1979

by Eduardo del Buey

1979

At the end of 1978, I had just ended my tour of duty at the Canadian Embassy in Teheran. I had left Iran as street protests took a life of their own and in January 1979, the Shah and his family left the country forever.

On February 11^th, Ayatollah Khomeini arrived in Teheran and took over the leadership of the revolution — one whose impact would be felt far beyond Iran’s borders.

Khomeini proclaimed the Islamic Republic of Iran and swore that his revolution would be exported around the world. Iran became a theocracy and reverted to a time when women had no rights. Power was now exclusively in the hands of a religious oligarchy.

At its prime, the Islamic Republic controlled the Shia crescent that included the south of Lebanon, Yemen, Syria, post-Saddam Iraq, and later found allies in Russia, Cuba, Venezuela, North Korea, and Nicaragua.

Today, it is at war with the United States and Israel and has proven to be a major regional power capable of holding its own in the face of great odds and despite the hardships imposed on its population and economy.

On the other side of the world in that same year, the Somoza regime in Nicaragua was overthrown by the Sandinista Liberation Front led by Daniel Ortega. This polarized Central America and helped plunge the region into wars between rightist and leftist factions as surrogates for the Soviet Union and the United States.

By 1990, Ortega converted Nicaragua into a dictatorship. He continues to wield absolute power together with his wife and, at age 80, shows no sign of leaving power. Russia, Cuba, and Venezuela continue to be his key allies.

That same year, U.S. President Jimmy Carter invited Israeli Prime Minister Menachem Begin and Egyptian President Anwar Sadat to Camp David to negotiate and sign the Camp David Peace Accord.

For the first time, Israel and an Arab state established diplomatic relations and kept their countries free of war despite concern on the Israeli right and resentment from the Egyptian street.

Israel returned the Sinai to Egypt. Peace brought dividends to both countries.

Egypt was vilified by its Arab neighbors, left the Soviet orbit, and became a client of the United States. Mr. Sadat was assassinated in 1981 by a member of the Muslim Brotherhood. After his death, reconciliation with the Arab world took place, and Egypt returned to the fold while respecting the terms of its peace agreement with Israel.

1979 also marked a major turning point, deepening the ties between extremist Wahhabism and the Saudi government. Driven by the Grand Mosque seizure in Mecca and the Iranian Revolution that threatened the Sunni Muslim world, the Saudi government sought to solidify its power by forgoing social and political progress.

These crises pushed the Saudi government to adopt an even stricter religious stance domestically and fund conservative Wahhabi doctrines globally to counter ideological threats.

Saudi Arabia began a policy of inundating the West with mosques filled with ultra-conservative Wahhabi imams whose aim was to radicalize Muslims in the West.

Today, these mosques are known to be breeding grounds for extremist groups and terrorists like those who perpetrated the 9/11 attacks and other terrorist attacks that have claimed thousands of lives.

Finally, that same year, the Soviet Union invaded Afghanistan. This major development eventually contributed to the collapse of the USSR after an eleven-year occupation that ended with the Soviets leaving Afghanistan with their tails between their legs.

The Islamist coalition opposed to Soviet rule, aided and abetted by the CIA, eventually liberated the country only to leave in place a weak state. In the mid-nineties, the Islamist opposition became the Taliban and took power, dragging the country back centuries.

One of the leaders of the anti-Soviet forces, Osama bin Laden, created al Qaeda, an Islamist terrorist organization that sought global jihad and carried out attacks around the world, including 9/11.

Al Qaeda later evolved into ISIS, which eventually took over parts of Syria and Iraq, and although it eventually lost its territory, it remains a major terrorist group operating on a global scale. Both al Qaeda and ISIS are active today, with cells in countries all over the world. A tragic example is the fate of tens of thousands of Christians in Nigeria and other sub-Saharan countries massacred by Islamist forces today with no action by Western states.

We live in confusing times.

To understand them, we must sometimes look to the past for their origins.

The origins of the events described above have resulted in many of the geopolitical realities that exist today.

And they date back to 1979.