Imagine for a second, you're just sitting at
your kitchen table. You're holding a newspaper,
just your standard daily paper, the kind you
might skim over your morning coffee or tea. Maybe
you check the headlines, read an opinion piece
or two, and then you just toss it into the recycling
bin without a second thought. Yeah, totally standard
morning routine. Exactly. But now, I want you
to imagine that a single opinion column buried
inside that paper. Just a few paragraphs of text
printed on page seven possesses so much explosive
unimaginable power that exactly 400 days after
you read it, it completely topples a massive
deeply entrenched monarchy. It sounds completely
fictional when you frame it like that. It sounds
like the plot of a dense political thriller.
But we're looking at a moment in history where
this actually happened. We're diving into a collision
of state media, incredibly arrogant political
propaganda and massive social upheaval that literally
changed the map of the modern world. It really
stands as one of the most remarkable and frankly
miscalculated chain reactions in modern history.
The goal of our deep dive today is to thoroughly
analyze Wikipedia article detailing the publication
of a very specific incredibly infamous piece
of writing. The article hit newsstands in 1978
and it was titled Iran and Red and Black Colonization.
Such a specific title. It is. But our mission
today isn't just to look at the text of this
article. Although the words they chose are incredibly
revealing, we need to completely deconstruct
the geopolitical tinderbox into which this op
-ed was dropped. Right. And examine the unprecedented,
unstoppable chain reaction it caused. We're looking
at the actual day -by -day mechanics of how a
revolution gets sparked. And for you listening
right now, you might already know a fair bit
about the Iranian revolution. Sure. You might
know the major figures, the broader outcomes,
the hostage crisis, the whole global impact.
But the mechanics of exactly how it started down
to the specific secretive bureaucratic decisions,
the pseudonyms, and the literal red ink used
to print the specific newspaper column, that's
the kind of historical aha moment that completely
changes how you view the relationship between
media and state power. It's about understanding
the anatomy of the spark rather than just staring
at the fire. And just as a quick baseline for
you listening, because we are dealing with the
Pahlavi regime, Ayatollah Ruhollah Khomeini,
and the deep roots of the Islamic Republic of
Iran, we are looking at this strictly as historians
today. Yes, very important point. We aren't taking
sides or endorsing any political, religious,
or ideological viewpoints of any of the figures
or movements involved. Our goal is simply to
impartially report on and analyze the factual
events and perspectives as they're documented
in the source material. Right. We're looking
at the mechanics of history, cause and effect,
plain and simple. I'm really glad we got that
out of the way because it lets us look at the
raw data of how this all went down. OK, let's
unpack this. Let's do it. To really understand
why a single newspaper article could act as a
detonator, we have to understand the bomb it
was attached to. We have to look at the background
of Iran on the eve of 1978. The context is everything
here. It really is. And according to our source,
the fuse actually started getting lit a few years
earlier, around 1975. And ironically enough,
it started with a peace treaty. Yeah. Why would
a peace treaty be the thing that starts unraveling
a regime? Well, the historical context here is
deeply layered. And it comes down to unintended
consequences. In 1975, a treaty was established
that effectively ended hostilities between Iran
and its neighbor, Iraq. OK. On paper, ending
hostilities is a stabilizing diplomatic achievement.
You secure your borders, you reduce military
tension. Makes sense. But by 1976, because of
this treaty, Iranians were once again permitted
to travel across the border into Iraq. They could
go on pilgrimages to holy sites. And that opening
of the border created a massive, completely unintended
vulnerability for the Shah's regime. Because
Ayatollah Khomeini, who at this point is the
Shah's most prominent vocal religious critic,
was living in exile right there in Iraq. Exactly.
So the regime secures the border militaristically,
but they inadvertently open a ma - cultural and
political corridor? If we connect this to the
bigger picture, it highlights a profound paradox
of authoritarian control. The Shah's government
signs a treaty to secure its external power,
but by allowing citizens to travel, they open
a massive conduit for domestic revolutionary
material. Wow. We have to visualize the logistics
of this underground network. Information had
to move physically back then. Right. No internet.
