, youths, and working people”
(Nabavi 2003: 32). But Baqa’i and Maleki were not in agreement with regard to Mossadegh’s
government. While Baqa’i, representing the right wing of the Toilers Party, was of the
opinion “that the Toilers Party should go into public opposition against Mossadeq’s
government,” Maleki’s left wing of the party supported Mossadegh (Nabavi 2003: 32,
Behrooz 2000: 33). Consequently, the Toilers Party also split, and from this moment onwards
Baqa’i led the Iranian People’s Workers Party (Aghazadeh 2001: 23), while Maleki’s group
“continued its activities under the title of the Third Force.” 47 Nevertheless, both parties found
themselves under the National Front movement.
Although initially smaller than the Toilers Party, Maleki’s “Third Force grew at a rapid
rate” (Nabavi 2003: 32). And while “the political environment of 1940s Iran had required the
adoption of either a pro-Western or a pro-Soviet stance,” under the influence of Maleki, such
binary thinking was abandoned in the early 1950s in favour of “a move toward the
indigenous,” which entailed efforts to develop “a discourse of economic independence”
(Pesaran 2011: 28).
It must be noted though, that the wide variety of socialist groups – those named above as
well as many others – were “brutal[ly] suppress[ed] by the state following Mohammad Reza
Shah Pahlavi’s return to power in 1953” (Abrahamian 1982: 419). Yet they were not thereby
eliminated; rather, subsequent to the 1953 coup, “the remnants of the Tudeh and its splinter
groups continued to influence and…drive the course of Iranian dissident activity” (Pesaran
2011: 27).

b. Public discontent

47
After the 1953 coup which forced the abdication of Mohammad Mossadegh from his position as Iran’s Prime
Minister, Maleki “changed the name of his Third Force to the Society of Iranian Socialists (Jam’eh-i Sosiyalist-
ha-yi Iran)” (Abrahamian 1982: 450).
 64

Throughout the 1950s, the Shah continued with his efforts to modernise Iran, and to this end
collaborated increasingly with several foreign powers, most notably the United States.
Although the Shah appeared convinced that he was acting for the benefit of Iran, a
groundswell of discontent among the Iranian public showed that this was not the general
opinion of the country’s population.
On the contrary, not only was the Shah’s leadership despised by many who were
unhappy with “his autocratic and repressive regime and his efforts to westernize the country”
(Zelizer 2010: 284). In addition, the 1950s saw a rise in anti-American sentiment among the
Iranian public. This was primarily the result of the growing realisation that the Islamic society
of Iran was incompatible with Westernised modernisation, which the Shah was trying to
implement in the country. As previously mentioned, this modernisation was indissociable
from a rise in consumer products imported from Western countries. And this growth
continued until, “by 1958, imports exceeded exports,” which rendered Iran “more dependent
on the West” than ever before (St Marie & Naghshpour 2011: 127). In addition, the growing
import of Western consumer products led to an overflow in the Iranian market, which forced
local shopkeepers into bankruptcy. For example, early in 1958, the Shah “suggested the
construction of department stores.” And even though many Iranians complained that this
would result in drastic unemployment amongst local traders this was dismissed by the Shah as
an “unrealistic” prospect (Ansari 2003: 142).48
In addition to this, the rise in anti-Americanism mostly found its roots in the public
dissatisfaction regarding the loans the US continued to give to Iran. Firstly, the Iranian public
became increasingly aware of the negative effects of these loans on the local economy; for
example, “inflation and a tendency for the economy to make sudden lurches from periods of
boom to ones of deep depression” (Owen 2004: 81).
Secondly, general public disapproval of the US loans was linked to what was done with
the credit received. That is, with help from the US, the Iranian government created a “state
security service,” which became “known by its Persian acronym, SAVAK.” This security
apparatus, which was established in 1957, was “specifically designed to provide intelligence
information on ‘anti-state’ activists operating both inside and outside Iran” (Kamrava 1990:
27). And as Ansari points out, “Iranians viewed this development with suspicion while some
openly complained” (Ansari 2003: 137). This was because SAVAK, “trained and maintained”

48
As Kezhavarzian explains, “the regime assumed that…supermarkets and departments stores would replace
bazaars by evacuating commercial exchanges from their confines” (Keshavarzian 2007: 134). In the Shah’s
memoir, entitled Answer to History, he justifies his actions by saying that he “could not stop building
supermarkets,” and that “moving against the bazaars was typical of the political and social risks [he] had to take
in [his] drive to modernisation” (Pahlavi 1980: 156).
 65

by the US (Sardar & Davies 2002: 70) and supported by the American CIA, soon became
notorious for being “involved in…jailings, beatings and tortures” (Keddie 2003: 134) – all of
which formed part of the Shah’s endeavour to “terrorize any potential opponents” (Ghods
1989: 197).
Thirdly, the Iranian public realised that the loans endorsed continuing dependence on the
United States, and this became “a source of antagonism for many Iranians” (Baxter &
Akbarzadeh 2008: 79) because it threatened the political independence of the country. The
fear became a reality when the US later expected to be granted more influence over the
administration of the country in return for their loans. To be specific, when as a result of “a
combination of falling revenue, widespread shortages and inflation in the late 1950s,” Iran
needed loans more urgently, it became apparent that these “much-needed loans…could only
be obtained in exchange for the promise of a programme of extensive economic
retrenchment” (Owen 2004: 81). And before long, “the hand of the United States was into
everything in Iran and impacted all aspects of Iran’s existence[,] from economics, to politics,
to social and cultural matters.” In terms of this, the “Americans were unwilling to adapt to the
culture and customs of Iran,” and instead went to great effort “to replace rules, customs,
cultures, and methods that existed (regardless of their importance or capabilities) with
American ways, methods and customs.” While, admittedly, there were some benefits to
adopting the new approaches, the means of this transformation were repugnant to many
Iranians, because the American “attitude and…mentality of superiority…bordered on
arrogance” (St Marie & Naghshpour 2011: 124, 126).
In many respects the sense of alienation, which had already become widespread among
the Iranian population in the 1940s, became a groundswell in the 1950s, and even the Shah
became aware that Iranians were losing their national identity. However, he tried to combat
this, firstly, by suppressing oppositional political organisations and dissenting individuals
through his new secret police (SAVAK) – as mentioned above – and secondly, through
reviving a common national identity through schools, through the national anthem, and
through a contrived celebration of the 2500th anniversary of the Pahlavi regime in 1959. The
Shah expected the celebration of this anniversary of the Imperial Monarchy to be
“international in scope,” but “unsurprisingly, the reception was less enthusiastic” and
consequently the “plans were shelved” (Ansari 2003: 143). Yet the Shah’s efforts to form a
common national identity were not only fruitless, they actually had a contrary effect, insofar
as the discontented Iranian public increasingly turned towards the Islam, under the influence
of Ruhollah Khomeini, who began playing an increasingly important political role.
 66

c. Ruhollah Khomeini

As Pesaran points out, once “much of the secular opposition was quashed by the Pahlavi
state[,]…religion became perhaps the only vehicle through which the nationalist and socialist
trends of the day could be spread” (Pesaran 2009: 698). With the increasing realisation among
the Iranian public that perhaps a return to Islam was the only solution to the problems the
Shah’s Westernised modernisation had brought, Ruhollah Khomeini emerged as deeply
significant, since he was “the most important among the politicized ulama” (Keddie 2006:
191). The Muslim cleric rose to prominence after the 1944 publication of his The Key to
Secrets,49 in which he attacked the Shah’s secular reforms, denounced Western influence, and
called for a return to Islamic purity” (Von Dehsen 1999: 109). In this way, Khomeini “used
Islam as a political tool for mobilizing the population against the regime, which he dismissed
as corrupt and illegitimate” [my italics] (Baxter & Akbarzadeh 2008: 79), and accordingly
“focused on how the Americans had, through the Shah, worked to destroy traditional Islam”
(Glaeser 2005: 78).
Admittedly, in the early 1950s, “Khomeini was seen as a great teacher rather than a
political figure” (Willett 2004: 34), although he already “occasionally appeared on the
political stage” (Milani 2008: 353).50 It was also around this time that he was “acclaimed an
ayatollah (great religious leader)” (Von Dehsen 1999: 109), after which he became referred to
as Ayatollah Khomeini.51 Following the coup which deposed Mossadegh, there appeared to
be “greater support for a nationalist ideology” which seemed to be gaining momentum “at the
expense of Islam.” And in response, “activist clerics such as Ayatollah Kashani” tried to
“absorb nationalist and populist themes into Islamic ideology.” As Appleby points out,
Khomeini took note of this and although during the 1950s he still “kept his distance from such
Shi’ite activists,” he pursued them privately, “meeting with Kashani and others to solicit their
views” (Appleby 1997: 28).

49
The original title of his work, Kashf al-Asrar, has been translated not only as The Key to Secrets (Von Dehsen
1999: 109), but also as Secrets Exposed (Keddie 2006: 191), Solving of Mysteries (Milani 2008: 811), The
Unveiling of Secrets (Jahanbegloo 2004: 74), and The Discovery of Secrets (Willett 2004: 32).
50
Although “through the 1930s, 1940s, and 1950s, Khomeini was mostly content to concentrate on his
teaching,” at the same time it must be said that “he was certainly both aware of, and interested in, political
events.” Nonetheless, his political statements were at that point in time, still limited to writings such as his Kasf
al-Asrar (1942) (Willett 2004: 29, 32).
51
Ayatollah, translated literally from Arabic, as “sign of God” (Janin 2005: 160) or “token of God,” is used to
refer to a high-ranking Shi’ite religious leader in Iran (Soanes 2006: 46); “in Shi’ism, an ayatollah has reached
the highest level of spiritual awareness” (Hauss & Haussman 2013: 380). Sardar and Davies clarify the term by
pointing out that “an ayatollah is not merely someone learned in Islamic theology and law, though that is a pre-
requisite; an ayatollah emerges by gaining the acknowledgment of the learned and attracting a loyal following
among people.” To elaborate, “to be an ayatollah…is an accolade bestowed and adhered to by the community”
(Sardar & Davies 2002: 63-64). In this regard, Khomeini’s acclamation as ayatollah from the 1950s onwards can
be seen as a confirmation of his increased popularity in this period.
 67

While “the concept of a state as it is understood in the West is in fact alien to Islam,”
Khomeini still argued “that a state is desirable, because of the need of the people for a
government that ensures their welfare, public order, and of course the protection of Islam.”
Yet, in this regard, Khomeini feared that “by copying too much of the Western system of
government, all the social ills of the West would be imported into Iran too” (Thiessen 2009:
33) – something most Iranians had already experience first-hand.
It was to this context of Western neo-colonialism, the growing influence of Iranian
oppositional political parties, and an increasing groundswell of public discontent, along with
the associated increasingly popular ideas of Ayatollah Khomeini, that the anti-modernisation
scholar Jalal Al-e Ahmad responded. And through his ideas, the anti-modernisation discourse
gained powerful momentum following the 1950s.

2.6 Jalal Al-e Ahmad52

Jalal Al-e Ahmad graduated from the Dâr al-Fonoun in 1943 and from the Tehran Teachers’
College in 1946, after which he became deeply involved in the Tudeh Party (Boroujerdi 1996:
65). He became “a member of the central committee of the Party for Tehran and a delegate to
its national congress,” and also “wrote prolifically for…party publications,” which led to his
appointment as “director of the party publishing house[,] entrusted with launching a new
monthly, Mahana-yi Mardum” (Algar as quoted in Al-e Ahmad 1984: 10).
In 1947, a group of activists, including Al-e Ahmad, followed Khalil Maleki – discussed
earlier – by leaving the Tudeh Party in protest against the party’s submissiveness to the Soviet
Union (Algar as quoted in Al-e Ahmad 1984: 11), and as Algar points out, Al-e Ahmad
subsequently “devoted his energies more to literary than to political activities” (Algar as
quoted in Al-e Ahmad 1984: 11).53
However, because of his alleged restlessness , Al-e Ahmad felt a deep “need for constant
and abrupt change of direction,” something which “his widow has called… hadisaju’i (a
search for happenings or events)” (Algar as quoted in Al-e Ahmad 1984: 11), with the
consequence that he was never absent from politics for long. He served Khalil Maleki’s Third

52
Jalal Al-e Ahmad (1923-1969) was born in Tehran into a religious family: “his father was a local religious
leader…[and] one brother spent two years ministering to the local Shi’i community” (Lorentz 2007: 17, Hanson
1983: 7). His father did send him “to the holy city of Najaf in Iraq to become a talabeh (theology student),” but
Al-e Ahmad did not feel a religious calling and “stayed there for no more than a few months” (Boroujerdi 1996:
65).
53
Al-e Ahmad wrote a number of fictional novels, such as Mudir-i Madrasa (The school principal) and fictional
essays such as Did va Bazdid (Visits exchanged). He also wrote two collections of short stories entitled Az Ranji
ki Mibarim (On account of our troubles) and Seh Tar (Sitar) (Algar as quoted in Al-e Ahmad 1984: 10, 11).
 68

Force Party until the 1953 coup,54 after which a “period of what Al-e Ahmad later called
‘forced silence’ followed” (Hanson 1983: 7). During this time, the anti-modernisation theorist
once again “severed all political ties and concentrated more on his literary interests”
(Boroujerdi 1996: 66), not least because “the conditions created by the coup…had…made
organized political activity virtually impossible” (Algar as quoted in Al-e Ahmad 1984: 12).
Nevertheless Boroujerdi refers to the 1950s as “the formative decade...of Al-e Ahmad’s
intellectual life” (Boroujerdi 1996: 66), as during this time, the theorist was exposed to
different ideas from other intellectuals which influenced him for the rest of his lifetime. Al-e
Ahmad translated André Gide’s Retour de l’URSS, which was “a gesture of protest against the
failings of the Tudeh Party and its sponsor, the Soviet Union” (Algar as quoted in Al-e
Ahmad 1984: 12), and around this time also added anthropological research to his ever-
changing interests. His texts on this subject even “led to an invitation by the Institute of Social
Research at the University of Tehran to edit a series of anthropological monographs.” Yet,
this involvement was short-lived (Algar as quoted in Al-e Ahmad 1984: 10), because he soon
realised that “they wanted to make the monographs…written according to Western criteria.”
This realisation was for him a defining moment,55 because it made him aware of “the
fundamental contradiction between the traditional social structures of the Iranians,” on the one
hand, and on the other hand, “all that is dragging [the] country toward colonial status, in the
name of progress and development” (Al-e Ahmad 1984: 12). Accordingly, this realisation
“involved a fundamental reorientation that set him apart from the quasitotality of the Iranian
intelligentsia” (Algar as quoted in Al-e Ahmad 1984: 13).
Al-e Ahmad’s text Gharbzadegi was an immediate result of this significant development
in his intellectual thought.56 Essentially, it was “a report he had prepared for the Commission
on the Aim of Iranian Education within the Ministry of Education” (Boroujerdi 1996: 66), but
Al-e Ahmad acknowledges in the preface of his text that he “owe[s] the expression
‘occidentosis’ to the oral communications of [his]…mentor…Ahmad Fardid.” He also
expresses his hope that “the recklessness of [Gharbzadegi]…would provoke [Fardid] in turn
to speech” (Al-e Ahmad 1984: 25). Interestingly, Fardid did speak on the matter, claiming
“that [Al-e Ahmad]…had misunderstood his notion [and had] present[ed] a journalistic and

54
Al-e Ahmad wrote articles for the publications of the Third Force Party as well (Algar as quoted in Al-e
Ahmad 1984: 12).
55
In ‘Masalan Sharhi- Ahvalat,’ Jalal Al-e Ahmad himself refers to this realisation as a ‘turning point’ in his
intellectual life (Algar as quoted in Al-e Ahmad 1984: 13).
56
The term has frequently been translated into ‘weststruckness’ (Rajaee 2007: 182, Vahdat 2002: 114), while
“‘Westoxication,’ ‘Occidentitis’ (playing on the Persian suffix –zadegi, which in medicine refers to the state of
being struck by an ailment or an infection), ‘Westamination,’ and ‘Euromania’” are other popular translations
(Gheissari 1998: 89). As Boroujerdi points out, in all translations “the term gharbzadegi was generally meant to
convey Iranian society’s and its intellectuals’ indiscriminate borrowing from the West” (Boroujerdi 1996: 67).
 69

vulgarized version of it” (Rajaee 2007: 182); yet his remonstrations were drowned out by the
popular appeal of Al-e Ahmad’s work. And this popular appeal was arguably the consequence
of the fact that, “for Al-e Ahmad the question was less philosophical and more political:
Iranians as a Muslim community must begin from the point where they lost their cultural
integrity and self-confidence” (Gheissari 1998: 89).
Al-e Ahmad’s Gharbzadegi effectively “questioned the basic foundations of Iranian
social and intellectual history at a time when the country was undergoing rapid socioeconomic
transformations.” As such, it is perhaps no surprise that his work was deemed un-publishable,
“because of its overtly critical view of the regime” (Boroujerdi 1996: 67). Yet this did not
prevent Al-e Ahmad from spreading his interpretation of Fardid’s notion. He clandestinely
circulated copies of it (Hanson 1983: 8), and part of it was published in a periodical, “but the
censorship intervened to prevent its continuation” (Algar as quoted in Al-e Ahmad 1984: 13).
Nevertheless, Al-e Ahmad did later manage to publish it privately in its entirety in 1962 (Al-e
Ahmad 1984: 25), and it “was hailed as an intellectual bombshell” (Boroujerdi 1996: 67).
In Gharbzadegi, Al-e Ahmad portrayed the modernisation of Iran as “a disease that had
infected Iranian society from the outside and debased Iranian life and cultural subjectivity”
(Mirsepassi 2000: 76). In the first few lines of the first chapter, which he entitled ‘Diagnosing
an Illness,’ Al-e Ahmad explains how gharbzadegi can be compared to an illness like the
infectious bacterial disease tuberculosis, or to an infestation of weevils – small beetles that
can be destructive to crops (Al-e Ahmad 1984: 27). As Hanson points out, with the word
gharbzadegi, “Al-e Ahmad is clearly playing on the word sensadegi, the affliction of wheat
by an aphid-like pest,” one which is “quite common in Iran” (Hanson 1983: 21). Using the
metaphor of the weevils, Al-e Ahmad points out how these insects attack wheat from the
inside, such that, while “the bran remains intact…it is just a shell, like a cocoon left behind on
a tree” (Al-e Ahmad 1984: 27). Similarly, Al-e Ahmad argues, the Iranian culture is infested
by the culture of the West, with the Iranian national losing his/her identity in the process. And
as a result of the ensuing occidentosis, he maintains, Iranians have become “like strangers to
[them]selves, in [their] food and dress, homes, manners, publications, and most dangerous,
[their] culture.” Moreover, he alleges that Iranians “now resemble an alien people, with
unfamiliar customs, a culture with no roots in [their own] land and no chance of blossoming
[t]here” (Al-e Ahmad 1984: 57, 64).
Al-e Ahmad furthermore asserts that Middle Easterners were historically “less receptive”
to Western products because of their Islamic background, which – on account of its
humanistic rather than consumerist orientation – “obstructed the spread…of European
civilization, that is, the opening of new markets to the West’s industries.” Yet, at the same
 70

time, this did not prevent Westerners from making Middle Easterners “objects of research in
the museum or the laboratory” (Al-e Ahmad 1984: 33, 34). What is interesting here, is that
both Edward Said and Melani McAlister respectively emphasise as much, albeit in different
ways.57 As discussed, Said points to the taxonomic approach to the Middle East which
emerged through the academic discipline of Orientalism, and which sought to categorise and
thereby control ‘Oriental’ people through defining them in terms of static categories. And
McAlister highlights how those same people were later subject to a battery of marketing
experiments, in terms of which the entire Middle East was construed as a laboratory for
consumerist research and development. Considered in this light, Al-e Ahmad’s protest is
significant, as the indignant response of one of the exploited, demanding the right to human
dignity, and struggling to understand at what point it was taken away from him.
In the latter regard, Al-e Ahmad attempts to outline how Middle Easterners became
‘occidentotic,’ and he traces the roots of gharbzadegi to the “intellectual movement of secular
ideas and Western oriented political systems” that sprouted in the mid-19th century
(Mirsepassi 2000: 76). In terms of this, he paraphrases Fardid – again showing the extent of
the latter’s influence on him – when he advances phrases such as: “where the West ends, we
begin,” “as the West stood, we sat down,” and “as the West awoke in an industrial
resurrection, we passed into the slumber of the Seven Sleepers” (Al-e Ahmad 1984: 54). In
effect, Al-e Ahmad thereby asserts that there are “two poles or extremes” of Occidentosis (Al-
e Ahmad 1984: 27), one which is “held by the sated – the wealthy, the powerful, the makers
and exporters of manufactures,” while the “other pole is left to the hungry – the poor, the
impotent, the importers and consumers.” Yet he warns that there is “not only a great gap
between the two groups, but…[also] an unfillable chasm deepening and widening by the day.”
This is not least because “the two supposed unchallenged pivots of the two blocs” during the
Cold War, namely, the United States of America and Soviet Russia, can now “sit quite
comfortably at the same table.” Consequently, the Cold War age “is no longer the age of
clashing ‘isms’ and ideologies,”58 rather, conflicts now arise as a result of the West’s desire of
“expansionism.” And this Al-e Ahmad closely associates with the desire “to secure
commerce,” something he considers “the foremost determinant of the politics of states,”
which hinges now on the reduction of human begins – along with their rich cultural heritage –

57
See Said, E.W. 1985A. Orientalism. London: Penguin Books, McAlister, M. 2005. Epic Encounters: Culture,
Media, and US Interests in the Middle East since 1945. Berkeley: University of California Press, and Chapter
One of this dissertation.
58
In his “The End of History” (1989), Francis Fukuyama also argued that post-Cold War, there would be no
more “clashing ‘isms’ and ideologies” (Al-e Ahmad 1984: 29). Fukuyama believed this to be a result of “the
universalization of Western liberal democracy [as] the final form of human government” (Fukuyama 1989: 1)
which would lead to a “mental liberation of humankind” (Boroujerdi 1997: 1).
 71

to mindless and soulless consumers, alienated from their history and traditions. Accordingly,
“all…‘isms’ and ideologies are roads leading to the sublime realm of mechanization,” and he
paraphrases Marx when he maintains that “we have two worlds in conflict,” namely “one
producing and exporting machines, the other importing and consuming them and wearing
them out,” all on “the stage [of] …the global market.” Al-e Ahmad elaborates on the problem
of occidentosis by stating that “the people of the developing nations are not fabricating the
machines,” yet they “have had to be gentle and tractable consumers for the West’s industrial
goods or at best contented assemblers at low wages of what comes from the West.” And on
the basis of this, he posits that the West, which “created the machine,” grew accustomed to it
through “gradual transformation,” while the developing nations “do not comprehend the real
essence, basis, and philosophy of Western civilization,” and thus can only be “aping the West
outwardly and formally (by consuming its machines)” (Al-e Ahmad 1984: 30, 31). The
implicit reference here to the commercial capitalism engendered in Iran, and the concomitant
limiting and disarticulation of Iranian industry, which rendered the country increasingly
dependent on the United States, can scarcely be missed. Moreover, Al-e Ahmad specifically
names UNESCO – discussed in detail towards the end of Chapter One of this dissertation – as
one of the weapons within this conflict (Al-e Ahmad 1984: 28, 29, 30).59
As such, according to Al-e Ahmad, “to follow the West – the Western states and the oil
companies – is the supreme manifestation of occidentosis,” and “this is how Western industry
plunders us, how it rules us, how it holds our destiny.” The problem is, however, that once a
country has “given economic and political control…to foreign concerns, they know what to
sell to you” after which they “naturally seek to sell…their manufactures [to the developing
countries] in perpetuity.” And regardless of the inhumanity involved, and the terrible cost in
terms of human well-being that the strategy stands to have in the future, the powerful
countries arrange matters to keep the subordinated country disempowered, because it is,
financially speaking, “best that [these countries] remain forever in need of them” (Al-e
Ahmad 1984: 57, 62-63).
The writer also expresses his concern over the way in which the ornamental
emancipation of women – which he declares to be a product of Western culture – has
established itself in Iran. Accordingly, current “material and spiritual equality [has not been]
established between the sexes,” because the commercial capitalism to which Iran has been
subjected has “succeeded only in swelling an army of consumers of powder and lipstick – the

59
This is significant because, as discussed in the previous chapter, the modernisation theorist Wilbur Schramm
conducted his study and published it under the title Mass Media and National Development, on request of this
international organisation; a book in which the application and extension of Daniel Lerner’s modernisation
theory occurs through the use of the mass media.
 72

products of the West’s industries” (Al-e Ahmad 1984: 70). In other words, Al-e Ahmad does
not argue that female liberation is a negative development, but rather criticises the fact that in
Iran it has only involved their freedom to purchase and use cosmetics, in a cycle of
manipulation stimulated by the West. Yet, he places the blame for this on policy, which has
left the Iranian government “no recourse but to draw…closer into the embrace of the West,”
by obliging it to rely not just on Western military aid, but also “on European publications,
their newspapers and their reporters, on their politicians.” And the end result of this, he
argues, is the “internationalization of everything and everywhere,” which sings the praises of
cosmopolitanism but secretly – and powerfully – establishes the American way of life as the
only mode of culture, with a single-minded determinism. In this regard, he elaborates by
explaining that the West “demands common markets, open borders, and closed customs
houses,” while “it carries the flag of the United Nations and drives wherever it can find the
corporations’ gasoline” (Al-e Ahmad 1984: 74).
Within such a context, national identity cannot but be lost, despite attempts “to promote
the nation-state through schools, the national anthem, the secret police, military aid, a twenty-
five hundredth anniversary celebration, and pasteboard leaders.” Indeed, Al-e Ahmad
considers these attempts fruitless efforts, as the contemporary era is “a time when boundaries
throughout the world serve only to distinguish the domains of various corporations.” And as
national identity disappears, people start to identify instead with consumer products, and to
feel the need to consume in order to achieve a sense of belonging. Rhetorically, Al-e Ahmad
asks: “What border or domain can stand up to the influence of Pepsi Cola, or to the comings
and goings of the oil brokers, or to Brigitte Bardot’s films, to heroin smugglers, or to the
dubious orientalists who are the official go-betweens for imperialism?” (Al-e Ahmad 1984:
75).
In order to “break the spell,” Al-e Ahmad argues, Iranians should not “remain only
consumers of the machine [and] submit utterly to this twentieth-century juggernaut,” because
“this road…led to [the] present circumstances…[of] occidentosis,” and has forced them to
now “live on handouts from the West.” Yet, very importantly, he also does not say that
Iranians should “retreat into [their] own cocoon,” by regressing back towards old traditionalist
way of life. Instead, he maintains, that “the machine is a means…to abolish poverty and to put
material and spiritual welfare within the reach of all,” not an end in itself. And in order to
realise this goal, Al-e Ahmad advances that Iran needs “an economy consistent with the
manufacture of machines, that is, an independent economy,” as well as, “an educational
system” in which values other than those of the market are taught (Al-e Ahmad 1984: 75). In
short, what this entails, is an appeal for national sovereignty, and the right to consider the
 73

ethical development of human beings as an end in itself, which such sovereignty would make
possible.
And, to guide the process, Al-e Ahmad calls on “people of character, expert, ardent,
principled people,” as this is what “this age of transformation” needs (Al-e Ahmad 1984:
132). That is, he does not advocate “rejecting the machine or banishing it, as the utopianists of
the early nineteenth century sought to do” (Al-e Ahmad 1984: 30-31). Instead, he seeks to
find a way in which both technology and the systems indissociable from it can be tamed and
used to Iranian advantage, in a way that does not extinguish the valuable aspects and vision of
the country’s traditional culture (Al-e Ahmad 1984: 77, 78, 79).
Although Al-e Ahmad came from a clerical family, he initially departed from his Islamic
faith, something which is apparent in Gharbzadegi, where he “dismiss[es] religion and the
ulama as a reactionary and ineffective bulwark against Western domination,” and
recommends instead a “‘taming of the machine’ through indigenization of technology” in the
above manner (Hanson 1983: 1).Yet in 1964, he undertook the Hajj,60 which “marked… his
journey [back] toward Islam” (Algar as quoted in Al-e Ahmad 1984: 13), or at least his return
to his religious roots. And Al-e Ahmad subsequently “came to accept religion as a vital,
native, non-Western part of Iranian identity, and a possible path to salvation from the curse of
gharbzadegi,” as he construed it as a “powerful indigenous oppositional force” that had “a
potential for effective resistance to ‘Westoxification’” (Hanson 1983: 1, 12, 19). At this point,
Al-e Ahmad saw the “nineteenth-century liberal intellectual break with [his] society’s
popular, mainly Islamic, traditions [as] a grave mistake” (Gheissari 1998: 89), and began to
argue that Islam constituted “the real key to national independence and emancipation”
(Mirsepasssi 2009: 171). Indeed, Al-e Ahmad even went on to adopt “an instrumentalist view
of Shi’ism as a mobilizing political ideology” (Boroujerdi 1996: 75), insofar as he “prescribed
the revival of Shi’i Islam as Iran’s most effective ‘vaccine’ against the pandemic of
gharbzadegi,” and advanced “the clergy as the most qualified ‘doctors’” able to administer
it.61

