The theoretical framework: Contextualising the role of ‘audience acceptance’ in successful securitisation up until the 1979 Iranian Islamic Revolution

The basic assumptions of the CS and the securitisation framework that was initially developed by Barry Buzan, Ole Waever, and Jaap de Wilde were intended to serve as a constructivist and critical approach to the study of security.Footnote ¹⁷ The theory was developed in the post–Cold War period in an attempt to reframe the concept of security that underpinned not only military security, but also political, societal, economic, and environmental security, and was posited as a valuable lens to understand security threats. Securitisation theory (ST) was a genuine attempt to introduce a new framework to challenge the perception of Cold War threats as objectively ‘real’. Initially, the CS suggested three fundamental components to securitisation theory: (1) the referent object: what is seen as existentially threatened and therefore as having a legitimate claim to survive; (2) the securitising actor: an actor that securitises issues by declaring something (a referent object) existentially threatened; and (3) the audience: the target that must be persuaded that the referent object is existentially threatened.Footnote ¹⁸ From a conceptual perspective, the scholarly debate on ST is extremely extensive and sophisticated. This section will therefore seek only to briefly unpack those aspects of the theory that are of use for analysing the case study at hand.

The initial concept put forward by the CS was challenged by scholars for different reasons, and building on their important work will help to develop the argument of this article. Scholars such as Claire Wilkinson, Jef Huysmans, Uriel Abulof, Matt McDonald, Barry Buzan, and Richard Little highlighted the normative aspects of the CS securitisation theory.Footnote ¹⁹ Buzan and Little, for example, described it as ‘IR’s “Westphalian straitjacket” … the strong tendency to assume that the model established in seventeenth century Europe should define what the international system is for all times and places’.Footnote ²⁰ Quite clearly, though, European understandings of society cannot be applied to Iran and the Middle East during the Cold War, and thus the latter cannot be considered in the context of Euro-American normative values. In fact, as the second part of this article will show, this point is closely related to the core reasons that prompted Khomeini to highlight the Shah’s Western reforms and the imperial influence of the Americans in Iran as an existential threat that needed to be securitised. Importantly, the main caveat of what we might call the empirical applications of the central concepts of CS is that in countries or regions, such as Kyrgyzstan, that are beyond the ‘Westphalian straitjacket’, non-linear and non-simplified versions of events are needed in order to understand the realities of securitisation processes. In their initial work on audience acceptance,Footnote ²¹ Paul Roe and Nicole Jackson, and more recently Uriel Abulof, have clearly conceptualised this: ‘securitization [as the core concept of CS] seems to entail a chain reaction of three distinct, binary steps in linear sequence: a securitizing train leaves the rhetorical platform, picks up a sufficient audience along the way to its final, extraordinary, destination’.Footnote ²²

According to the CS, an issue is successfully securitised when an audience agrees with the securitising actor’s claim that the issue at hand represents an existential threat to the referent object, or at the very least the audience is indifferent to this claim, and thus supports the securitising actor’s suggestion of using extraordinary measures to confront the threat.Footnote ²³ In this way, audience acceptance is marginalised at the expense of the security speech act, which the CS emphasises. Matt McDonald, for example, argued that relying exclusively on language to demonstrate a successful securitisation process is problematic, as contextual factors, such as dominant narratives and identity, play an important role in both patterns of securitisation and the construction of security as a whole.Footnote ²⁴ Abulof also notes that ‘securitization steps are not binary, but span a spectrum. This applies, as discussed above, to the securitizing move, but equally so to audience acceptance.’Footnote ²⁵ Abulof’s and McDonald’s criticism focuses on the non-binary securitisation steps and non-linear sequences evident in case studies located outside of the ‘Westphalian straitjacket’. Indeed, these elements are essential to understanding revolutionary and securitisation dynamics. However, it is important to recognise that, when it comes to the dynamics of ‘audience acceptance’ in securitisation processes, there are differences between the ‘Westphalian straitjacket’ context and the Middle East.

