I apologize that I am currently unable to give a proper reply, but there are quite a few entries about the Iranian Revolution as it was happening by Hoxha in his political diary, many of which are selected essays in his Reflections on the Middle East, 1958-1983.
You can find it on the Marxist.org site: http://www.marxists.org/reference/archive/hoxha/works/ebooks/reflections_on_the_middle_east.pdf
Go to p. 544 (as listed) to view the table of contents.
You may especially be interested in the entry on p. 355 titled THE EVENTS WHICH ARE TAKING PLACE IN THE MOSLEM COUNTRIES MUST BE SEEN IN THE LIGHT OF DIALECTICAL AND HISTORICAL MATERIALISM. Specifically beginning on p. 372 (last paragraph).
A (very) quick summary of Hoxha's Marxist analysis would be that the 1979 Iranian Revolution began in 1953, when Mossedeq (supported by the mullahs who were opposed to the Shah) was deposed in an imperialist coup to bring back the Shah (the Shah being the representative of the wealthy, feudal landowners). "It is characteristic of the revolt of the Iranian people that, despite the great terror, it was not quelled, but continued spasmodically, in different forms and in different intensities. This revolutionary process steadily built up in quality and overcame the stage of fear of suppression." Despite suppression, the opposition became more widespread and open, the opposition being the representative of a working class, anti-feudal, anti-imperialist movement - even if not ideologically unified:
We must always bear in mind that neither this political opposition, nor the religious opposition to the Pahlavis was united. Some of those who comprised this opposition were against the so-called agrarian reform, against the right of women to vote, etc. This section, which comprised conservative clergy, was steadily losing its influence amongst the masses, who were moving closer to that part of the clergy who openly fought the dictatorship of the Shan on the basis of the Shia principles of the Moslem religion. One of these was Ayatollah Khomeini, who was imprisoned, tortured, imprisoned again and sent into exile and his son murdered This enhanced the influence of the imam among the people, in the Bazaar, hence, amongs the merchants, and also amongst the workers. In the rising tide of agitation and the great demonstrations against the Shah, the masses demanded the return of the Imam to the homeland. The death of his son and of a political personality, Ali Shariat, in mysterious circumstances led to the emergence of the religious elements in the forefront of the clashes and the whole people united with them, especially in Tabriz on February 18-19, 1977, as well as in Tehran, Qum and other Iranian cities. All this testifies to the fighting spirit of the people of Iran. As a result the Pahlavi monarchy was quite incapable of resisting the repeated waves of the onslaught of the insurgent people.
Well, I’m not a marxist historian, but I am a Marxist and I did write an essay on this last semester, so I’ll give you as good an answer as I can.
Iran had undergone a major period of political upheaval prior to the 1979 revolution, which itself was the culmination of this upheaval. To understand this outburst of revolutionary activity, we first need to understand the economic circumstance of Iran in the 1970s.
For the better part of a millennium, Iran existed as a feudal society (I can’t say I known the specifics of Iran’s economy at the turn of the century, but I find it hard to believe that it was any more backwards than Russia’s at the time, which really wasn't feudal), in which all land was monopolised by a landed aristocracy and the Islamic clerics. These two classes also acted as the bureaucratic functionaries of the state. This structure was altered with the Constitutional Revolution 1905-07, by establishing a parliament, the state functions of the clerics and aristocrats were broken (although their economic power remained). However, from the Constitutional Revolution until the 1979 revolution, the Iranian state became more and more absolutist with state power being slowly centralized in the hands of the Shah.
This process began in 1921, when Reza Khan overthrew lead a military coup to overthrow the Qaja Dynasty. During the Second World War, the British and Soviet governments invaded Iran and deposed Reza Shah - they feared he was planning to side with Germany. They replaced him with his son, Mohammad Reza Shah. In 1953 the Liberal-Nationalist government of Mohammad Mosaddegh was overthrown in military coup orchestrated by MI6 and the CIA (see; Operation Boot) after his attempts to nationalise the Iranian operations of the Anglo-Persian Oil Company. From 1953 on, the Shah ruled with an iron grip over the Iranian state - a state propped up by economic aid from the United States. Much of it spent on repression, such as funding the notorious secret police, the SAVAK, and the expansion of the military (by the time of the revolution, about ~40% of the budget was spent on the military). This was partially because the Shah needed to rule through force of arms, but more so that the United States needed a strong Iran to defend access the the Persian Gulf oil reserves should the Cold War ever turn hot.