60
The hajj is the great pilgrimage to Mecca which all Muslims are expected to make at least once if they can
afford to do so. In Khassi dar Miqat (translated as Lost in the Crowd and A Chaff at Apointment), published in
1966, Al-e Ahmad gives an account of his pilgrimage.
61
Admittedly, not all scholars who studied Al-e Ahmad’s life and works were convinced of his return to Islamic
principles. On the one hand, Hamid Algar argues that in Khassi dar Miqat, Al-e Ahmad leaves the impression of
“a meticulous and generally sympathetic observer of the pilgrims [and] not that of an enthusiastic participant in
the pilgrimage.” Although Algar concurs that his account of his pilgrimage “can be regarded as the record of a
step forward on a path [towards]…a more complete identification [with] Islam,” he simultaneously asserts that
“the process of comprehensive return to Islam as personal belief…was never completed” (Algar as quoted in Al-
e Ahmad 1984: 19). Al-e Ahmad’s criticism of pilgrims’ “rapacious appetite for western products” (Hanson
1983: 9) in Khassi dar Miqat may also be deemed an indication that he was not (yet) convinced that Islam could
be used as a sufficient vaccine against the disease of gharbzadegi. On the other hand, Pistor-Hatam interprets the
 74

After Gharbzadegi almost all of Al-e Ahmad’s work “was dominated by an awareness of
the historical and contemporary opposition of the West and the Islamic world,” along with a
“concern for the rescue of an Iranian cultural authenticity and autonomy[,] at the heart of
which lay Shi’i Islam.” In addition, he adopted “a critical stance toward those of his fellow
intellectuals who were carriers of the disease of occidentosis” (Algar as quoted in Al-e
Ahmad 1984: 13), and who revealed their illness through “their emphases on Westernization”
(Ghods 1989: 195).
Although Al-e Ahmad was active across different political platforms, and translated a
wide variety of texts, he remains famous primarily for his version of Fardid’s notion of
gharbzadegi. As Hanson points out, he “did more than any other Iranian to popularize the
term and crystallize the issue for serious analysis within Iran,” and his expansion on the
definition of the term, and his efforts to propagate related ideas with his book Gharbzadegi,
had an immense influence on anti-modernisation theorists worldwide. In fact, not only did his
text “become a classic of modern Persian prose” (Hanson 1983: 8), it is also “the most read
and widely debated essay in modern Iran” (Rajaee 2007: 102), and can be regarded as “the
holy book for several generations of Iranian intellectuals” (Boroujerdi 1996: 67). As the
foreword to the Campbell translation of Gharbzadegi boasts, “it aroused a widespread and
enthusiastic response…to the degree that the coined word of its title permanently entered the
Persian language” (Al-e Ahmad 1984: 7). In fact, it is said to have been “the first Iranian
essay to have social value on a world level” (Baraheni as quoted in Boroujerdi 1996: 67).
On account of Gharbzadegi, Al-e Ahmad has been valorised for helping “to change the
intellectual discourse” (Rajaee 2007: 102) of Iran, and correlatively for contributing to “a
partial reorientation of the Iranian intelligentsia” around appreciation for their indigenous
culture and traditions, on account of the human dignity imbricated with its principles and
practices (Algar as quoted in Al-e Ahmad 1984: 21). Indeed, the text “earned [him] a
reputation as the most dauntless and effective rabble-rouser of his time” (Boroujerdi 1996:
67), and made him “the leading spokesman for the non-establishment Iranian intelligentsia”
(Hillman 1990: 120). Yet while Al-e Ahmad was heavily influenced by Fardid’s theory, Al-e
Ahmad himself has been identified “as the precursor of Ali Shari’ati[,]…who bears a closer
resemblance to him than any other member of Iran’s literary intelligentsia” (Al-e Ahmad
1984: 16), and who took anti-modernisation theory to a whole new level.

text differently, as she points out that in his pilgrimage account, “he emphasizes Iranian superiority and tries to
tie early Islam to Iran” (Pistor-Hatam 2007: 576).
 75

2.7 The context of Iran during the 1960s

The United States continued to interfere in Iranian economic and political affairs throughout
the 1960s, not least because the Kennedy administration believed that “unless there were
internal reforms, the Russians would inherit Iran by default” (Gani 1987: 261). They thus
persuaded the Shah to focus more on pursuing socio-economic reforms, as opposed to
expanding his military. Although the Shah was “unhappy with American reform pressures”
(Keddie 2006: 144), it was impossible for him to refuse “to pursue the internal reforms,”
because of his dependence on the United States (Ghods 1989: 192). Consequently, the Shah
“launched a forced modernisation-cum-westernization programme” (Paya 2003: 53).
He accordingly emphasised the socio-economic benefits of his reforms with strong
propagandist rhetoric, in which he focused on “his target audience,” namely “the 75 per cent
of the population which represented the peasantry” (Ansari 2001: 13). In this regard, he
announced that he aimed to transform Iran into an alternative utopia, and proposed a transition
towards a society which he “originally labelled the model society, and subsequently…the
‘Great Civilization’” (Ansari 2001: 3). Yet the Shah’s idea of Iran’s transition into a ‘Great
Civilization’ has been viewed as “his most controversial mythic construction,” which sought
to disguise “the real political gains” (Ansari 2001: 3) he stood to make from the process. For
example, the related reforms “were intended to gain national prestige more than to create
national prosperity, knowledge or justice” (Ghods 1989: 121), and the Shah’s modernisation
programme “created less an authentic development than a consumer society for privileged
elites” (Rouleau 1980: 3).
The reforms implemented by the Shah in the early 1960s were dubbed the ‘White
Revolution,’62 and he initiated them because he believed that if the Iranian government did
“not implement reforms from above, [they would] face a revolution from below” (the Shah as
quoted in Ghods 1989: 179). Accordingly, he “tried to harness the White Revolution as a
vehicle for unifying the country” (Ansari 2001: 3). It was “based on six principles including
land reform, the nationalization of forests for heavy industry, profit sharing for industrial
workers, sale of state factories, voting rights for women, and the founding of a literacy corps”
(Echemendia 2009: 27). Although on the surface these seem to have been positive
developments for Iran, “not all of Iranian society was thrilled with these changes”
(Echemendia 2009: 27). One of the most important reforms of the White Revolution
“involved the continuation of land redistribution from wealthy landlords to landless peasants.”
Yet, in this regard, “the Shah neglected to consider problems such as the start-up cost of
62
This is not to be confused with Reza Khan’s 1921 ‘White Revolution.’
 76

independent farming or access to water for irrigation,” primarily due to “his haste to prove
himself a reformer.” Consequently, “many peasants lost their land to creditors because they
could not produce enough on their small plots to pay their debts,” so that the ironic outcome
of this was that “soon, the people who needed economic liberation were worse off than
before” (Summitt 2004: 569). In fact, some even argue that rather than preventing a “general
socio-economic crisis” from emerging, the Shah actually caused one. That is, due to his
internal policies, the gap between the rich and poor increased across the country (Pesaran
2008: 700). Moreover – as Saikal points out in his detailed account of the Shah’s rule – it was
the monarch’s “power structure and corrupt administration that were…responsible for the
worsening socio-economic situation.” Under the Shah, “the entire governmental machinery
was inefficient, and riddled with corruption, favouritism, and nepotism” (Saikal 1980: 73, 74),
while the Shah was increasingly condemned for both his “pro-imperialist policies”
(Jahanbakhsh 2004: 478), and “his dictatorial rule and human rights abuses” (Burr 2009: 22).
Accordingly, as Rouleau maintains, “the three favourite themes of the militant clergy –
foreign domination, despotism, injustice – were precisely the evils suffered by the Iranian
people under the reign of Mohammad Reza Shah” (Rouleau 1980: 3).
While the economic reform – if carried out meticulously – might have been a positive
development for Iran, it must be remembered that “what the middle class wanted was
democratic reform” [my italics] (Summitt 2004: 570). In contrast, the Shah’s regime, firstly,
did “not provide the new bourgeoisie with institutions through which [they] could channel
their political aspirations,” and secondly, did not ensure that “economic reform and
development were paralleled by any political reform or development” [my italics] (Ghods
1989: 194). Consequently, the Shah was criticised not only for being “out of touch with his
people and their needs” (Summitt 2004: 562), but also for plainly “ignor[ing] the…demands
of his own people” (Bill 1982: 27).
As such, when the Shah’s failed reforms, as well as “a few years of painful economic
crisis and inflation” (Keddie 2006: 147), combined with the general anti-Western groundswell
which had escalated following the 1953 coup, “a rich discourse containing nationalist,
socialist, and religious strands” developed. Indeed, since the “presence of foreign business
interests continu[ed] to increase in Iran,” and the Shah also persisted with his “efforts to
‘modernise’ the economy and Westernize the country, it would have been surprising had
feelings of resentment toward foreigners not escalated at this time” (Pesaran 2011: 30). And
the general public dissent that emerged sparked significant demonstrations and riots, and
“encouraged an increasingly vocal opposition from a wide range of urban groups united by
their dislike of American interference and the shah’s dictatorial ways.” These groups
 77

“included a revived Tudeh Party and National Front, as well as a group of radical clergy led
by the Ayatollah Khomeini” (Owen 2004: 81), which “played a key role” (Vahdat 2002: 133)
because of the support Khomeini gathered by opposing the monarch’s reform plans on the
basis of the argument that “the Shah was sacrificing Islamic values at the altar of Western
‘progress’” (Echemendia 2009: 27).
The importance of the latter should not be underestimated. The “social and psychological
alienation of the Iranian people” continued as a result of “the ‘modernisation’ programme of
the 1960s and 1970s,” and this was a critical factor in the establishment of “the political and
discursive hegemony of political Islam in post-revolutionary Iran.” That is, in reaction to the
sense of alienation experienced by the Iranian public, a “new type of ideology was formed,”
one which “employed Islamic symbols and ideals to provide a new but familiar meaning to
the subjectivity of Iranians.” And within this ideology, Islam was seen as the answer to the
problem of modernity, and articulated in a way that “had a very popular…appeal”
(Mirsepassi-Ashanti 1994: 51).
In the spring of 1963, “various mullahs, led by Khomeini, began preaching protest
sermons about the land reform and Iran’s relationship to the West.” And in his sermons,
Khomeini “accus[ed] the Shah of selling out the country to the West and rejecting the
principles of Islam.” As Johnston points out, through doing so Khomeini echoed much of
what Al-e Ahmad had said, especially in his argument that “the poisonous culture of
imperialism [is] penetrating to the depths of towns and villages throughout the Muslim world,
displacing the culture of the Qu’ran,” and recruiting the youth to serve at the feet of
“foreigners and imperialists” (Johnston 2011: 26).
As anticipated, the Shah reacted violently to the protest sermons, sending government
military officials to attack, but Khomeini responded to the Shah’s violent reaction with “an
emotional sermon condemning the Shah,” in which he accused him “of being an enemy of
Iran.” The Ayatollah and several other mullahs were promptly arrested, which, in turn,
sparked “riots throughout the country” (Summitt 2008: 117, 118) and even “culminated in
three days of huge popular demonstrations” (Owen 2004: 81). And the Shah was only “able to
restore his autocratic power by beefing up his security forces, shooting demonstrators, [and]
arresting large numbers” of people (Keddie 2006: 148). But as Summitt points out, “it was not
lost on the rioters that the tanks and bullets used against them were American-made”
(Summitt 2008: 118). Subsequent to the uprising, the Shah’s SAVAK “extended its control to
virtually all aspects of life,” insofar as “independent political parties were banned, and
literature, art, and political discourse subjected to widespread censorship.” But the effect of
 78

these extreme measures was the creation of “an ideological vacuum [in Iran], which made the
ascendancy of the Islamic discourse possible” (Vahdat 2002: 133).
This was partially compounded by the fact that, instead of criticising him, the US turned
a blind eye to the Shah’s violent and extreme measures, and considered the 1963 uprising “an
isolated event, caused by a few radicals;” analogously, the US embassy in Tehran
“emphasized positive aspects of the ‘White Revolution’ and ignored any problems” (Summitt
2004: 573, 571). The reason for his was the US perception of the Shah “as the best guarantor
of order and stability within Iran,” which led to him receiving consistent US backing
(Kaufman 2006: 323). After all, since the US government was deeply “anxious to keep Iran
out of Soviet hands, the image of a reforming monarch leading the revolution from above was
exactly what the academic doctor had ordered” (Ansari 2003: 160). And in an act of
significant complicity, the Western media supported the Shah’s internal policies as well, and
portrayed Iran “as enjoying prosperity and economic growth” (Gillespie & Webb 2013: 132),
ignoring the prevailing discontent and unrest within the country.
The Shah also played his part in this, manipulating the United States into supporting him
by playing into US fears over the spread of communism. “Although the strongest challenges
to his regime were internal, non-Communist ones, he was able to convince the West that his
major opponents were tools of the Soviets,” and “he blamed any vocalization of
dissatisfaction on Communists.” Furthermore, “whenever his leadership was challenged,” the
Shah went to great effort to “persuade…the State Department that his country would be safer
from Communism under his direct control.” In fact, the Shah even argued “that his proximity
to the Soviet Union made him a critical buffer to Khrushchev’s aims for the region” (Summitt
2004: 573).63 And as Washington accepted the Shah’s claims regarding the communist threat
as true, he was seen as “a lynchpin of US security in the Middle East for four US
administrations” (Root 2008: 123).
However, because he followed orders from the Kennedy administration, the Shah was,
consequently, seen by many Iranians as no more than a “puppet of the United States”
(Bacevich 2005: 104), and Khomeini was thereby afforded ample material for “the most
stinging criticism” with regard to the US-Iran collaboration. He had recently been released
following his arrest for criticising the Shah’s reforms, and almost immediately showed his
indignation in his 27 October 1964 speech entitled ‘The Granting of Capitulatory Rights to
the US,’ in which he referred to Iran and its independence as being “sold,” and maintained

63
Nikita Sergeyevitch Krushchev (1894-1971) was secretary of the Communist Party of the Soviet Union from
1953 to 1964. After Joseph Stalin’s death in 1953, Krushchev succeeded as the leader of the Soviet Union in
1956 (Lansford 2008: 34).
 79

that its dignity had been “trampled underfoot” (Ansari 2003: 162). Again, Al-e Ahmad’s
appeal for human decency and respect – rather than subordinating consumerist modernisation
– echoed strongly in Khomeini’s words. In response to Khomeini’s diatribe, the Shah,
realising the limitations of imprisoning him again, sent the religious leader into exile, “first to
Turkey and then to Iraq” (Blanchard 1996: 25), in the hope of isolating what he perceived as
“the primary dissenting voice” (Echemendia 2009: 27).
For the same reason, the independent political parties within Iran were also banned
(Vahdat 2002: 133). However, ironically, this move had the opposite effect, because many
Iranians who lived abroad began setting up parties opposing the Shah. Most Iranians living
abroad were there to study, since there were “always…fewer places available in Iranian
universities than there [were]…applicants” (Chehabi 1990: 194). As a result, while “in 1960
there were 15,000 Iranian students abroad,” six years later, this number had doubled.
Especially in the late 1960s, “Germany had the highest Iranian student population,” and under
the critical impetus of the international counter-culture movement, it “became one of the
centres of anti-regime activity by Iranian students” (Chehabi 1990: 195). Of these students,
many “held a variety of Marxist views, while others…belonged to the radical Islamic
opposition” (Amirahmadi & Entessar 1992: 21). And the strength of such opposition grew to
the extent that in May 1962, it was announced that the National Front had established a
European organisation (Chehabi 1990: 196). That same year, “Iranian student organizations
throughout Europe and the United States met to create a cohesive organization known as the
Confederation of Iranian Students, National Union (CISNU).” This comprised “the first
universal Iranian student organization and was strongly influenced by leftist and Tudeh Party
ideologies,” to become “more politically active against the Shah’s increasing oppressive
regime” (Shahmohammadi 2008: 33). Another successful “international revolutionary
movement” was the Freedom Movement, which was established in the belief that the freedom
desired by the Iranians could only be acquired through an “armed struggle” (Alfoneh 2013:
206). But protesting against the Shah’s regime abroad did not avert danger altogether, because
the SAVAK “was also active abroad,” and “monitor[ed] Iranian students who publicly
opposed Pahlavi rule” (Usa 2009: 127).
Nevertheless, through political organisations such as the Confederation of Iranian
Students and the Freedom Movement, Iranian dissidents found a stage on which to voice their
discontent not only with the Shah’s regime, but also with American neo-colonialist efforts in
their country. Increasingly, though, their “anti-Westernism and anti-regime ideas turned…to
the masses’ Shi’i outlook” (Keddie 2003: 189). And because Marxism had also been
considered as a possible alternative to Western-style capitalism, the religious and the politico-
 80

economic solutions were was soon combined into one, especially after Islamic theorists such
as Ali Shari’ati began reinterpreting “Islam in light of Marxist methodology” (Hunter 1998:
94). Indeed, the anti-modernisation theorist whose theories flourished in the 1960s,
“mobilized a whole generation of young Iranians” through his “radical blend of Islam and
Marxism.” Later, though, Shari’ati did point out the “irreconcilable philosophical and
doctrinaire differences between Islam and Marxism,” maintaining “that Islam and Marxism
are contradictory ideologies and…survival of one was contingent upon the rejection or
annihilation of the other” (Rahnema 2000: 341, 360). After this, he focused on Shi’i Islam as
the only solution, against the backdrop of a deeply anti-modernist stance, and it is to this
position that we now turn.

2.8 Ali Shari’ati64

Like Jalal Al-e Ahmad, Ali Shari’ati came “from a clerical family,”65 and he “taught briefly as
a high school teacher” while finishing his bachelor’s degree at Ferdowsi University of
Mashad (Hanson 1983: 13). While teaching, Shari’ati became actively involved in nationalist
politics which was, at the time, “in crisis over British claims about oil concessions.” From the
outset, Shari’ati’s political path opposed the Shah’s regime and thus his “political
involvement [soon] led to radicalization and arrests” (Celarent 2012: 1289).
In 1959 he left for France where he studied “philology, sociology, and history…at the
University of Paris,” and remained involved in politics, participating “actively
in…Islamically-oriented opposition to the Shah’s regime” (Algar as quoted in Shari’ati
1979A: 6), joining both the Freedom Movement and the Iranian Student Confederation
(Ghods 1989: 195). In France, Shari’ati was first exposed to the theories of Frantz Fanon, and
he remained heavily influenced by Fanon’s texts throughout his lifetime, along with the
“works of…Weber, Sartre and Durkheim,” which he used to censure the “‘Westoxification’
[that]…he blamed for the backwardness and subjugation of Iran and other Third World
countries” (Ganji 2006: 31). Shari’ati identified the “cultural dependency on the West, which
Iranians only reinforced, as the greatest danger to Iran’s cultural heritage” (Ghods 1989: 195),
and for this reason, emphasised “the need for Iran to gain political, cultural, and economic
independence from the West.” Importantly, he insisted “that the correct path to achieving a

64
Ali Shari’ati (1933-1977) was born in north-eastern Iran, yet “the exact location is not certain” (Celarent 2012:
1289).
65
His “father and grandfather had been active Islamists” (Celarent 2012: 1289) and the former “was a religious
leader and teacher active in the remnants of the National Front opposition to the regime in the mid-1950s and on
the radio in Mashhad lecturing on religious topics in the 1960s” (Hanson 1983: 13).
 81

truly independent development was a religious one” (Pesaran 2011: 29, 30), rather than
something solely political or economic. In effect, he “sought to use Islam as an ideological
base to fight the regime” (Ghods 1989: 195), and attempted to “reconcile Shi’i Islam with
modernisation,” contending “that a nation must regain its cultural and religious traditions as a
precursor to modernizing on its own terms” (Mirsepassi 2000: 13). To this end, together with
Ebrahim Yazdi and Mostafa Chamran, he formed the Liberation Movement abroad in 1964
(Ganji 1989: 31).
Shari’ati “identifie[d] with the worldwide struggle of Third World peoples against
imperialism,” and “argued that colonialism was Islam’s enemy.” Yet, while “he employ[ed a
Marxist]…idiom and recognize[d] the value of some of its insights,” combining “the
discourse of gharbzadegi with a range of concepts taken from Marxism,” Shari’ati soon
“reject[ed] Marxism as the alternative” to the status quo (Rahnema 2000: 360, Hanson 1983:
2, Pesaran 2011: 29). This was primarily because he rejected the Marxist idea of the primacy
of economics, maintaining instead that “culture, particularly religion, [w]as society’s truly
formative force” (Pesaran 2011: 29, Ghods 1989: 195). Henceforth, he formed “a new and
radical version of politicised Islam,” which he proposed “as a third way between
Westernization and Marxism” (Pesaran 2011: 29, Hanson 1983: 2). Ali Shari’ati can therefore
be seen as a “prime example of the Islamic intellectual movement” that followed the anti-
modernisation/Westernisation current of the 1960s (Rahnema & Behdad 1996: 6, 7).
Not surprisingly, upon his return from France in 1964, Shari’ati was arrested (Algar as
quoted in Shari’ati 1979A: 6), on account of “his oppositional activities as a student in Paris”
(Hanson 1983: 22). Yet, following his release six months later (Algar as quoted in Shari’ati
1979A: 6), he took up a position at the University of Mashad, where he worked as a professor
of Islamic history, and continued with his activism (Hanson 1983: 13). According to Shari’ati,
“Shi’ism was the perfect vehicle through which the masses could rise up against the injustices
of the Pahlavi regime and its foreign backers” (Pesaran 2011: 29). Although he wrote many
essays, “only a few works….were written expressly for publication,”66 because like Ahmad
Fardid, he too was first and foremost a teacher, and “his primary medium of communication
was the lecture.” However, the difference between them was that his lectures were “recorded,
transcribed, and published widely…inside Iran and abroad, underground and openly” (Hanson
1983: 13).
In 1972, Shari’ati wrote about his primary objective for writing and lecturing in a letter to
his son. He said that he wanted “to galvanize an entire society…whose members are asleep or

66
Hanson names Eslamshenasi (Islamology) and Kavir (The Desert), an autobiographical account, as two works
that were written “expressly for publication” (Hanson 1983: 13).
 82

have been deluded, [while] the other half who are awake are in a state of flight.” He wanted to
“both…awaken the asleep, induc[e] them to stand up, and…have the fleeing escapees [return]
to Iran [and] encourage them to stay” (Shari’ati as quoted in Hanson 1983: 13). In effect, what
he expressed was the value of a critical-constructive approach to reforming the country, one
which was informed by high moral standards, and reflection on the importance of human
needs other than consumerism. Understandably, his anti-modernisation perspective was not
appreciated by the Shah’s regime, and Shari’ati was obliged to use different techniques to
prevent arrest and censorship, including the use of code words. In this regard, Mansur
Farhang – the ambassador of Iran to the UN in 1979-1980 – wrote that “it took the SAVAK
six months to realise what he was doing,” and that “even then, it was more the massive
turnout of the university students…than a coherent understanding of Shari’ati’s message that
alarmed the SAVAK agents” (Farhang 1979: 32). Yet, eventually Shari’ati was “compelled to
resign” (Algar as quoted in Shari’ati 1979A: 6), and was “blacklisted from teaching at any
Iranian university” (Hanson 1983: 13). Yet he did not concede defeat, but rather used the
ensuing space to elaborate on his revolutionary strategy, and it was in a large part due to his
efforts that “Islam as a focus of resistance to the regime became popular” (Ghods 1989: 195).
This was not least because Shari’ati influenced many Iranian activists to form “Islamic
Marxist organizations such as the Mojahedin-e Khalq and Habibollah Peyman’s Movement of
Combatant Muslims” (Ganji 2006: 31). While Al-e Ahmad admittedly neglected to develop
his theory of the battle against ‘the machine’ in detail, Shari’ati, in contrast, spent most of his
time “advocating his path to salvation [for]…Iranian society,” which entailed “a
revolutionary, revitalized Shi’ism…and…social justice and equality” (Hanson 1983: 14).
Referring to the West’s domination of Iran, Shari’ati posited that “mankind is being driven
into a new stronghold of slavery,” and he maintained that “the system has converted [Iranians]
into empty pots which accommodate whatever is poured inside them” (Shari’ati 1979B: 9-10)
– imagery which can be compared to Al-e Ahmad’s metaphor of the wheat infested by
weevils that hollow it out. Shari’ati’s continuing “activism and rising popularity” led to his
arrest again in 1975 and a longer prison term of a year and a half (Hanson 1983: 14), and after
his release he left for a self-imposed exile in London (Hanson 1983: 13), where he died
“under mysterious circumstances” on 19 June 1977.67 Nevertheless, despite Shari’ati’s death

67
With regard to Shari’ati untimely death, “memorial volumes in honour of Shari’ati…cite a wide variety of
circumstantial evidence to negate the plausibility of a natural death” (Hanson 1983: 20), and Hamid Algar
contends the involvement of the SAVAK to be “almost certain” (Algar as quoted in Shari’ati 1979A: 6).
Although after his death, British doctors “verified a heart attack,” and “Shari’ati’s family, who took custody of
the body, produced no medical evidence to prove ‘foul play’” (Hanson 1983: 20-21), for many “the argument
can still be made that, inter alia, the constant harassment, uncertain livelihood, and problems with censorship
 83

prior to the Islamic Revolution, his role therein was crucial and he has even “been called ‘the
ideologue’ of the Iranian Revolution and the Voltaire of the Revolution” (Hanson 1983: 18).
In sum, both Al-e Ahmad and Shari’ati were “concerned with the destructive effects of
colonialism and imperialism on their societies,” and construed “themselves as the defenders
of local values and people from what they perceived as Western-dominated Iran” (Mirsepassi
2000: 77, 78). And Al-e Ahmad’s “denunciation of Western influence, combined with
Shari’ati’s emphasis on Islam as a positive social force,” was to “bec[o]me very popular
among students,” and played “a major role in the Islamic revolution” (Ghods 1984: 195). In
many respects Mirsepassi sees Shari’ati’s work “as continuing Al-e Ahmad’s critique of
secular-political ignorance of the Islamic culture of Iran,” since Shari’ati continued to follow
the anti-modernist “path that Al-e Ahmad had begun” (Mirsepassi 2000: 77, Pesaran 2011:
29), on the basis of Ahmad Fardid’s gharbzadegi.