To ensure this is borne in mind, the analytical framework I developed for this study involved refining and adjusting some fundamental components of securitisation theory, particularly by incorporating non-linear securitisation moves and the concept of ‘assemblage’.Footnote ²⁶ The framework refers to intricate networks that are constantly evolving, being assembled, disassembled, and reassembled in various contexts, serving multiple purposes. These networks exhibit a dynamic nature, lack stability, and are always in a state of flux.Footnote ²⁷ Amir Lupovici describes this as ‘a continuous process contributing to the creation of the assemblage’. He also suggests that ‘the interactions among various securitizing moves affect deterrence adoption, employment, and success. Foremost, each of the securitizing moves should be understood not as a single act, but rather as a part of a continuous process contributing to the creation of the assemblage.’Footnote ²⁸ Furthermore, in his complex securitisation and counter-securitisation efforts, Khomeini’s ability to depict the Shah’s regime as spanning six stages and 16 years highlights the importance of gaining legitimacy. This background sets the stage for examining the role of ‘audience acceptance’ in the successful securitisation of non-democratic/liberal states during the Cold War. To explore this line of inquiry further, I delve into the typology of securitisation and consider the crucial roles played by the ‘legal audience’ and the ‘political audience’ as sources of legitimacy. The legal audience typically refers to state rules and institutions. Accordingly, securitising actors, such as governments, security communities, and state elites (e.g. prime ministers) can garner support for executing a securitisation act based on state laws.Footnote ²⁹ It is important to note that these state institutions and laws vary across different states, regions, and types of regimes, particularly in non-European/Western contexts such as the Middle East.

The political audience refers to other sources of legitimacy for the execution of a securitisation act. In some case studies, especially in revolutionary contexts such as the one that is the focus of this article, the securitising actor needs to gain support from the general public, or political audience.Footnote ³⁰ In this context, in his earlier work on audience acceptance, Paul Roe refers to the political audience as ‘hold[ing] “moral” support concerning the “securityness” of an issue”.Footnote ³¹ Importantly, Roe also refines the term political audience, suggesting that securitisation be seen as a distinct two-stage process: a ‘stage of identification’ and a ‘stage of mobilisation’. Roe defines the stage of identification as rhetorical securitisation, and the stage of mobilisation as active securitisation.Footnote ³² This understanding is useful for tracing Khomeini’s securitisation process from 1963 to the 1979 revolution. Hence, in a non-Western context, specifically in revolutionary and politically charged periods, tensions rise around the possibility of regime change, and the political audience has the potential to influence the success of a national security policy.

The moral dimension of the political audience encourages acceptance of the alternative reality promised by Khomeini, lending it legitimacy, as he was able to portray the Shah as immoral and as cooperating with American imperialism and Zionism. However, there are exceptions to this, as foreign governments can also serve as a political audience for another country. According to Ori Wertman and Christian Kaunert, Israel’s securitisation moves were aimed at consecutive American administrations as the political audience. As one of their case studies demonstrates, the Israeli cabinet sought approval from the Americans before proposing an attack on the Egyptian army. However, the Johnson administration opposed Israeli military action, leading the Israeli cabinet to postpone their plans.Footnote ³³ This is a useful theoretical observation: Turkey, Iraq, and France also play crucial roles in the Shah’s securitisation policy. The acceptance of these governments as the political audience for the counter-securitisation moves against Khomeini resulted in his exile from Iran between 1964 and 1978.