Exactly. So you have Ordinary citizens, pilgrims,
merchants traveling to Iraq, and while they're
there, they're sitting in on Khomeini's teachings.
They're quietly slipping cassette tapes into
their luggage, hiding transcribed sermons in
their coats, and crossing back into Iran. The
cassette tape as a revolutionary weapon. It's
such a powerful image. It really is. You have
this massive, heavily armed state apparatus,
the military, the intelligence agencies, and
it's being systematically undermined by standard
issue cassette tapes playing in living rooms
and local mosques. The source notes that because
of this influx of smuggled material, disapproval
of the shell was rapidly increasing at the mosque
level. So the mosques were becoming the central
nervous system of the subterranean resistance.
Precisely. They provided a built in pre -existing
social network that the state couldn't easily
shut down without causing massive religious outrage.
But it wasn't just religious grievances brewing,
was it? There was this massive push for structural
reform rooted in a constitution from backades
earlier. The opposition was far from a monolith.
which makes this entire period so complex. Our
source highlights that alongside the religious
disapproval being stoked by these tapes, the
broader Iranian public was increasingly demanding
that the Constitution of 1906 and 1907 be fully
restored. OK, so a constitution from over 70
years prior. Yes. And understanding what was
actually written in that constitution is vital
to understanding the diverse demands of the people
in the late 1970s. The 1906 and 1907 Constitution
represented a really fascinating, highly unusual
blend of democratic desires and religious oversight.
Let's break down exactly what they were demanding,
because it shows just how much power the Shah
had centralized. What did this old Constitution
actually promise the people? It promised a structural
check on absolute power. The people wanted the
right to free elections, which is foundational.
Right. They wanted a government that was actually
responsible and accountable to the elected legislative
body, known as the Majelis. So a real parliament
with actual teeth. Exactly. And perhaps most
threatening to the regime, they wanted a Shah
with strictly limited authority. They were demanding
a constitutional monarchy where the monarch is
a figurehead or an executive bound by law, not
an absolute ruler who dictates policy on a whim.
Right. So you have secular reformers, students
and political activists who love those democratic
elements. They want free elections and a strong
Medales. Yeah. But where do the clerics fit into
this? Why were the religious groups also fighting
for this specific constitution? That brings us
to the fourth major demand listed in our source,
which is the institutional glue bridging the
gap between secular reformers and the religious
opposition. OK, what was it? The 1906 and 1907
Constitution mandated a committee of Mucetites.
Yes. These are top tier, highly respected Islamic
scholars and jurists. And this committee essentially
had a built in veto over any legislation. They
had the constitutional power to strike down any
bills that were deemed to conflict with Muslim
law. Wow. So by demanding the restoration of
this constitution, the public is essentially
demanding a system that provides democratic accountability
for the secular crowd, alongside an institutionalized,
legally binding role for Islamic law. for the
religious crowd. Exactly. It gave these two wildly
different groups a unified platform to rally
behind. It created a dangerous consensus against
the show. So the temperature in the country is
rising steadily. You have the smuggle tapes radicalizing
the mosques. You have a unified cross demographic
demand for constitutional reform. And then in
October 1977, a match is struck. What happens
in October? Khomeini's son Mustafa dies. And
the source specifically describes his death as
mysterious. But in a highly polarized environment,
a mysterious death is never just a tragedy. It's
a political event. It wasn't just the death itself
that poured gasoline on the fire. It was who
the public immediately blamed for it. The source
notes that the mysterious death of Mustafa Khomeini
caused public dissatisfaction to grow significantly.