2.9 Conclusion

Although extensive political unrest had been prevalent in Iran from the 1960s onwards, from
early 1977 the Pahlavi regime genuinely appeared to be losing control. This was not least
because the Shah’s “programme to relax police controls,” which was implemented as a result
of external pressures to uphold human rights, effectively “encouraged the opposition to raise
its voice,” and it became even “more vocal during the summer of 1977.” Moreover, “street
protests multiplied in January 1978” in reaction to “a diatribe against the anti-regime clergy,”
which had been published in Iran’s oldest newspaper, Ittila’at. The ensuing violent reaction
from the government to the protesters resulted in a massacre, and one of the influential
clerical leaders at the time, Shari’atmadari, called on the Iranian people “to observe the
fortieth day of the Qum massacre by staying away from work and peacefully attending
mosque services.” This marked the beginning of “three cycles of forty-day upheavals”
(Abrahamian 1982: 500-502, 504-506).
On 7 September 1978, the largest demonstration ever recorded in Iran took place, and the
Shah “felt he had no alternative but to proclaim martial law.” However, his order to “ban…all
street demonstrations” was not sufficiently publicised, and many protestors gathered the next
day, and their refusal to disperse was met with violence by Iranian security forces, and
resulted in “the bloodiest single confrontation thus far.” In fact, 8 September became known
as Black Friday due to the number of casualties and people killed, and the day “led to the loss

caused such undue strains and tensions as to bring about [his] premature [death];” rendering it “at least indirectly
attributable to the regime” (Hanson 1983: 21).
 84

of the last remnants of support for the monarchy,” and precipitated “strikes in the oil industry,
the bazaar and other vital economic centres” (Wright 1990: 58).
Soon after, on 6 October 1978, Iraq’s leader, Saddam Hussein, “distrustful of the
movement growing around Khomeini,” exiled the Ayatollah – fourteen years after he had
settled in Iraq. Khomeini subsequently settled in Paris, and from here actively spread his
dissenting voice by recording “anti-shah speeches” on cassette tapes, which were smuggled
into Iran, labelled as ‘Oriental Music’ (Del Testa 2001: 100, Blanchard 1996: 25). In the taped
messages, Khomeini incited the Iranian public to “protest in massive numbers,” a request the
Iranians gladly adhered to (Wright 1990: 47).
The Shah’s position rapidly deteriorated around this time, despite his desperate tactics to
reverse the situation. For example, he announced “the introduction of a new ‘Western-style
democracy’” (Howard 2004: 168), and even “asked for forgiveness” in a nationwide
television address. But it was a case of too little, too late, and the Shah was forced to leave
Iran on 16 January 1979. And when Khomeini returned to Iran on 11 February 1979, the
“power was officially transferred to [him]…and his followers” (Hurd 2008: 76). From then
on, Khomeini set about establishing “a revolutionary theocratic republic based on Islamic
principles,” and his vision was realised when “the Islamic republic of Iran was officially
created following a national referendum” (DeRouen & Bellamy 2008: 344) on 30 and 31
March 1979. Bowker refers to the referendum as “Khomeini’s absolute victory over the Shah
and the Westernisers,” since “more than 98 per cent” of the “20 million Iranian citizens who
voted…endorsed the idea of an Islamic Republic” (Bowker 2007: 111, Rieffer-Flanagan
2013: 56). Yet, this would not be represented in the US mass media as an orderly victory of
democracy, in which the value of human decency and the right to self-determination, rather
than the imperatives of consumerism, had for once emerged victorious. On the contrary, as
will be discussed in the next chapter, it was represented as a chaotic product of dangerous
religious fanaticism, which in turn was said to pose a threat to the whole world.
 85

Chapter Three: From anti-Communism to anti-Islam – The

transformation of the fifth news filter of Herman and Chomsky’s
Propaganda Model

3.1 Introduction

As discussed in Chapter Two, the anti-modernisation discourse – exemplified in the writings

and rhetoric of Ahmad Fardid, Jalal Al-e Ahmad and Ali Shari’ati – became progressively
more popular in Iran from the 1950s onwards, as an alternative to the pro-modernisation
discourse put forward by the United States. Arguably, the first major contest between these
two discourses occurred when Mohammed Mossadegh endeavoured to use anti-modernisation
theory as the basis for initiating political change through (among other things) the
nationalisation of Iran’s oil. However, as indicated, his attempts in this regard were thwarted
when the United States (along with Britain) funded and initiated a coup which removed him
from his position as Prime Minister, and forced him out of the political limelight. Yet, where
Mossadegh failed, the Ayatollah Khomeini later succeeded, in a move which culminated in
the Iranian – or Islamic – Revolution of 1979. Understandably, because exponents of the anti-
modernisation discourse in Iran had long showed an inclination towards an al-hal al-Islami
(Islamic solution), this event entailed a blurring of the lines between nationalism and religious
fundamentalism. However, there was no mistaking its deep antipathy towards the modern
capitalist orientation of both the United States government and major American corporations,
for whom consumerism was the only way of life worthy of veneration. The consequence of
this was a wave of negative mass media representations, through which American news
broadcasts and publications engendered prejudices against both the anti-modernisation stance
of the Iranian revolutionaries, and their Islamic fundamentalism.
As will be argued in this chapter, the orientation and dynamics of such representations
can be neatly accounted for in terms of the propaganda model theorised by Herman and
Chomsky, in their collaborative work Manufacturing Consent: The Political Economy of the
Mass Media. According to this model, media messages percolate through five filters, which
remove attitudes and concerns incompatible with the ethos of corporate capitalism, and
thereby ultimately determine which messages appear in the mass media, as well as how events
and people are portrayed. Yet, while the fifth filter of the propaganda model was historically
the anti-communist filter, in what follows, it will be argued that the event of the Iranian
 86

Revolution initiated the transformation of this filter into an anti-Islam filter – the effects of
which remain with us today, especially since the end of the Cold War.
In short, after a brief overview of the context and dynamics of the propaganda model
theorised by Herman and Chomsky in their Manufacturing Consent, the focus will shift to the
transformation of the fifth news filter – from anti-communist to anti-Islam in orientation.
After this, the ascendancy of this transformed filter in relation to Iran will be traced. This will
occur through a triangulation of American mass media representations of Mohammad
Mossadegh, the Shah and the Islamic Revolution, in which the Ayatollah Khomeini played a
central role.

3.2 Herman and Chomsky’s propaganda model

The US media plays a powerful and crucial role in inflecting the perceptions of the American
public with regard to political figures and events, both local and international. As Fellow
points out, “the 1970s marked an irresistible rise of news-media power,” since “the mass
media…not only held up a mirror to society,” but also “became a significant force that shaped
the nation’s cultural and political fabric” (Fellow 2010: 331). And since then, “the role of
Western media in depicting or creating reality” has remained “crucial in the formation of
public opinion” (el-Aswad 2013: 45).
However, as Edward S. Herman and Noam Chomsky argue in Manufacturing Consent:
The Political Economy of the Mass Media, this influence all too often can exceed the
parameters of ‘simple’ framing – that is rendering anomalous or foreign events intelligible to
a wide domestic audience, who are believed to share certain basic values and assumptions.
And when this occurs, Herman and Chomsky maintain, the mass media effectively produce a
form of propaganda. While Chomsky “often critiques the US media in his written works and
has been the subject of television documentaries and interviews on this subject,” his
collaborative work with Herman, Manufacturing Consent, “represents his formal statement on
US media-elite relations” (Herring & Robinson 2003: 554).
The title of this work was “borrowed from a book by Walter Lippmann,” who argued for
the value of the mass media, which, through public relations, “could manage public attitudes
on various topics in order to ‘manufacture consent’ for the continuing rule of the governing
elite” (Achbar 1995: 40, Brady 2008: 68). Yet although Herman and Chomsky adopted
Lippmann’s term, the theorists had considerably different ideas about its value. That is,
Lippmann, on the one hand, advanced ‘the manufacture of consent’ in the 1920s as “‘a
revolution’ in ‘the practice of democracy,’” and identified it in terms of “the process by which
 87

public opinion is formed” (Diggs-Brown 2012: 50). Specifically, Lippmann argued that it was
“the only quick way of having a critical thing done” (Trumpbour 2002: 133), explaining that
“regular people had no sense of an objective reality and possessed only images in their
minds.” As a result, Lippmann argued, “leaders could play upon these images to direct public
opinion in ways they desired” (Mattson 1998: 118). Chomsky, on the other hand, remains
“critical of attempts to manufacture consent” (Spring 2003: 125) in this way, and instead
considers such endeavours in a negative light as “technique[s] of control” (Achbar 1995: 40).
Indeed, the primary issue at stake in Manufacturing Consent is how “the media serve to
mobilize support for special interests;” in other words, how the media manipulate the public
to approve of certain ideas and events (Herman & Chomsky 1988: xi). Importantly, though,
Herman and Chomsky do not advance that the American mass media is comparable to the
forms of mass media found in totalitarian states, which are orientated around strict, ‘top-
down’ governmental censorship. Rather, within the context of the United States, they attempt
“to expose the corporate-government-media complex in its manipulation of foreign affairs”
(Bennett 1989: 937). According to the argument of Manufacturing Consent, “the mass media
serve as a system for communicating messages and symbols to the general populace.” In this
regard, “it is their function to amuse, entertain, and inform, and to inculcate individuals with
the values, beliefs, and codes of behaviour that will integrate them into the institutional
structures of the larger society.” Significantly, Herman and Chomsky advance that, “in a
world of concentrated wealth and major conflicts of class interest, to fulfil this role requires
systematic propaganda” [my italics] (Herman & Chomsky 1994: 1).
Accordingly, the media portray “the world in a way that tends to shape the perspective of
those entering the political elite,” and “generate public consent or at least acquiescence to US
foreign policy” (Herring & Robinson 2003: 555). In this way, “the media serve to mobilize
support for special interest[s]” (Bennett 1989: 937), and they do so by operating “on the basis
of a set of ideological premises” (Herman 2003: 1). In this regard, Chomsky believes that
“there tends to be a liberal and adversarial bias in the media which serves the crucial function
of setting the boundary of critical thought.” However, “the truth about US foreign policy [is]
actually…located outside of that boundary” (Herring & Robinson 2003: 554). That is, while
robust debate and freedom of expression appear to be characteristic of the American mass
media, such debate and expression are never allowed to proceed to the point where they begin
to challenge the validity of the fundamental assumption underpinning American society. Or,
for that matter, the perception that American foreign policy is anything but benign in
orientation.
 88

Herman and Chomsky explain their standpoint particularly through their concept of a
propaganda model, through which they show how the primary purpose of the media is “to
inculcate and defend the economic, social, and political agenda of privileged groups”
(Herman & Chomsky 1988: 298). In terms of this, the propaganda model is an “interlocking
and mutually reinforcing system” (Bennett 1989: 937), which should not be mistaken for a
“conspiracy theory” (Herman & Chomsky 1988: xii). Instead, it “traces the routes by which
money and power are able to filter out the news fit to print, marginalize dissent, and allow the
government and dominant private interests to get their messages across to the public”
(Herman & Chomsky 1994: 2). In other words, they use the propaganda model to
“explain…why the agenda and framing of news reports on US foreign policy rarely deviate
from those set by US corporate and political elites” (Herring & Robinson 2003: 555). As
Herman elaborates: “the propaganda model describes a decentralized and non-conspiratorial
market system of control and processing” (Herman 2003: 3), rather than a centralised,
ideological system of pre-publication censorship.
In certain respects, Herman and Chomsky’s formulation of the propaganda model was
precipitated by the opposition which greeted UNESCO’s proposed New World Information
and Communication Order (Carlsson 2003: 40).68 As discussed towards the end of Chapter
One, NWICO was proposed in the 1970s as the result of a growing realisation that there was a
state of disequilibrium in the world with regard to information and it was ultimately opposed
by the largest purveyors of such information, namely the United States and Britain. That is,
the NWICO movement “began as a protest over the concentration of…media ownership,” and
how such ownership affected not only the distribution of media material, but also the
dissemination of the Western cultural and ideological elements indissociable from such
material. Essentially, from the perspective of the non-aligned countries that proposed the
establishment of a NWICO, such dynamics of “Western ownership and control” amounted to
a covert “form of cultural dominance,” underpinned by the “covert goal” of “capitalist
economic expansion” across the world (Brown-Syed 1993).69
Herman and Chomsky’s propaganda model was developed on the grounds of an
analogous observation, and through their propaganda model, they provide “a framework for
analysing and understanding how the mainstream US media work and why they perform as
they do” (Herman 2003: 1). Klaehn sheds more light on this by explaining that their theory “is
analytically and conceptually concerned…with the question of how ideological and

68
That is, their propaganda model focuses on “the huge inequality in command of resources,” and on the role “of
wealth and power” in the choice of what information gets disseminated (Herman & Chomsky 1994: 2).
69
These issues were elaborated upon in section 1.7 of Chapter One.
 89

communicative power connect with economic, political and social power,” and with exploring
“the consequent effects upon media output” of such dynamics (Klaehn 2009: 43). In short,
their model consists of a set of five news filters, which “fix the premises of discourse and
interpretation, and the definition of what is newsworthy” (Herman & Chomsky 1994: 2).
According to them, raw news passes through each of the five filters, with only the residue left
after this refinement process featuring in the mainstream media. Again, this procedure is not
the consequence of overarching surveillance and censorship on the part of some politburo;
rather the combinative feature of the filters “selects and rewards those who see the world in a
way congenial and unchallenging to…elite interests.” That is, as the filters are “linked
together,” the “government and powerful business entities and collectives” are able to “exert
power over the flow of information” (Herman 2003: 2-3). As such, censorship is not
practised, because as Herring and Robinson point out, it is not necessary, since “uncongenial
facts and framings…are mostly not perceived to exist” (Herring & Robinson 2003: 555).
The five news filters of the propaganda model – which “interact with and reinforce one
another” – are summed up as follows:

(1) the size, concentrated ownership, owner wealth, and profit orientation of the dominant mass-media
firms; (2) advertising as the primary income source of the mass media; (3) the reliance of the media on
information provided by government, business, and ‘experts’ funded and approved by these primary
sources and agents of power; (4) ‘flak’ as a means of disciplining the media; and (5) ‘anticommunism’ as
a national religion and control mechanism. (Herman & Chomsky 1994: 2)

The first filter, as indicated, concerns the size of the media, or “the limitation on ownership of
media with any substantial outreach by the requisite large size of investment” (Herman &
Chomsky 1994: 4). In this regard, Herman and Chomsky point to the growing “trend toward
greater integration of the media into the market system” (Herman & Chomsky 1994: 8), with
“media stocks hav[ing] become market favourites.” This development has “increased the
pressure and temptation to focus more intensively on profitability” (Herman & Chomsky
1994: 7), not least because more critical, ‘socialist-orientated’ publications have either been
forced out of business, or relegated to the unprofitable margins of the market.70 As Herman
elaborates in an article published some ten years after the initial publication of Manufacturing
Consent, “the dominant media are firmly imbedded in the market system,” since they have
become “profit-seeking businesses” themselves (Herman 2003: 2). And the transformation of

70
While “capitalism is the accumulation of resources by means of exploitation in the production and sale of
commodities for profit,” socialism focuses rather on “production for the satisfaction of needs” (Bosswell &
Chase-Dunn 2000: 20, Von Mises 2009: 143). As a result of the lack of focus on profit for socialist media
publications, the revenue of socialist publications rarely surpassed that of capitalist media publications.
 90

the media into profit-orientated businesses has created “a clash of interest between the
media’s supposed role as a watchdog of the elite and the interests of that elite” (Herring &
Robinson 2003: 555). To clarify, the growing focus on money-making has harmed the
objectivity of media corporations. In a situation where the exposure of corrupt behaviour is
deemed in the public interest, such information may be withheld when this corruption
involves a company that the media corporation is closely associated with, or even owned by.
The second filter, advertising, relates to the first. Due to the size of media corporations
and their focus on profit, advertising has become an important source of income, if not “the
principal source of revenue” (Klaehn 2009: 44). Consequently, there is a “constraining link
between the news media and the interests of commerce,” insofar as such “reliance shapes
media output in order to appeal to affluent audiences,” and to avoid invoking the ire of those
companies whose products are correlatively advertised (Herring & Robinson 2003: 556).
Guyatt confirms this when he maintains that the “corporate behemoths are inclined to sell the
news as if it were any other product.” Importantly, he points out that “this inevitably has
consequences,” namely the tendency on the part of the media house to avoid reifying critical
thought over consumer interest, and at all costs to steer clear of broadcasting material critical
of the companies which patronise the media house in question through their advertising
(Guyatt 2000: 207). As such, the primary consequence of this, is that media conglomerates’
reliance on advertising for income, along with the intense competition experienced between
the different media companies, has put the advertisers in a powerful de facto position of
quasi-censors. In other words, “the advertisers’ choices influence media prosperity and
survival” (Herman & Chomsky 1994: 14), because the former have the power to retract their
advertisements – and thus a large portion of revenue – and have not been shy in doing so
when media content does not support their sales. As a result, television advertisers “avoid
programmes with serious complexities and disturbing controversies” because these “interfere
with the ‘buying mood.’” And the consequence of this, in turn, is that some media have
become primarily concerned with pleasing the advertisers, by providing a “supportive selling
environment” (Herman 2003: 2), rather than with fulfilling their role of serving public interest
(Herman & Chomsky 1994: 17).
While “the first two filters suggest that political-economic dimensions play heavily into
news production processes,” insofar as they highlight “the macro-level structural dimensions
that in effect ‘shape’ mainstream news discourses,” the third filter “draws attention to and
highlights the ways in which news discourses are socially constructed vis-à-vis sources”
(Klaehn 2009: 44). That is, their reliance on “government and corporate sources” (Herman &
Chomsky 1994: 17) tends to imbue the media with a biased viewpoint, since these
 91

“institutionally affiliated sources…typically dominate news discourses” (Klaehn 2009: 44).

As Herman adds, “both efficiency and political considerations, and, frequently, overlapping
interests, cause a certain degree of solidarity to prevail among the government, major media,
and other corporate businesses” (Herman 2003: 2). This is because the media are required “to
supply a steady and rapid flow of ‘important’ news stories,” and this need is “combined with
the vast public relations apparatus of government and powerful interests.” Consequently,
“journalists tend to become heavily reliant on public officials and corporate representatives
when defining and framing the news agenda” (Herring & Robinson 2003: 556). This reliance
explains why reports of governmental and commercial exploitation rarely receive
thematisation in mainstream media reports – after all, self-criticism is a rare phenomenon
within both state governance and business corporations. Instead, “the powerful…use personal
relationships, threats, and rewards to further influence and coerce the media” (Herman &
Chomsky 1994: 22), not least of which is the intimidating prospect of being excised from the
inner circle of news sources. A penalty which could spell economic disaster, as audiences
would then shift their attention to other media houses, whose coverage of events is perceived
as ‘more informed’ and ‘up-to-date.’ As Guyatt points out, “although the press is nominally
free to write…anything about American foreign policy,” critical reporting is rare because, “in
practice[,] foreign correspondents form a cadre which travels and works alongside
government officials” (Guyatt 2000: 207). The Pentagon, in particular, maintains a
significant influence over the American mass media, since it provides journalists with a
steady, yet biased source of information through the “Pentagon’s Hometown News Service,”
which “produces both print and broadcast ‘news’ that is used by local newspapers and
television channels” (Bennett et al. 2007: 144).71 Understandably, these “overlapping
interests” cause “a certain degree of solidarity to prevail among the government, major media,
and other corporate businesses” (Herman 2003: 2), because, as Herman and Chomsky point
out, “it is very difficult to call authorities on whom one depends for daily news liars” (Herman
& Chomsky 1994: 22). Equally important, there has been “a durable method of providing
experts who will say what the establishment wants said” (Herman & Chomsky 1994: 25).
Ultimately, the effect of all of this is that “news comes to reflect institutional interests on a
macro level” (Klaehn 2009: 44), often at the expense of public interest.
Fourthly, ‘flak,’ the next news filter in Herman and Chomsky’s propaganda model,
“refers to negative responses to a media statement or programme” (Herman & Chomsky

71
In addition, the Pentagon has “cut out the middle man” through a “Pentagon Channel,” which is “available to
Americans via their satellite and cable-company service providers” (Bennett et al. 2007: 144). By skirting around
journalists and distributing their biased messages directly to the public, the US Department of Defence increased
their influence in ‘the manufacture of consent.’
 92

1994: 26). While small-scale flak rarely gets through to the immense and powerful media
organisations, flak that “is produced on a large scale, or by individuals or groups with
substantial resources,” can in fact have an impact, in that “it can be both uncomfortable and
costly to the media.” While “the government is a major producer of flak” (Herman &
Chomsky 1994: 26, 28), when combined with large corporations an even more imposing front
is formed that can significantly “pressure the media with threats of withdrawal of…TV
licenses, libel suits, and other direct and indirect modes of attack” (Herman 2003: 2). In this
way, the fourth filter “brings the concept of power into play, stressing that dominant
institutional actors possess the requisite social-political power to exert subtle or not-so-subtle
control over patterns of media performance” (Klaehn 2009: 44). In effect, flak is a news filter
that “caution[s] editors and journalists against putting out news stories that are ‘too’
controversial” (Herring & Robinson 2003: 556). And in many respects, it operates as the
ultimate disciplining tool within the propaganda model, which serves to bring the media back
on track, as it were, whenever they stray too far off the path of the mainstream discourse, and
too far from the elite interests which that path serves.
If there is an avowedly ‘ideological’ filter in the propaganda model, it is the last filter of
‘anti-communism,’ and for the purposes of this paper it is especially important. As Herman
and Chomsky indicate, throughout the Cold War, communism was portrayed as “the ultimate
evil,” to the point that opposition to this economic ideology became elevated “to a first
principle of Western ideology and politics” (Herman & Chomsky 1994: 29). Indeed, as they
observe, “when anti-Communist fervour is aroused, the demand for serious evidence in
support of claims of ‘communist’ abuses is suspended, and charlatans can thrive as evidential
sources” (Herman & Chomsky 1994: 30). The corollary of this, of course, is that “the anti-
communist control mechanism” exercises “a profound influence on the mass media,” as
“issues tend to be framed in terms of a dichotomized world of Communist and anti-
Communist powers” (Herman & Chomsky 1994: 30), with a general disregard for critical
circumspection that approximates the conservatism of religious fundamentalism.
Consequently, for the duration of the Cold War, the news filter of anti-communism “provided
journalists…with a ready-made template,” which they were obliged to use “to ‘understand’
global events, and [it] provided the political elite with a powerful rhetorical tool with which to
criticize as unpatriotic anyone who questioned US foreign policy” (Herring & Robinson 2003:
556). Accordingly, the fifth filter was “mobilized often to induce the media to support (or
refrain from criticizing) US attacks on small states that were labelled communist” (Herman
 93

2003: 2).72 As Klaehn points out, in line with the filter of anti-communism, “fear may be
deployed as an ideological control mechanism and used to legitimize policies, mobilize
resources and push specific agendas” (Klaehn 2009: 46).73 An important factor in this regard
is the level of emotionality involved, which renders “the concept [of
anticommunism]…fuzzy;” as a result, “it can be used against anybody advocating policies
that threaten property interest or support accommodation with Communist states and
radicalism” (Herman & Chomsky 1994: 29), even when such support is in reality only
marginal or tangential. In other words, the anti-communist filter can be used and abused
whenever and wherever elite capitalist interests demand its employment, due to its unclear
boundaries and the lack of proof that is required in relation to it.
In sum, the combined effect of the five filters working in unison, is that “the
media…present a picture of the world which defends and inculcates the economic, social, and
political agendas of the privileged groups that dominate the domestic economy, and who
therefore also largely control the government” (Mitchell & Schoeffel 2002: 15).

3.3 The transformation of the fifth filter

As more than two decades have passed since Herman and Chomsky first published their
theory regarding the propaganda model, it is not surprising that since then, certain
modifications to the theory have been suggested. At the end of the Cold War, Herman wrote,
in his “The Propaganda Model Revisited,” that the fifth filter will “possibly [be] weakened by
the collapse of the Soviet Union and global system.” Yet, he nevertheless went on to argue
that this may “easily [be] offset by the greater ideological force of the belief in the ‘miracle of
the market.’” Quoting Ronald Reagan, who served as the president of the United States during
one of the most important periods of anti-communist fervour (from 1981 to 1989), what
Herman thereby intimated was that the disintegration of the Soviet Union would not lead to
the dissolution of the fifth filter. Rather, the latter would instead continue as a determining
factor in media circles, fuelled by the new neo-liberal outlook, which by default had

72
Parenti confirms that “the media support US military interventions into other countries,” as “official
assumptions that Washington’s war policy is motivated by concerns for democracy, national security, and peace”
are accepted “with little critical examination” (Parenti 2011: 170).
73
With regard to the infiltration of fear in the collective mind through the American media, see Ordoñez-Jasis,
R., and Jasis, P. 2003. ‘Bowling for Columbine’: Critically Interrogating the Industry of Fear. Social Justice
30(3): pp. 127-133.
 94

effectively become hegemonic.74 Accordingly, Herman argues, there subsequently emerged

“an almost religious faith in the market,” to the point where not only are “markets…assumed
to be benevolent,” but in addition, “nonmarket mechanisms are [viewed as] suspect.” In line
with these convictions in the post-communist era, “journalism has internalized [the
capitalist]…ideology” to such a degree that any hint of government intervention – even that
undertaken for the public good – rapidly becomes decried as a throwback to an erstwhile
‘repugnant’ socialist agenda (Herman 2003: 11).
While to a certain extent this continues to be an issue, in an interview twenty years after
the two theorists first proposed their propaganda model, Herman and Chomsky did admit that
“anti-communism has receded as an ideological factor in the Western media.” However,
according to the scholars, the ‘war on terror’ and “the antithesis of communism, ‘the free
market,’” have emerged as the co-replacement polarities of the anti-communism filter
(Mullen 2009: 15). In other sources, Chomsky evinces some regret for not referring more to
the role of fear in the section on the fifth filter, and emphasising particularly “the way
artificial fears are created with a dual purpose;” that is, “partly to get rid of people” and
“partly to frighten the rest.” As Chomsky puts it, “if people are frightened, they will accept
authority” (Mitchell & Schoeffel 2002). Arguably, through such revisions, Chomsky indicates
the historical contingency, and indeed malleability, of the fifth filter, and suggests that it is
something that can be manoeuvred against anything that threatens the American hegemony of
the contemporary era.
Huntington’s The Clash of Civilizations – written shortly after the dissolution of the
Soviet Union – already anticipated a move away from the ideological battle between
capitalism and communism. The scholar appeared confident that this ideological clash would
soon be replaced by a battle between different civilisations. In terms of this, he predicted that
“governments…will increasingly attempt to mobilize support by appealing to common
religion,” as they are “decreasingly able to” do so “on the basis of ideology” (Huntington
1993: 29). This assertion is arguably incisive, because ever since the collapse of the Soviet
Union, the United States has been “looking for ways to regain its lost economic punch,” and
has sought to “consolidate its world hegemony” by “trying to invent a new Soviet Union,”
that can function as a new enemy (Gandásegui & Clement 2007: 149).
The argument of this dissertation is that the United States has identified as a new
contender in this regard, Islam, something with which Gandásequi and Clement agree when

74
Park et al. define neoliberalism as “a doctrine of political economy based on the institutions of private property
rights, free markets, and the liberalization of trade and financial activities,” which is underpinned by an extreme
laissez-faire approach that contrasts with the regulated Keynesian capitalism which dominated until the late
1970s (Park et al. 2012: 170).
 95

they assert that all the sabre-rattling rhetoric of the post-Cold War era, boils down to the
emergence of “the Muslim threat” (Gandásegui & Clement 2007: 149). Importantly – and in
line with this argument – Huntington identified Islam in particular as a religion which the
Christian West would find itself engaging with as an adversary in the post-Cold War era. In
fact, Huntington’s work “demonized Islam in its entirety” (Mamdani 2004: 766), and thus in
many respects comprised part of the great transformation of the fifth news filter of Herman
and Chomsky’s propaganda model.
To be sure, after decades of governmental and media messages identifying the
communist Soviet Union as America’s (and by implication the world’s) main adversary, the
creation of Islam as the new enemy was, on the one hand, not without its challenges, because
a whole new array of stereotypes, prejudices and tropes required both formulation and chronic
circulation, in order for them to be assimilated within the popular lexicon and imagery. On the
other hand, the United States had long believed that “Islam and communism…shared” some
features, since Islam was seen as “a rigid system, like communism, controlling all man’s
activities and even his thoughts” (Jacobs 2011: 81, Frye as quoted in Jacobs 2011: 81).75
Arguably, it was on the basis of this ambiguous interface that “the mainstream western media
[started to] project…Islam as inimical to civilised values,” and it was no coincidence that this
“demonising of Islam” dovetailed neatly “with the Western geo-political interests in arms and
oil” (Thussu 1997: 264). These anti-Islamic media messages caused “popular fear and
suspicion of Islam…[to] become a widespread element in the climate of opinion in America.”
And although this anti-Islamic sentiment has recently been primarily “linked to the 9/11
attacks” (Ernst 2013), arguably, such Islamophobia has its roots much earlier, 76 in the
American response to the Iranian Revolution (Ansari & Hafez 2012: 113).77 As will be
discussed next, though, it is not sufficient to construe things in this general way. This is
because the set of circumstances unique to the birth of the Islamic Republic – circumstances
linked to the three key figures of Mohammad Mossadegh, the Shah, and Ayatollah Khomeini
– did not simply give birth to such Islamophobia, but rather helped facilitate the
transformation of the fifth news filter from anti-communist to anti-Islam in orientation.