The issue of external governments serving as the political audience is important in the context of the audience acceptance sub-debate among critics of the CS’s initial foundations. It has also been a key component of the recent attempts to further develop the securitisation framework. This sub-debate comprises critical assessment by scholars such as Balzacq, Salter, Leonard and Kaunert, and Cote, among others.Footnote ³⁴ In the works of these authors, some of the alternative models proposed introduce a vague concept of ‘the audience’ but do not provide a concrete analytical tool with which scholars can identify a specific ‘securitisation actor’. In his early work (2005), Balzacq initiated a debate about the need to take into account the ‘social’ aspects of securitising moves (e.g. practices and the audience dimension). Balzacq argued that ‘securitization is better understood as a strategic (pragmatic) practice that occurs within, and as part of, a configuration of circumstances, including the context, the psycho-cultural disposition of the audience, and the power that both speaker and listener bring to the interaction’.Footnote ³⁵ The focus on the relationship between the security actor and the listener was also a feature of recent work by Wertman and Kaunert, who argued that given that ‘each securitizing actor has its own personality, previous experiences, or ideology, and thus each has its own political perception, the securitizing actor perceives the support of a different entity besides the legal audience as essential legitimacy for securitization’.Footnote ³⁶

Therefore, the critical observations made by Balzacq, but also by Wertman and Kaunert and others mentioned above, take us beyond the CS and the ‘Westphalian straitjacket’ and place us at a theoretical departure point for charting and assembling the securitisation trajectory of the 1979 Iranian Revolution. Specifically, we can contextualise the strategic and, more importantly, pragmatic relations of both the Shah and Khomeini with their chosen audiences/listeners. This was a parallel process, which, quite strikingly, was a zero-sum securitisation game. From 1963, Khomeini focused on securitising the Shah’s corrupt, pro-Western regime, which included Israel, Zionism, and the aforementioned American Jewish ‘magical power’. As Khomeini was operating from the opposition with no official or formal legitimacy for his securitisation moves, he was well aware that Iranian public acceptance was key to the success of his actions. Moreover, not only did Khomeini convince his audience/listeners about the need for security action, but his political audience was stronger and ultimately more influential than the legal audience controlled by the Shah and served as the source of his legitimacy for successful securitisation moves. As the second part of this article will show, over time, the zero-sum securitisation game also included the counter-securitisation moves made by the Shah, who targeted the legal audience, i.e. his personal secret security services SAVAK (Persian: Sāzmān-e Ettelā’āt va Amniyat-e Keshvar, or the Iranian secret police) and the Iranian police, inciting them to act against Khomeini.

Last but not least, in the revolutionary context, both Martin Holbraad and Morten Axel Pedersen have emphasised the ‘conceptual creativity’ of applying the CS framework to revolutionary politics in Cuba. They argue that ‘“revolutionary securitization”, as we call it, is systematically oriented towards rescinding precisely the liberal premise on which the distinction between ordinary and extraordinary politics – and the securitization model of the Copenhagen School – relies, namely the distinction between people “themselves” and the external political structures by which they are governed’.Footnote ³⁷ Part of the process of creating the distinctions that Holbraad and Pedersen refer to is establishing the legitimacy of opposition leaders and the unofficial state elite. Ori Wertman and Christian Kaunert recently proposed that in some countries, the religious elite can also influence security matters where they have the appropriate authority/legitimacy.Footnote ³⁸ Khomeini in pre-revolutionary Iran fits this description well, as the empirical evidence will show. As early as 1963, Khomeini – a member of the religious elite who did not even have a formal role in the Iranian political opposition – articulated how the referent object, in this case the Shah and his supporters, American imperialism, Israel, Zionism, and the supposed magical power of the Jews, were threats to Iran’s national security. The Shah, meanwhile, reacted quickly to Khomeini’s speech act with a counter-securitisation move challenging Khomeini’s security framing and employing his own narrative identifying Khomeini as the security object.