The reason for this spike in anger is that prominent
journalists and researchers, specifically Niki
Kadi and Jan Richard, attributed his death to
SAVAK. For those who might not know the history,
SAVAK was Iran's secret police force. Yes. And
they weren't just a quiet intelligence agency
gathering files. They were notorious. They were
the brutal enforcement arm of the regime known
for severe repression of political dissidents,
surveillance, and torture. They cast a massive
shadow of fear over everyday Iranian life. So
they were universally feared and hated by the
opposition. Absolutely. And whether Sabaq was
actually involved in Mostafa's death or not almost
doesn't matter historically. The perception was
reality for the Iranian public. They firmly believed
the state had reached across the border into
Iraq and assassinated the son of their most prominent
exiled critic. The atmosphere must have been
incredibly tense. You've got the simmering, grieving,
deeply organized subterranean resistance communicating
via smuggled tapes, entirely convinced the state
just murdered a religious. leader's son. It's
a total pressure cooker. And while all this rage
is bubbling right under the surface, the international
community seems completely, almost comically
oblivious. Which brings us to Jimmy Carter. The
timing is just staggering. We are looking at
late 1977, early 1978. The country is a powder
keg. Yet exactly one week before the publication
of the article that would ignite the revolution,
U .S. President Jimmy Carter gave a speech regarding
Iran. Here's where it gets really interesting.
Think about the dramatic irony of what he said.
Carter famously referred to Iran as an island
of stability in one of the more troubled areas
of the world. An island of stability. Just days
later, the entire island is essentially on fire.
How could the intelligence be that wrong? It
perfectly illustrates how completely insulated
the Iranian imperial court, and by extension
their Western allies, were from the actual mood
of the Iranian street. They were just looking
at the wrong metrics. Exactly. They were looking
at military budgets, oil revenues, and the surface
level control exercised by SAVAK. They weren't
looking at the mosques, the bazaars, or listening
to the cassette tapes. Right. And that hubris,
that total misreading of the national room, is
exactly what led the regime to make the catastrophic
decision to polish the article we're unpacking
today. So let's look at the actual bureaucratic
timeline of how this article came into existence.
Because it didn't just organically appear from
some frustrated journalist. This was a deliberate,
orchestrated, state -sponsored smear campaign.
According to our source, on January 4th, 1978,
the article, Iran, Red and Black Colonization,
was literally sealed in the imperial court. So
it came from the very top. It was sent from the
top down. The prime minister himself, Amir Abbas
Huweda, who researchers heavily suspect to have
written or at least commissioned it, sent it
directly to the information minister, Dariush
Humayun. Wow. And he sent it with explicit orders
to get it published in one of Iran's major newspapers.
It's coming from the absolute highest echelons
of the government, the prime minister handing
a hit piece to the information minister. But
they didn't publish it under the prime minister's
name, did they? No, they didn't. They used a
pseudonym. It went to... print under the name
Ahmad Rashidi Matla. Why go through the charade?
Why not just have the government issue a formal
muscular statement condemning Khomeini? By attributing
the article to a completely fictitious name,
the regime was attempting to launder their propaganda.
They wanted to create the illusion of grassroots
independent outrage. Ah, I see. The goal was
for the average citizen to read this and think,
oh look, here's a concerned patriotic Iranian
writing an op -ed to expose a dangerous foreign
agent. It's an attempt to make state ideology
look like public consensus. But the historians
know who really wrote it. Yes. Researchers, like
Bauman Bakhtiri, cited in our source, note that
the main authors were actually Doryush Humayun
himself, alongside a low -ranking ministry official
named Farhad Nikuka. It's the ultimate astroturfing
campaign, the state pretending to be the public.
But what makes the hubris even more astounding
is how the article's tone was altered before
it even went to print. That's a fascinating detail.
The source points out that the original draft
of this article was based on documents collected
by SAVAK, and interestingly, that initial intelligence
-based draft was actually considered relatively
tame. That's a vital piece of the puzzle. It
suggests that the intelligence professionals
at SAVAK, the people who actually monitored the
public mood, perhaps understood that an overly
emotional deeply insulting attack would backfire
or lack credibility. So they drafted something
bureaucratic and dry. Exactly. But according
to the source, the Shah allegedly intervened
directly and ordered the article to be rewritten.
He mandated that the tone become significantly
more insulting. He essentially told his team,
no, make it meaner. That's exactly what happened.
