Summary
The 1979 revolution replaced Iran’s monarchy with a new political system led by clerical authority that promised justice and dignity but soon imposed strict controls, especially on women. Although many initially supported the revolution, the new order consolidated power, suppressed rival movements, and reshaped the state around religious governance. Women who had helped mobilize the revolution became early critics when compulsory veiling and legal limitations were introduced. Their continued activism and resistance have remained one of the most enduring forces challenging the system.
Key Takeaways
- Women played a significant role in the Iranian Revolution but quickly became among its first opponents when restrictions on their rights began to appear.
- The revolutionary system evolved into a political structure centered on clerical authority under the doctrine of rule by an Islamic jurist, gradually weakening republican elements.
- Iranian women have continued resisting restrictions for decades, becoming a persistent symbol of opposition and calls for dignity and freedom.
In 1979, only weeks after the fall of the Shah, tens of thousands of Iranian women marched through the streets of Tehran on March 8, International Women’s Day. They had helped bring down a monarchy in the name of justice and dignity. But almost immediately, they sensed that the revolution they had supported was turning against them. Their protests against the first attempts to impose compulsory veiling were among the earliest warnings of what the new Islamic Republic would become.
The story of Iran’s revolution cannot be told without them.
In 1979, Mohammad Reza Pahlavi’s monarchy was replaced by the Islamic Republic of Iran. Ayatollah Ruhollah Khomeini was the architect of the revolution that overthrew the Shah, promising salvation and dignity to the downtrodden in Iran and across the Muslim world.
As the world approaches another International Women’s Day, the voices of Iranian women, silenced for decades, are finally echoing far beyond the walls meant to contain them. From prison cells to the streets of Tehran, their struggle forces the world to reconsider the revolution that reshaped Iran in 1979. It is a story that began with promises of dignity and justice, but one whose deepest betrayal fell upon the very women who helped bring that revolution to power.
On October 6, 2023, women’s rights activist Narges Mohammadi was awarded the Nobel Peace Prize while serving a ten‑year prison sentence in Tehran for protesting the oppression and abuse of Iranian women.
One day later, on October 7, Hamas, an ideological offspring of the same revolutionary current, massacred 1,200 Israelis and condemned thousands of Gazans to death, all while claiming the moral high ground.
The first year after Khomeini seized power was decisive. It saw the dismantling of secular and competing political movements and the gradual implementation of a political order governed by Sharia law.
Between April 3, 1979, the day the Islamic Republic was officially established, and January 1980, Khomeini delivered 22 speeches that were later published by the Iranian Ministry of National Guidance in a volume titled “Selected Messages and Speeches of Imam Khomeini.”
Across these speeches, Khomeini gradually outlined his vision for Iran, its international role, and the future he imagined not only for Iranians but for Muslims worldwide.
The three most frequently repeated words in those speeches were “the people” (200 times), “Allah” (139 times), and “Islam” (124 times). Khomeini proclaimed the beginning of a new era in which God’s will would be fulfilled on earth. Social justice, dignity, and equality were promised to the people.
The enemies in his narrative were the West, especially Great Britain, the United States, and the Soviet Union and, of course, Israel. The westernization promoted by the Pahlavi dynasty would be replaced by Islamic values, principles, and traditions.
For millions of Iranians, both secular and religious, Khomeini represented hope for a better future. This hope was reflected in the overwhelming majority that voted for the establishment of the Islamic Republic in the referendum held in March 1979.
But how Islamic was Khomeini’s project?
The very notion of an “Islamic republic” is internally contradictory. The term was not chosen out of admiration for the French republican model that had hosted Khomeini in exile prior to his return to Iran. Rather, it revealed his political pragmatism. His project was fundamentally political rather than theological.
Like many revolutionary leaders, Khomeini forged tactical alliances. One of them was with Mehdi Bazargan, a prominent revolutionary figure whom he appointed as the first Prime Minister of the new republic.
The constitution that emerged from this compromise became a hybrid: a system that combined Khomeini’s doctrine of velayat‑e faqih, the rule of the Islamic jurist, with elements of a republican political framework. Over time, however, the republican elements faded, and divine authority became concentrated in the hands of the Supreme Leader.