In 1963 the government of Mohammad Reza Shah began a massive project of economic development and social change. It was named the “White Revolution of the Shah and the People” and was a long period of reform set on industrialising the nation and developing the capitalist mode of production to a modern standard. It involved the consolidation of the rural land holdings into the hands of the state and a growing class of agrarian capitalists (more or less the same landed aristocracy of the last half-century) and developments of industrial infrastructure as well as schools and hospitals. All of which was paid for by the state, or at the very least subsidised by state investment in the projects of domestic capitalists. Those who lost out, the shia clergy, vehemently opposed the reforms as it removed their economic control over land.
To allow the “White Revolution” to take place, there needed to be a massive expansion of Iran’s working class, inevitably coming at the expense of the Rural Peasantry.The land reforms were designed to divide up the aristocratic feudal estates, and create smaller estates of the wealthy peasants, who would go on to become the rural petty-bourgeoisie. The process of land reform began in 1962 and involved legislation to force landowners to sell off large parts of their estates to the peasants. Very few peasants actually benefited from this, as already more than 40% were rural labourers paid in cash, without their own cultivating rights. The attempt at breaking up the estates didn't last, so the Iranian government set about establishing “Farm Corporations”, forcing the peasants to become shareholders in the corporations, working for them as agricultural labour. But since farm corporations use modern machinery, not all peasants could be employed, and former farm laborers could hardly ever be employed.’ This created a new group of landless, unemployed people, forced to migrate into the cities to find work. Just like the enclosure acts of 18th century Britain.
In the 1970s Iran became part of OPEC and in 1973 OPEC voted to raised the price of oil dramatically. By 1975, oil revenues had quadrupled since the beginning of the “White Revolution”, reaching nearly twenty billion dollars. These oil revenues fueled a second wave of industrialisation. Industrial production at the height of the oil-boom, accounted for 15% of Iran’s Gross Domestic Product, and 20% of its total employment. The oil boom had allowed Iran to become a modern capitalist state in less than twenty years.
Now that we have an idea of the economic base of Iran in the 1970s, we can look into the nature of the revolution.
The Revolution is often characterised as an Islamic one. This is not true. While the forces of the Islamists played a role in the protests that toppled the Shah, the real driving force of the revolution came from the working class and their ability to strike and cripple the economy, as well as organise and resist repression from the state. The Islamists were a fundamentally middle-class ideological force that could do little to oppose the Shah’s military state.
Before the 1905 Constitutional Revolution had removed the government function of the shia clergy, they had been a powerful political and landowning class. Before the white revolution, the shia clerics lacked any unified political ideology. When it began, the dissolution of the old feudal estates weakened the power of the clergy even more, as they lost most of their wealth. This is what began clerical opposition to the Shah. The period of social liberalisation and secularisation that came with the development of capitalism during the white revolution, led to a great weakening of the influence clerics, forcing a large portion of them out of politics altogether. This has been the case with clerics of all faiths all around the world, they act as a decisively conservative force. A conflict between church and state, was inevitable and with the now growing Islamist political forces in the educated middle class, as a rejection of westernism and the woes that western intervention had brought on Iran, an actual confrontation between the two forces was possible.
The Revolution itself was sparked by middle-class protesters, but despite the drive of the Islamists and liberals, only the working class, being the largest and and most economically powerful of all the classes, was able to topple the regime. Initially a small minority in Iran, the urban working class soon became the largest. During the mass migrations of the “White Revolution”, the working class swelled to millions. The working class had demonstrated their ability to defeat the other class throughout the “White Revolution” by striking and winning wage increases in the 1970s, particularly in the oil industry.
The role of the working class and the extent of their activity within revolutionary activities is exemplified by the formation of the “Shuras”, the self-organised workers councils, a clear sign that the working class is beginning to form the structures of dual power. It is clear that the working class was not led into a revolutionary upsurge by the clerics. Workers revolted due to their poor economic situation and the expectations of decent wages and living standard under the newly developed industrial economy. The Iranian revolution was caused by one major factor: the unmet expectations of the Iranian people. the inability of the Shah’s reform programme to give the people what they demanded, or what was expected, as well as his continued oppression in order to maintain his iron grip on power, caused one of the largest revolutions of all time. With the lack of any clear revolutionary socialist organisation, and the weakness of the liberals and nationalists, the power vacuum was quickly filled by the Islamist, and a workers revolution for their own emancipation against a state capitalist dictatorship, hijacked by the forces of fundamentalist Islam.
Further reading (Revolutionary Rehearsals is the only one that's Marxist, but the others are good):
Maryam Poya, “Iran 1979: Long Live the Revolution!...Long Live Islam?”, in Revolutionary Rehearsals, ed. Colin Barker (London: Bookmarks, 1987)
Nikki R. Keddie, Modern Iran: Roots and Results of Revolution (Yale University Press, 2006)
Misagh Parsa, Social Origins of the Iranian Revolution (Rutgers University Press, 1989)
What is a "marxist historian" ?