75
See also section 1.4.c. of Chapter One.
76
Islamophobia is identified by Gottschalk and Greenberg as a “social anxiety toward Islam and Muslim
cultures” (Gottschalk & Greenberg 2008: 5). With regard to this increase of fear towards Muslims, or
‘Islamophobia,’ since the terrorist attacks on the World Trade Centre, see also Morgan, G., and Poynting, S.
2012. Global Islamophobia: Muslims and Moral Panic in the West. Surrey: Ashgate Publishing.
77
As Ansari and Hafez point out, Islamophobia “gained currency since the 1980s, in the wake of the Teheran
hostage crisis which created a backlash against Islam with media images of fiery, bearded clerics and militant
throngs in the Iranian Revolution” (Ansari & Havez 2012: 113).
 96

3.4 The ascendancy of the fifth (anti-Islam) news filter

In effect, Herman and Chomsky’s text, which explains the functioning of the propaganda
model, focuses on “systematic media bias” (Goodwin 1994: 104). In many ways, an
analogous bias can be identified in the media portrayal of “the two main protagonists in the
Iranian political arena,” namely Mohammad Mossadegh and Mohammad Reza Shah Pahlavi
(Foran 1997: 10). And this bias was later reflected in extended form, in relation to the Islamic
Revolution and the subsequent American hostage situation, which were characterised as
expressions of the archaic Islamic fundamentalism, which the Ayatollah Khomeini was
thought to embody.78
Arguably, between these three figures, the transformation of the fifth news filter
occurred. In short, initially, the ostensibly communist Mossadegh was utilised as a foil against
which the image of the Shah – as modern, capitalist liberator – was embroidered. However,
when the successful usurpation of Mossadegh by the Shah was undermined by the Khomeini-
led revolution, a powerfully negative image of radical Islam as the new threat to American
ideals and values emerged. And with this, the transformation of the fifth news filter of the
propaganda model was set in motion.

a. The portrayal of Mohammad Mossadegh in the US press

In a letter to the editors of Time (quoted in Appy 2000: 157), Mohammad Mossadegh wrote:
“I am confident that you will continue in your good course, as before, in spreading reliable
information about our country in the US.” However, there is sufficient evidence to suggest
that the American media did not carry out this task with the requisite degree of objectivity. On
the contrary, the US press presented a profoundly biased picture of Mossadegh as a
communist, and of his reforms as deeply embedded in a socialist ethos.
For the most part, such characterisation was without foundation. As Heiss points out,
Mossadegh attempted to “steer a middle course during the Cold War” (Hahn & Heiss 2001:
185), one that traced a path between the US and USSR influence. At the time, this avowedly
‘neutral stance’ was referred to by Mossadegh as a “negative equilibrium,” and has
subsequently also been called a “protected balance.” This was undertaken because Mossadegh
“did not want an American presence to become overwhelming” (Badiozamani 2005: 30) any
more than he wanted the Soviets to exercise undue influence over his country (Chubin &
Zabih 1974: 2). Accordingly, he believed that his policy of “‘nonalignment’ was the only way
78
The Iranian hostage crisis of 1979 – 1981 will be referred to in detail in Chapter Four.
 97

to protect Iran from the kind of interference that the AIOC had practiced throughout Iran,”
and he was adamant that this would “ensure the attainment of the nation’s true independence”
(Hahn & Heiss 2001: 185-186).
Yet Mossadegh’s desire for balance was reinterpreted by the American government and
media alike, as a refusal of the Prime Minister to align himself with the pro-capitalist stance
of the United States – a refusal which had its basis in his ostensibly enduring ‘socialist’
proclivities. As Heiss asserts, the reason for this misapprehension was that, at this historical
juncture, the ‘if you’re not with us, you’re against us’ assumption prevailed in the American
political sphere.79 Consequently, the United States did not trust Mossadegh’s intentions and
could not comprehend his justifications for the policy of a negative equilibrium, which he
nonetheless courageously maintained. Instead, US officials became suspicious of
Mossadegh’s refusal “to stand with the West against the communist menace,” and deduced
from this that the Iranian Prime Minister must have been in covert support of communism
(Hahn & Heiss 2001: 185-186).
Although “Mossadegh had occasionally been linked to communism prior to the coup,”
this occurred only after SIS station chief Woodhouse “came to Washington to convince the
Eisenhower administration to support the coup.” Indeed, initially even Eisenhower had
“emphasized his anti-Communist credentials” prior to his election. Yet, when the opportunity
presented itself, Woodhouse “refrained from arguing that Mossadegh must be overthrown
because he had nationalized the foremost British oil corporation” – which was, in fact, the
primary reason for the British desire to remove Mossadegh from power. Instead, he
strategically “stressed that the Iranian demagogue must be toppled because he was paving the
way for a Communist takeover in Iran.” Despite being without basis, Woodhouse’s efforts to
portray Mossadegh as a communist ‘hazard’ worked. That is, as a result of his determined
framing of Mossadegh in this way, “the US government’s conviction of the validity of his
connection to Marxist-economic viewpoints” was “solidified” (Hiro 2006: 74), and from that
moment on, “the Eisenhower administration accused [Mossadegh’s government] of
harbouring nascent Communist influences” (Goldsmith 2005: 81). That is, once the United
States government had been convinced of this point, it sustained its denunciation of
Mossadegh and his supporters (Palmer 1992: 66-67).

79
Interestingly, in an address to a joint session of congress held nine days after the terrorist attacks on the World
Trade Centre in New York, then-President George W. Bush similarly asserted: “Either you are with us, or you
are with the terrorists” (Peek 2011: 147). Like a historic recurrence, a ‘neutral’ stance in this matter was neither
understood nor accepted as an alternative. In the same way, it was argued that since Mossadegh refused to stand
with the US against the communists, he must have relations with them, or at least have an interest in protecting
them.
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Accordingly, before long, the same viewpoint found its way into the American
mainstream media. That is, the assumption that Mossadegh was a communist, or at the very
least a weak political figure, and thus easily susceptible to the communist ‘virus,’ was
strongly supported in the American news of the time. As Dorman and Farhang point out,
“over about a two-year period,” the portrayal of Mossadegh in the US media changed “from
that of a quaint nationalist to that of near lunatic to one, finally, of Communist dupe”
(Dorman & Farhang 1987: 34).
A very incisive text in this regard is “Discursive Subversions: Time Magazine, the CIA
Overthrow of Mossadegh, and the Installation of the Shah,” in which the sociologist John
Foran compares “press images of Mossadegh and the Shah at the time of the joint Anglo-
American operation against the former in August 1953” (Hahn & Heiss 2001: 182). Foran
justifies his choice to limit his research to Time magazine articles, by pointing out that “by the
1950s, Time had arguably attained the stature of the most influential shaper of opinion in the
United States” (Foran 1997: 10). This is moreover confirmed by Appy, who describes it as
“the most influential popular press outlet of the day” (Appy 2000: 158). In his work, Foran
focuses primarily on the magazine’s cover story, published in the issue that announced
Mossadegh as Time’s ‘Man of the Year’ in 1951.80 As Foran rightfully points out,
Mossadegh’s name does not appear on the cover – instead, he is referred to as the man who
“oiled the wheels of chaos” – and even in the cover story entitled “Man of the Year:
Challenge of the East,” his name is not mentioned until the seventh paragraph of the article
(Foran 1997: 11).
As Foran advances, “the chief concern was the communist threat to Iran if Mossadegh
remained” (Foran 1997: 12), and although in the Time cover story Mossadegh is never
directly referred to as a communist, his affiliation with communism is consistently implied.
For example, when it is stated that “there were millions inside and outside of Iran whom
Mossadegh symbolized and spoke for, and whose fanatical state of mind he had helped to
create.” Indeed, of these supporters, it is said that “they would rather see their own nations fall
apart than continue their present relations with the West,” and that, importantly, “communism
encouraged this state of mind, and stood to profit hugely from it” [my italics] (Anon. 1952).

80
Importantly, the feature entitled ‘Man of the Year’ – a yearly recurring feature which began in 1927 and
changed to ‘Person of the Year’ in 1999, arguably to avoid accusations of being sexist – is not necessarily
awarded to persons whose actions are supported by the magazine, or to persons who are admired or respected.
Instead, the title is conferred on those who have made a significant impact on the world’s news in that year. In
other words, it is “bestowed…on the person…who most affected the news and [American]… lives, for good or
ill, and embodied what was important about the year.” Importantly, Time named the Ayatollah Khomeini ‘Man
of the Year’ in 1979, and as a result of the strong adverse reaction it received in response to this controversial
choice, Time magazine has subsequently avoided choosing a ‘Person of the Year’ who is likely to cause
controversy (Anon. 2011, Graham 2012).
 99

Likewise, it is said that Mossadegh “would rather see the ruin of Iran” than submit to the
Western powers, and that “left to themselves,…countries [like Iran] will reach the point where
they will welcome Communism” (Anon. 1952).
In this regard, as Norouzi points out, the article refers to Mossadegh as an umbrella
figure, that is, as a symbol for “all [the] Mossadeghs of the world, whomever they may be.” In
other words, Mossadegh was seen as “the most visible symbol of a trend toward
independence” which the author of the Time magazine article “believed presented a
‘fundamental moral challenge’ to the West,” as it tested “US mettle in the most provocative
and maddening of ways” (Norouzi 2012).81
In 1953, “the West’s fear that Iran would fall to communism reached a crescendo,” and
ultimately motivated “US action against Mossadegh on August 19, 1953” (Foran 1997: 11,
12) – since the US consensus was that “Iran was to be kept in the Western camp at all costs”
[my italics] (Gasiorowski 1987: 267).82 In line with this, during the “final days” prior to the
coup d’état which removed Mossadegh from his position of power, “the legitimacy of the
Prime Minister had been thoroughly discredited by the US press,” who had “passively opted
for a simple narrative that perfectly matched the narrow bipolar Cold War ideology of the era”
– namely one in which Iran comprised a potential “communist threat.”
Yet despite their illegality, the ensuing events “appeared perfectly understandable in the
United States not only because of the alleged ‘impending threat of communism,’ but also
because of the distinct characterizations of Mohammad Mossadegh, the Shah…and Iran that
dominated the media” (Lee 2013: 24, 32). Indeed, “the standard textbook account of the
American coup that overthrew the democratically elected Iranian government…maintains that
the action was necessary to save Iran from communism.” And this despite the fact that “there
is no evidence that such a possibility existed” (Kincheloe & Steinberg 2004: 59); in fact, as
previously alluded to, Mossadegh’s affiliations with communism were practically non-
existent. Not only did he “never profess Communist allegiances” (Goldsmith 2005: 81), but in
addition, Mossadegh also “only tolerated the Tudeh’s existence and did not actively seek its
support” (Lee 2013: 26).83 In fact, “Mossadegh…regarded any association with the Tudeh as
a potential embarrassment and wished to be known as a strict nonpartisan independent”

81
Time magazine’s portrayal of Mossadegh as a communist may also have been the result of the obsession of the
magazine’s publisher and “Cold Warrior,” Henry Robinson Luce, “with the ‘loss’ of China to communist
revolution in 1949” (Fousek 2000: 126, Foran 1997: 10), and his desire to realise his prophecy to start an
‘American Century’ (see Luce, H. R. 1941. The American Century. New York: Farrar & Rinehart, Brinkley, A.
2011. The Publisher: Henry Luce and His American Century. New York: Vintage Books, and Herzstein, R. E.
1994. Henry R. Luce: A Political Portrait of the Man Who Created the American Century. Berkeley: University
of California Press).
82
The strategic reasons for this have been elaborated upon early in Chapter One.
83
As discussed in Chapter Two, the Tudeh Party was Iran’s main communist party.
 100

(Ghods 1989: 131). As such, a more fair appraisal would be to assert that Mossadegh was “a
non-communist advocate of democracy who sought to break with a history of dependency and
Western influence in his country’s economy and political affairs” (Appy 2000: 181). But the
above notwithstanding, “his nationalism and democratic aims were fatefully misrepresented”
as communist ideals in the American media, to the point where challenging the validity of
related assertions became unthinkable at popular levels.
Apart from the influence of the fifth filter of the propaganda model, the “dominant US
constructions” of the Prime Minister were also “based on Orientalist and Cold War
discourses, and served to further solidify such discourses” (Foran 1997: 12). That is, “the idea
of Western superiority that was built in to the Orientalist [way of] thinking,” and which had
shaped American opinion with regard to the Middle East for decades, also “condemned and
denigrated Mossadegh” (Hahn & Heiss 2001: 189), insofar as the American media portrayed
Mossadegh as grotesquely “inferior, childlike, and feminine” (Hahn & Heiss 2001: 183).84
The coup itself was also misrepresented in the media. Although limited space in this
chapter prevents a thorough treatment of this subject, it must at least be mentioned that the
American mainstream media maintained “that the affair had been internal in origin, and
widely popular.” Correlatively, the evidence of strong American interference was barely
mentioned in the Western media and this tendency continued “right through the Iranian
Revolution” and indeed for the next “quarter century” (Foran 1997: 12). Arguably, the
American media’s allegations concerning Mossadegh’s affiliation to communism were
primarily the result of a process that can best be described through Herman and Chomsky’s
propaganda model.85 In short, the third filter (reliance on government sources) and the fifth
filter (anti-communism) of the propaganda model were employed to misrepresent Mossadegh
in the media, while alternative views were marginalised, either through mainstream outlets,
which involved the first filter (size), or in an effort to avoid the ‘flak’ of the fourth filter. A
fear which no doubt included wariness of appearing ‘un-American’ to the point where
advertisers might withdraw their patronage, which comprised the dynamic of the second filter.

b. The Shah as the ‘great liberator’

In contrast to the largely negative portrayal of Mossadegh in the US media, the autocratic
Shah of Iran was portrayed in an almost singularly positive light, despite overwhelming

84
For more on the discursive influence of Orientalism in this regard, see Chapter One.
85
See section 3.2 of Chapter Three.
 101

evidence to the contrary.86 While Dorman and Farhang confirm that “Time’s representation of
the Shah is noteworthy in that it is generally positive,” Page and Shapiro go further when they
maintain that the Shah “enjoyed extraordinarily friendly treatment by the US media” (Foran
1997: 10, Page & Shapiro 1992: 257).
Following the coup d’état which unseated the Prime Minister, the US media spoke of a
“public revulsion” for and a “popular uprising” against Mossadegh, driven by “patriotic
people” who had “enthusiastically poured into central Tehran to express their undying
devotion to their Shah.” In addition, the ‘capitalism versus communism’ binary was once
again utilised liberally by the American mainstream media, insofar as it was stated that the
regime change was played out by the army and public, “because of their revulsion against
communism and love for the monarchy” (Abrahamian 2001: 210). Similarly, after the coup,
and with a view to generating even more blinding sensationalism around the event, the
American press quickly reached the “consensus that Iran had been spared a Communist
takeover only by the narrowest of margins” [my italics] (Dorman & Farhang 1987: 48) – a
ploy which allowed them afterwards to portray the Shah as “a staunch anti-Communist ally”
of the United States (Page & Shapiro 1992: 257). As previously mentioned, the Shah was also
fully aware of the US’s fear of a communist takeover, and with a view to ingratiating himself
even further with the superpower, in the interest of endorsing his authority and extending his
rule indefinitely, he “cleverly portrayed himself [as] the sturdy dam containing the Red
deluge” of the Soviet threat (Saha 2004: 188).
Yet the ‘capitalist versus communist’ binary was not the only rhetorical weapon in the
arsenal of the US mass media. In addition, while the incompetence of Mossadegh and his
ostensibly ‘deeply flawed’ political policies were emphasised, concomitantly, the Shah’s
‘hard work’ towards ‘progression’ in the country, was thematised – progression which was
defined in terms of opening up the domain to foreign corporate capitalist interests. In this
regard, the Shah was particularly praised for being “a force for modernisation” (Malek 1997:
38), and US admiration soon became unequivocal, when both the Shah “and his nation were
held up by the US to the rest of the world as the quintessential Western modernisation success
story” (Kincheloe & Steinberg 2004: 59).
Yet the persistently positive portrayal of the Shah in the US media was not the
consequence of a collective hallucination on the part of a myriad of American news agencies.
Rather, it constituted the problematic result of the “strong reliance by the press upon the
official, stated US policy toward Iran,” which was precipitated by the power of the third filter
of the propaganda model. That is, because of the strong dependence of the media upon their
86
With regard to the Shah’s alleged atrocities, see Chapter Two.
 102

sources – in this case American officials and foreign policy makers (Malek 1997: 227)87 –
journalists were “unable to communicate with intellectuals and religious leaders who were
part of the opposition,” and hence “unable or unwilling to clearly see or communicate the
view that the Shah was a pawn of the US government” (Schwoch et al. 1992: 57). The end
product of this inability and/or unwillingness, along with the Shah’s apparent “sympathy to
US objectives [which] earned him a certain amount of respect in popular press” (Lee 2013:
36), was that after the coup, “the press was content to quickly offer a warm welcome back to
the Shah” (Dorman & Farhang 1987: 48).
In terms of this, the US media portrayed the Shah “as an insightful monarch who was
trying to drag his backward population into the twentieth century,” and in the interest of
generating this perception of him, his “repressive political system” was hardly referred to,
while “his policy failures” were also largely ignored (Downing et al. 1995: 433, 436, Page &
Shapiro 1992: 257). Indeed, although at times “the media described…the Shah’s rule as
‘stern’ and ‘iron-fisted,’” terms that were “euphemisms for what was really going on in Iran,”
it was implied that this was necessary within the context of his country, and his violent and
tyrannical approach were never condemned (Saha 2004: 188). As such, US media reports
regarding the “Shah’s reign conveyed little of its brutal and dictatorial character” (Kamalipour
1997: 93), while the Shah was also “never referred to as a dictator or despot” (Downing et al.
1995: 435).88 And on the rare occasion that the press did allude to the Shah’s possible
dictatorship, it was invariably “justified as necessary for economic development to take
place.” In short, it was deemed essential for the Shah “to be tough [in order] to develop such a
backward people,” and he was persistently “portrayed as a strong ruler,” rather than the
“brutal dictator” he essentially was (Downing et al. 1995: 433, 436, Schwoch et al. 1992: 57).
An important reason for this was because “his strengths” were “primarily…assessed
from the standpoint of US strategic interests” (Kamalipour 1997: 93). Swoch et al. concur,
stating that the Shah was portrayed as “a benevolent but strict patriarch leading his backward
children into the enlightenment of Westernization” – defined in terms of corporate-led
capitalism (Schwoch et al. 1992: 57). The Shah, no doubt realising what he had to do in order
to remain favoured by the West, deliberately presented himself as “a latter-day Peter the
Great, introducing his ignorant, backward, and stubborn subjects to the bounties of

87
See Section 3.2 of this chapter.
88
Indeed, “throughout [their] study of elite-press treatment of the Shah over a twenty-five-year period,” Dorman
and Farhang “could find only four uses in the mainstream news columns of the word ‘dictator’ to describe the
Shah, and rare use of the term in editorials” (Dorman & Farhang 1987: 99). While the label of ‘dictator’ could
easily be applied to the Shah, the media instead only “exhibited a robust willingness to use” this term “liberally”
when referring to Mohammad Mossadegh – even though he was democratically elected and renowned for
pursuing internal policies that were in the interest of the Iranian public (Kamalipour 1997: 93-94).
 103

modernisation and secularization,” and the consumerism indissociable from such

development (Saha 2004: 188). And such presentation gained an uncanny degree of
credibility at an international level, because consistently “the patronizing language that [had]
worked to discredit Mossadegh of any authority or legitimacy as a leader was also broadly
applied to Iran and Iranians in general” (Lee 2013: 37).
However, not only did the filter of the propaganda model thereby prevent the formulation
and dissemination of a more objective and critical appraisal of conditions in Iran under the
Shah. In addition, the great irony is that the habitual tendency of US news agencies to operate
in terms of the propaganda model – particularly the third filter of ‘sourcing’ – ultimately left
the US completely unprepared for the shock of the Islamic Revolution. That is, in keeping
with the propaganda model dynamics, the “US government and corporations which supported
the Shah, maintained only narrow channels of communication with Iranian government
sources and supporters,” and hence failed to detect “the signs of looming political trouble
even when they became pronounced.” Indeed, even during the nation-wide uprisings just prior
to the revolution, “Americans obtained most of their information about…[Iran] from Shah-
controlled official information sources,” which, not surprisingly, “provided an egregiously
distorted perspective on what was happening in Iranian society” (Kincheloe & Steinberg
2004: 59). This “narrow network of [Iranian] government sources created an illusion that the
Shah might be facing some temporary difficulties but enjoyed an essential stability,” and they
moreover “succeeded in so persuading and thus blinkering both US politicians and the major
mass media” (Downing et al. 1995: 434). Thus again, the content of the US media was
influenced by the third filter of the propaganda model, that is, the media’s reliance on official
sources – although, in this case, it was the Iranian rather than the US government sources that
wielded authority.
However, while “mass media depictions of the Shah were shallow and misleading,” and
while this led to the Shah “enjoy[ing] decades of relatively favourable press at the expense of
the truth” (Saha 2004: 188), it also meant that America in particular, and the West in general,
were completely unprepared for the advent of the Islamic Revolution. Indeed, “until the eve
of the Islamic Revolution in Iran in 1978-1979, the United States media...presented the Shah
and his regime in the positive light in which the US foreign policy-makers were seeing him.”
And as Dorman and Farhang observe, “the press went along with what would prove to be the
US State Department’s self-fulfilling prophecy that the Shah was the only source of stability
and continuity in Iran” (Malek 1997: 36, Dorman & Farhang 2006: 36). In fact, so powerful
was the discursive momentum behind such representations, that “even after the Shah was
deposed, the positive view remained largely unchallenged in the US press” (Schwoch et al.
 104

1992: 57). Accordingly, after his downfall, the Shah was portrayed “as a saddened, tearful,
and ill-treated sovereign whose ungrateful people, in mindless fashion, had driven him from
his country” [my italics] (Dorman & Farhang 1979: 163). And as will be discussed next,
related themes of madness, of popular insanity, and of hysterical emotionality, would play a
key role in US media representations of the Islamic Revolution.

c. The Islamic Revolution and Ayatollah Khomeini

Prior to the Islamic Revolution, the fact that the “supercilious treatment” of the Iranians in the
American press went uncontested, was also the result of the way in which the United States
saw itself “as innately superior to Iran” (Azimi 2008: 283, Lee 2013: 37).89 Indeed, Anglo-
American officials “buttressed claims of Western superiority over Iranian and other Middle
Eastern peoples by perpetuating the idea that those peoples were weak and incapable” (Hahn
& Heiss 2001: 181). And in assigning these negative characteristics to ordinary Iranians, the
fact that the majority of them were Muslim was also very often mentioned. Importantly,
though, the Shah was himself a Muslim, but his association with Islam was deliberately
suppressed in the US press. In terms of this, while he did not openly advertise his Islamic
background, as “he had decided that playing the Islamic card could lead to a clash with his
western allies” (Taheri 2010: 151), these western allies were only too happy to play along,
and relegate his religious affiliation to the margins of consideration.
Yet, on account of this heady mix of denialism and modernisation discourse, it was
largely missed that the primarily Islamic Iranian people were dissatisfied with the Shah’s
attempts to secularise their country. And, under the growing influence of anti-modernisation
theorists – such as Ahmad Fardid, Jalal Al-e Ahmad and Ali Shari’ati – the majority of
Iranians started to believe in an ‘Islamic solution’ (al-hal al-Islami). Accordingly, while Shi’i
Islam gained enormous momentum, the Ayatollah Khomeini also became increasingly
influential, and the culmination of all of this was the outbreak of the Islamic Revolution.
Although the Revolution can, in hindsight, be regarded as a rather obvious outcome, after
decades of discontent and oppression, at the time – especially in the US media – it was
primarily presented as an unforeseen event, not least for the reasons relating to the
propaganda model, discussed in the previous section. Since the US government and the media
had long claimed that, under the Shah, Iran was “one of the most stable regimes in the area,”
the outbreak of the Islamic Revolution struck them as a completely discordant event – indeed
an event of popular madness (Summitt 2004: 562). That is, for the “iron triangle of media-
89
This sense of superiority can be traced back to Orientalism, as discussed in Chapter One.
 105

government-academia,” which for over two decades had so solidly framed “the Pahlavi
dynasty and the Shah’s so-called ‘stability’ in the region, the collapse of the US-supported
Shah and the demise of US foreign policy influence in that part of the world” was “as
embarrassing as it was shocking to all the parties involved” (Malek 1997: 36). After all, only
months before the overthrow of the Shah, “the Western news media were assuring readers and
viewers that the Shah maintained full control of Iran and enjoyed widespread popular
support” (Saha 2004: 186). Consequently, “the revolution of 1978 came as a complete
surprise to policymakers as well as the general public” (Govier 1988: 66).90
Since the outbreak of the Islamic Revolution had not been predicted, the US media was
not prepared for the regime change, and both “US government officials and major media were
at a loss for explanations” (Downing et al. 1995: 435). On the one hand, the arrival of the
Revolution undetected, pointed straight to the deficits of a news ‘system’ which had
previously prided itself on efficiency, insightfulness, and above all, on the ability to control
the events of history through the manufacturing of popular consent. On the other hand, the
Revolution quickly emerged not as a spontaneous event, but rather as something predicated
on an entire oppositional discourse – that of anti-modernisation – which had been growing for
decades beneath the radar, as it were, of US media pundits. But for the US media to draw
attention to either of the above issues, was untenable. This was because, while mention of the
first would detract from their own credibility, mention of the second threatened to lend
credibility to the Islamic Revolution, through identifying it as an event with a developed
politico-philosophical basis.
However, again, the limitations of the propaganda model provided the US media with a
way out of this impasse. That is, because the Islamic Revolution was not widely understood, it
remained possible to emphasise half of the truth, namely that it involved “a rejection of
[the]…Western way of living and of Western standards and values,” which most people in the
US deemed universal (Thiessen 2009: 74). The media then failed to explain that their
rejection of a Western ethos had been concomitant with the Iranian people’s embrace of other
cherished, but nevertheless progressive, values, which were understood as an ethical pathway

90
Not only the US media, but also the US government, had not foreseen the outbreak of the Islamic Revolution.
President Carter has often been quoted as toasting Iran as “an island of stability” on New Year’s Eve of 1977.
Clearly not even the American president suspected that before the end of the new year, “neither the close
relationship [between the US and Iran] nor the stability would remain.” Even much later, the US government
refused to acknowledge the magnitude of the situation, despite the increasingly growing unrest in Iran. That is,
as late as August 1978, “the CIA…declared that Iran was ‘not in a revolutionary, or even in a pre-revolutionary
situation.’” Nonetheless, the Islamic Revolution was already well under way at that time (Graetz 2011: 142,
Graebner et al. 2010: 429).
 106

that would lead their nation towards independence.91 Instead, the media resorted to the easier
explanation, namely “that the stubborn and backward Iranians were rebelling at being thrust
into the twentieth century and that the protests were a reactionary movement against
progress.” Accordingly, in US media reports, the theme of popular madness loomed large;
Islamic Revolutionaries were described as “mobs running riot,” and no “legitimate political
reasons for action” were cited (Downing et al. 1995: 435).
Another reason for recourse, on the part of the US media, to themes of insanity in the
coverage of the Islamic Revolution, was the fact that the event “was both anti-West and anti-
Communist,” which made it a “difficult international event to cover” (Dorman & Farhang
1987: 180).92 As argued early, through the propaganda model, the American media had
previously portrayed potential threats to American interests primarily as ‘communist’ in
orientation, after which the powerful discursive momentum behind such habitual
dichotomisation of world events could be left to do its work – namely the construction of
popular prejudice. However, since the Islamic Revolution was underpinned by both anti-
Western and anti-Communist considerations, the US media was unable to characterise the
event in pejorative terms as communist, as they had been accustomed to doing. Shuja
confirms that “the movement under Khomeini…presented a special challenge to US policy
makers” – and to the US media – “because it could not be cast in the standard role of a left
movement” (Shuja 1982: 63).
Nonetheless, as Martin and Barzegar point out, “many commentators” had already begun
predicting that “militant Islam would soon replace Soviet Communism as America’s most
worrisome imagined national threat” (Martin & Barzegar 2010: vii). As a result, a new
negative category began to emerge on the media reporting scene, namely radical Islam.93 And
in the interest of embroidering this category, instead of focusing on the ideology behind the
protests, the US media focused on the protesters alone, because this allowed them more
freedom to paint an unnerving picture of Iranians, which played on the fears of the American
people. For example, in the American media, the Iranian protesters were portrayed as “a
handful of disgruntled religious zealots without wide support from the Iranian people” (Malek
1997: 53), but who were nevertheless able to command the allegiance of the latter through a
nefarious admixture of threats, cajoling and mesmerising charisma. The US media also
supported this pejorative “verbal code…[with] an even more effective visual code.” To

91
These values were particularly shaped by the Shi’i Islamic religion and nationalism, which had both started to
gain momentum together with the dismissal of Western principles (Yergin Steininger 2010: 12).
92
Indeed, the Iranian protesters appeared to be aware that they were breaking new ground, as expressed in the
slogan “neither west nor east but only the Islamic Republic” (Maszka 2008: 119).
93
In this regard, it has been argued that “the longest and oldest Cold War – and war – ha[s] been waged not
between communism and democracy but Islam and Christianity” (Shuja 1982: 61).
 107

elaborate, news stories about Iran were generally “supported visually by pictures of either
Royalist soldiers sporting weaponry or citizens marching in demonstrations.” And these
images effectively “served to suggest metonymically that the entire population was in a
constant state of extreme political mobilization,” indissociable from hysterical emotionality
(Downing et al. 1995: 435, 436). Via such means, “Americans tended to view the Iranian
revolutionaries through an ignorant and thoroughly ethnocentric lens,” which led the latter to
be construed “as ‘religious fanatics’ and Muslim extremists.” Moreover, due to the “lack of
information” provided by the US media, concerning the reasons behind the Revolution,
Americans tended to attribute the anti-American sentiment of the protesters to “simple
barbarism and unreasonable, naked malevolence” (Kamalipour 1997: 93). In addition,
religious leaders such as the Ayatollah Khomeini received “very superficial labelling,” insofar
as words such as ‘fanatical’ and ‘reactionary’ were more often circulated in American news
reports than the arguably more truthful ‘revolutionary’ and ‘courageous,’ “which the
demonstrators undoubtedly were in their unarmed opposition to the Shah and his huge secret
police and army” (Downing et al. 1995: 436).

