The Photo Of The Return

The French Revolution of 1789 was like the Big Bang of the modern political era. There have been two major reenactments of the French Revolution, and many minor ones. In the French Revolution the king and queen, Louis XVI and Marie Antoinette, were overthrown and guillotined. The chaos of the revolution eventually ended in the rule of Napoleon, although he had nothing to do with initiating the revolution or executing the king and queen. The revolutionaries were obsessed with the number ten, and the measurement system that they developed is what we refer to today as the Metric System. 

The first major reenactment of the French Revolution was the October Revolution of 1917. Tsar Nicholas was overthrown and the family ultimately executed. Every reenactment of the revolution has it's own version of the Storming of the Bastille, which was the signature event of the French Revolution. In 1917 it was the Storming of the Winter Palace. The conquests of Napoleon had earlier spread the ideals of the revolution, the modern secular republic. While his invasion of Russia was ultimately unsuccessful could Napoleon have imagined that, just over a century later, the tsars would be overthrown by a reenactment of the revolution that had brought him to power?

The second major reenactment of the French Revolution was the Iranian Revolution of 1979. The revolutionaries, led by Ayatollah Khomeini, were in exile in France not far from Versailles, which was the home of the French monarchy that was overthrown. Khomeini returned home, after the royal family had fled into exile, on an Air France jet which has the revolutionary tricolor painted on it. The Iranian version of the Storming of the Bastille was the Storming of the U.S. Embassy, which resulted in the Hostage Crisis. The reenactments are not exactly the same as the original French Revolution, each rearranges the pieces in it's own way. The Iranian Revolution, in contrast to the French and October Revolutions, was a move back toward religion. The Eiffel Tower was a monument of the centennial of the French Revolution but the Iranian version of the tower, the Azadi Tower, was a monument of the 2500 year anniversary of the monarchy that would be overthrown by the reenactment of the French Revolution. 

The Azadi Tower looks like a cross between the Eiffel Tower and the Arc De Triomphe, both of which are post-revolutionary symbols in Paris. But the Azadi Tower is to celebrate the 2500 year anniversary of the Persian Monarchy. I remember from childhood the news of when it opened. Image from Google Street View.

I also remember this famous image of Ayatollah Khomeini triumphantly returning to Iran, in February 1979, from exile in Paris. He returned on an Air France jet and the following photo from the Wikipedia article "Ruhollah Khomeini" is of the elderly ayatollah being helped down the steps from the plane by the Air France pilot.

The Shah and his family had left Iran by this time but there were still forces in the country that were loyal to the Shah. Some have wondered if so many foreign journalists were allowed on the plane as insurance that the Shah's forces wouldn't preclude the budding revolution by simply shooting it down.

What I wonder about is whether this photo of the return was carefully pre-planned. Was Khomeini's team well-aware of the importance of the French Revolution, and how it was the beginning of the modern political era? Did they know that the French Revolution had been reenacted, early in the Twentieth Century, by the October Revolution in Russia, and planned this photo to portray this unfolding Iranian Revolution as another reenactment of it?

Khomeini's team, who had been in exile with him near Paris, knew that journalists would take photos as he descended the steps of the plane. Being helped down the steps of the plane added to Khomeini's aura. Some leaders try to portray their physical vigor, which implies their capability of doing their job. Instead this photo implied that Khomeini's great power was entirely spiritual, and not of this world.

But why was it the pilot who helped him down the steps? Khomeini's son is right behind them and could have been the one to help. The pilot is dressed in a military-like uniform, which is reminiscent of Napoleon, and the tricolor, which was the revolutionary flag, was painted on the plane. This definitely implied that the budding Iranian Revolution was picking up where the all-important French Revolution left off. 

This explains why the Hostage Crisis had to happen. Revolutionaries stormed the U.S. Embassy, and fifty of the staff were held hostage in the crisis that went on for 444 days. If the French Revolution was being reenacted then there had to be an event that corresponded to the Storming of the Bastille, which was the signature event of the French Revolution. The fact that the Bastille had been a prison meant that the staff of the embassy had to be held as prisoners.

This wasn't the only factor in the Hostage Crisis. I believe that the wall around the U.S. Embassy compound actually helped to bring about the crisis. In the early days of the Persian Monarchy it achieved a great victory over Babylon and supplanted it as the most important power. Babylon was centered around a walled city and while a drunken royal party was going on the Persian engineers managed to partially dam the Euphrates River, which flowed through the walled city, and the Persian warriors were able to get inside the walls. As anyone who has read the Bible knows, the Persians released the Jews from captivity in Babylon and they returned and rebuilt the Temple, which is now referred to as the Second Temple.

Does anyone see the historical irony of the Hostage Crisis? There were prayers across America for the hostages. Even after the failure of a rescue attempt the prayers continued, and help would come from an unexpected direction. The new leader of neighboring Iraq, Saddam Hussein, saw Iran in revolutionary turmoil, and cut off from it's main ally the U.S. Saddam was certainly also worried about Iran's revolution spreading to his own majority Shiite population. There were border clashes between the two countries in the Spring of 1980, with each side blaming the other. Saddam was hoping that oil-rich and Arab-majority Khuzestan province would rise up and join him. 

In September 1980 Iraq launched a full-scale invasion of Iran, concentrated on Khuzestan province. This is what unintentionally got the hostages released. With Iran actually being invaded the hostages were no longer needed as a rallying point for the revolution, the guards holding the hostages were needed at the battlefront, and soon the hostages were released.

The irony is that the victory that started the Persian Monarchy as a great power involved getting inside the walls of Babylon, after which the Jews were released from their captivity. The signature event of the revolution that ended the Persian Monarchy was getting inside the walls of the U.S. Embassy and taking the staff captive. Babylon was in what is now Iraq and Saddam Hussein considered it as being very important and had much of it rebuilt. So then he had to get back at Persia, at least subconsciously, and get it's captives released. 

Notice also that the Persian conquest of Babylon, in ancient times, revolved around a river. The Persians dammed the Euphrates River to get inside the walls of the city. The rematch in 1980 between Iran, as the modern name of Persia, and Iraq, as the modern incarnation of Babylon, also officially started over a river. The Tigris and Euphrates Rivers join to form the Shatt-al-Arab River, which forms the border between Iraq and Iran. There had been a long controversy over where exactly the border line was on the river. Saddam Hussein marked the beginning of the war with Iran by withdrawing from a treaty over the river.

This is how history works. We tend to reenact it, sometimes intentionally but often without realizing it. But sometimes we do it over to avenge a wrong or make it turn out differently.