The regime felt so untouchable, so convinced
of their island of stability status that they
thought they could just openly mock and degrade
their most powerful religious critic without
any blowback. And we have to look at this specific
date they chose to publish it. They didn't just
pick a random Tuesday. They chose January 7,
1978. Right. Now, to a Western observer in 1978,
that's just a date on the calendar. But the source
points out a crucial cultural detail. This day
fell on the exact anniversary of Reza Shah's
unveiling decree. Right. Reza Shah being the
current Shah's father. And this unveiling decree
was the law that literally banned women from
wearing the hijab in public. The timing is absolutely
critical. By publishing a vicious attack on a
prominent Islamic cleric on the exact anniversary
of a heavily resented secularizing decree that
banned traditional Islamic dress, the regime
was not just making a political statement. They
were rubbing it in. They were launching a calculated
cultural strike. It was designed to be deeply
provocative. It was a flex of state power, rubbing
salt in a historical wound to remind the religious
establishment who was in charge of the culture.
They went out of their way to poke the bear.
They did. So let's actually look at the weapon
they deployed. Let's dissect the article itself.
The title is Iran and Red and Black Colonization.
Even before we get to the text, the aesthetic
choices the newspaper made are wild. Very deliberate
choice. It was published in the Atella At newspaper,
which was one of the major widely read dailies.
They put it on page seven in a section called
Comments and Ideas Again, pushing that concerned
citizen angle. And they literally printed the
text in red ink. What's fascinating here is the
rhetorical framing established right in the title.
The phrase red and black colonization isn't just
catchy. It's a highly constructed narrative.
How so? The regime was attempting to paint a
picture of an unholy, completely unnatural alliance
against the progress of Iran. By red, they were
referring to communist forces, specifically elements
like the Marxist Tudor Party. OK, so red equals
communists. Exactly. And by black, they were
referring to the religious Islamist forces aligned
with the conservative clerics. And by calling
it colonization, they're trying to strip away
the legitimacy of the domestic grievances. They're
basically telling the public, if you're upset
with the Shah, you aren't a real Iranian with
valid concerns. You're just a tool of foreign
imperialists trying to colonize us. It's a massive
gaslighting effort. The regime needed to portray
its own domestic policies, specifically the reforms
of the White Revolution, as the true undisputed
path of Iranian progress. Remind us what the
White Revolution entailed. The White Revolution
involved massive land reforms, women's emancipation
initiatives, and the nationalization of forests.
Now, these reforms angered the clerics because
land reform threatened religious endowments,
and they angered the Marxists because it was
top -down authoritarian capitalism. So the state
managed to make everyone mad. Yes. But the state's
narrative was simple. Anyone opposing these reforms,
whether from the Marxist left or the Islamic
right, had to be, by definition, a foreign agent.
And the article aimed this accusation squarely
at Ayatollah Khomeini. I want to read a bit of
the excerpt provided in our source because the
sneering, condescending tone really has to be
heard to be believed. Please do. The article
says, quote, it was not difficult to find such
a man. They had found him a man with an unclear
past. He belonged to the most reactionary and
fundamentalist classes." It goes on to say he
was dedicated to political adventurism and that
his name only survives in living memory due to
the shameful events of 1963. The text is incredibly
dense with specific targeted insults that break
those down. How did it? Calling his past unclear
and labeling him an adventurer is a direct attempt
to strip him of his religious authority. They're
trying to reduce a revered Marja, a source of
emulation for millions of Shia Muslims, to the
status of a cynical, ruthless political opportunist.
Just a guy out for himself. Right. And on top
of that, the article describes him as an Indian
Sayyid who had lived in India and had contact
with British colonial centers. Wait, they called
him an Indian Sayyid? Khomeini is the face of
the Iranian Revolution? Why on earth is state
media calling him Indian? What does that even
mean in this context? It's a deliberate attack
on his heritage to make him seem un -Iranian.
Say denotes dissent from the Prophet Muhammad,
but by prefixing it with Indian they're playing
on nationalist sentiments and historical prejudices.
Oh, I see. They're whispering to the public,
he's not one of us, his family comes from outside
our borders and he's secretly working for the
British. That is incredibly calculated. And then
there's the truly wild accusation about foreign
cash. The article claims that an Arab adventurer
named Mohammed Tofi al -Ghaizi was caught carrying
a briefcase filled with 10 million reels to fend
the revolt. 10 million reels in a briefcase?
