I have a few quesitons about Iranian nationalism:
Was it a major force behind the 1906 Constitutional Revolution?
Did it originally have a strong religious component i.e. did they define themselves as Persian-speaking Shi'as?
How did nationalism affect Iranians who spoke a different language? How did it affect Zoroastrians, Bahai's, Christians, Jews, and Sunnis? Did these groups sign on to a version of Iranian nationalism? Did Iranian nationalism exclude them or oppress them?
To what extent were the Pahlavi Shahs able to divorce nationalism from religious identity?
Did Iranian nationalism help Mossadegh gather support to nationalize AIOC's operations? Or did he rely on something else, like the support of socialists and communists?
Did nationalism play a role in the 1979 revolution? I sometimes encounter a narrative that Iranians, many of whom did incorporate religion into their identity, supported the revolution to gain a level of independence from the West/US. If this is true, does this mean there were competing nationalisms in Iran? The state-approved secular nationalism v. the nationalism of the everyday Iranian?
How ideologically pure were Iranian communists? Did separatists and communists in Iran employ nationalist rhetoric, or did they stick to socialist or communist rhetoric?
How ideologically pure were the religious leaders leading up to the revolution and in the years after? Did Khomeini and the rest stick to a purely Islamic rhetoric, or did they appeal to the peoples' identity as Iranians? During the Iran-Iraq war, did they only motivate people with religion, or did they cast the conflict as Iranians battling Western Imperialist-backed Arab invaders?
Yes, very much so.
not exactly. On your "persian-speaking" point, quite the opposite in fact! Iranian Azeris who didn't even speak Persian are some of the founding ideologues, most famous heros etc... See: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mirza_Fatali_Akhundov http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sattar_Khan - One of most famous heros of Constitutional Revolution. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/B%C4%81qer_Kh%C4%81n http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ahmad_Kasravi The reason you see it referred to as the "Persian 1906 Constitutional Revolution" is because Iran was still known as "Persia" in the English lexicon and pretty much all of western civilization. Another example of the un-persian-centricness of it was another hero of the movement around the time: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kuchik_Khan who founded a short-lived republic in the Iranian province of Gilan. See: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jungle_Movement_of_Gilan The movement was for democracy and was based on a strong sense of iranian identity.
refer to above. very much did the opposite.
Reza Shah focused on removing religion from the public sphere. Infamously banned the chador etc... Not sure how "successful" you can judge this. Obviously not as much as Ataturk in Turkey. His son, mohammad reza was much more focused on countering liberal nationalists and communists and in fact worked with the clergy and made deals with them as he saw them as a tool in this. (See Abbas Miani's biography of the shah on this point. Under the Shah's reign, 3000 mosques were built and a huge network of clerics was able to develop. Contributed hugely to their success as the winning faction in the 1979 revolution).
Nationalism very much helped Mossadegh. Also, remember that the CIA funded street protests of people masquerading as communists shouting pro-mossadegh chants as a way of discrediting mossadegh.
Interesting question. Yes and No. The clerics leading their part in the revolution certainly argued against nationalism. They demonised it. One political cleric (later assassinated by marxist guerillas) infamously said that "Iran can burn for all I care". The rationale/ideology behind this was idealistic pan-islamism. They were calling for a global/regional movement and Iranian nationalism was painted as heretic. The yes part of this comes from the fact that nationalism certainly did play a role for the leading intellectuals of the revolution and the "liberal" nationalists. These people were followers of Mossadegh and very much influenced by the west if not educated there. They believed in some sort of "iranian religious democracy", but not religious in the theocratic sense. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mehdi_Bazargan http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Karim_Sanjabi http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ebrahim_Yazdi http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Abolhassan_Banisadr They dominated the interim government and did strongly in the first elections of the Islamic Republic. e.g Bani-Sadr won 79% of the presidential election. It was because of this that the clerics later introduced vetting into the election process. Bani-Sadr was exiled shortly after the US embassy hostage crisis (the elected government, including the people I linked above came out against the takeover but after being helpless in doing anything about it all resigned in protest). This is why the US hostage crisis is seen as one way hardliners tried to - successfully - radicalise the revolution even further.
Iranian communists were at times backed by the soviets and as such did use the same playbook and left-wing rhetoric but nationalism was used too. Members of the Tudeh party in hindsight do say that their primary motivation of joining the party was because it was just the de-facto opposition. If you opposed the Shah, you joined the communists. So ideology wasn't necessarily the primary factor for everyone. Maybe why the far left-wing movement died away, although thats probably more due to the collapse of the soviet union more than anything else. However, a good example is - what used to be - the most extreme marxist group, the mojahedin-e khalq, they still exist (but insignificant domestically) and they have dropped all left-wing rhetoric.
I was going to mention this above but when Saddam invaded, the demonization of nationalism by the islamists and political clergy stopped. There was a heavy mix of religious, nationalistic and anti-imperialist rhetoric. This was needed to muster up support and unite the nation in the face of an invasion. It wasn't until towards the end of the war though that the idealistic "pan-islamism" and "spread the revolution" ideology died away. Took them a while before realism hit their faces that muslims all over the world were not going to rise up and imitate what happened in Iran. Another point about the clergy and khomeini i'd bring up here. Although the clergy has always been involved in backroom politics in a sense and that whoever ruled Iran always had to accommodate the clergy in one way or another, it wasn't until Khomeini that aggressive and active political islam in shiism became mainstream. In fact, the Shia clergy has traditionally been "quietist", meaning that they did not believe they should be active in day-to-day politics. In fact, a big part of the Shia clergy still believe this. One person, a non-cleric, French educated man, was hugely influential in making this change mainstream. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ali_Shariati His lectures at universities were hugely popular and he is credited as the "sociologist" behind the revolution.