Before seizing power, Khomeini addressed Muslims as a whole, expanding his audience beyond Iran’s borders. Once he consolidated control, however, he introduced a distinctly Shiite doctrine that excluded most Muslims and alienated many Iranians as well.
The constitution of the Islamic Republic was drafted by Shiite clerics. It did not follow any of the four major Sunni schools of Islamic jurisprudence—known as madhabs, meaning legal traditions or interpretive schools within Islamic law. These Sunni schools are the Hanafi, Hanbali, Shafi‘i, and Maliki traditions.
Instead, the new state was grounded in Twelver Shiism, the official religion of Iran.
Why then did Khomeini call his revolution “Islamic” rather than explicitly Shiite?
One explanation is political strategy. By invoking Islam broadly, he could mobilize support far beyond the Shiite community and appeal to Muslims worldwide.
Another possibility is that Khomeini believed his interpretation of Islam represented the most authentic model, one that others would eventually follow.
Yet the unfolding reality suggests something closer to the first explanation: a populist revolutionary who mastered the art of mobilizing the masses while concealing the full implications of his project.
In 1979 Khomeini established al‑Quds Day, an annual event calling for the liberation of Jerusalem and the global triumph of Islam. In his speeches he repeatedly praised Muslim unity and solidarity.
At the same time, his actions undermined the very ecumenical cooperation he invoked.
Earlier in the 20th century, several religious figures had sought reconciliation between Sunni and Shiite Muslims. One notable effort was led by Ayatollah Mohammad Taqi ad‑Din Qommi, who helped establish Dar al‑Taqrib, the “House of Reconciliation,” in Cairo in 1947.
One of the initiative’s most significant achievements came from Sheikh Mahmud Shaltut, then the Grand Imam of al‑Azhar University. Shaltut issued a fatwa, a religious decree or authoritative legal opinion in Islamic law, recognizing Twelver Shiism as a legitimate fifth school of Islamic jurisprudence alongside the four Sunni madhabs.
When Khomeini came to power decades later, he could have revived Qommi’s efforts toward a more unified Muslim community, the umma, meaning the global community of believers bound together by faith. Instead, Qommi was forced into exile due to his theological disagreements with Khomeini.
Despite opposition from many leading Shiite scholars, Khomeini declared himself the vali‑e faqih, the supreme jurist and political authority of the state, concentrating extraordinary authority in a single clerical office.
Iranians had voted for justice, equality, freedom of expression, dignity, and brotherhood, the ideals Khomeini promised them. Once he secured their mandate, however, he dismantled the very forces that had helped bring him to power. Political allies were imprisoned, exiled, silenced, or executed, while the revolutionary state consolidated control over the military, the economy, the media, and the judiciary.
No betrayal illustrates this transformation more clearly than the fate of Iranian women.
During the revolution, Khomeini praised their role, describing them as “the vanguard of the movement.” Women marched in demonstrations, organized networks, and mobilized society against the Shah.
Yet once power was secured, the new regime imposed strict dress codes and sweeping legal restrictions on women. The revolution that promised dignity turned many of its most courageous participants into subjects of control.
In his first speech in April 1979, Khomeini declared: “In an Islamic Republic, there is no oppression… In Islam there is freedom for all groups, women, men, black, white, for all.”
The Iran he created bears little resemblance to that promise.
It is neither fully Islamic nor genuinely republican. It is a Khomeinist state, one that suffocates its own citizens, distorts the moral message of Islam, and projects instability far beyond its borders.
And yet the story of Iran’s revolution did not end with the consolidation of the regime.
For decades, Iranian women continued to resist, sometimes in the streets, sometimes in prison cells, sometimes through the quiet courage of everyday defiance.
History records a striking irony: the first mass protest against the Islamic Republic was led by women on International Women’s Day in 1979.
The revolution answered them with intimidation, repression, and law.
But it never succeeded in silencing them.
Generation after generation of Iranian women refused to disappear—students, journalists, mothers, artists, prisoners, and activists who challenged a system determined to control their bodies and their voices.
Today, as the world marks another International Women’s Day, those voices are no longer confined within Iran’s borders.
They echo across the world.
Nearly half a century after the revolution, the most enduring legacy of 1979 may not be the regime it created.
It may be the women who outlived it.