3.5 Conclusion

For a long time, the “dominant media question” in the US remained ‘Who lost Iran?’ The
persistence of this question is arguably very telling, because it is based on the “assumption…
that Iran was a quasi-colony, a possession to be ‘lost’ by the United States, rather than an
independent nation in the midst of a painful and violent process to social change” (Downing
et al. 1995: 436). In this regard, Hooglund confirms that, “after the fall of the shah,
journalists, analysts, and politicians in the United States referred to the success of the
revolution as being a loss for the United States” (Hooglund 2002: 144), while Gottschalk and
Greenberg assert that the American media presented the “popular revolt as a defeat for the
United States, rather than as a complex political, economic, and religious movement”
(Gottschalk & Greenberg 2008: 124).
Like the binary opposition of ‘communism versus capitalism,’ the idea that America
‘lost’ Iran in many ways also stems from Cold War rhetoric. That is, during the Cold War, in
the American political rhetoric as well as in the media, countries which had embraced the
communist ideology were often referred to as ‘lost.’ In terms of this analogy, by referring to
Iran as having been ‘lost’ – despite the fact that it was never taken over by the communist
influence – it is for the first time implied that the US could also lose a country for another
reason, namely radical Islam; a form of Islam which was, by that stage, already being
 108

advanced in the media as synonymous with non-progress, anti-Westernisation and anti-

modernisation.94
Arguably, the transformation of the anti-communist filter into an anti-Islam filter was, at
least to a certain extent, also granted a convenient point of interface in Iran. This was because,
for the audiences of the US mass media, the erstwhile ostensible ‘communism’ of Mossadegh
was allowed to coalesce with the religious fundamentalism of Khomeini, such that the ideals
of the two figures – despite their differences and separation in time – came to form the flip
sides of the same coin. And moreover to be understood as a ‘rogue’ alliance against the
supposedly magnanimous figure of the Shah. Yet, that the fifth filter had undergone
transformation – or at least become malleable – by the late 1970s, was evinced when the
American media “started condemning…Islamic resurgence” (Engineer 2007: 79) after the
Revolution, and putting “the entire blame” for the “anger among the people of Iran” on
“Islamic fundamentalism” (Engineer 2007: 119). Interestingly, the term ‘fundamentalism’
itself was “coined by the US media in [the] late 70s,” and was soon used “throughout the
world in a pejorative sense.” However, as Engineer remarks, fundamentalism was rarely
referred to with regard to Christianity. Indeed, even “though the Christian right was quite
active in American politics, it was conveniently ignored and only Islamic intervention [in
foreign spheres] was considered harmful” (Engineer 2007: 79).
The portrayal of Iran in the American media “followed the lead of the political system.”
It has often been pointed out that “international news coverage is the area where political
influence in news presentation is the strongest and where the adversar[ial]…relationship
between media and government and any notion of ‘fairness’ are at their weakest.”
Accordingly, “in their coverage of international events, the news media are more likely to
present the perspectives current in the State Department and/or National Security Council
than any other interpretation,” and in this way, “the ‘national interest’ operates as an
important criterion in selecting, and a crucial value in interpreting, events as news” (Downing
et al. 1995: 434). This is clearly the case in the portrayal of Iranian political figures and
political events in the US media. Page and Shapiro concur that it is a general practice of the
US media to portray countries that are regarded as ‘friends’ of the United States “in a highly
favourable light, even if they are hated and feared by their own people” (Page & Shapiro
1992: 377). And in terms of this, it is worth recalling that “the Shah is still remembered
fondly as a ‘friend’ of the West who brought ‘stability’ to an unstable region,” despite wide

94
With regard to the rhetorical concept of ‘losing’ Iran, as used by both the American government officials and
the media with the outbreak of the Islamic Revolution, see Dorman, W. A., and Farhang, M. 1979. Why Nobody
Lost Iran. Politics Today (May, June), pp. 32-37.
 109

disapproval of his regime among the majority of the Iranian people (Thussu 1997: 266).
Following on from this, as Mughees-uddin points out, post-Revolutionary Iran as a country is
principally portrayed as a threat to the United States as a result of its “Islamic character,” and
its negative image in addition derives from the media portrayal of the country as being
“terrorist” or “fundamentalist” in orientation. In particular, the US media have attempted to
contrast Iran with the United States through religion as well. That is, on the one hand,
Christianity – as the religion predominant in the US – is portrayed as a symbol of tolerance
and of the free-market economy, while on the other hand, Islam – the religion in Iran – is
repeatedly associated with intolerance and centralisation (Mughees-uddin 1995: 41-42).
The rise in anti-Islamic and anti-Iranian media messages has been noted by many. For
example, Hadar refers to the “anti-Iranian/Islamic fundamentalism hysteria that has gripped
the US media” in recent years (Hadar 1993: 30). And it has been argued that, “in the
aftermath of the Cold War,” the media “speculated about the rise of new global enemies,” in a
way that contributed to the fascination of the American press “with political Islam and Iran,”
also known as “‘the Green Peril’” (Gerges 1999: 49).95 The effect of this has been significant.
As Bayor points out, through a “Harris Poll taken in February 1987,” it was revealed that “a
majority of Americans named only one country as ‘the enemy,’ which was Iran” (Bayor 2011:
1098). Yet the American public is not affected by the news media alone. In addition,
mainstream cinema has a powerful effect on the formation of general opinion as well. And, as
will be discussed in the next chapter, consistent with Herman and Chomsky’s propaganda
model, the products of Hollywood often present audiences with a similarly unilateral picture.

95
See also Hadar, L. T. 1993. What Green Peril? Foreign Affairs 72(2): pp. 27-42.
 110

Chapter Four: Reflections of the anti-Islam filter in Ben Affleck’s

Argo (2012)

4.1 Introduction

The anti-Islam news filter, discussed in the previous chapter, now operates pervasively across
mainstream US news networks – particularly in the wake of the 9/11 attacks on the World
Trade Centre in New York. Yet the propaganda power of persistent short news snippets and
brief sound bites, while significant, is arguably matched by the power of a mainstream
Hollywood film that is infused with the same prejudices. Such films, which hold the audience
captive for a much greater length of time, are also more readily recalled by the latter
afterwards, on account of the narrative, which functions as a mnemonic device, and because
of the spectacular and evocative images which are the hallmark of big budget mainstream
cinema. And it is in such recollection, and through its communication to others, that the
related propaganda is disseminated even further throughout the social body.
Arguably, Ben Affleck’s Argo (2012) is a case in point, and the focus of this chapter will
fall on the manner in which the narrative of the film is orientated around, and informed by, the
prejudices of the anti-Islam news filter. In what follows, firstly, some of the main factors that
precipitated the hostage situation upon which the narrative of the film is based, will be
considered in detail, before the hostage crisis, as an important historico-discursive juncture,
will be elaborated upon. Next, the US media portrayal of the hostage crisis will be examined,
as a precursor to investigating the extent to which Affleck’s film Argo borrows from the
related media tropes. To this end, a consideration of the recent post-9/11 context out of which
Argo emerged will be discussed, along with the historical underpinnings of the cinematic
narrative, before, finally, some of the key formal and thematic features of the film are
engaged with. In the latter regard, three key formal features will initially be focused upon,
namely the opening use of storyboards (which approximate the images of a graphic novel),
the manner in which the audience is positioned ideologically through an array of camera
angles during the course of the film, and the effect on the audience of the denouement
montage. After this, the progressive thematisation throughout the narrative of Argo, of the
ostensible ‘madness’ of the Iranian revolutionaries in particular, and the Iranian people in
general, will be explored, along with the manner in which this entails the use of various
tropes, drawn from both original American news coverage of the hostage crisis, and from the
Hollywood horror genre.
 111

This research is important because such representation of the Iranians by the American
media and film industry appears to be part of a larger political agenda, one that – as will be
considered in the following concluding chapter – seeks to maintain the legitimacy of violent
conflict between the two countries, as an imminent possibility.

4.2 The hostage situation

a. The cause of the hostage crisis

Before proceeding with any analysis of Affleck’s Argo (2012), it is important to consider the
events to which it alludes, as well as the context in which these events occurred. To begin
with, when the Shah left Iran on 1 February 1979, he did not settle in another country straight
away. Instead, he lived in several different states for short amounts of time, while trying to
find a safe haven (Houghton 2001: 60). That is, the Shah first left for Egypt (Anderson 2011:
24) where he was hosted by then-President Anwar Sadat (Keddie & Matthee 2002: 308).
However, only six days after his arrival in the country, the Shah moved to Morocco at the
invitation of King Hassan. This welcome was also short-lived, though, as the king asked the
Shah to leave Morocco when he realised that, due to the tense political situation in Iran, the
Shah would not be able to return to his country of origin in the near future (Farber 2005: 109,
120).
As Gary Sick states, “Washington had had no direct contact with the Shah during his
visit to upper Egypt and was not consulted about his further travels to Morocco.” The US
government thus sent a US intelligence official to renew contact with the former Iranian
monarch, and the two of them met on 11 February. Although “the Shah gave no indication of
a desire to move to the United States,” the US maintained their invitation, which had
ostensibly been extended to him in January.96 Yet three days after this meeting, on 14
February, the American embassy in Tehran was attacked by Iranians, and “Washington began
to reconsider the wisdom of permitting the Shah to the United States.”97 As a result, when on
22 February the Shah announced his move to the US in a message to the US ambassador in
96
It has often been argued that, “had the Shah come to the United States in January 1979 as expected, his
presence would have been regarded as entirely normal,” and that it was “the Shah’s indecision and
procrastination” that turned “what would have been a routine event” into “a political issue” (Sick 1985: 207).
The US ambassador to Iran, William H. Sullivan, concurs with this, maintaining that if the Shah had come to the
US “at the outset, with the obvious intention of abdicating,” it would most likely not have caused any issues
(Sullivan 1981: 232-233). In fact, as Daugherty states, “the Iranians themselves expected this to happen and were
surprised when it did not” (Daugherty 1996: 5), while the US may even have received approval from the
Ayatollah Khomeini “for making the Shah’s orderly departure feasible” (Sullivan 1981: 276-277).
97
As a result of the embassy attack on 14 February, several staff members were “taken hostage for several
hours.” The seizure was later referred to as the St. Valentine’s Day Open House (Daugherty 1996: 1).
 112

Morocco (Sick 1985: 177), he was encouraged “to go elsewhere, even though the US
invitation was officially not rescinded” (McDermott 2001: 79).
While the Shah’s departure for the United States was continuously postponed, King
Hassan “politely [informed]…the Shah’s entourage…that his continued presence in the
country was becoming a political liability.” Yet, in March, US President Jimmy Carter
decided to prohibit the Shah entry into the United States indefinitely, “primarily because of
the intense hatred…built up in Iran among the mobs who controlled the country and the
resulting vulnerability of many Americans still there” (Carter 1982: 452). A weighty irony
hung over Carter’s decision though, because such hatred was, to a large extent, the
consequence of the Shah’s previous complicity with the American agenda. And perhaps, in
the interest of ameliorating this, while the Shah sought asylum elsewhere, “contact[ing] a
series of other governments without success,” President Carter also “approved a plan to seek
other countries of possible asylum for the Shah.” Yet the former Iranian monarch was not
welcome anywhere in the world for fear of retribution (Sick 1985: 178). Eventually, three
weeks after his arrival in Morocco, the Shah departed for the Bahamas after David
Rockefeller helped him to find refuge there (McDermott 2001: 79).98 US Secretary of State,
Cyrus Vance, then “claimed that the US government was instrumental in getting the
Bahamian government to accept” the Shah’s entry into their country (Afkhami 2008: 543).
However, while in the Bahamas, “the Shah’s health deteriorated significantly,” and he
was diagnosed with lymphocytic leukaemia.99 Moreover, in addition to his faltering medical
condition, his residency again became uncertain, as the “government of the Bahamas refused
to extend [his] visa” (Pahlavi 2004: 317-318). Thus, after a ten-week stay in the Bahamas, the
Shah moved to Cuernavaca, a resort town southwest of Mexico City on 10 June 1979 (Buhite
1995: 172). Yet, as McDermott points out, “the Shah’s refuge in Mexico…did not mean that
the issue of his entry into the United States was in abeyance.” On the contrary, the US
government repeatedly reconsidered its choice to refuse the Shah entry between January and
October. Eventually, on 22 October, the American government finally allowed the Shah to
enter the United States, although his access was said to be for medical treatment only
(McDermott 2001: 81, 84, Houghton 2001: 60). Importantly, it was neither an act of
benevolence, nor an extension of political sympathy to the Shah, but rather a strategically pre-
98
As Buhite explains, Rockefeller had been the Shah’s banker, and “as head of Chase Manhattan Bank, did
billions of dollars of business with Iran.” In addition, he “saw the monarch as a personal friend” (Buhite 1995:
171).
99
The Shah had already been diagnosed with lymphocytic leukaemia in April 1974 by the French doctors Jean
Bernard and Georges Flandrin. Yet, because “the Shah’s personal physician insisted that they not use words such
as ‘cancer’ or ‘leukemia’ with the Shah,” as such “words were too unsettling,” the Shah was told “that he had
Waldenstorm’s disease” (Milani 2008: 1061, Zonis 1988). Yet, once in the Bahamas, the evidence of cancer
became undeniable.
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emptive move, because “Carter did not want to be held responsible for the Shah’s death” as a
result of his unwillingness to let the Shah enter the US for medical treatment. That is, “almost
everyone in the Carter administration believed that the Shah was on the verge of death and
that the treatment he needed was only available in the United States” (McDermott 2001: 84,
97). Also, it was assumed that by allowing the Shah to enter the US on purely medical
grounds, Iranian revolutionaries would not respond violently, as had been feared previously. It
was decided that as soon as American doctors had examined him, the news of his illness
would at once be spread through the US media, so that everyone around the world, “especially
the revolutionary government in Iran,” would be informed that the Shah “had been admitted
to the United States for humanitarian reasons and that he would be asked to leave as soon as
he was able to” (Afkhami 2008: 563).
Yet, at this point, the lack of transparency that had plagued Iranian society, and the
correlative limited American understanding of the context they were dealing with, again
precipitated an unforeseen response. That is, since the Shah’s illness “had been a closely
guarded Iranian state secret,” the Iranian revolutionaries did not trust the US government’s
explanation for its admittance of the Shah to America.100 Soon it was alleged that “the United
States was engaged in an act of deception,” and conspiring to “return the Shah to power,”
through means analogous to those of the orchestrated coup d’état of 1953 (McDermott 2001:
94, Beeman 2008: 130, Rubin 1981: 303). In fact, Khomeini himself saw this as “a
provocative act,” and regarded the entry of the Shah into the United States as “evidence of
America plotting” (Moin 1999: 220). Consequently, he “demanded that the United States
allow a team of Iranian doctors to inspect the Shah to make sure he was truly ill,” but “the
United States refused” (Beeman 2008: 13).
In many respects, it can be argued that this precipitated the events to which Ben
Affleck’s film Argo (2012) refers. This is because, as a consequence of the above, many of
the Iranian revolutionaries were incensed, and, in addition, they “felt, not for the first time, a
strong sense of betrayal by the US President” (Daugherty 1996: 5). Related to this, on 4
November 1979, a group of young revolutionaries, who gathered under the name of ‘Students
Following the Line of the Imam,’ stormed the American embassy in Tehran, which,
importantly, was regarded as “a symbol of twenty-five years of US relations with the Shah”

100
When diagnosed, the Shah had requested secrecy around his medical status, telling his doctor, Georges
Flandrin: “At a time when they are killing officers faithful to me in my country, I cannot reduce them to
complete despair by revealing my state of health” (Afkhami 2008: 557). Indeed, his illness was “one of the best-
kept state secrets of all time,” and even “the US government did not [know about it]…until informed…at the end
of September 1979.” And it was only on 18 October that the American government discovered “that the illness
was cancer” (Sick 1985: 182). In fact, even the Shah’s wife, Queen Farah Pahlavi, “was not told of his illness
until 1977” (Zonis 1988).
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(Afkhami 2008: 564, Buhite 1995: 161). And following the seizure, while sixty-six
Americans were taken hostage, “the students confiscated most of the embassy’s documents,”
much of which was classified information (Hamilton 2006: 343).101 In addition to the files
which were taken intact, the hostage takers “made a great show of laboriously piecing
together shredded documents” (Sick 1985: 191).102 This event marked the beginning of the
Iranian hostage crisis.103

b. The hostage crisis as a historico-discursive juncture

It is important to pause at this point to consider the discourses at play in the hostage crisis, not
least because such consideration reveals the myopia of subsequent US attempts to characterise
the crisis as the consequence of Islamic fundamentalist madness – via the amended fifth filter
of the propaganda model identified by Herman and Chomsky. That is, on the one hand, the
outrage on the part of the Iranian students, which led to their storming of the US embassy in
Tehran, was not simply a reaction to Carter’s rejection of Khomeini’s request for Iranian
medical investigation into the veracity of the Shah’s illness. Although this no doubt served as
a catalyst, the students’ actions were fuelled by a chronic sense of oppression beneath the
weight of the American modernisation discourse, a modernisation discourse which had been
progressively imposed upon large swathes of the Middle East in general, and on Iran in
particular.104 As discussed, this modernisation discourse was, in turn, not merely the novel
product of Daniel Lerner’s imagination, but also largely the consequence of an array of
historical and geo-political factors, stretching from the latter days of the British Empire, right
through to the early phases of the Cold War, after the Allied victory of 1945. Yet, the Iranian
students who stormed the US embassy on 4 November 1979 could not see this discourse in a
101
Prior to February 1979, when the protests and political tension within Iran were running high, the American
ambassador to Iran, William H. Sullivan, ordered “all reference files boxed and shipped back to Washington,
retaining only a thin working file in each office.” This was done so that the classified documents could be
“destroyed quickly in mid-February” by embassy staff members “as order collapsed in Tehran.” Yet, “after the
February attack…the various agencies simply shipped back many of the boxes of original files,” and, “as a
result, when the crisis began to mount in October, the embassy found itself with a massive quantity of extraneous
paper to be protected.” Although the embassy staff members attempted to destroy most of it when the embassy
was attacked again in November, “it was impossible to shred and burn all of these files in the short time
available” (Sick 1985: 190-191).
102
Lewis Perdue writes on his website how the Iranian hostage takers used the book The Washington Connection
– which he co-authored with Robin Moore and James N. Rowe – to learn how to reconstruct shredded
documents. That is, in the book it is explained how investigative reporters could sort through shredded material
and re-create it. Perdue was “ashamed and angry” when he found out that the “Iranian thugs” had learned how to
reconstitute the torn papers through his “investigative reporting of a Congressional scandal” (Perdue 2013). See
also Moore, R., Perdue, L., and Rowe, J. N. 1977. The Washington Connection. New York: Condor.
103
Significantly, while the hostage situation, which lasted for fifteen months, has gone into American history as
the ‘Iranian hostage crisis,’ the history books in Iran still refer to it as ‫ کیرما یسوساج هنال ریخست‬which can
loosely be translated as ‘Conquest of the American Spy Den’ (Abrahamian 1982: 79).
104
See Chapter One.
 115

detached, apolitical light, for good reason. Embedded within a society that had suffered
greatly through the effects of this discourse, which had robbed its people of both national
sovereignty and human dignity, the students’ actions were also an expression of the anti-
modernisation discourse elaborated upon in Chapter Two. That is, the discourse engendered
over decades by, among others, Fardid, Al-e Ahmad and Shari’ati – intellectuals in their own
right who espoused not ‘madness,’ but rather a position different to that of the American
agenda.
Contrary to popular belief, “there is no direct evidence” that the takeover of the
American embassy by Iranian revolutionary students was ordered by the Ayatollah Khomeini
(Axworthy 2013: 168). In fact, “there is little or no evidence…that he was even aware of what
the students were planning to do before they actually did it” (Houghton 2001: 54), and as a
result, Khomeini was as surprised as the Americans were by the event (Moin 1999: 226). In
particular, three students, Ibrahim Asgharzadeh, Abbas Abdi and Mohsen Mirdammadi,
played a key role, especially in the planning of the event. Importantly, they have all
“repeatedly denied…that the Ayatollah knew anything about their plans before they were
actually implemented” (Houghton 2001: 54, 55). Nonetheless, the hostage takers did
subsequently seek his approval, insofar as, after the embassy had been taken over, “the
activists and students who had seized the hostages [and] were supporters of
Khomeini…waited for his ruling” (Wagner 2010: 80).
Khomeini did not make an official statement straight away, arguably because he “needed
time to gather his thoughts and assess the potential advantages and disadvantages of any
pronouncement by him for or against the move” (Moin 1999: 226).105 Indeed, for two days,
the hostage takers waited anxiously for Khomeini’s verdict. Yet Khomeini was obliged to act
carefully. On the one hand, he was aware of the array of dynamics informed by the anti-
modernisation discourse, which had precipitated the students’ action, but over which he
wielded precious little control. And were he to have immediately fanned the related flames of
discontent, the situation may have become totally ungovernable. Yet, on the other hand, were
he to have condemned the seizure of the US embassy, he would have edged himself closer to
the very source of such discontent, in a way that would have problematised his legitimacy in
the popular imagination of Iran. As such, his eventual pronouncement was as anticipated;
broadcast on the Tehran radio, Khomeini “praised the hostage-takers and gave his blessing to
the seizure of the embassy” (Wagner 2010: 80). US Secretary of State Cyrus Vance advances

105
Although some scholars like Shawcross (1989: 260-262) assert that “Khomeini’s support for the students’
actions was instantaneous,” Houghton and many others maintain that “this claim is probably incorrect”
(Houghton 2001: 54).
 116

that it is likely that when Khomeini witnessed the response of the Iranian public to the
embassy takeover, he became aware of the capacity of the hostage situation to join the
conflicting groups within Iran against the United States, and this led him to use it “as a
rallying point for bringing about a new Iranian state” (Vance 1983: 376). In this way, he used
the hostage situation “as a tool for radicalizing the revolution and…creat[ing] an Islamic
state” (Hamilton 2006: 342). But to characterise him as maliciously orchestrating the event
would be incorrect, because he instead found himself reacting to it carefully, and with a
certain measure of desperation.
However, while the students had actually just wanted to “stage a temporary protest of a
few hours or days” (Axworthy 2013: 168), it was Khomeini’s public approval of the hostage
situation that resulted in the event continuing far beyond this time frame. Indeed, it has often
been argued that Khomeini “kept the revolutionary fire blazing” when, with growing
confidence in his control of the situation, he began “inciting the students to stand fast in the
fight against the American devil” (Hamilton 2006: 342-343). Yet, his political opportunism in
this regard notwithstanding, Khomeini also felt the pressure of the humanitarianism intrinsic
to the Islamic religion – of which he was the key representative in the country – and on 17
November, he requested the hostage takers to release all female and black hostages, as long as
it had been proven that they were not spies (Hauser 1999: 284, Rothwell et al. 2011: 393). He
stated that “he was releasing the women because Islam did not incarcerate women and the
African Americans because he knew that they and their kind were treated badly in the United
States.” Subsequently, on 18 and 19 November, “thirteen American hostages, five women and
eight African-American men,” were released (Afkhami 2008: 567).106
Yet this “goodwill gesture” did not change the American public opinion of the Islamic
leader (Axworthy 2013: 172). Although the Ayatollah Khomeini had been “virtually unknown
to the general public in the United States until the Iranian hostage crisis,” he was immediately
associated primarily with the malicious and unprovoked seizure of US citizens, and
consequently regarded by the American public with “outrage and contempt” (Gordon 1988:
17). This was not the least because, despite ordering the release of the above thirteen
hostages, at the same time Khomeini called the American embassy a “centre of espionage and
conspiracy,” and stated that “those people who hatched plots against our Islamic movement in
that place do not enjoy international diplomatic respect” (Rothwell et al. 2011: 392-393). For
the American public, this was again perceived as a reprehensible negation of international

106
Later, on 10 July 1980, Khomeini also ordered the release of Richard Queen, “for reasons of health” (Hauser
1999: 287). Queen was freed the next day and his deteriorating health status was “later diagnosed as multiple
sclerosis” (McDermott 2001: 193).
 117

law, instead of fiery rhetoric meant to counterbalance the gesture of compassion from which it
was indissociable.
In this regard, it must be remembered that the hostage drama unfolded against the
backdrop of the March 1979 national referendum – in which the Iranian public
overwhelmingly voted ‘yes’ to the simple question: “Should Iran be an Islamic republic?”
(Kamrava 2011: 156) – and shortly before the 2 December second national referendum was
scheduled “to approve the constitution” (Daniel 2012: 195). This referendum “was passed by
a nearly unanimous vote” (Wright 2010: 130), and as a result, Khomeini was “named Iran’s
political and religious leader for life” (Etheredge 2010: 203). Arguably, what the above
indicates is not that Iran comprised a society in utter chaos, peopled by emotionally unstable
zealots, but rather a society in the process of a difficult transformation, in which tumultuous
moments were admittedly frequent. Moments to which Khomeini had to respond very
carefully, and cleverly, because all Iranian eyes were on him. Needless to say, the nuances of
this situation received no thematisation in the US mass media.
The Iranian government demanded several things from the US in exchange for the
hostages, that is: “the United States should give up the Shah to Iran; return the Shah’s wealth;
recognize all the harm it had done to Iran[, and] commit itself not to interfere in the internal
affairs of Iran” in future (Afkhami 2008: 567). Yet, President Carter refused to meet these
demands, and instead used not only political but also diplomatic, and even economic
measures to both persuade and pressurise Iran to release the hostages (Hamilton 2006:
343).107 Arguably, the rising tensions between the two countries is neatly evinced by the fact
that, although the Shah was declared medically fit to travel on 27 November 1979, and arrived
in Panama on 2 December, his departure from the United States did not lead to the release of
the hostages in Iran. Instead, Iran was unrelenting in its demand for the Shah’s return to Iran,
so that he could be subjected to a trial and charged for the human rights violations carried out
during his reign. Yet their hopes in this regard were dashed when, after leaving Panama for
Egypt, the Shah passed away in the latter country on 27 July 1980 (McDermott 2001: 101,
102). Understandably, Khomeini was faced with a difficult choice at this juncture; to give up
the hostages – who effectively comprised his sole means of purchase on the United States –
would compound his defeat at the hands of fate. Thus, perhaps in an attempt to save face as
much as possible, the Iranian captors refused to release the hostages, stating that they
continued to hold them captive “in further protest of US policies” (Kidder & Oppenheim

107
For example, the US President “ended all imports of Iranian oil” and “froze Iranian assets in the United
States.” In addition, Carter “tried to get the UN Security Council to impose sanctions on Iran, but the Soviet
Union vetoed the measure” (Hamilton 2006: 344).
 118

2007: 352). This obliged Carter, for the remainder of his term in office, to continue with
efforts to free the American hostages. In fact, in addition to taking political and economic
measures, he ordered military action in the form of a rescue mission, which was “planned in
such a way as to avoid miring American troops in a protracted fight in Iran from which it
would be difficult to extricate them” (Hamilton 2006: 343).108
Eventually, after 444 days of captivity, “the crisis ended with the signing of the Algiers
Accords in Algeria on January 19, 1981” (Mowla 2008: 167), and the hostages were formally
released the next day. President Ronald Reagan had only just been inaugurated and thus
started his presidency on a positive note (Buhite 1995: 183).

c. US media portrayal of the hostage crisis

McAlister maintains that “television news coverage of the Iran crisis was remarkable for
being a[n]…absolutely ubiquitous” and chronic phenomenon. “Every night for more than a
year, Americans watched as Iranians held demonstrations outside the embassy, chanting their
anger at the United States and burning US flags” (McAlister 2002: 446). As such, the hostage
crisis became the subject of “unprecedented media coverage,” and in many respects became
“the longest running human interest story in the history of television” (Vanhala 2011: 56, Sick
1985: 220). Historian Gaddis Smith concurs with this, going so far as to assert that the
hostage crisis “had more extensive coverage on television and in the press than any other
event since World War II” (Smith as quoted in Smith 2009). In particular, US news network
ABC turned the hostage crisis into an unceasing real-life television drama (Vanhala 2011: 56)
by creating an entire programme around the issue. The show was initially called The Crisis in
Iran: America Held Hostage, but this title was later changed to the more wide-ranging
Nightline, and it aired from November 1979 until March 1980 (McAlister 2005: 202, 205).109
By means of this, the US public were given “the latest developments just before they went to
bed” (Vanhala 2011: 56), while the anchorman of news network CBS – Walter Cronkite –