‘Methodological nationalism’ and the epistemology of securitisation: Archival research, intelligence reports, and elite interviews in the service of critical security studies

David Campbell noted that ‘for many, the dangers of the past are a thing of the past’.Footnote ³⁹ But can one really draw an artificial boundary between the past and the present or vice versa? Specifically, I seek to understand whether it is feasible to examine problems and complex concepts such as securitisation in the context of the post–Cold War era? Sources of external threat such as migration, pandemics, and global terrorism have been extensively studied and conceptualised in this period.Footnote ⁴⁰ However, while most of these so-called security issues did not emerge until the early 1990s, they were in fact deeply embedded in the final two decades of the Cold War. As noted by Ken Booth, during the Cold War, the ‘primary concerns were (military) strategic relations between states. Pedagogy was equally conservative in approach, working for the most part in the straitjacket of a compelling but constrained understanding of realism.’ That said, Booth also stressed that ‘there is less new in the post–Cold War phase than many imagine, and there is more to be learned from the Cold War phase than many assume’.Footnote ⁴¹

Methodological nationalism has contributed to the neglect of these historical connections and the role of non-traditional actors that can be found in official archival records. This has meant that the role of Khomeini in challenging traditional security paradigms and the relationship between Israel and Iran has been frequently overlooked.Footnote ⁴² A key example of methodological nationalism in this historiography is the work of Israeli historian Uri Bialer, who conducted an in-depth examination of Israel–Iran oil relations, focusing on the Eilat–Ashkelon pipeline project and Israel’s energy security policies from 1957 to 1977.Footnote ⁴³ Bialer’s important research primarily explored the interactions between governmental bodies such as the National Iranian Oil Company (NIOC) and the Israeli Ministry of Foreign Affairs (MFA). He shed vital light on key governmental figures such as Zvi Doriel, the envoy responsible for oil affairs in Tehran, and his counterpart Fatollah Nafici, one of the heads of the NIOC, and the relationships between the Shah and his Israeli counterparts, Levi Eshkol and Golda Meir, or the Israeli Foreign Minister, Abba Eban.Footnote ⁴⁴ Bialer’s work, which relies on official documentation from the Israeli MFA and American and British state archives, has traditionally focused on state institutions, the top-down formal decision-making process, and the official state elite.Footnote ⁴⁵ Influenced by methodological nationalism, he also included transnational Zionist actors such as the Jewish philanthropist Baron Edmond de Rothschild and his relationship with Israeli Minister of Finance Pinhas Sapir in the context of Israel–Iran oil relations.Footnote ⁴⁶ However, the perspective of the Iranian opposition on this project, namely the significant role of Khomeini’s critique of imperialism, Zionism, and Israel’s presence in Iran, or other sources of opposition to the Shah regime, was largely neglected in Bialer’s study of Israel–Iran oil relations and, indeed, was systematically overlooked throughout this period.

Similarly, the work of Yitzhak Mualem on Israel–Iran relations in the 1970s also suffered from methodological nationalism bias. By applying a binary zero-sum game to Zionist historiography, Mualem argued that the majority of Iranian Jews who were supporters of the Shah and his policies suddenly faced hostility from the proponents of the Islamist revolution and Khomeini’s new regime. Mualem’s research primarily focused on the Israeli MFA and the security community, particularly Mossad and its counterpart SAVAK, which were the main security units protecting Iranian Jews in distress.Footnote ⁴⁷ However, Lior Shenfield’s critical work revealed that Iranian Jews actually played a role in facilitating the 1979 revolution, through organisations such as the Society of Jewish Iranian Intellectuals and the Sapir Charity Hospital in Tehran.Footnote ⁴⁸ The works of Mualem and Bialer, as well as others,Footnote ⁴⁹ exhibit the methodological nationalism bias by relying heavily on archival research and formal documentation, which overlooks Khomeini’s complex role as a security actor and oversimplifies the relationship between Israel and Iran as a zero-sum game. The research conducted by both scholars emphasises the close relations between the Shah and Israel, highlighting the Zionist narrativeFootnote ⁵⁰ of the protection of Iranian Jews, while portraying Khomeini as hostile towards Jews and Israel when he came to power.

