The Spark of the Iranian Revolution - "Iran and Red and Black Colonization"

Welcome to a new episode of pplpod! In this episode, we dive into the explosive political catalyst of the Iranian Revolution by examining a pivotal 1978 propaganda article.

On January 7, 1978, the Ettela'at newspaper published a highly controversial piece titled "Iran and Red and Black Colonization" under the fictitious pseudonym Ahmad Rashidi Motlagh. The article was allegedly drafted at the Imperial Court and deployed by Prime Minister Amir-Abbas Hoveyda as a weapon to attack religious opponents of the ruling regime. It viciously targeted Ayatollah Ruhollah Khomeini, portraying him as a faithless adventurer and a foreign agent with ties to British colonial centers. The piece alleged a sinister alliance between communist forces, referred to as "red," and religious Islamists, labeled as "black," who were supposedly uniting to oppose the Shah's White Revolution reforms.

Coming shortly after the mysterious death of Khomeini's son—which many citizens blamed on the SAVAK secret police—the publication backfired spectacularly. It immediately sparked the massive 1978 Qom protest, where seminary classes were canceled and demonstrators chanted "Death to the Pahlavi regime". After police began firing into the crowds, the deadly unrest rapidly spread to other major Iranian cities, including Tabriz, Yazd, Isfahan, and Shiraz. Ultimately, this single article is widely recognized as the starting point of the Iranian Revolution, placing Khomeini at the absolute center of the resistance movement that overthrew the Pahlavi dynasty just four hundred days later.

Source credit: Research for this episode included Wikipedia articles accessed 2/27/2026. Wikipedia text is licensed under CC BY-SA 4.0; content here is summarized/adapted in original wording for commentary and educational use.