It sounds like a bad spy movie. It's classic
state propaganda. It ties the entire narrative
into a neat xenophobic bow. Khomeini is an Indian
born British connected adventurer funded by Arab
money working alongside communists to destroy
Iranian progress. They threw every possible political
and cultural accusation at him simultaneously.
They really did. And the article specifically
blames Khomeini for the 1963 uprising against
the white revolution. It says he attempted to
execute the plans. of red and black colonialism
by revolting against the land reforms and women's
emancipation, quote, thereby costing the lives
of innocent people. Blaming him for the bloodshed.
Yeah. And then the article concludes with a really
chilling threat. It says that millions of believers
will not forget how the enemies of the nation
united, quote, even if they found themselves
taking the form of the clergy. That final line
is the regime directly threatening the religious
establishment. They're stating in literal red
ink in a national newspaper that wearing clerical
robes won't protect you from the state if you
oppose the Shah's agenda. It's a massive threat.
The arrogance is palpable. They truly believe
this article would humiliate Khomeini, terrify
his supporters, and scatter the opposition. So
what does this all mean? Put yourself in the
shoes of an average Iranian citizen on January
7th, 1978. You wake up. Maybe you're already
quietly listening to smuggled tapes of Khomeini.
Right. You're frustrated with SAVAQ's brutal
overreach. You want the democratic and religious
protections of the 1906 constitution restored.
You open your daily paper and you see the state
openly mocking and degrading one of the highest
religious authorities in the country on the exact
anniversary of the hijab ban. How does the public
react to such a blatant profanation? The response
was immediate and it was explosive. January 8th,
exactly one day after the publication of the
article, marks day one of the 400 days that would
completely end the monarchy. Day one. Huge protests
erupted instantly in the holy city of Qom. This
city is the theological center of Iran, the intellectual
heart of the clerical establishment, and their
reaction was a total visceral rejection of the
state's narrative. The source notes that classes
at Qom's seminary were immediately canceled.
That isn't just people skipping school. That's
a massive institutional strike. Absolutely. The
students and clerics poured out of the classrooms
and into the streets. People began gathering
at the homes of the Marja, the highest religious
authorities in both Tehran and Qom, demanding
that they take a public stand against this insult.
And by the evening of January 8, the protests
had concentrated at the Azzam Mosque in Qom.
The slogans chanted there tell us exactly how
the public interpreted the article. What were
they chanting? They weren't just demanding a
retraction or an apology for a newspaper column.
They were chanting long live Khomeini and death
to the Pahlavi regime. Wow. Straight to death
to the regime. Yes. The regime's attempt to isolate
and humiliate Khomeini had instantly backfired.
It turned him into the undisputed focal point
of the resistance. And things escalated terribly
the next day. On January 9, the protests grew
even larger. And this is a really crucial detail
from the source the bazaar closed. Yes. Why is
the closing of the Bazaar is such a big deal.
The closure of the Bazaar is always a massive
historical bellwether in Iran. The Bazaaris,
the traditional merchant class, control the economic
heartbeat of the city. Okay. When they shut down
their shops, the protest moves beyond just the
theological seminaries. It becomes a massive
economic strike. So it's spreading across classes.
Exactly. It showed that the black and red, or
at least the religious students and the working
merchant classes, were actually uniting in real
time. The article By attacking Khomeini so aggressively,
gave all these disparate groups a glaring common
enemy. It's incredible. The Shah was terrified
of a red and black alliance, and by trying to
crush it in the press, he accidentally created
it in the streets. He forced their hands. But
the regime didn't back down. On the afternoon
of January 9, police began firing live ammunition
into the crowd in Qum, killing and injuring many
people. And this brings us to a vital cultural
and religious mechanic of this revolution. The
police violence didn't crush the protests. It
acted as a force multiplier. The source points
out that the day after the shootings, people
gathered to protest and to commemorate the deaths
in many other Iranian cities. Right, the memorial
protests. This isn't just spontaneous anger anymore.