The added value of studying historical cases of securitisation has already garnered attention and provides an opportunity to reshape our understanding of security. However, studies have so far not adequately connected this with the methodological nationalism bias. Some studies have already shown how identity-related dynamics during the Cold War engage with security and foreign policy, including, for example, Campbell’s work on the Cuban Missile Crisis or Weldes’s work on the 1956 War.Footnote ⁵¹ These works demonstrate that, while the articulation of security through foreign policy as part of a state’s national identity was useful to Cold War historians and historical evidence, it was grounded in the predictable comfort zones of Euro-American Cold War contexts. These studies also enjoyed unparalleled access to the National Archives of the United States and the National Security Archive Documents Reader.Footnote ⁵² Most importantly, while these works used archival research and focused on an identity-based understanding of security as articulated through foreign policy, they did not actively apply ST. This article builds on these early attempts to articulate security through foreign policy as part of a state’s identity but will also link them to the current critical theoretical debate about the importance of the ‘audience component’ in ST and the Middle East.

Another way of examining aspects of ST is to look at the relationship between political history and securitisation. The work of Matti Jutila and, more recently, Ori Wertman and Christian Kaunert re-examined these connections.Footnote ⁵³ Jutila, for example, sought to conceptualise how the politics of Finnish war history can be securitised. He showed how extreme historical politics can be defended or explicitly used by the state elite to strengthen a securitising act, in other words ‘how history, or a particular interpretation of it, can be the referent object of securitization’.Footnote ⁵⁴ While this is clearly an explicit use of the ST in the context of historical narrative, it is applying it strictly to the interpretation of national history. That being said, the case study in this article differs from Jutila’s work in three aspects. First, it does not attempt to study a specific interpretation of Iranian national history but to offer a critical reading of the Iranian Revolution. Secondly, it emphasises the interconnections between historical documentation and critical readings of ST. And thirdly, the Finnish case study falls within the ‘Westphalian straitjacket’, while this article focuses on the non-democratic/liberal context of the Middle East.

As regards methodology and epistemology, Thierry Balzacq’s seminal work is vital to this article’s analytical framework. Balzacq outlined four methods/techniques that are useful methodological tools in the study of securitisation theory: (1) discourse analysis; (2) ethnographic research and semi-structured interviews; (3) process-tracing; and (4) content analysis.Footnote ⁵⁵ As Balzacq also notes, ‘within the conspectus of process-tracing, failed securitizing moves are outcomes worthy of investigation, in part because they enable us to explain why other moves were successful and, in part, as a consequence, because the knowledge culled from failed securitizing moves can “enrich the general theory” of securitization’.Footnote ⁵⁶ These words very much apply to the analysis in the second part of this article, which traces the Shah’s failure in order to help us grasp Khomeini’s success.

Balzacq further argues that ‘process-tracing operates essentially with qualitative data (various types of documents, interviews, newspapers, historical memoirs, surveys, etc.)’.Footnote ⁵⁷ In the empirical part of this paper, these four methods will be used in a mixed approach: Israeli MFA documents, as well as newspaper interviews with the Shah and speeches by Khomeini, will be analysed (content analysis). The emphasis will be on discourse analysis and ways in which the referent object is being framed, in other words, how American imperialism, Israel, Zionism, and so-called Jewish magical power were being depicted as threats to Iran’s national security. Ethnographic research or, in this case, semi-structured interviews with the Israeli elite will be used to map how the referent object reported the securitisation process and its climax. The term ‘securitisation climax’ was coined by Amir Lupovici in his 2016 work, where he argues that ‘what distinguishes the securitization climax from other types of securitization moves is the relative dimension of the climax’. Lupovici further proposes that ‘in order to demonstrate a securitization climax, one must establish not only the existence of a former (successful) securitization move of the same issue to the same target audience, but establish that it peaked its presentation of the threat (that is, of a higher magnitude and/or more urgent)’.Footnote ⁵⁸ I find that this term also applies to some of Khomeini’s key moves from exile, his counter-securitisation against the Shah, and the Shah’s interview on 60 Minutes. I therefore borrow this term and use it in several contexts in the second part of this article. Process-tracing will also be used to identify how the Shah changed the security object in his 1976 securitisation act as well as the de-securitisation act by Khomeini and his changing attitudes towards American and Iranian Jews during February 1979.