108
The military rescue operation, dubbed Operation Eagle Claw, infamously “turned into a horrendously
unsuccessful rescue attempt” (Redd 2009: 207), and it was aborted on 24 April 1980 due to “mechanical
problems.” Dramatically, “as the force was in the midst of a night time withdrawal, a large RH-53 helicopter
collided on the ground with a fuel and ammo-laden C-130 transport.” The ensuing “explosion and fire killed
eight Americans, injured several others, and forced the would-be rescuers to abandon the bodies of the dead, five
helicopters, much of their equipment and a number of secret documents” (Adams 2001). It was this blunder from
which “the Carter administration never seemed to recover” (Redd 2009: 207). For more on the failed rescue
attempt, see ‘The Iranian Rescue Mission’ in McDermott, R. 2001. Risk-Taking in International Politics;
Prospect Theory in American Foreign Policy. Ann Arbor: University of Michigan Press.
109
The initial title America Held Hostage powerfully indicates how the hostage situation was experienced by the
greater American population, yet it is possible that part of the reason for its change was because it emphasised
too much American powerlessness in the face of the situation.
 119

ended every evening’s news broadcast by recalling exactly how long the hostages had been
held captive (Houghton 2001: 2).110
However, it was not only the level of coverage of the crisis that was remarkable, but also
the fact that for such a long time – 444 days – almost no critical or contextualising sentiments
were expressed in the news. Rather, the media coverage “tended to reinforce the public’s
worst fears about the crisis and Iran in general,” and it “capitalized on – and contributed to –
public hysteria about the hostages” (Smith 2009). Yet, while for many, the “method of the
daily accounting of captivity, reiterated by Walter Cronkite’s verbal tagline…provided a
continual reminder of the outrageous actions of Iranians” (Naficy 2012B: 278), what such
practices arguably eclipsed was the strategic game under way, along with the fact that the
moves made within it were calculated rather than careless, and predicated on intelligible
discursive tensions, rather than ‘madness.’ In this regard, while the relative myopic
consistency of related US media coverage represented precious little about the event and the
circumstances which had precipitated it, it revealed an immense amount about the power of
the amended fifth (anti-Islamic) news filter to consistently manufacture the American
people’s consent.
Accordingly, “the fate of the hostages became the single most discussed issue in US
public life” (McAlister 2002: 446-447).111 However, while prior to the hostage crisis, Iran had
rarely been mentioned in the American media (even though the US had been involved with
Iran for decades), when the Iranian hostage crisis commenced and Iran was widely covered by
the media, very little on the background of the crisis made it into the news. As a result, the
American public remained problematically uninformed about the US-Iranian relations of the
previous decades.112 In short, “the quality of coverage did not parallel its abundance” (Smith
2009), because the media reportage was “remarkably innocent of any historical sense”
(McAlister 2002: 446). In particular, American meddling in Iran’s political affairs for
decades, as well as the forced modernisation undertaken in the country – which infuriated the

110
Goodman refers to Cronkite’s signoff as “the most powerful subliminal editorial in America,” as well as “a
dramatic epitaph to the news,” insofar as it comprised a perpetual “flag at half-mast, a daily probe of a wound, a
political statement” (Goodman 2009). Regarding Walter Cronkite and the Iranian hostage crisis, see Goodman,
E. 2009. Ellen Goodman on Walter Cronkite and the Iranian Hostage Crisis. The Washington Post, July 17,
2009. Available at: http://archive.is/XgNR. Date accessed: November 17, 2013.
111
As Smith points out, “in the six years from 1972 through 1977, the three networks [ABC, CBS and NBC] had
devoted an average of only five minutes per year to material on Iran” (Smith 2009). In comparison, media
coverage of the hostage situation of 1979 to 1981 “took up more than 20 per cent of all television news.” On the
American television network ABC, Iranian news “coverage averaged 4.1 minutes out of every 22-minute
broadcast” (McAlister 2005: 206). See also Naficy, H. “Mediating the Other: American Pop Culture
Representation of Postrevolutionary Iran,” in Kamalipour, Y. R. (ed.). 1997. The US Media and the Middle East:
Image and Perception. Westport: Praeger Publishers.
112
Regarding the history of US involvement in the Middle East in general, and in Iran in particular, see also
section 1.3 of Chapter One and section 2.2 of Chapter Two.
 120

mullahs and largely destroyed the indigenous Persian culture – were rarely mentioned in the
American media. And without this vital background information, the American public could
not understand the motives of the Iranian hostage takers, and were thus largely obliged to
accept the media’s characterisation of them as ‘emotionally unstable.’
Consequently, while “the news media focused on the daily drama at the expense of
context” (Vanhala 2011: 56), the American people largely reacted emotionally to the violent
Iranian takeover of their embassy.113 And this was something which the US media fuelled by
reducing the Iranian hostage story “to a story of the Iranians’ irrational rage” (McAlister
2002: 446). In effect, this systematically encouraged the American people to regard both Iran
and Islam “as monolithically hostile – fanatical, irrational, and unappeasable” (Smith 2009).
Naficy concurs with this, maintaining that the US media went to great lengths to harness
“ideologically and economically both Iran and its threat,” in a process of “ideological
containment [that] involved the ahistoricizing, demonizing, and caricaturing of Iran and
Islam” (Naficy 2012B: 227).
Arguably, the most important product to emerge from the crisis was the “discourse of
terrorist threat;” this was not only firmly established during the Iranian hostage crisis, but has
also maintained its primary position for over thirty years, and has proved paramount in the
construction of “a subtle but crucial change in the imagined geography of the Middle East.”
According to McAlister, this change “was marked by a reclassification,” insofar as “‘Islam’
became highlighted as the dominant signifier of the region.” In this regard, there occurred “a
reframing of the entire region in terms of proximity to or distance from ‘Islam,’ which itself
became conflated with ‘terrorism’” (McAlister 2005: 200). As Naficy explains, the “US
media work converted Iran into a limited repertoire of discrete and disembodied audiovisual
signs, repeated ad nauseam.” These were, among others, “bearded and turbaned ‘mad
mullahs’; the thick frown of Ayatollah Khomeini; veiled women with raised fists,” and
“frantic mobs shouting ‘Death to the Shah,’ ‘Death to America,’ ‘Death to Carter’” (Naficy
2012B: 277). And these ‘madmen’ were contrasted with the American hostages, who were,
instead, portrayed as the victims of Iranian ‘terrorism.’ Indeed, the whole of the United States
was presented as an innocent nation, thereby ignoring the long history of US-Iranian relations,
as well as the hostages’ positions as government officials. By ignoring these pivotal details,
113
Indeed, the threefold reaction of the American public involved “support for the US government, pity for the
victims’ plight, and outrage toward the ‘enemy’ government” (Scott 2000: 182). And on the basis of such
sentiments, a “wave of anti-Iranian sentiment swept across America” (Bayor 2011: 1098). In this regard, the
presence of Iranian students and visitors in America also became “a source of anger and outrage” (McAlister
2002: 447). Indeed, it even “provoked a considerable amount of anti-Iranian immigrant sentiment among
Americans, a prejudice almost non-existent prior to that time” (Bayor 2011: 1098). Anti-Iranian views were also
aired through demonstrations. As Naficy points out, at one point, “in Houston, one thousand anti-Iranian
demonstrators gathered outside the Iranian consulate for two days” (Naficy 2012B: 279).
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Americans could easily be presented as victims in the media. In this regard, it was
simplistically claimed in the media that the hostages had been violently attacked on US
territory, that is, the American embassy.
Related to this, the Iranian crisis even “led to the first national ritualization of the Yellow
Ribbon Movement” (Gresson 2004: 60), which drew from the tradition of hanging yellow
ribbons in support of American troops fighting for ‘freedom’ in faraway countries.114 While
people began to display yellow ribbons “to signal their concern about the safety of [the]
American citizens” in Iran (Pershing & Yocom 1996: 48), the symbol soon took off as a trend
in the hostages’ respective hometowns, where yellow ribbons were displayed to demonstrate
“their hopes for the hostages’ safe release” (Sturken 1992: 140). These ribbons, which
appeared everywhere, comprised an important “material part of the construction of meanings
about Iran” (McAlister 2005: 208), which moreover dovetailed neatly with the highly
prejudicial and thematically limited media coverage of the issue. This construction of
meanings was also magnified through a Washington Post article entitled ‘Coping with Rage’
by Barbara Parker, in which it was “suggested that Americans who were frustrated over the
standoff” should hang up yellow ribbons to show their support for the hostages (O’Neill 2004:
40).
Perhaps the only feature in the American media which was contradictory to such blatant
binary opposition, was the airtime extended to Massoumeh Ebtekar. Iranian Ebtekar was only
nineteen years old when the American embassy was taken over. Yet she was chosen as “the
official interpreter and spokeswoman” (Sciolino 1998) since she was “a college freshman who
had spent her youth in America.” She spoke English well, even with an American accent, and
she soon “became known to a rapt US television audience as ‘Mary.’” Apart from her calm
demeanour, which stood in marked contrast to the heightened emotionality conjured up by
related US news reports, her message was also completely at odds with the image the US
media had provided of Iran. That is, Ebtekar stated “that Americans should be the first to
recognize the Iranian impulse toward justice and freedom, since those ideals were brought
into her life in the United States, and later at an American-style school in Tehran” (Peterson

114
Although “yellow ribbons were used widely during the Iranian hostage crisis,” as Parsons points out, “the
practice was first adopted to welcome the returning prisoners from Vietnam” and was “inspired by the 1973 love
song by Tony Orlando and Dawn,” which was entitled Tie a Yellow Ribbon Round the Ole Oak Tree, and which
was “about a returning convict.” According to the folklorist, Penelope Laingen – wife of hostage Bruce Laingen,
US Chargé d’Affaires – was inspired by the song and came up with the idea of tying a yellow ribbon around a
tree to show her support for her husband and his fellow hostages (Parsons 1981). Regarding the symbol of
yellow ribbons, see also Pershing, L., and Yocom, M. R. 1996. The Yellow Ribboning of the USA: Contested
Meanings in the Construction. Western Folklore 55(1), pp. 41-85.
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2010: 54).115 However, her sentiments were not only drowned out by the highly prejudicial
rhetoric disseminated via mainstream US news outlets. In addition, they continue to be elided
even today, through biased pronouncements on the ‘problem’ of Iran, which are moreover
echoed and reflected through mainstream Hollywood cinema.

4.3 Ben Affleck’s Argo (2012)

a. Context

Historically speaking, Hollywood films have very often been orientated around influencing
public opinion. That is, while Herman and Chomsky refer to “the reliance of the media on
information provided by government, business, and ‘experts’ funded and approved by these
primary sources and agents of power” (Herman & Chomsky 1994: 2), there has also been a
relationship between the government and the film industry. Indeed, throughout its history, the
American movie industry has very successfully managed to dominate the general viewpoint
of its audience, because, through both its big budget spectacular fare and ever expanding
networks of distribution, it “exerted an awesome power to influence and mould public
opinion” (Mintz & Roberts 2010: 139).
From the First World War onwards, films were used by “nations on all sides…to
influence their respective societies to embrace the ideology behind the war effort.” And
within the context of Hollywood in particular, the tendency of films to follow along this
trajectory was “both an early sign of its penchant for reflecting public opinion and, equally, its
ability to go beyond mere entertainment and influence public conceptions,” in powerful and
enduring ways (Roberts 2010: 46). That is, already in the early twentieth century, the US
government influenced the sort of movies produced by Hollywood. That was not least
because the US government became aware of their ability to use films to influence the
public’s political thought (Shaheen 2003: 190). Consequently, a relationship soon developed
between the Hollywood film industry and the US government. In fact, it was President
Woodrow Wilson who first considered “the political value of cinema,” realising its immense
power due to its popularity and its association “in the eyes of the world with the modernity of
the United States.” Wilson wanted to “put the movies at the service of a great crusade to
uphold the values of liberal democracy which were being put at risk by the Great War,” and
he soon became aware of the cultural and economic value of the film industry. This was

115
See also Ebtekar, M. 2000. Takeover in Tehran: The Inside Story of the 1979 US Embassy Capture.
Vancouver: Talonbooks.
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especially important for him because he believed that “economics and ideology went hand in
hand.” His attitude in his regard is neatly evinced in his statement that “the film has come to
rank as the very highest medium for the dissemination of public intelligence,” on account of
the way in which “it speaks a universal language[,] it lends itself importantly to the
presentation of America’s plans and purposes” (Puttnam 1997: 88-91). Correlatively, within
the film industry itself, there also emerged a push “for movies to be used as one of the
instruments of propaganda.” While during the First World War, the US government became
“aware of the power and usefulness of their film industr[y],” during the Second World War,
“the Office of War Information in the United States” went further by forming “a Bureau of
Motion Pictures to goad the studios into pumping out films that would give a rousing lift to
the war effort” (Puttnam 1997: 191). Importantly, “although the BMP did not have direct
control over the film industry, it did exert a powerful influence in Hollywood” (Mintz &
Roberts 2010: 139).116
Arguably, this dynamic has continued into the contemporary era, and today, during the
present ‘War on Terror,’ Hollywood appears to be fulfilling a similar role. In fact, the close
relations between Hollywood and the Headquarters of the US Department of Defence, the
Pentagon, are quite apparent. For example, “on November 30, 2000, Hollywood luminaries
attended a star-studded dinner hosted by Defence Secretary William Cohen in honour of
Motion Picture President Jack Valenti, for which the Pentagon paid the bill - $295,000.”
When spokesman Kenneth Bacon was asked “to explain why the DOD personnel were
fraternizing with imagemakers at an elaborate Beverly Hills gathering, [he]…said: ‘If we can
have television shows and movies that show the excitement and importance of military life,
they can help generate a favourable atmosphere for recruiting’” (Shaheen 2003: 177-178).
Similarly, the relations between Hollywood and the US Central Intelligence Agency (CIA)
cannot be ignored. According to Jenkins, “the CIA claims that it began cooperating with
Hollywood in the 1990s,” and the reason for this cooperation is – according to the CIA – “to
help reverse its [negative public] image in film and television” (Jenkins 2012: 32). Yet, there
is evidence to suggest that Hollywood is not only turned to in order “to help the CIA mitigate
public relations disasters;” in addition, “the Agency is also invested in Hollywood for its
ability to boost both public and congressional support” (Jenkins 2012: 32). The importance of
this relationship is understandable, because Hollywood has grown into a billion dollar
industry which, apart from its obvious commercial interests, has also maintained its

116
The popularity of Hollywood films in the US during the Second World War was evidently tremendous:
“average ticket sales in America each week during World War II ranged between eighty and ninety million,” and
at the time, this “equalled two-thirds of the country’s population” (Mintz & Roberts 2010: 138).
 124

immensely influential position in relation to the formation of public opinion. Moreover,

“because of the vast American cultural reach via television and film,” its impact has increased
since the Second World War era.
Yet, in terms of this impact, as Shaheen points out, “for more than a century
Hollywood…has used repetition as a teaching tool” (Shaheen 2003: 172, 174), insofar as,
very often, it has comprised a platform from which conservative attitudes and myopic
platitudes have been reiterated with monotonous regularity. In many respects, Ben Affleck’s
blockbuster film Argo is a particularly good example of the relationship between Hollywood
and the American government.
Argo was just one of Hollywood’s many productions of 2012. Yet, while the excitement
generated by its nail-biting narrative was evinced by its immense popularity, this popularity
can also be attributed to its conservative repetition of US propaganda tropes from the Iranian
hostage crisis. That is, it is often claimed that the terrorist attacks on the World Trade Centre,
on 11 September 2001, precipitated an anti-Islamic backlash in the global mass media. Yet,
although the tragic events of that day certainly compounded and reinforced the existing anti-
Islamic discourse, it must be remembered that the re-articulation of the fifth news filter of
Herman and Chomsky’s propaganda model occurred much earlier, with the advent of the
Iranian Revolution. And it was during the subsequent Iranian hostage crisis that the anti-Islam
filter underwent a process of significant refinement in the US media. Indeed, “international
terrorism really hit the American public consciousness for the first time in November 1979,”
with the start of the hostage crisis, and it was during this event that the US media “created the
perception of both Iran and Islam as threats to Western ideology, epistemology, and even
ontology” (Vanhala 2011: 56, Naficy 2012B: 276).
Of course, the event of 9/11 also constitutes part of the context out of which Argo
emerged, and related to this, in his text entitled “Images of Muslims in Western Scholarship
and Media after 9/11,” el-Aswad speaks of “the construction of so-called Islamophobia.”
According to the scholar, Muslims have, over the last decade or so, been portrayed “as a
threatening ‘Other,’” even though this image “has been predominantly fabricated.” That is,
while “Islam has become a centre of fear,” for America in particular and the Western world in
general, this fear remains “irrational.” Nonetheless, the attack on the World Trade Centre
significantly “motivated the Western media to create negative images of Muslims” (el-Aswad
2013: 39, 40, 44), which audiences have imbued with complete veracity, and clung to
tenaciously.117

117
In his “Bush and the World,” Michael Hirsh agrees that the World Trade Centre attacks heralded the
beginning of a new ideological clash between the United States and Islam; a clash that previously existed
 125

In terms of this, Argo was also not only produced after the 9/11 tragedy, but also within a
context of renewed anti-Islamic sentiment. As Steinbeck points out, “10 years after the 9/11
attack on the United States, a second wave of anti-Muslim hatred is sweeping the country”
(Steinback 2011). With regard to this, a recent poll held by the Washington Post and ABC
News “showed that 49 per cent of Americans held an unfavourable view of Islam,” and that
this was “a significant increase from 39 per cent in October 2002” (Ali et al. 2011: vi).
Importantly, and in line with Herman and Chomsky’s propaganda model, this “outrage
seems largely propagated by politicians and others seeking to capitalize on Americans’ fears”
(el-Aswad 2013: 45). To a large extent, Steinbeck concurs with this, maintaining that “the
American public psyche” has moulded itself around a “generalized fear of Islam itself,” as
they are “regarded by many as a military enemy of the United States” (Steinback 2011).
The origin of such trends, as many political scholars and media theorists have pointed out, can
often be traced to the media’s strong reliance on the government as a source. 118 This is
significant because Iran has, in the last few years, again become a ‘hot topic’ in the American
mass media for its alleged nuclear ambitions – something which will be discussed in more
detail in the following concluding chapter. And the recollection, within the narrative of
Affleck’s Argo (2012), of the Iranian hostage crisis from a thoroughly American perspective,
at the present moment when relations between the two countries are again strained, is not only
topical, but also no doubt politically efficacious. In this regard, it must be remembered that
Hollywood has produced other films on Iran which convey a similar message, and which, in a
certain sense, have prepared the way for Argo, as the latest avatar of a particularly
conservative point of view. Among others, these are Stephen Gaghan’s Syriana (2005), Cyrus
Nowrasteh’s The Stoning of Soraya M (2008), and, importantly, Alex Traiman’s Iranium
(2011). While the geopolitical thriller Syriana deals with the threats posed to America by the
covert dynamics of the Middle Eastern oil industry, and while The Stoning of Soraya M
concerns the cruel and fatal act of violence against a young Iranian woman, who refused to

between capitalist America and the communist Soviet Union. As Hirsh states, after the terrorist attacks “the
United States was faced with an irreconcilable enemy; the sort of black-and-white challenge that had supposedly
been transcended in the post-Cold War period, when the great clash of ideologies had ended,…now reappeared
with shocking suddenness” (Hirsh 2002: 18).
118
American “presidents have used a variety of innovative methods in an effort to control the information flow
out of the White House” (Kennedy-Shaffer 2006: 35). In this regard, the “media’s capacity to advance the
agenda for war” is often turned to (Bonn 2010: xi). See also New York Times journalist David Barstow’s article
“Inspector General Sees No Misdeeds in Pentagon’s Effort to Make Use of TV Analysts,” along with his “One
Man’s Military-Industrial-Media Complex,” which concerns the covert Pentagon campaign to use retired
military officers to reiterate political viewpoints about the ‘war on terror’ on television and radio. In relation to
“the reliance of the media on information provided by government, business, and ‘experts’ funded and approved
by these primary sources and agents of power” (Barstow 2008, Barstow 2009, Herman & Chomsky 1994: 2), see
also Chapter Three, section 3.2. The third filter of Herman and Chomksy’s propaganda model points to this
phenomenon, and Herman in particular advances a significant “degree of solidarity…among the government,
major media, and other corporate businesses” (Herman 2003: 2).
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divorce her husband when he wanted to marry a 14-year-old girl, Iranium is a documentary
film which explicitly thematises Iran’s apparent desire to produce nuclear weapons.
In a similar vein, Argo recounts the 1979 escape of six Americans, not only from the US
embassy in Tehran, after it is seized by the students, but also from Iran itself, despite the
efforts of the Komiteh to prevent them from doing so. On the one hand, this entails a rather
obvious act of displacement, namely the emphasis on a minor rescue success, in the interest of
eliding the fact that for 444 days the US proved incapable of securing the release of its
hostaged citizens. In addition to this failure, for that matter, the failed American military
rescue mission and the death toll it resulted in is also not referred to in the film. 119 On the
other hand, and of more concern, is the worrying possibility that such displacement might just
comprise an adumbration of a deep-seated American desire to win an unequivocal victory
over its old enemy, Iran. That is, Argo constitutes the most recent means of ideological
preparation for a real world military victory. After all, the film was rendered all the the more
politically conspicuous by the special attention it received. In this regard, it must be recalled
that it was none other than the First Lady Michelle Obama who announced Argo as the winner
of the Academy Award for Best Picture, and she moreover did so via live video feed from the
White House, “surrounded by US military men and women in their uniformed finest”
(Williams 2013).

b. The historical underpinnings of Ben Affleck’s Argo (2012)

Before proceeding with any analysis of Argo, however, it is important to consider the
historical events upon which it is based, which to a certain extent comprise a synopsis of the
narrative. Importantly, most Americans at the US embassy in Tehran worked in the chancery,
the Embassy’s main building, which was located on the south end of the compound, and were
– as a result – captured during the embassy takeover. Yet eleven American embassy staff
members worked in the consulate, “a separate facility fortunate to have a direct entrance to
the street.” As such, while the takeover of the embassy was in progress, the staff members in
the consulate were told to break into two groups and make their way to the British embassy.
While one group of six staff members was arrested during their attempt to escape, and they
were soon incarcerated with the other hostages, where they stayed in captivity until their
release fourteen months later (Lijek 2013: 1), the second group of five avoided capture. These
escapees were the consular officers Robert Anders, Mark J. Lijek and Joseph D. Stafford, as
well as the wives of Lijek and Stafford, namely Cora A. Lijek and Kathleen F. Stafford, both
119
See note 108.
 127

of whom worked as consular assistants. Henry L. Schatz, who worked as an agriculture

attaché, also avoided capture (Couch 2011: 351-352). At the time of the attack, Schatz was
“in an office building across the street from the US Embassy,” and he fled “to the Swedish
Embassy, where he hid for several days” (Killion 2004: 71). The other five initially tried to
get to the British Embassy, but as this building had also been taken over by the Iranians, they
stayed at a friend’s house until 8 November. At this point, Anders phoned John Sheardown, a
friend who happened to be “the top Canadian immigration official in Iran and second in
command at the embassy” (Killion 2004: 71), and he agreed to help them. Sheardown let the
Canadian Ambassador to Iran, Ken Taylor, know about the American refugees who, in turn,
notified the Canadian government. Ultimately, Prime Minister Joe Clark gave his consent to
help the Americans (Lijek 2013: 1). The Staffords moved in with Ken Taylor and his wife
Pat, while the others remained at the home of John Sheardown and his wife Zena (Killion
2004: 71). The split was “both to balance the housekeeping load and to make clear this was an
official act of Canadian government policy,” in case the secret came out, although soon,
Schatz joined them at Sheardown’s house as well (Lijek 2013: 1).
While the ‘house guests,’ as they were referred to, led reasonably lavish lives, as time
went on, “the threat of discovery” increased (Lijek 2013: 1, Bearman 2007).120 Anders and
Lijek met with Taylor and asked “that he relay to Washington [their] belief [that] it was time
to consider [their] situation separately from that of the hostages.” The Canadian government
agreed that it was time to help the ‘house guests’ escape Iran, and carried out a rescue
operation in close collaboration with the CIA. CIA agent Anthony (Tony) Mendez believed
that they should “devise a cover so exotic that no one would imagine it was being used for
operational purposes.” 121 In this regard, since “movie-making is widely known as an unusual
business,” Mendez was convinced that “most people would not be surprised that a Hollywood
production company would travel around the world looking for the right street or hillside to
shoot a particular scene” (Mendez 1999/2000). He thus “flew to Hollywood and used his
contacts there to create a production company, buy a script and create the illusion that the
makers of a film called Argo: A Cosmic Conflagration needed to scout locations in Iran”
(Lijek 2013: 1). The ‘house guests’ were to pose as the film crew, and leave the country

120
This was not only because the Iranians were reconstructing the shredded embassy documents, such that they
would “eventually figure out the true number of embassy staff, count heads, and come short,” but also because
some journalists had discovered that “there were Americans on the loose,” and there was the danger that they
would risk the escapees’ lives in order to publish the scoop (Bearman 2007, Killion 2013: 71).
121
Tony Mendez moved, in 1979, from his position of Chief, Office of Technical Services (OTS), Disguise
Section, to Chief, OTS, Authentication Branch. In this position, he had “operation responsibility worldwide for
disguise, false documentation, and forensic monitoring of questioned documents for counterterrorism or
counterintelligence purposes” (Mendez 1999). Consequently, “one of his duties became the ‘exfiltration’ of
Americans out of hostile countries” (Killion 2004: 71).
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through their by the CIA created aliases, using Canadian passports, “genuine documents that
the Canadian government had prepared for the Hollywood aliases devised by the CIA”
(Bearman 2007).122 On 28 January 1980, the five, together with Mendez and his companion,
Julio, left for the airport. However, they got through the check-in without any problems
whatsoever, and after a short delay – due to a mechanical problem on their plane – they were
off (Bearman 2007). In fact, the elaborate cover story that Mendez had developed using the
fake film company was never used, because the Americans encountered absolutely no
opposition, on account of their Canadian passports (Phillips 1998: 35).

c. Formal and thematic features of Ben Affleck’s Argo (2012)

To understand just how far Affleck’s film Argo deviates from the above historical reality, and
correlatively just how closely it approximates those representations of the US mass media that
continue to be informed by the anti-Islamic news filter of Herman and Chomksy’s propaganda
model, it is helpful to approach the narrative of Argo through certain of its formal and
thematic features. In this regard, in what follows, three key formal features will be focused
upon, namely the opening use of storyboards (which approximate the images of a graphic
novel), the manner in which the audience is positioned ideologically through an array of
camera angles during the course of the film, and the effect on the audience of the denouement
montage. After this, the progressive thematisation throughout the narrative of Argo, of the
ostensible ‘madness’ of the Iranian revolutionaries in particular, and the Iranian people in
general, will be explored, along with the manner in which this entails the use of various
tropes, drawn from both original American news coverage of the hostage crisis, and from the
Hollywood horror genre.
To begin with, Affleck’s Argo commences with a very rushed summary of the history of
Iran. That is, because of the extremely short duration of this segment in relation to the total
length of the film of two hours, it follows from a simple mathematical assessment that the
film producers chose to spend less than two per cent of the narrative on the history of Iran,
and on the background events which precipitated the hostage crisis. And the political
significance of such extreme laconism is compounded by the fact that the history narrated in
this time encompasses several centuries. Accordingly, it is virtually impossible to provide the
audience in such a short time with sufficient information on the hostage crisis to enable them

122
Cora Lijek was to pose as the writer, Mark Lijek as the transportation coordinator, Kathy Stafford as the set
designer, Joe Stafford as the associate producer, Anders as the director, and Schatz as the cameraman. Mendez
himself would pretend to be the production manager.
 129

to consider the narrative in a critical light. And in addition to the insignificant amount of time
spent on the background to the crisis, the actual narrative itself is presented in a problematic
manner as well. That is, the opening summary of Argo is recounted by a voice-over and
accompanied by storyboards, which strongly resemble the images of a graphic novel.
Arguably, the use of such a format involves important implications for both the nature of the
‘truth,’ and the status of the audiences.
On the one hand, by presenting Persian history in this way, it is reduced from a complex
political phenomenon to a simplistic backdrop for a tale of American heroics. This is not least
because the graphic novel genre often employs basic stereotypes and tropes, in which human
emotions and demeanours are exaggerated. And through representing people and events in a
powerfully Manichean way (the good versus evil trope), a story can be told in a way that
makes it quickly and easily digestible. Obviously, when a narrative of extreme political
complexity – which is moreover not just historical in orientation but also deeply relevant to
the contemporary era – is simplified, such exercises in laconism become politically very
problematic. Yet such problems are glossed over in the opening of Argo, in which it is
moreover intimated that the narrative is factual. The background story ends by showing angry
Iranian protestors, while the popular – yet deceptive – Hollywood phrase “based on a true
story” appears on the screen. This simple sentence arguably promises a significant degree of
realism; it reminds the audience of the underlying reality of what they are about to see, and
displaces the fact that the film is produced to entertain, and perhaps to influence opinion
accordingly. To be sure, such a qualifying phrase can be understood as exempting the film
from accusations of propaganda, because it is not declared that the narrative is the truth. But
the extent of such exemption remains an open question. This is because the comic strip
images, mixed with ‘real’ footage and acontextualised photographic images, strongly
resemble the narrative admixture Americans received through the US media, during the
hostage situation four decades earlier.123

