July 24, 2020
Nobel Peace Prize winner Shirin Ebadi says she was “naive” to have believed in Ayatollah Khomeini and to have supported the 1979 revolution.
In an op-ed article written for The Washington Post and published February 25, Ebadi said, “The border between idealism and naivete is sometimes blurred. In our idealism, we were naive enough to think that the cleric Ruhollah Khomeini was the man to make our dreams come true. It is hard to admit it, but we started to follow him even though we knew very little about his vision for Iran. Millions of people were enchanted by him. They were captivated by his charisma without reading any of his books or listening to him in an open and free debate.”
Ebadi wrote: “Today, with the benefit of hindsight, most of us can agree that 1979 was not the time for a revolution. What we needed most was reform, not the total destruction of the system. In fact, toward the end of the Pahlavi Dynasty, we seemed to have the right conditions for a meaningful transition. The Shah was ill and weak; as the revolution got underway, he reluctantly appointed Shahpur Bakhtiar, who had spent many years of his life fighting for liberal democracy, as prime minister. Bakhtiar was determined to be the agent of change. Yet we never gave him a chance.”
Ebadi wrote: “Our shortsightedness resulted in what we see today. Over the past four decades, many of our youths have sacrificed their lives to compensate for our mistake. It profoundly saddens me to see how economic mismanagement and political repression have created a profound sense of hopelessness among the younger generation.
“In this desperate situation, many of our talented young people leave the country to pursue their dreams. Why? Because our revolution created a corrupt economic and political system that thrives on the binary opposition of ‘us’ or ‘them.’ If you aren’t one of ‘them,’ you will have few opportunities for advancement or personal development.”