In some cases, formal historical documents and archival records provide only limited evidence of a particular securitising move and its different aspects, such as the securitising plot or audience acceptance. However, this complex process can still be traced and assembled using historical intelligence reports, elite interviews, and secondary sources on Iranian society during the 1960s and 1970s. Moreover, many countries in the Middle East, including Israel, do not provide scholars with access to official state records and have strict and opaque censorship regulations.Footnote ⁵⁹ Nevertheless, as this article shows, it is possible to use the archival records of the Israeli MFA to trace securitisation moves by both the Shah and Khomeini, as well as how these were perceived by the ‘referent object’. That said, we cannot rely solely on the archival records of the Israeli MFA. Thus, this inquiry also taps into other types of historical documentation: media interviews with the Shah, oral interviews with Israeli diplomats and members of the intelligence elite, and the Islamic speeches and lectures Khomeini gave in Najaf between 21 January and 8 February 1970. Together, these primary sources provide a critical narrative of the non-linear trajectory of Iran’s securitisation practices that led to the 1979 revolution.

While the interviews used by this article will not directly contribute to our understanding of the grammar of securitisation employed by Khomeini and the Shah, they will reveal how Israeli diplomats and intelligence officials who served in Iran before the 1979 revolution were integral parts of what Khomeini and later the Shah framed as the referent objects of security. This enriches the data about securitisation acts that can be gleaned from archival records.

Historical overview of Israel–Iran relations

As well as an understanding of securitisation theory, this article also requires a concise historical overview to help situate its central argument within the wider context of Israel–Iran relations. The latter can be roughly divided into three main periods. The first period (from the early 1950s to the early 1970s) preceded the 1979 revolution and was characterised by semi-covert relations between the Shah and Israel. The second period is more nuanced and can be seen as a ‘transition period’ ranging from the 1979 revolution through the 1980s to the 1990s. The third period, starting in the early 2000s and continuing to the present day (2023), is characterised by mutual hostilities. The first period has mainly contributed to our understanding of the economic and security dimensions of Israel–Iran relations as well as, to some extent, to the nature of the clandestine relationship between Tehran and Jerusalem during the Shah’s administration.Footnote ⁶⁰ One of most important features of the first period is the instability of relations and fluctuations as a result of Israel’s wars with the Arab world as well as changing geopolitical circumstances.Footnote ⁶¹ For example, after Israel’s victory in the 1967 Six-Day War, the two countries initiated the Eilat–Ashkelon oil pipeline project. Given that the Suez Canal had been blocked since the 1967 war, the pipeline to Eilat allowed the Iranians to cut the costs of exporting their oil to Europe. Iran’s oil sales increased, and Israel, meanwhile, was able to solve a serious energy problem, which helped the country continue its economic growth.

The second aspect of Israel–Iran relations from the 1950s to the 1970s was the security perspective through the lens of clandestine diplomacy.Footnote ⁶² Specifically, during the first period, Israel–Iran relations were seen as part of the important concept of the ‘periphery doctrine’,Footnote ⁶³ which was established by Israel’s first prime minster, David Ben-Gurion, in the early 1950s and sought to end Israel’s isolation from the Arab world’s non-Arab and/or non-Muslim factors (e.g. Turkey, Iran, the Kurds, the Berbers, Ethiopia, the Christians) in the Middle East.Footnote ⁶⁴ In his autobiography, Shabtai Shavit, the sixth director general of Israel’s Mossad (1989–96), uncovers the role of Iran from the Israeli national security perspective. Shavit notes that ‘the “periphery doctrine” was to create two notable triangles: the “northern triangle” includes Jerusalem Ankara and Tehran; the southern triangle includes Jerusalem, Khartoum (Sudan), Addis Ababa (Ethiopia)’.Footnote ⁶⁵

