Not exactly. While it is true the population came together under a new banner of Shia Nationalism, not everyone came peacefully. Rather, Khomeini used the Iran-Iraq war as a distraction to deal with problems his camp was facing.

Other political groups and parties (notably the Communists, such as the Tudeh party or various armed guerrillas) had allied themselves with the Islamists against the Shah before the Iraqi invasion ever began. Keep in mind that the Iranian Revolution took place at the end of 1979, and the Iraqi invasion didn't officially start until September of 1980. So there were a solid 9 months in which the political groups were vying for power before the war ever started.

I am actually in the midst of writing a paper on this right now, and what it argues is that the Iran-Iraq war gave Khomeini and the Islamists the justification they needed to stave off political opponents by creating an external enemy. Starting below is something adapted from my paper:

Economically, the Revolution came upon the back of a recession that hit the tail end of the 1970s. After a boom period in 1974-1976 caused by a surge in oil demand, the Iranian state was harshly brought back to reality by the ensuing bust, which dropped GDP growth rates into the negatives for the first time since 1963.^1 However, this was only a taste of what was to come immediately following the revolution when GDP growth rates reached -26.6% in 1980^2 and many countries froze Iranian foreign assets while in the process of enacting an official embargo upon the country.^3 This rapid collapse of the economy is in no small part due, as some such as Jahangir Amuzegar claim, to the fact that the religious faction of Khomeini and his affiliates had no true economic plan beyond ousting the Shah.^4 With such dire economic straits being faced on the homefront, the war provided an ideal outlet for the worries of the populace. The revolutionary fervor and war effort were able to keep the nation preoccupied long enough for the economic upturn of 18981-1986 to begin.^5 While oil production in particular remained a problem due to the war’s destruction of infrastructure, the decline of the overall national GDP was stabilized and the worst of the economic crisis was over.

In addition to merely distracting the populace from these economic woes, the war helped the regime handle the economic crisis in the short term.. In part, this arose from the scale-up of the Iranian army which helped to employ large amounts of young, working-age men. Iran’s army rose from approximately 150,000 soldiers at the start of the war to over 900,000 regulars and roughly 2,500,000 militia members by the end.^6 For a country with a population of less than 40,000,000, this was an impressive number of troops. When considering the high casualty numbers suffered among these troops, above 250,000 non-civilian Iranians by some conservative estimates^7, large numbers of men were removed from the workforce. How exactly the regime was able to field such large numbers will be explained later in this paper when the religious justification of the regime is discussed. Although the war may have provided a short-term answer to some economic problems, it is also important to note that economic policies undertaken during this era have had crippling effects on Iranian society in the modern age. In particular, the desire for the same large army which employed hundreds of thousands of young Iranian men in the 1980s led also to official efforts to increase the fertility rate, causing severe unemployment in the decades following the war. As Tehran based economist Ali Rashidi puts it:

“[Iran] wanted to have an army of 20 million. And as a result, they encouraged pregnancy and the rate of population increased from something like 1.7 to 4, 4.5. As a result, the population of Iran has doubled during the last 25 years. So this increasing population is far from what the economy can absorb, and at the same time the policies that have been followed since the end of the war have nothing to propose in terms of absorbing this extra population.”^8

In addition to shielding economic woes, the war allowed free reign for the new regime to deal with the political upheaval caused by the rapid revolution. The focus upon the war effort allowed for the government to take unprecedented steps in the suppression of the universities, considered a “bastion of freedom” from the revolution.^9 In order to accomplish this, from June of 1980 until 1987 the Iranian government embarked upon a Cultural Revolution (Inqilab-e-farhangi). This Cultural Revolution, aimed at bringing the thought of the universities in line with the Islamist views of the government, involved the shutdown of Iranian universities until the Fall of 1982 and then long-term censorship for years afterwards.^10 These measures, in conjunction with increasing conscription and death rates in the war with Iraq, led to a flight of educated individuals from the country.

Although representing the flight of the educated and middle class, this brain drain was not decried by Khomeini. Rather, he supported the loss of these intellectuals, claiming that *“They say there is a brain drain. Let these decayed brains flee. . .[Iran] is not a place for them to live anymore.”*^11 For Khomeini, this flight allowed his country to be purged of secular and western influences. The fact that the war gave him cover for this purge, and even expedited it, allowed him to better complete his goal of “Islamizing” the new nation.

Finally, the war provided cover for the crackdown on dissidents within the new Islamic Republic. By 1983, Khomeini and his affiliates had not only crushed the communist elements who were instrumental in the revolt against the Shah, but had also completely changed the dynamics of power into a theocracy based upon the idea of the Velayat-e Faqih.

This idea of the Velayat-e Faqih is really interesting, and if you want I can write something on it later. But right now I should stop procrastinating my math homework and will leave you with this. Hopefully it isn't too off topic.

Sources:

1 - Amuzegar, Jahangir. “The Iranian Economy Before and After the Revolution”. Middle East Journal 46.3 (1992): 415. Web.

2 - World Bank Data

3 - Amirahmadi, Hooshang. Revolution and Economic Transition: The Iranian Experience. Albany: State U of New York, 1990. 32. Web.

4 - Jahangir. 417.

5 - Ibid. 415.

6 -Pollack, Kenneth M. Arabs at War: Military Effectiveness, 1948-1991. Lincoln, NE: U of Nebraska, 2002. 3, 189. Print.

7 - Hiro, Dilip. The Longest War: The Iran-Iraq Military Conflict. New York: Routledge, 1991. 250. Print.

8 - Esfandiari, Golnaz. "Iran: Unemployment Becoming A 'National Threat'" RadioFreeEurope/RadioLiberty. Radio Free Europe, 28 Mar. 2016. Web. 28 Mar. 2016.

9 - Mojab, Shahrzad. "International Higher Education # 36." International Higher Education # 36. N.p., 2004. Web. 28 Mar. 2016.

10 - Ibid.

11 - Interview in Borjian, Maryam. English in Post-Revolutionary Iran: from Indigenization to Internationalization. Bristol: Multilingual Matters, 2013. Print.