Saturday  2004-01-17   World

Neither Shahs nor Ayatollahs nor foreigners

The last Shah of Iran went to exile 25 years ago on 1979-01-16 leaving the country to a group of embittered reactionary clerics lead by Ayatollah Khomeini. Soon America the Shah's master would be humilated and infuriated by the spector of its citizens taken hostage in Teheran. Iran went on to waste the 1980s by devouring its young in a futile decade-long war that Iraq's Saddam started and Khomeini kept on. The next decade saw the US ally of the 1980s Iraq's fall from grace after its transgression in Kuwait and its subsquent punishment (that continues on to this day) and Iran's halting, sporatic and sadly incomplete regeneration. After a quater century since the Shah's dethronement and five decades since the Shah's enthronment, what lessons have we learned over these decades?