The second period (the early 1980s to the late 1990s) starts from the premise that Israel lost the ‘northern triangle’ by losing Tehran after the 1979 Islamic Revolution.Footnote ⁶⁶ However, this period can be seen as the ‘transition period’ in terms of the ties between Israel and Iran. This period examines the relationship between Tehran and Jerusalem in the broader context of the transition from the Shah’s pro-Western orientation during the Cold War, through the 1979 revolution, to Khomeini’s era and the post–Cold War period.Footnote ⁶⁷ While Israel officially withdrew from Iran, diplomatic ties were severed and the term ‘Little Satan’ was used to refer to the Jewish state, with different channels of covert relations between Iran and Israel then being established through third-party countries such as Canada.Footnote ⁶⁸ However, following the 1979 revolution, the relations between Iran and Israel did not adhere to a strictly binary pattern. Instead, they involved a degree of short-term, pragmatic cooperation, particularly notable throughout the 1980s and the Iran–Iraq war.Footnote ⁶⁹ For example, attempts were made to rebuild an alliance between Iran and the United States through the Jewish lobby and arms sales to support Iran in its struggle against Saddam Hussein, known as the ‘Iran-Contra Affair’. Israel facilitated the transfer of US-made missiles to Iran in exchange for money that was then used to provide arms to the anti-Sandinista Contra rebels in Nicaragua.Footnote ⁷⁰ However, developments during these years were also used to substantiate the hostile nature of the Islamic republic with the creation of Hezbollah, a Shiite party with an armed militia. Hezbollah, sponsored by Iran, fought to end Israel’s military presence in south Lebanon after the 1982–5 war.

The third period starts after the year 2000 and continues to this day (2023). This period is marked by mutual hostility between Israel and Iran. It is largely characterised by mutual securitisation processes, mutual hostilities in international forums, e.g. the UN, anti-Semitism and Holocaust denial of Iranian elites, cybersecurity, and Israel’s securitisation of Iran’s nuclear programme.Footnote ⁷¹ Furthermore, building on the previous period, Hezbollah, backed by extensive Iranian financial and political support, bolstered its military capabilities by amassing a vast arsenal of rockets and missiles capable of targeting strategic economic and infrastructure assets in Israel. Hezbollah also engaged in direct conflict with Israel during the 2006 Lebanon War.Footnote ⁷² Essentially, this article seeks to contribute to the first period, by examining overlooked security dynamics within the opposition.

Phase 1: Khomeini’s referent object of security and building a narrative of threat (1963–1964)

Phase 2: Counter-securitisation and the political audience: Khomeini’s exile (1964–1978)

The counter-securitisation moves made by the Shah were successful in terms of the original CS framework and subsequent developments employing the terminology of Balzacq as well as Wertman and Kaunert. The Shah achieved three major successes: first, the arrest of Khomeini after the Khordad Uprising (1963), followed by 10 months of house arrest between August 1963 and April 1964 and his subsequent exile (November 1964).Footnote ⁸⁶ Using his monopolisation of power over the Iranian armed forces (the legal audience) and following the state’s own rules, the Shah obtained the formal consent of the aforementioned audience. This is in keeping with the framework’s definition of obtaining the consent of legal audiences. The development is not surprising, since in authoritarian regimes, due to a lack of checks and balances, the leader has a full and direct hold over the military and intelligence communities that secure their regime. As for the second of the Shah’s achievements, once the security object (Khomeini) and the narrative of threat was removed by means of the former’s exile, the Shah’s successful securitisation act yielded several additional important achievements in terms of his alliance with Israel. However, adhering to formal state rules in non-democratic regimes such as Iran under the Shah and obtaining the formal consent of the legal audience was not enough to constitute a fully successful securitisation move. The third achievement was that foreign governments, specifically Turkey, Iraq, and France, here representing the moral/political audience, accepted the Shah’s counter-securitisation move. However, the Iranian people, which are also a political audience, refused to accept the Shah’s political legitimacy. This informal yet powerful securitisation process was not perceived as moral and right and thus continued to support Khomeini while he was in exile. In authoritarian countries like Iran during the Cold War, this could be the difference between successful securitisation and revolution.

