In 1976, the Shah’s government angered pious Muslims by changing the first year of the solar calendar from the Islamic hijri to the ascension to the throne by Cyrus the Great. “Homeland jumped overnight from the Muslim year 1355 to the royalist year 2535.” The same year the Shah declared economic austerity measures to dampen inflation and waste.The regime it overthrew was perceived to be heavily protected by a lavishly financed army and security services. As one observer put it: “Few expected the regime of the Shah, which had international support and a modern army of 400,000, to crumble in the face of unarmed demonstrators within a matter of months.”Another historian noted the revolution was “unique in the annals of modern world history in that it brought to power not a new social group equipped with political parties and secular ideologies, but a traditional clergy armed with mosque pulpits and claiming the divine right to supervise all temporal authorities, even the country’s highest elected representatives.”