It has a schedule. We have to examine the mechanics
of these memorial protests. In Shia Islam, there
is a deep cultural and religious tradition of
mourning the dead, which includes significant
commemorative gatherings, particularly the Chehelm,
which marks the 40th day after a death. 40th
day? Yes. When the state police killed protesters
in Qum on January 9, they unwittingly seeded
a guaranteed, mathematically predictable wave
of future protests. They set a timer. Exactly.
They created martyrs. And the commemoration of
those martyrs 40 days later created a built -in
rhythm for sustained, escalating resistance.
It's like a chain reaction of dominoes falling
across the map. The source lists the cities where
these memorial protests spread. Tabriz, Yazd,
Isfahan, Shiraz, Jaram, and Awaz. It just kept
spreading. If you visualize a map of Iran, you
see the revolution starting in the theological
heart of Qom, moving to the capital in Tehran,
and then exploding outward. Every single time
the police cracked down and killed protesters
in Tabriz, they essentially set an alarm clock
for new memorial protests 40 days later in Yazd
or Isfahan. This raises an important question.
How often does a government's own propaganda
apparatus inadvertently create the very monster
it's trying to destroy. It seems like a classic
blunder. The Shah's regime wanted to prove that
Khomeini was irrelevant, a relic of the past
with no actual influence. By dedicating state
resources to attacking him so publicly and so
viciously, they validated his power. They showed
they were scared of him. Precisely. They proved
to the entire nation that the Shah was terrified
of an exiled cleric. The article effectively
drafted Comini's blueprint for victory, placing
him at the absolute center of a revolutionary
movement that would sweep the entire country.
And the timeline is just breathtaking, exactly
400 days later. From the moment that Red Ink
hit the page on January 7th, 1978, to the moment
the Pahlavi dynasty was completely overthrown.
400 days. Just over a year. It's a terrifying
testament to how fast a deeply rooted system
can collapse when a single arrogant miscalculation
ignites years of dry tinder. It serves as a textbook
example of the limits of authoritarian control.
The state controlled a massive modern military.
They controlled SAVAC. They controlled the flow
of official media and the newspaper. They had
all the hard power. Yet they were utterly defeated
by an underground network of smuggled cassette
tapes, the unifying power of shared religious
and constitutional grievances, and their own
complete inability to understand the people they
were governing. As we wrap up this deep dive,
it really is quite a journey we've been on. We
started with a peace treaty that accidentally
opened a smuggling route for cassette tapes.
We saw a nervous, out -of -touch regime trying
to project an image of an island of stability
to the West while secretly drafting a ghost -written,
deeply insulting op -ed at home. We saw that
op -ed printed in red ink designed to divide
the country, but instead it united students,
clerics, and merchants into an unstoppable 400
-day countdown to a revolution. It's an absolute
masterclass in how not to handle a simmering
political crisis. And just to briefly reiterate
our stance as we conclude, looking back at these
events from a purely historical, analytical standpoint
reveals the mechanics of how revolutions take
hold and spread. We're observing the cause and
effect, the action and reaction, completely independent
of the various ideologies that ultimately won
or lost in the years that followed. Just following
the data? History provides the data. It's up
to us to understand the patterns. And that brings
us to our final thought for you to take away
today. Consider the dynamic we just explored.
The Iranian state had every traditional lever
of hard power at its disposal. Guns, money, media.
The opposition had cassette tapes, whispered
conversations, and underground networks. When
a massively powerful entity uses its giant megaphone
to punch down at an exiled critic, does it inherently
prove to the public that the critic's ideas are
actually stronger than the state's weapons? Does
the act of public defamation actually serve as
the ultimate endorsement of the threat? It's
a profound paradox of power. By trying to destroy
an idea publicly, you often granted the exact
oxygen it needs to consume you. I encourage you
to think about how that dynamic plays out in
the media ecosystems, the political discourse,
and the institutional power struggles you observe
today. It's everywhere once you look for it.
The tools have changed from newspapers and cassette
tapes to algorithms and social networks, but
the human reactions to power and provocation
remain remarkably consistent. Thank you so much
for joining us on this incredible journey through
history today. Keep asking questions, keep looking
past the headlines, and as always, stay curious.