123
For example, the audience is told that the Shah’s wife, Queen Farah, “was rumoured to bath in milk.” Indeed,
this was a rumour at the time, yet to date no academic source has actually supported this claim. However, as in
the film this statement is accompanied with images of a naked woman walking into a bath filled with milk, the
implication is that this was her habitual practice. In addition, the voice-over maintains that “the Shah had his
lunches flown in by Concord from Paris.” Although, during the 2500 th anniversary of the Peacock Throne
celebration, the Shah did fly in chefs from Paris to cook the food provided to his guests, even for him to have his
lunches flown in – especially by Concorde, the most expensive aeroplane at the time – would have been
impossible to sustain. Moreover, the United States is portrayed as reasonable and kind to the Shah, by granting
him asylum, although the fact that the US was not very welcoming is not referred to. Similarly, while the video
images of the Shah and his wife walking down the steps of an aeroplane are actually from their state visit to
Prague, the picture of President Carter and the Shah shaking hands, which is shown directly afterwards, actually
stems from Carter’s visit to Tehran in December 1977. Significantly, it was taken on the night that the US
President proposed a toast to the Shah and complimented him for responsibly guarding his “island of stability”
(Graetz 2011: 142). Images of the Shah’s stay in the United States are not widely available, because the US
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On the other hand, apart from its blurring of fact and fiction in a playful way (which
nevertheless has the potential to result in serious political effects, insofar as the cinematic
simplification of the historical crisis is granted credence by audiences), the use of such a
comic strip format also has an important implication for the status of the film’s audiences.
That is, despite the fact that the target audience of the film ranges from young adults to
mature viewers, all are effectively treated like children through the use of such a format,
insofar as the voice-over and sketches recall a classic bedtime story. In fact, this point is
powerfully underscored at the end of the film, when the character of Tony Mendez is seen
kissing his sleeping son’s head, and the camera pans to the left to show one of the storyboards
which is on display, next to his son’s collection of Star Wars characters. 124 In this regard, the
parallel between audiences of the film, and children who allow their critical faculties to be
lulled to sleep through immersion within a make-believe world, is deeply troubling – not least
because the world in question is one of pressing historical problems, not fantasy.
The second key formal feature of Argo is that of its camera angles, and the resultant
ideological positioning of the spectator which occurs through them. In their “Colonialism,
Racism, and Representation,” Robert Stam and Louise Spence deal in detail with the issue of
‘spectator positioning,’ also referred to as ‘political positioning.’ According to them, what this
entails is the use of camera angles in films in order to surreptitiously manipulate the audience
to sympathise with one group or party, and to be against another. In many of the classic
‘Western’ films, they maintain, “the viewer is forced behind the barrel of a repeating rifle and
it is from that position, through its gun sights, that he…receives a picture history of western
colonialism and imperialism” (Stam & Spence 1999: 243). One in which the greater ethical
issues at stake are dissolved or eclipsed, through a localised implicit sympathy with the
coloniser/imperialist. Sympathy which is moreover engendered through a process of
inadvertent identification, a seeing of the world through the eyes of the coloniser/imperialist,
which is difficult to resist or reject because it is ‘naturally’ fallen into, through the process of
viewing the film and making sense of its narrative.125
By way of elaboration, Stam and Spence use this theoretical framework to analyse
certain scenes from Andrew V. McLaglen’s adventure film The Wild Geese (1978), in which
“the imagery of encirclement is used against black Africans,” and to contrast it with aspects of

government shunned him from the press, not wanting to put too much emphasis on his presence there, and not
wanting to acknowledge any political ties between him and American politicians – ties which, as already
discussed, were quite significant.
124
Interestingly, Mendez is shown holding his sleeping son in a manner almost identical to one of the characters
on the storyboard from the fictional film Argo, who holds a young boy, while flying a space craft.
125
See also Engelhardt,T. 1971. Ambush at Kamakazi Pass. Bulletin of Concerned Asian Scholars 3(1), pp. 64-
84.
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Gille Pontecorvo’s Battle of Algiers (1966), which actually succeeds in “invert[ing] this
imagery of encirclement,” via creative use of “the identificatory mechanisms of cinema on
behalf of the colonised rather than the coloniser.” That is, on the one hand, in The Wild Geese,
the spectator is forced to take on the role of the white mercenaries, as the camera angle shows
their point-of-view as they shoot and kill hundreds of black Africans. In short, this kind of
spectator positioning implies that it is “White Europe’s right to determine Africa’s political
destiny.” On the other hand, although the same method is used in Battle of Algiers, it is done
to put emphasis on the opposite perspective, namely that of the Algerians who are struggling
for independence. That is, the film depicts the battle of the guerrilla fighters against the
French government during the Algerian War, most powerfully through the situation of the
camera within the Algerians’ homes, which the French soldiers break into, in the role of
aggressors (Stam & Spence 1999: 243, 244).126
In Argo, spectator positioning also plays a very important role. Admittedly, Ben Affleck
maintained that, he sought to “humanize…the Iranian people as victims” through his film and
to “contextualise the movie so people understood we weren’t starting with bearded lunatics
who were pulling bricks off buildings for no reason” (Affleck as quoted in Steadman 2012).
However, his contentions notwithstanding, it has been pointed out that “nothing that follows
comes close” to achieving this end, as “the rest of the movie actually undoes…this” noble
intention (Lee 2012). That is, Affleck actually makes significant use of political or ideological
positioning, in order to encourage the audience to take on a pro-American and contra-Iranian
standpoint. Arguably, the following examples of ideological positioning that occur through
the camera angles of Argo, show how already from the beginning of the film, the viewer is
manipulated into taking a perspective against the Iranians.
Firstly, following the brief and biased background story told through the comic strip
storyboards discussed earlier – which play a crucial role insofar as they code the Iranians as
violent, unpredictable, and given to excessive displays of incomprehensible emotionality – the

126
The theoretical framework concerning political positioning, as referred to by Tom Engelhardt, and Stam and
Spence, has also been extended by feminist film theorists. In this regard, the film technique of suture is
particularly important. Within film theory the term is used “to describe the methods by which viewers are
absorbed into the narrative and encouraged to identify with characters.” Especially through the technique of
shot/reverse-shot, viewers are “urged to identify with the gaze of the fictional character” (Chaudhuri 2006: 49),
rather than attempting to include themselves in the narrative. The practice of suture and ideological positioning
have particularly been criticised by feminist film theorists, such as Laura Mulvey, who disapprove of its use as a
tool of manipulation in presenting women as sexual objects. Mulvey, along with Kaja Silverman and others,
protest against the fact that “camera positioning and editing not only draw the spectator into the space of the
film,” but also “position the spectator in relation to the character in the narrative.” To the feminist film theorist
this is particularly problematic, because it is employed “to the advantage of a patriarchal hegemony,” effectively
“depicting a patriarchal status quo as natural and real” (Cosslett et al. 1996: 119). And this has a bearing on
Argo, to the extent that the film communicates the superiority of ‘masculine’ America, over “a feminised Orient”
(Fechter 2007: 39).
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audience is progressively lowered down, from out of such transcendent historical abstraction,
into the imminent reality of revolution. That is, a burning American flag is shown in close up,
before the camera moves up and away from the flag, at which point it becomes clear that the
flag is held by an Iranian revolutionary standing on a balcony. A revolutionary who is waving
the flag above a crowd of hundreds of Iranian demonstrators. Although initially this entails a
high-angle shot, which shows the action from above the revolutionary on the balcony, looking
down, the viewer becomes aware of the magnitude and violent chaos of the demonstration.
Only from above can the large number of demonstrators be appreciated. Yet the audience is
not allowed to remain at this unnerving but nevertheless safe distance. This is because the
next camera angle used is an eye-level shot, which violently thrusts the audience into the
action, forcing them to stand in and amongst the protesters. The anger in the faces of the
Iranians now becomes clearly visible, and the viewer is forced through a series of lower-angle
shots into a vulnerable position, while rapid camera movements from the one demonstrator to
the other add to the discomfort and incomprehension of the viewer. This uneasiness is further
increased by the related images: banners with hateful anti-American messages, images of a
frowning Ayatollah Khomeini, and a brief scene in which a man stabs an effigy of the Shah,
encouraged by the shouts and chants of those around him. As such, when the camera finally
moves away from the action, zooming out and taking a high-angle position yet again – which
for a second time reveals the enormity of the demonstration – the audience experiences it as a
welcome reprieve. At this point, a panning shot to the left shows the American embassy, with
its open (and by comparison, tranquil) parking area, and the regular official business being
conducted in its offices emerges as a highly desirable refuge, in contrast to the stormy ocean
of anger and chaos outside the embassy walls.
The focus then switches to inside the embassy building, and Deputy Political Officer Ann
Swift is shown looking outside towards the demonstration. The camera then assumes her
point-of-view and the audience sees the protestors through her eyes. Although still far away
and prevented from entry by the walls and fence around the embassy grounds, their chants can
be heard in the background, and their aggressive gestures can be seen. The effect of this
sequence, even though it deviates from the more formulaic approach seen in The Wild Geese,
by initially placing the viewer amongst the Iranian demonstrators, in no way approximates the
sympathetic approach found in Battle of Algiers. That is, rather than allowing the audience to
progressively identify with the Iranian demonstrators, the audience is thrust awkwardly into
their midst, in a way that is deeply disconcerting, before being returned to the relative safety
of the embassy, and the perspectives of its staff. Through this process, the film highlights, on
the one hand, the aggression and chaos of the Iranian protest, and on the other hand, it
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encourages the audience to take on an anti-Iranian perspective, as the viewer is made to feel
threatened by the demonstrators, and correlatively more comfortable with assuming the point-
of-view of the Americans.
Arguably, the related sense of identification with the Americans is further endorsed when
the camera looks over the shoulders of the security guards as the surveillance monitors cut out
one by one, after showing the last images of the protestors’ entry into the compound. A
similar camera angle is employed when the security guards load their weapons and fire tear
gas towards the demonstrators. At this point, the viewer is, in effect, “forced behind the barrel
of a repeating rifle” in a manner akin to the cinematic technique described by Stam and
Spence (Stam & Spence 1999: 244).
While examples of such camera angles and related ideological positioning continue
throughout the film, in certain respects their power to influence the audience is secondary to
that of the montage that occurs in the denouement. This third formal feature, while it draws on
such camera techniques, also goes beyond them, insofar as the excitation it elicits from
audiences has the potential to engender their identification with the main characters in even
more pronounced ways. As Mark Joyce points out, not only has “the montage
technique…been widely acknowledged as a powerful means of expression,” but also, “to
many cinema theorists[,] montage is the essence of cinema” (Nelmes 2007: 392). In this
regard, D.W. Griffith’s innovative film technique of “cross-cutting to create suspense between
the pursuer and pursued,” has since been regularly copied, because it still makes a “powerful
psychological impact” on viewers when used in a film, despite the monotonously formulaic
process involved (O’Steen 2009: 51). This formula also tends to work best when used in
relation to a narrative which involves the hero or heroine struggling to defeat or escape a
villain or a threat, or to save a vulnerable third party, which they traditionally succeed in
doing, although just in the nick of time (Fourie 2007: 249). In the case of cross-cutting, or fast
cutting montage, the difficulty of resisting identification with the protagonist or related group
is immense, because of the level of intensity to which the narrative is taken at such moments.
Consequently, even if the identification precipitated by the camera angles, discussed above,
has been resisted,127 in many cases even critical audiences find themselves inclined – when
faced with such montage – to momentarily relinquish their (political) reservations and side
with the protagonists Indeed, in his film review of Argo, Andrew Schenker claims that the
tension during the airport climax is “aided by a sustained series of cross-cutting that would

127
The idea that individuals in the audience read and interpret media texts differently was pioneered by Stuart
Hall, who argued for three kinds of reading: dominant, negotiated and oppositional reading. See also Hall, S.
1980. “Encoding/Decoding” in Hall, S., Hobson, D., Lowe, A., and Willis, P. Culture, Media Language.
London: Hutchinson.
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make D.W. Griffith proud” (Schenker 2012), and goes on to suggest that “no one would deny
the thrill of seeing the Americans affect their daring escape” [my italics] (Schenker 2012).
Within the narrative of Argo, the above occurs when the Americans – disguised as
Canadian filmmakers – endeavour to leave Iran. At first, the revolutionary guards are just
suspicious of the ‘Canadian’ travellers, but soon one of them receives a phone call with the
news that the ‘filmmakers’ are in fact the American escapees the Komiteh has been looking
for. While the Americans nervously proceed through the different checkpoints at the airport,
climb onto the bus that transports them across the runway, and then take their seats on the
aeroplane, the revolutionary guard who has received the news, struggles through the crowds at
the airport to warn the other guards to stop the travellers. In this regard, the film cuts back and
forth between the Americans and the Iranian guards, raising the narrative tension and driving
the viewer onto the edge of their seat, in a process compounded by the addition of suspenseful
music and the sound of the guards’ shouts and the clatter of their boots. The cuts from the
aeroplane to the guards running, and then later to their motorised pursuit of the aeroplane as it
struggles to get airborne, all increase the tension exponentially. Until, that is, the Americans’
flight succeeds in taking off – just in the nick of time – and they settle back to enjoy alcoholic
beverages, which are served after they have left Iranian airspace. In this way, Argo functions
at a formal level as propaganda. This is not only because, through the excitement elicited by
the above denouement montage, the viewer gets caught up in the action and follows the story
from the point of view of the protagonists. In addition, it is also because, on account of such
montage, they follow the narrative so closely that they ignore both the fact that no such chase
ever occurred historically (Bearman 2007), and the historical evidence that indicates how
American interference in Iranian affairs – facilitated by figures such as the protagonists – was
anything but benign.
However, the adoption of any such critical, oppositional, pro-Iranian stance towards the
narrative is further problematised by the way in which, throughout Argo, the ostensible
‘madness’ of the Iranians persists as a salient theme. Indeed, thematically speaking, different
dimensions of such ‘madness’ are presented in a progressively gradated manner.
To begin with, while the historical inaccuracies and problematically laconic presentation
of Iranian history through the storyboards – with which the film commences – have already
been discussed, it should also be noted that these portray the Iranian population as an
enduringly aggressive people. That is, the storyboards start with images of angry and clearly
violent Persians. The Persians wield swords, fight tenaciously, and two stabbings, in which
spears are mercilessly pierced through their opponents’ chests, receive focus. Similarly, in the
background, massive dark clouds of smoke are visible, implying the destruction that the
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Persians caused. And the last storyboard referring to the Persian empire involves a close-up of
a cruel and sinister expression on the Shah’s face.
Next, when referring to the Shah’s “campaign to westernize Iran,” the images are of
young, beautiful women, none of whom are veiled, implying that their Westernisation meant
that they needed to give up the more conservative aspects of their faith. Yet, importantly,
from their smiles they appear happy to be Westernised. Consequently, the next images
comprise a significant indictment of the “mostly traditional Shi’ite population,” who, the
audience is told, were “enraged” as a result of the Shah’s Westernisation policies. Thus, they
are made to appear highly unreasonable and backward in terms of their attitude. Their
resultant demonstrations thereby emerge as irrational and aggressive responses to the
progressive changes or modernisation. This idea is then confirmed when the overthrow of the
Shah and the return of the Ayatollah is said to have “descended into score-settling, death
squads and chaos.” Correlatively, the images of the Ayatollah do not paint a happy picture
either: caricatured as wearing a permanent frown and sneer – in a manner akin to villains of
the comic genre – his representations confirm the image the American audience (and for that
matter, the global Western audience) received through the US mass media. Coded in this way,
the subsequent increasing noise of the jubilant crowd is experienced by the audience as
unnerving, rather than comforting; an experience which is underscored by the ensuing sound
of gun shots. Demonstrators are also shown setting effigies alight. As such, in addition to the
troubling penchant for opulence and excess, which the storyboards – as discussed earlier –
advanced as characteristic of the Shah and his retinue, the overwhelming sense from the
above is that of the Iranians’ inherent, emotive and irrational violence. A violence which
brews constantly beneath any apparent surface of Iranian stability, and which boils over at the
slightest provocation. And it is into this cauldron that the audience is then plunged, through
the following ‘real’ footage of the narrative.
The discomfort of this immersion, as already indicated, is partly achieved through
contrasting the Americans inside the embassy with the Iranians outside the embassy. While
the Americans are shown to be calm, composed, yet fearful, the Iranians are presented as
aggressive, rough and unpredictable. Also the voices of the Americans in the embassy –
which are demure and professional – contrast sharply with the irate chants of the Iranians
outside the embassy walls, just before the embassy takeover occurs. Yet, this juxtaposition
does not simply continue the theme of Iranian ‘irrationality,’ which was broached through the
storyboards, but also extends this violent unreason both into the present era, and to figures
representative of Western democracy – namely the embassy staff.
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And while at a formal level, the camera angles – discussed earlier – position the audience
so that they identify with the plight of the American staff, the distress felt by the Americans
inside the embassy is legitimated thematically in the next instance when the impossibility of
reasoning discursively with the demonstrators is revealed. That is, on the basis of a belief in
their shared rationality, embassy security chief Al Golacinski (Bill Tangradi) goes outside to
try to reason with them, but he is immediately forced to the ground, has his arms bound
behind him and his eyes blindfolded, and then, with a gun pushing into his neck, he is thrown
against the embassy door, until he begs his colleagues inside to let the demonstrators in.
When the door is opened as a result of his pleas, a whole group of protestors push in, and the
reason for Golacinski’s failure to calm them down is made clear – one protestor holds up an
image of the Ayatollah Khomeini, a symbol of extreme religious fundamentalism that
operates on deeply emotive and violent principles, which are anathema to those of the
‘civilised’ Western world.
Even at this point, the above juxtaposition continues, insofar as a palpable contrast exists
between the shouting and jostling of the ‘unruly’ protestors, and the ordered actions of the
embassy employees, who until the last moment work in a desperate but focussed way, to try
to ensure that all the necessary documents are shredded. Interestingly, in contrast to the
veneration of the image of Khomeini on the part of the above protestors, one protestor
discovers an analogous image in the embassy, which the American staff members have used
as a dartboard. And although his look of disbelief at discovering such sacrilege is clear, so is
the implication of the scene: the Americans’ reasonableness and efficiency is afforded by the
critical distance they adopt towards any hallowed figure, which entails a reflexivity the
Iranians have yet to achieve.
The lack of such critical distance, in turn, is later represented as having precipitated a
pervasive inhumanity throughout the country, not only towards foreigners, but even towards
many Iranians themselves. This much is evinced upon Mendez’s (Ben Affleck’s) entry into
Iran, when some commotion arises at the airport; a man is handled aggressively while his wife
starts shouting, and the calamity rapidly escalates out of all proportion. Although the reason
for the commotion is not made clear, it can be argued that the film producers attempted to
emphasise the danger Mendez was putting himself in, by entering Iran under the Komiteh.
But what is also interesting about this scene is that, while the initial violence stems from the
Komiteh officials, the victimised couple – unlike the restrained American staff at the embassy
who tried to reason with the demonstrators – respond immediately with violent emotionality.
As such, they emerge as victims not only of the Komiteh’s malevolence, but also of their own
inability to exercise restraint and work deliberatively towards a solution. In this way the
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danger facing Mendez is compounded, as it stems not only from fundamentalist authorities,
but also from the unpredictability of any possible Iranian allies.
Arguably, such characterisation of the Iranians is taken even further during the scene in
which the American escapees – disguised as Canadian filmmakers – travel by van to
ostensibly investigate a location for the shooting of their ‘film’ Argo. The van they are
travelling in is enclosed by two demonstrations and so they have no choice but to drive
through the angry crowd. And when the latter realise that the van contains non-Iranians, they
begin to swing their fists and bang with their palms on the vehicle. Yet their groaning and
gestures differ markedly from the goal-directed activities of the demonstrators at the embassy,
and in many ways approximate the mindless, rhythmic swaying of zombies, borrowed from
the infamous Hollywood horror genre.128 Indeed, Lee concurs in a Slate film review, stating
that Argo’s producers are guilty of “recasting the oppressed Iranians as a raging, zombie-like
horde” (Lee 2012), although the political effects of using such codes from horror films to
portray the Iranians is not elaborated upon significantly in his review. Moreover, although the
protagonists narrowly escape the above threat, once in the bazaar it emerges with clarity that
such a threat was not simply the idiosyncratic product of an overpowering ‘crowd’ mentality.
On the contrary, such ‘zombieism,’ it is intimated, comprises a collective expression of
individual tendencies that characterise the population, and which can be triggered by the
slightest provocation, no matter how tangential or unrelated the inadvertent ‘offence’ may be.
That is, at one point, an old Iranian man suddenly becomes very aggressive after one of the
escapees (Kerry Bishé) takes a photograph of his shop. While her character of Kathy is
portrayed as very reasonable in this scene, suggesting even that that he “can have the picture
if [he] want[s] it,” the man’s anger cannot be abated. He throws the photograph on the ground
and his shouting increases. Eventually, it emerges that the source of his anger derives from the
fact that “the Shah killed his son with an American gun,” to which the escapees respond by
looking at his tirade with incomprehension. Incomprehension which the audience is meant to
share, not only because the camera angles predispose them to identify with the Americans, but
also because the irrational connections made by the old man (along with the danger they
threaten), make identification with the Iranians difficult, on account of the radically different
logic which seems to inform their thought.
And this underlying threat, brewing just below the surface of any apparent quietude on
the part of the Iranians, is thematised again, later, when the housekeeper of the Canadian
ambassador, Sahar (Sheila Vand), is being questioned by a revolutionary official, Ali Khalkali

128
See also George A. Romero’s Dawn of the Dead (1978), as well as its remake, that is, Zack Snyder’s Dawn of
the Dead (2004).
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(Ali Saam). Once again the central theme of madness is highlighted, because although
Khalkali appears to be polite and calm, Sahar’s terror can be felt by the audience, as she
knows that beneath Khalkali’s seemingly gentle demeanour, there lurks a ruthlessness ready
to erupt at the first opportunity. Indeed, while the scene at the bazaar, discussed earlier, drew
on tropes from zombie films to collectively characterise the Iranian people, the above scene
involving Khalkali and Sahar is also arguably informed by elements from the Hollywood
horror genre, namely those that relate to slasher/serial killer films. That is, in many respects,
Khalkali comprises a Middle Eastern analogue of a Norman Bates or Hannibal Lecter.129
This characterisation of an Iranian official is also an important precursor to the final, all-
important, suspenseful climax, in which the escapees are confronted by a Komiteh guard,
whose intelligence (and potential for violence) matches that of Khalkali, but who – despite
being deeply suspicious of the Canadian film crew – is prevented from acting because their
documents and story seem in order.

4.4 Conclusion

Admittedly, the nail-biting chase down the runway – which ensues when the Komiteh guard
does discover their identity – is a true ‘Hollywood-esque’ addition to the real story. That is,
the close call and consummate use of accelerated montage, as discussed earlier, was added to
capture the audience’s attention during the escape, for the ideological reasons already
elaborated upon. But what has not been mentioned is the effect of characterising the Komiteh
guard in the above way, against the backdrop of the figure of Khalkali. That is, while the
Americans’ aeroplane succeeds in taking off, and while they celebrate their escape over
cocktails, the audience knows all too well that the guard remains on the runway, looking up

129
The character of Norman Bates, played by Anthony Perkins in Alfred Hitchcock’s Psycho (1960), is
portrayed in a way to make him ‘likeable’ for the viewer, until the very end of the film when, in an unexpected
plot twist it is revealed that he has a multiple personality disorder, and has murdered his mother and her lover, as
well as a female visitor to his hotel. A move which “violate[s] the perceived promise of safety,” which his
character initially seems to offer (Phillips 2005: 71, 125). The serial killer Hannibal Lecter was played by Brian
Cox in Michael Mann’s Manhunter (1986), Anthony Hopkins in Jonathan Demme’s The Silence of the Lambs
(1991), Ridley Scott’s Hannibal (2001) and Brett Ratner’s Red Dragon (2002), and Aaron Thomas in Peter
Webber’s Hannibal Rising (2007). Although a serial killer, the character of Hannibal Lecter, created by Thomas
Harris in his thriller novels, is “quite sophisticated and witty” (Sayre & King 2010: 95). Especially in Scott’s
Hannibal, Lecter was turned “into a kind of monstrous figure of fun” until he became “the same kind of
ubiquitous cultural monster that Freddy Krueger had been at the end of the 1980s” (Phillips 2005: 161).
Although, on the one hand, Lecter is a “menacing and dangerous” villain, on the other hand, he does not seem to
fit the inhumane, cruel acts he is infamous for, as he “draws detailed European vistas [and] plays classical
music.” Because of the way he is characterised, especially in The Silence of the Lambs, although the audience is
aware of his status as a serial killer, he is simultaneously and unexpectedly liked by the viewer, and deeply
feared for what he is capable of (Hirschberg 2009: 94, 95).
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with an undying hatred at his lost prey. Looking up and waiting – with the reptilian patience
of the Hollywood psychopaths his character draws upon – for an opportunity to take revenge.
And while the reality of this threat of revenge was already evoked through the familiar
phrase ‘based on a true story,’ at the start of the film, the movie ends with a similar message.
This is communicated when, during the film credits, the ‘real’ pictures of the Iranian hostage
crisis are accompanied by screenshots from the film, in a process of juxtaposition that
intimates the historical accuracy of the film. The first few images show John Chambers – the
Hollywood make-up artist – next to an image of the actor John Goodman who plays him in
the film. And this is followed by screenshots of the actors who played the house guests next to
images of the original visa photographs of the escapees, emphasising their physical
resemblance. In short, “when the end credits juxtapose photos of the actual Canadian caper
principals with stills from the movie, it’s hard to tell which is which” (Stein 2012). Next in
the line of physical comparisons are Canadian Ambassador Ken Taylor and his wife Patricia,
White House Chief of Staff Hamilton Jordan, and spokesperson Massoumeh Ebtekar.
However, at this point, images of the actual Iranian hostage crisis are compared with images
from the movie, starting with an Iranian man holding a burning American flag, the first
Iranians climbing over the gate towards the American embassy, the reassembled shreds of
classified documents, a derelict Hollywood sign, a woman in a burka sitting on a tank while
holding a machine gun, and finally, a murdered Iranian man dangling from a crane – one of
the first images the character Mendez saw when he arrived in Iran. These last few images are
particularly important, not only because they continue the earlier emphasis on the historical
accuracy of the film, but also because they effectively rise to the level of a historical fact, the
idea of the ‘mad’ emotionality and violent irrationality of the Iranians. A madness which the
images (along with the preceding narrative) bear testimony to, and which is advanced as a
continuing threat to the peace and security of the United States. Through this process, Argo,
although ostensibly made for the purposes of entertainment, also arguably obfuscates a highly
sensitive and complex geo-political situation. And as will be discussed in the next concluding
chapter, it does so at a deeply problematic time in world history.
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Chapter Five: Conclusion – The framing of Iran as a nuclear

threat by the American mass media

5.1 Introduction

Perhaps the most unfortunate effect of the stereotypes and tropes of the anti-Islamic inflected
fifth news filter, discussed in the previous chapters, is the way they eclipse how the majority
of Iran’s development has taken place in its recent post-revolution history. By comparing
Iran’s census of 1976 with the census of 1996, Adelkhah illustrates its growth over the course
of twenty years. While in 1976, Iran counted 33.7 million people, twenty years later the
Iranian population had reached 60 million. Yet, while the country’s inhabitants had nearly
doubled, “the number of people receiving schooling” also rose significantly, “from 59
percent…to 85 percent for men and from 28 percent to 74 percent for women” (Adelkhah
1999: 106). And between then and now, the quality of life has continued to improve. Indeed,
the 2013 United Nations Human Development Report shows that Iran’s current 65 million
inhabitants enjoy a high quality of life, as it is quantified by the Human Development Index
(HDI) in the high-level human development category and rates 76th of all countries in the
world (Human Development Report 2013: 143).
Indeed, currently, Iran’s capital Tehran, a megalopolis with about 10 million inhabitants,
is “the country’s largest city and the second most populous city in the Middle East after
Cairo” (Venter 2005: 42). Yet it is thoroughly infused with “the feel of a modern city,”
especially since the majority of the construction development occurred during the last few
decades, with the consequence that “most architecture is new, with many 10- to 18-story
buildings,” of which the most “significant recent building additions” are “a stadium capable
of holding 100,000 people,” as well as “a new international airport” (Lorentz 2007: 329). And
while the northern part of Tehran has been described as epitomising modern, upmarket living,
with its plethora of “office buildings, theatres, restaurants, hotels, and shopping centres,” the
southern part, “filled with old bazaars and historic buildings” is increasingly being identified
as a space worth preserving; something only possible when a city has modernised so much
that it finds itself looking back at its own past with nostalgia (Fast 2010: 20).
Considered in this light, it becomes evident that the Middle Eastern nation – although it
rejected the modernisation trajectory prescribed by the likes of Daniel Lerner and others, and
temporarily implemented by Shah Pahlavi – has nevertheless been capable of developing and
modernising in its own way, within the parameters of its domestic constraints, and in relation
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to its nationalist agenda. That is, all of the above is the product of over a quarter of a century
of Iranian modernisation, understood in terms of national development, rather than the
exploitative modernisation processes expounded by Lerner and those who succeeded him.
Arguably, Iran’s recent interest in nuclear power must be seen as part of this modernisation
process, not as a subterfuge behind which lurks the demons conjured up by the American
mass media. Indeed, the Iranian “pursuit of acquiring a mastery of nuclear technology has
become a symbol of national self-determination, independence, and pride” (Soofi &
Ghazinoory 2013: 12). And the progress made by Iran, despite the severe international
sanctions imposed on the country in recent years, arguably evinces its people’s determination
to modernise further, and to take their place alongside – not against – the developed countries
of the international community. In this regard, it is helpful to briefly consider the history of
Iran’s nuclear programme.

