Dictators and civilizational thinking in Iran: From the Great Civilization to Islamic Civilization
Despite critical differences between the two political regimes that have dominated Iran for nearly a century, there are striking similarities between the Pahlavi monarchy (1925-1979) and the Islamic Republic (1979-present). Like Mohammad Reza Shah, Ayatollah Ali Khamenei has built a cult of personality around himself and has engaged in “civilizational thinking” — a preoccupation with defining the eternal essence and world-historical destiny of Iran through references to a glorious (one might say “glorified”) collective past. Nonetheless, the two leaders have interpreted Iranian history in vastly differing ways that serve divergent ideological ends.
