You want me on that wall, you need me on that wall..
Colonel Nathan R. Jessup, Unite Stated Marine Corps
From the movie A Few Good Men

Well Faramarz beat me to it. I have been meaning for some time to write about exactly the same thing, which is part of a general enigma for me, firstly why have Iranians no sense of community, cooperative society or collective democratic decision making, secondly the reasons for the abject failure of modernism in Iran and its corollary:  thirdly what made the Young Turks – the modern often European educated technocrats who aligned themselves with Reza Shah to build the modern Iran -  give up on democracy and come to the realisation nothing was achievable without a strongman.

The vitriolic political polemics of Iranians makes dispassionate historical analysis impossible. But here are few disjointed historical notes of how we have always taken the shortcut.  

Starting with the 1299 (1921) Coup, one unappreciated fact is that it is wasn’t just Reza Khan and Seyyed Zia but many others who considered a Coup needed to save Iran.  The historical circumstances were such that everyone was crying for a strongman. Once the historical context and the abject misery of the situation in Iran is considered then it becomes understandable. They all wished for it and they regretted it later! The literature of friend and foe of Reza Khan, the future strongman ruler prior to his ascension to dictator and monarch, is full of cries for a strongman to save Iran.

It was indeed crystallised in the writings of the time.  For example Malek o Shoa’ray Bahar in his History of Political Parties also called the Demise of Qajar (the first democratic period spanning the 3rd and 4th Parliaments interrupted by the First World War - by the way how many of us are aware Iran became one of the main battlegrounds of the WW I in the East?) firstly tried to distance himself from Reza Khan to substantiate his democratic credentials and he was indeed dismayed by the latter discarding the democratic process writing contemporaneously against it, albeit in secrecy, yet only a few years earlier in the chaotic period after WW I and complete economic collapse in Iran, he wrote longingly for a “strongman” as “nothing else would save the situation”. He came to regret it as it became clear that such strongmen by nature will not tolerate dissent.

The tragic vanguard of modernism in Iran namely Ali Akbar Davar aligned himself with Reza Khan and so did the young technocrats of the Radical Party and Iran e Javan etc. Indeed, before Reza Shah coming to power Davar had passionately argued the situation in Iran required a strongman that the young modernists could follow and build a modern state as the conservative elements backed by the clergy supported by the mob using the parliament would make the task impossible.

It is interesting to note many leaders of Mashruteh save for a few such as Taghizadeh who had opposed the Minor Dictatorship and taken part in the earlier civil war, this time chose to sit home and shunned active politics. Yet some of the same leading politicians returned after the removal of Reza Shah and supported his son before and after Mossadegh.

Later in the mid-20th century it is startling to note from the memoires of people like Dr Ghani writing in 1948 after returning to Iran, why Iran could not have a strong but just leader? He was arguing and longing for a strongman, again! So Dear Faramarz, as long we are the way we are, it is as the fictional Colonel Jessup said.