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The Interim Government of Iran
The Interim Government of Iran was the first government established in Iran following the Iranian Revolution. It was, to put it generously, a political experiment conducted in the middle of a hurricane. This government lasted from the appointment of Mehdi Bazargan as prime minister on February 4, 1979, until its collective, weary resignation on November 6, 1979. Its existence was a brief, nine-month lesson in the difference between holding a title and holding power.
Formed at the behest of the revolution's returning figurehead, Ayatollah Ruhollah Khomeini, the government was tasked with the Sisyphean chore of transitioning from a 2,500-year-old monarchy under the Pahlavi dynasty to a new, undefined "Islamic Republic." It was staffed primarily by liberal-nationalist and religious-modernist figures who believed, with a certain charming naivety, that a revolution could be managed with bureaucracy and reasoned debate. They were wrong.
Formation and Mandate
On February 4, 1979, with the Shah having already fled and his regime crumbling like a stale biscuit, Ruhollah Khomeini issued a decree appointing Mehdi Bazargan as the Prime Minister of the "Provisional Revolutionary Government." The decree was a masterpiece of strategic ambiguity. It tasked Bazargan with managing the transition, holding a referendum on creating an Islamic Republic, and arranging for the election of a constitutional assembly and a new parliament.
Bazargan was, on paper, the perfect choice for a bridge figure. He was a respected engineer, an academic, a devout Muslim, and a long-time pro-democracy activist who had opposed the Shah. He was a co-founder of the Freedom Movement of Iran, a group that sought to reconcile modern democratic principles with Islamic values. Khomeini himself described Bazargan as "a good man," which in revolutionary parlance is often a precursor to being sidelined. The cabinet Bazargan assembled reflected his own worldview: a collection of technocrats, academics, and lawyers, most of whom were nationalists with an Islamic but not a theocratic bent. They were men who knew how to run a ministry, but not a revolution.
Their formal mandate was clear. Their actual power, however, was non-existent.
The Dual Power Problem
The central, fatal flaw of the Interim Government was its complete lack of authority. From its inception, it was one of two competing power centers. While Bazargan and his ministers occupied the government buildings, the real power was being consolidated elsewhere. This shadow state, loyal only to Khomeini, made the official government a largely symbolic entity.
The primary rival was the secretive Council of the Islamic Revolution, a body of clerics and hardline loyalists handpicked by Khomeini. This council operated as the true legislative and executive authority, issuing decrees, appointing judges, and making decisions that routinely contradicted or overrode the Interim Government. Bazargan would later compare his administration to "a knife with no blade."
Further eroding any semblance of control were the revolutionary organizations that had sprouted across the country:
- The Komitehs: Revolutionary committees, or Komitehs, acted as local police forces, intelligence agencies, and moral guardians. They were autonomous, armed, and answered only to the clerical establishment. They arrested citizens, confiscated property, and carried out summary justice, all without consulting the official government.
- The Revolutionary Courts: Headed by figures like the infamous "hanging judge" Sadegh Khalkhali, these courts bypassed the existing judiciary to conduct rapid, often televised, trials of former officials of the Shah's regime, leading to thousands of executions. The Ministry of Justice was powerless to intervene.
- The Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps (IRGC): Formed in May 1979, the Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps was established as an ideological military force to protect the revolution from its enemies, both foreign and domestic. Unlike the regular army, whose loyalty was suspect, the IRGC was fiercely loyal to Khomeini and operated entirely outside the chain of command of Bazargan's government.
This dual-sovereignty structure created a state of perpetual chaos. The Interim Government would issue an order, only to find it ignored or countermanded by a local Komiteh or a decree from the Revolutionary Council. It was a government in name only, a frustrating and ultimately futile exercise in political theater.
Challenges and Dissolution
The Interim Government found itself besieged by crises it had no tools to solve. The economy was in freefall, the military was in disarray, and ethnic minorities, particularly the Kurds, began agitating for autonomy, leading to armed conflict. Bazargan's attempts to negotiate and find moderate solutions were consistently undermined by hardliners who preferred violent suppression.
The final, decisive blow came on November 4, 1979. A group of radical students calling themselves the Muslim Student Followers of the Imam's Line overran the United States embassy in Tehran, taking 52 American diplomats and citizens hostage. The Iran hostage crisis was not just an international incident; it was a domestic power play. The students acted without the government's knowledge or consent, but with the clear, if tacit, approval of Khomeini.
The crisis was deliberately engineered to humiliate Bazargan's moderate faction. Just days earlier, Bazargan and his foreign minister, Ebrahim Yazdi, had met with the U.S. National Security Advisor, Zbigniew Brzezinski, in Algiers. This meeting was portrayed by radicals as proof of the government’s subservience to the "Great Satan." The embassy takeover made the Interim Government's position untenable. They could neither approve of the action, which violated all international norms, nor could they force the students to release the hostages. They were utterly impotent.
Two days later, on November 6, 1979, Mehdi Bazargan and his entire cabinet resigned. He stated that his government's continued work was "impossible." Khomeini accepted the resignation without ceremony, and full state power was officially transferred to the Council of the Islamic Revolution. The liberal phase of the revolution was over.
Legacy
The Interim Government of Iran is often remembered as a footnote, a brief and failed transitional body. But its failure is arguably more instructive than a success would have been. It demonstrated that the driving force of the Iranian Revolution was not the liberal-democratic ideal espoused by figures like Bazargan, but the radical, anti-Western, theocratic vision of Khomeini and his followers.
It served as a convenient buffer, absorbing the initial chaos of the post-revolutionary period while the clerical establishment built the institutions that would form the foundation of the permanent Islamic Republic of Iran. It was a disposable shield, designed to fail. Its existence is a stark reminder that in a revolution, the people who start the arguments are rarely the ones who get to finish them. It’s a lesson in what happens when you bring a meticulously drafted policy proposal to a gunfight. You should probably remember that.