5.2 A brief history of Iran’s nuclear programme

a. The 1950s and 1960s – US collaboration with the Shah

As Kibaroglu points out, “Iran’s acquaintance with nuclear science and technology goes back
to the years when the US increased its assistance to Iran in the economic, military and
technical fields,” that is, during the post-World War II era (Kibaroglu 2006: 213). Indeed,
“many believe that Iran’s nuclear ambitions [a]re the product of… its close alliance with the
United States” during this period, because the post-World War II relationship between the two
countries paved the way for Iran “to initiate its nuclear research” (Cordesman & Al-Rodhan
2006: 100).
Initial US desire to collaborate with Iran on such a project was, of course, not a
magnanimous gesture, but rather a strategy necessitated by the circumstances of the Cold
War. This is evinced by then-President Dwight D. Eisenhower’s address to the United
Nations General Assembly in December 1953, in which he acknowledged that the US no
longer held “a monopoly of atomic power,” because Great Britain and Canada also had the
knowledge to build nuclear weapons, and because the Soviet Union had recently gained an
analogous capacity. As a consequence of the latter, Eisenhower stressed the need for “a new
climate of mutually peaceful confidence” in the world, and proposed the use of atomic energy
for “peaceful power.” In terms of this he suggested that all countries with atomic knowledge
“begin…to make joint contributions from their stockpiles of normal uranium and fissionable
materials to an International Atomic Energy Agency,” which would “be set up under the aegis
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of the United Nations” (Eisenhower 1953). There was significant consensus concerning this
after Eisenhower’s address, and while the IAEA Statute was signed by 81 countries in
October 1956, the IAEA was itself established as an autonomous organisation in July 1957
(Fischer 1997: 49).130
On account of the positive US-Iran relations during the 1950s, the two nations signed an
“Agreement for Cooperation…Concerning Civil Uses of Atomic Energy,” on 5 March 1957,
in which the terms of their collaboration were clearly laid out. That is, while Iran professed its
desire “to pursue a research and development programme looking toward the realization of
the peaceful and humanitarian uses of atomic energy,” the United States stated its willingness
“to assist…Iran in such a programme,” by exchanging information and leasing uranium
(Agreement 1957). Following this, in 1959, Shah Mohammad Reza Pahlavi bought a 5-mega-
watt-thermal (MWt) research reactor from the United States, and in addition ordered “the
development of a nuclear research centre at Tehran University” (Ganguly & Kapur 2009:
216), which was completed in 1967. In November of that same year, the reactor became
operational. Importantly, this landmark event was only made possible through the “93 per
cent enriched uranium supplied by the United States” (Cordesman & Al-Rodhan 2006: 101).
Indeed, most of the “components, facilities, and equipment” of the Tehran Nuclear Research
Centre (TNRC) at Tehran University were “sold to the Shah by US companies with the
approval of the administrations of presidents John F. Kennedy and Lyndon B. Johnson”
(Melman & Javedanfar 2007: 84).
Thus, in many respects, the American modernisation theory, initiated by Daniel Lerner
and other pro-modernisation theorists,131 and informed by a primarily commercial orientation
that involved US corporations as the primary beneficiaries, was realised in a particularly
profitable way at this stage. In turn, the knock-on effect of such US support of the Shah was
the inflection of the Shah’s ideas for Iran’s advancement. That is, the Shah began to
concentrate persistently on the development of his country’s nuclear capacity, since he
intuited “that keeping up with nuclear energy was a key element of the process of
modernisation,” as outlined by the US (Orr 2010: 23). Yet it must be reiterated that Iran’s
nuclear project was for peaceful means only, as evinced by its signing of the Treaty on the
Non-Proliferation of Nuclear Weapons (NPT) in July 1968, “in an effort to speed up its
negotiations for nuclear deals with the United States.” The Treaty was also ratified by Iran in
1970. In the agreement, it is unequivocally stated that those nations which possess nuclear

130
The International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) is still active today and promotes nuclear development for
peaceful purposes, while it inhibits the production of nuclear weapons.
131
See Chapter One.
 143

weapons would “not transfer weapons or knowledge about how to build them to their friends
and allies,” while non-nuclear nations were obliged to agree “not to seek nuclear weapons,”
and to allow IAEA inspectors to monitor “their peaceful nuclear research and energy
facilities.” And Iran’s willingness to abide by all these conditions guaranteed it the security of
“the full benefits of peaceful nuclear energy production” (Sagan 2006: 49, 50).
Understandably, since the US had enabled Iran to pursue nuclear development in the first
place, Iran’s initial nuclear pursuits during the late 1950s and throughout the 1960s were in no
way criticised in the American mass media. On the contrary, in the 1960s, American media
coverage of Iran was limited to two representations; firstly, Iran was hailed “as unconditional
ally and first line of defence against a Soviet move in the Persian Gulf region,” and secondly,
“as an island of stability in an inherently unstable part of the world” (Dorman & Farhang
1987: 126). In this regard, Iran’s development of nuclear energy was seen as an advantage
since, firstly, “it would allow Iran to export greater volumes of its oil production to the West,”
and, secondly, it would “give US and European companies the opportunity to participate and
invest in the construction of nuclear reactors and the related facilities.” Although the US must
have considered the possibility that Iran could use its knowledge of nuclear energy to one day
create nuclear weapons, this risk was not considered substantial, because of the influence
which the US wielded over the country (Tarock 2006: 651).

b. The 1970s – Regime change and problems

In 1974, the Shah announced his intentions to start “an extremely ambitious nuclear energy
programme” (Alagappa 2009: 298), and to this end he created “the Atomic Energy
Organization of Iran (AEOI)” (Fuhrmann 2012: 82) later that year. The organisation soon had
“more than five thousand scientists and nuclear technologists on the payroll” (Goswami 2012:
275). In addition, the Shah declared that Iran would produce nuclear weapons in the near
future, “without a doubt and sooner than one would think” (the Shah as quoted in Cordesman
& Al-Rodhan 2006: 102). This problematic statement, made on 23 June 1974, and which ran
counter to the terms and conditions of the NPT, was the “initial alarm bell for Washington.”
And while the Iranian embassy hastily renounced the veracity of the report the next day
(Caravelli 2011: 84), on at least one other occasion, the Shah openly referred to the prospect
of Iran producing nuclear weapons in the future, after which his “statements…were [again]
quickly retracted” (Knopf 2012: 113).
But his provocative sentiments were clearly understood as fanciful sabre-rattling, a
testimony to his exuberance over Iranian nuclear prowess, which had little chance of being
 144

realised. And evidence for this is that in the following year, the Iranian Autonomic Energy
Organization and the American Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT) committed to a
phase of intense collaboration, during which MIT was to “train nuclear scientists from Iran”
(Cordesman & Al-Rodhan 2006: 100). In addition, European countries like France and
Germany supported Iran’s nuclear programme, firstly, by helping Iran to expand its nuclear
infrastructure, and, secondly, by educating Iranian professionals and scientists on nuclear
development. Iran was also allowed to buy “a 10% share in a uranium enrichment company,
Eurodif, which was a joint venture between France, Belgium, Spain, and Italy.” It is through
these contracts that the opportunity arose for Iranian “students, scientists, and technicians” to
go to France and other European nations, to “advance their skills and knowledge in nuclear
engineering, nuclear physics, and related branches.” Iran also collaborated with Germany in a
number of analogous ways (Kibaroglu 2006: 214, 215).
Although the Shah actively pursued relations with many European countries, the US-
Iranian collaboration remained most significant. However, at the very moment when
collaboration between the two countries was at its height, and “when the prospects for nuclear
cooperation looked bright, troubles ensued.” The start of the Islamic Revolution in 1979
resulted in “social unrest and political turmoil,” which fuelled US anxiety over continued
nuclear involvement with Iran, and led to “the United States end[ing] its supply of highly
enriched uranium and terminat[ing] all nuclear cooperation with Iran” (Fuhrmann 2012: 83).
Consequently, when the Shah left Iran at the beginning of 1979, his “dream of a nuclear Iran
[went] with him” (Knopf 2012: 114).
Yet, this dissolution of US-Iranian nuclear collaboration did not appear to bother the
newly established Islamic Republic. In fact, when the Ayatollah Khomeini came to power, he
officially ordered the termination of the nuclear programme, arguing that it represented
“Iran’s toadying subjection to the West” (Alagappa 2009: 298), liberation from which
Khomeini and the other revolutionaries had made a national priority. Yet, in this regard, as
discussed in Chapter Four, when he associated the nuclear programme with “imperialism and
the ‘decadent’ culture of the West” (Melman & Javedanfar 2007: 89), his words should have
been taken with a large measure of salt, as it were. This was because, far from bearing
testimony to any vehemently anti-modernist stance, informed by blind religious
fundamentalism, Khomeini’s sentiments were arguably as calculated as ever. On the one
hand, they did, of course, appeal to those religious zealots who rejected nuclear weapons on
fundamentalist grounds,132 and thereby ensured Khomeini of their continued support. But, on

132
Even today it is often argued that the use of nuclear weapons is forbidden by Islam. Iran’s current Supreme
Leader, Ayatollah Ali Khameini has stated that “the Islamic Republic of Iran has repeatedly announced that in
 145

the other hand, and far more importantly, they allowed Khomeini to save face; by rejecting
something before it could be taken away from him, he effectively spared himself the onerous
task of having to account for the loss of an important national resource.

c. The 1980s – The rekindling of Iran’s interest in nuclear power

Yet Khomeini was denied the opportunity to continue with the above subterfuge for long,
because on 22 September 1980, Iraq invaded the country, after President Saddam Hussein
announced that “Iran had violated the 1975 Algiers agreement.”133 In short, this invasion led
to the Iran-Iraq war, “one of the most destructive conflicts since World War II” (Browne &
Snyder 1985: 127, 129), and one in which there occurred “the most deadly use of chemical
weapons since world War I” (Lynn-Jones & Miller 1993: 371).134 In addition, it also proved
to be “one of the longest conflicts in the annals of the modern Middle East” (Takeyh 2010:
366).
Iraq’s invasion of Iran was the culmination of a series of clashes at the Iranian/Iraqi
border, which in turn has been attributed to the establishment of Iran as an Islamic Republic.
On the one hand, since Iraq was a “strident, secular state seeking to organize the region under
the banner of pan-Arabism,” the Ayatollah Khomeini immediately saw it as an opponent. On
the other hand, Iraq’s Saddam Hussein saw the Islamic Republic of Iran, “with its regional
mandates and ideological claims,” as a “unique threat” to the stability of Iraq (Takeyh 2008:
15). Although the US government initially remained on the sidelines of the conflict, “in the
wake of Iran’s impressive military victories in 1982,” the possibility that Iran could win the
war became plausible. And the US’s primary concern was that if this were to happen, they
might soon find Iran “in a commanding position of power throughout the Gulf” (Sterner 1984:
129). Indeed, the “doomsday scenario” envisioned by US analysts included Iran provoking
“the majority Shiite population of Iraq to take up arms against US interests all over the
Middle East” (Blight et al. 2012: 96). Not comfortable with an Islamic regime in such a
powerful position, “Washington gradually abandoned its policy of neutrality and non-
involvement in favour of a ‘tilt’ toward Iraq” (Sterner 1984: 129), and this ‘tilt’ took the form
of “provision of political, military, and economic assistance” to Saddam Hussein (Ashton &

principle, based on Shari’a, it is opposed to the production and use of nuclear weapons” (Rieffer-Flanagan 2013:
160).
133
That is, the Accord “recognized the…main navigation channel…of the Shatt al-Arab waterway as the border
between the two countries,” but “Iraq…resented this agreement” and “started clamouring for its revision shortly
after the revolution” (Daniel 2012: 204).
134
See also Hiltermann, J. R. 2007. A Poisonous Affair: America, Iraq, and the Gassing of Halabja. Cambridge :
Cambridge University Press.
 146

Gibson 2013: 186).135 Correlatively, the US increased the impetus of their media campaign to
label Iran as promoter of terrorism, and in 1984 banned most forms of economic assistance to
the country (Taylor 2010: 67). Although the US had implemented sanctions against Iran since
the Iranian hostage crisis, these sanctions were at first imposed only against Iran’s petroleum
and military sectors. But by 1987, these sanctions were “expanded to a comprehensive trade
and investment ban” (Solingen 2012: 78).
Ironically, although these measures on the part of the US government were aimed at
reducing the power of Iran in order to diminish the threat it posed against American interests,
it appears that US support for Iraq in the Iran-Iraq war had the opposite effect. Indeed, a
combination of the events of the 1980s led to Iran’s rekindled interest in pursuing a nuclear
development programme. That is, the violence of the conflict shocked even those clerics who
had initially been against nuclear power for religious reasons, “into realising the value of
modern military technology” (Kibaroglu 2006: 216). And the urgency of again exploring this
path was compounded by both rumours that Iraq was planning to acquire nuclear weapons,
and by the continuous threat which Israel’s nuclear arsenal was thought to pose. Similarly, the
Iranian government also realised that so long as their national policies opposed American
interests, they remained vulnerable to potential US nuclear reprisal, and it was believed that
acquiring their own nuclear weapons would dissuade an American attack (Pollack 2004: 259).
Moreover, despite the problems associated with his reign, the Shah had instilled in
Iranians a sense of self-esteem through his nuclear ambitions, because they implied that the
Iranians were no longer a backward, dissolute people, but a modern and increasingly powerful
nation, deserving of self-respect. And Khomeini, although providing initial ideological
justification for abandoning Iran’s nuclear programme – realised that he could not hold back
the related resurgent desires of his people, because nuclear development in Iran had for too
long been “associated with Iranian national pride and prestige” (Kibaroglu 2006: 219).
Yet, it was realised by all concerned that Iranian capacity to produce its own nuclear
weapons was a long way off, and that more immediate problems faced the country and
demanded urgent attention. In particular, the sanctions imposed by the United States had
“contribute[d]…to…substantial economic problems” in Iran (Solingen 2012: 78), not least of
which was a pervasive energy crisis, and it was in response to this that a recommencement of
Iran’s nuclear energy development plans was understood as imperative (Kibaroglu 2006:
216).

135
In this regard, “$2 billion worth of US commodity credits was made available to Iraq” in 1984. In addition,
the US government “channelled intelligence information to Baghdad that helped the Iraqi war effort.” Close to
the end of the Iran-Iraq war, the US Navy and Air Force became directly involved “in protecting tanker traffic in
the Persian Gulf” (Potter & Sick 2004: 198)
 147

Consequently, the country sought “new allies to replace the US” (Serrato 2010: 49), with
whom they could establish new “nuclear cooperation agreements” (Williams & Viotti 2012:
179). In this regard, Iran signed nuclear collaboration agreements with Pakistan and Argentina
in 1987, and in addition reached out to China and Russia for assistance with developing their
nuclear programme (Kibaroglu 2006: 217). Yet, although the country continued to follow up
on the enrichment contracts they had signed with foreign companies in 1975 (Mærli &
Lodgaard 2007: 97), “there was little progress on securing cooperation [with other nations]
until the 1990s” (Williams & Viotti 2012: 179). The great irony of this was that Iranian
interest in modernising the country, through developing nuclear energy, and in the long term,
nuclear weapons, was not because of any inherent aggressiveness on their part. Rather, it was
a response to their perceived defensive needs against potential US aggression, and with a view
to addressing their existing energy needs, which had in large part been precipitated by US
sanctions.

d. The 1990s to the first decade of the 21st century – Iran as a nuclear ‘threat’

In the 1990s, the US sanctions continued as the Iranian proliferation of nuclear arms and other
weapons of mass destruction were thematised as an increasing concern.136 Also, in addition to
the sanctions, several Executive Orders were put in place to thwart Iranian access to American
technology for a much-needed upgrade of its antiquated oil industry (Solingen 2012: 78).
After initiating several attempts to establish nuclear collaboration with other nations, Iran
succeeded in securing agreements with China and Russia in the early 1990s; however, the
extent of these collaborations was soon reduced as a result of US pressure (Williams & Viotti
2012: 179). Moreover, as a result of the Iran-Libya Sanctions Act of 1996, foreign companies
investing more than $20 million in Iran’s oil and gas industry stood to be penalised (Taylor
2010: 67).
Owing largely to these obstacles which the US placed in the way of modernisation and
development in Iran, reconciliation between the two countries has proved ineffective; firstly,
the incentives offered by the US have been deemed insufficient by the Iran, who have
accordingly refused to accept the American conditions of non-proliferation and dependence;
secondly, because of such constant American attempts to limit the capacity of Iran, many in
the Iranian government oppose any kind of rapprochement with the United States whatsoever

136
Indeed, “between 1991 and 1997, Iran bought roughly $1.4 billion worth of equipment from Russia and other
former Soviet republics.” This equipment ranged from Kilo-class submarines, SU-24 strike aircraft, MiG-29
fighters, advanced naval mines, and some ground force equipment” (Pollack 2004: 258). But, conspicuously, no
nuclear weapons were included in this list.
 148

(Tarock 2006: 647). Arguably, there is significant justification for this attitude, but it is by no
means ubiquitous.
Yet despite the American sanctions and overall objections to the Iranian nuclear
programme, Iran did not give up on its nuclear development initiatives. On the contrary, it can
be argued that US reservations have made the Iranian government even more determined to
pursue nuclear technology as the energy option of the future. This much was evinced by the
fact that at the IAEA General Conference in September 2002, Iranian officials affirmed their
plans to construct nuclear power plants (Williams & Viotti 2012: 179), and in December 2002
it was discovered that Iran has two nuclear facilities, which it had been able to keep
undisclosed until then (Solingen 2012: 78). Yet, despite the fact that these facilities do not yet
have the capacity to produce nuclear weapons, such developments suited President George
Bush’s agenda, since he had already proclaimed Iran part of the “axis of evil” in his State of
Union address early that year.137 Considering America’s history of relations with Iran, the
claim that Iran is ‘evil’ is a deeply flawed and thoroughly inappropriate description of a
country that has been subject to significant victimisation at the hands of America. As Potter
and Sick point out, “for the Iranian leadership, to be depicted in this way…was taken as
demonstration of a dangerous ignorance and arrogance at the head of the most powerful
country in the world” (Potter & Sick 2004: 208). Importantly, once again, the invective on the
part of the United States “only prompted [Iran] to adopt a defensive nuclear policy” (Islam
2011: 71).
Yet in 2003, the US invaded Iraq, under the pretext that Saddam Hussein was in
possession of Weapons of Mass Destruction (WMDs).138 Although, on the one hand, the
Iranian government applauded the American initiative to bring down Hussein, on the other
hand, they also remained apprehensive, fearing that American interference in Iraq would lead
to either “an attack against Iran, or the establishment of a hostile Iraqi government, or the
fragmentation of Iraq,” the instability of which would spill over into Iran. Consequently, Iran
provided the US with full cooperation, hoping that their support would prevent such
undesirable outcomes. In addition, Iran presented a proposal in which it expressed its
willingness to negotiate with the US over – among other issues – its nuclear ambitions. In this

137
For the complete text of President Bush’s address, see pages 146-147 in Lind, N. S., and Tamas, B. I. 2007.
Controversies of the George W. Bush Presidency: Pro and Con Documents. Westport: Greenwood Press.
138
Although “removing Iraq’s alleged possession of weapons of mass destruction was the principal reason given
for” the invasion, importantly “no weapons of mass destruction were discovered” (Croddy et al. 2005: 166,
Barriot & Bismuth 2008: 16). It has since been argued that the US had an ulterior motive for their invasion, and
that the claim that Iraq had WMDs was a mere pretext for the war. That is, instead of generously freeing the
world of an ‘evil’ and threatening Iraq in possession of dangerous WMDs, it has been argued that the United
States was merely pursuing an Iraqi regime change for its own pursuit of a global free-market economy (Arai-
Takahashi 2009: 86).
 149

regard, Iran promised to cooperate with the IAEA by allowing its inspectors access to nuclear
development sites. In doing so, the Iranian government hoped to prove its innocence over
allegations concerning the production of nuclear weapons (Mattair 2008: 52).
Nonetheless, Iran’s attempts to gain American trust were unsuccessful. In 2003, Iran’s
chief nuclear negotiator, Hassan Rowhani, temporarily suspended the country’s nuclear
programme, as a “compromise…necessary to further negotiations with the West”
(Patrikarakos 2013: 25).139 And in 2005, the American Department of Treasury froze “the
assets…of Iranian entities and individuals with suspected ties to Iran’s nuclear efforts”
(Solingen 2012: 79). In addition, the portrayal of Iran in the American media stays negative.
In a comparison of New York Times editorials and the policy documents published by the
Department of State Bulletin between 1981 and 1994, Malek shows that the American “press,
to a great extent, merely reflects the US government’s policy toward a particular international
issue or event,” such as the Islamic Revolution and the Iran-Iraq war. From the results of
Malek’s content analysis, it can be derived that “the media and government have an
interdependent relationship,” in terms of which, “the press is highly influenced, directly and
indirectly, by the government’s policy or position toward an issue, conflict or state” (Malek
1997: 243).140 And indeed, the US government has repeatedly been quoted in the media as
mentioning “the terrorist state of Iran,” as well as referring to the Islamic Republic as a “rogue
state” (Islam 2010-11: 73).
Importantly, Malek points out that, while the number of policy documents per year was
more or less equal, “the number of New York Times’ editorials per year devoted to issues
related to Iran” increased considerably (Malek 1997: 243, 244). In other words, while the US-
Iran relations and altercations have remained reasonably constant, the US media have
increased their coverage thereof. As a result, it can be argued that since the American public
has received more media messages on Iran, the concerns surrounding the Middle Eastern
nation have received a more prominent place in the imagination of the American public.
Importantly though, the impression of Iran provided by the American media remains largely
negative.141

139
Hassan Rowhani is currently President of Iran (Richendollar 2013: 97, Dzerovych 2005: 24-25).
140
This standpoint is strongly supported by Herman and Chomsky’s theory. See also Chapter Three.
141
In addition to the increasing use of the anti-Islam filter in the US media, evidence can also be found for some
more blatant forms of censorship against opposing messages in the American media. For example, when Flynt
Leverett wrote an op-ed about the big mistake the American government had allegedly made in refusing Iran’s
offer to rapprochement, it was “crudely censored by the NSC,” that is, the National Security Council (Galbraith
2008: 78).
 150

e. Iran’s nuclear ambitions today

Although Iran has “for years been willing to negotiate with America and others about their
concerns over its nuclear activities,” this is generally conveniently left out of American media
reports. In fact, in 2010, Iran proposed its relinquishment of “its then-current stockpile of 3 to
4 present enriched uranium and, in effect, [to] forgo enrichment at the near 20 present level
needed to fuel a research reactor making medical isotopes for cancer patients.” In return, Iran
requested “an internationally guaranteed fuel supply for the reactor,” as well as “recognition
of its right to enrich.” The most important condition put forward by Iran in their proposed
negotiations is that the country “would not have to concede internationally recognized
sovereign and treaty rights.” All reasonable requests, yet they were all rejected by the US
government (Leverett & Mann Leverett 2013: 24).
Iran’s current president, Hassan Rowhani has expressed a strong desire for a resolution of
current Iran-US tensions, and confidently stated that the United States and Iran “can arrive at
a framework to manage [their] differences” (Gladstone 2013). In his address to the United
Nations General Assembly, in New York, on 24 September 2013, Rowhani emphasised “that
Iran posed ‘absolutely no threat’ to anyone,” and “reiterated that its nuclear programme was
peaceful” (Patrikarakos 2013: 25). Nonetheless, the overtures of Rowhani might again be
ineffective. That is, Obama’s General Assembly speech made it clear that the United States
still considers Iran as a threat. In this regard, the American president’s political position and
rhetoric with regard to Iran and nuclear power is consistent with that of former US presidents.
The recent agreement reached on 24 November 2013, in Geneva, which was spearheaded by
the United States, in terms of which Iran will be obliged to curb its nuclear programme in
exchange for some initial sanctions relief (Sciutto & Carter 2013), does suggest a positive
move. However, it must be remembered that this arrangement is tentative, giving Iran only a
six-month window to comply (White House 2013), and is predicated on the de facto
submission of Iran to constant US policing for the foreseeable future (Joint Plan of Action
2013: 1, 4). Moreover, the power of the prejudices against Iran, engendered largely through
the mass media dynamics discussed in this dissertation, appear to be difficult to transform.
That is, already some US “senators have been discussing...imposing even tighter sanctions,
which could anger Tehran and put [the]…deal reached in Geneva in jeopardy” (Hafezi &
Pawlak 2013).

5.3 Concluding Remarks

 151

All films, on account of the many hands required to usher them into production (and, for that
matter, to ensure their distribution) are contingent on the emergence of synergy between an
array of factors, and Ben Affleck’s Argo (2012) is no exception. However, the film is
arguably marked by the strongly political nature of the factors which combined to underpin
and inform it. That is, it is possible to argue that Argo was precipitated, in large part, by a
series of four salient events. While in 1997, then-President Bill Clinton declassified the CIA-
operation which helped the six escapees leave Iran (Kadivar 2013: 62), and while following
this, in 2000, Tony Mendez published his memoir Master of Disguise, in 2007, Joshuah
Bearman published an article in Wired magazine on the escape of the six embassy staff
members.142 Accordingly, while Bearman’s article brought the episode into the public
spotlight, where it soon caught the eye of producers George Clooney, David Klawans and
Grant Heslov, who saw a blockbuster Hollywood film in the story (Jenkins 2012: 10),
Mendez’s book – made possible by Clinton’s declassification of the CIA operation – provided
the requisite amount of research on which to construct the narrative of Argo.
Yet, that such a film was considered to have strong market appeal – despite the length of
time that had passed since the hostage crisis – was also because of the rising political tension
between the United States and Iran, which had again reached an impasse around the time
Argo was produced. As such, the film is in many respects indissociable from
contemporaneous representations of Iran in the American media, which focus on the Middle
Eastern nation’s nuclear ambitions. Yet, concerns have been raised over the fairness of
subjecting Iran to a ‘tribunal’ by the media. Recently, a study entitled “The Media and Iran’s
Nuclear Program: An Analysis of US and UK Coverage, 2009-2013,” shed important light on
how Iran has been patently misportrayed on the issue of its nuclear activity. That is, not only
has the ‘Western’ mass media focused on instances of bellicose political rhetoric rather than
on trying to establish facts concerning Iran’s nuclear programme. In addition, it has also based
its predictions on such sensationalism, which has elicited a highly emotive international
reaction. Moreover, it has failed to provide an explanatory context for the origins and tone of
this rhetoric, while concomitantly relying heavily on US government sources for information
– sources which, as already discussed, are highly biased in favour of the claims of the United
States.
Consequently, media coverage has tended to characterise the country as intensely
belligerent, instead of exploring “Iranian security strategies and policies in depth” (Siegel &

142
See Mendez, A. J. (with McConnell, M.) 1999. Master of Disguise: My Secret Life in the CIA. New York:
William Morrow & Company, as well as Bearman, J. 2007. “How the CIA Used a Fake Sci-Fi Flick to Rescue
Americans from Tehran. Wired Magazine.” Available at: http://www.wired.com/magazine/2007/04/feat_cia/all/.
Date accessed: November 17, 2013.
 152

Barforoush 2013: 8-30), and as responses to US aggression. And the corollary of this
misrepresentation and inaccurate media coverage is the mobilisation of global public opinion
against Iran. In fact, a Pew Global Attitudes survey found global “widespread opposition to
Iran obtaining nuclear weapons.” And importantly, “among those who oppose Iran acquiring
nuclear weapons, Americans are the most willing to take military action if necessary to
prevent an Iranian nuclear weapons program” (Pew Research Center 2012: 1, 5).
Understandably, within this context, a film like Afflecks’ Argo, which not only echoes and
reflects such mass media prejudices, but also does so in a concentrated form – as a cinematic
narrative – and from the global platform of the immense Hollywood distribution network,
cannot be construed as ‘simply entertainment.’ Rather, it must instead be understood as a
potentially powerful ideological tool.
 153

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