Phase 3: Khomeini deepens his relationship with the political audience from exile (1964–1978)

Not only did the three counter-securitisation achievements mentioned above seem to secure the Shah’s regime and force Khomeini into exile, but they also managed to strengthen Khomeini’s relationship with the political audience (the Iranian people) and drew significant support from abroad.Footnote ⁸⁷ Indeed, Persian sources translated into English show that Khomeini regularly incorporated anti-Semitic tropes in his speeches from exile. First, in Bursa (Turkey) until 1965, thereafter in Najaf (Iraq), and from 1978, in his final destination of Paris, Khomeini continued his securitisation speech acts against Israel, Zionism, the Iranian Jews, and American imperialism. An important source for this period is a book on the Islamic government of Khomeini translated into English from PersianFootnote ⁸⁸ and comprising a student’s summary of a series of lectures given by Khomeini in Najaf between 21 January and 8 February 1970. One quote from these lectures, in particular, shows how Khomeini’s narrative articulates the attitude that needed to be adopted in pan-Islamism vis-à-vis Israel and Zionism:

This quote is an example of Khomeini articulating his foreign policy objectives for the future Islamic republic, namely to declare war on the West Bank and East Jerusalem (specifically Masjid al-Aqsā), which had been occupied territories since the 1967 war. While Israel and Zionism are not explicitly mentioned here, and Khomeini refers to a ‘handful of Jews’, it can be assumed that he is referring to Israeli governments and Zionism more generally. Most importantly, in terms of securitisation theory, it is clear that these foreign policy objectives were actually paving the way for the next phase – the Iranian Revolution.

Furthermore, in another quote from the same source, Khomeini contextualises the Jews, especially British and American Jews, within Western imperialism:

Here, Khomeini uses the securitisation speech act with two objectives in mind. First, he frames Western imperialism with what European and American Jews – referred to as ‘a handful of wretched Jews’ – have been able to accomplish. Secondly, the security narrative put pressure not only on the Iranians but also on Muslim countries in social and financial distress, and the state elite, to cooperate and set aside their petty differences for the sake of pan-Islamism. This can also be read as a call for other Muslim countries in the Middle East and elsewhere to securitise the American Jews, European Jews, and Western countries.

In the next quote taken from Persian sources translated into English, Khomeini asserts that ‘since the Jews of Banu Qurayza were a troublesome group, causing corruption in Muslim society and damaging Islam and the Islamic state, the Most Noble Messenger eliminated them’.Footnote ⁹¹ Here, Khomeini’s security speech act makes a connection between the historical Jews of Banu Qurayza and the causes of corruption in Muslim society – referring to future Iran as Khomeini’s future Islamic state.Footnote ⁹² That said, these words could in fact refer to any Muslim society in the Middle East, such as Medina, and could therefore also be read as an open invitation for other Muslim countries and Islamic leaders to securitise Jews, Zionists, and Israel’s presence in these countries. Once again, Khomeini articulates the nature of the security act required: the elimination of these Jews.

In the last example, Khomeini asserts: ‘The Jewish scholars and rabbis were condemned by God because fear or covetousness made them keep silent in the face of the misdeeds of the oppressors, whereas if they had spoken or cried out in protest, they could have prevented oppression from occurring.’Footnote ⁹³ Here, Khomeini puts the blame on the Jewish rabbis on the side of the oppressors (the Shah and Western imperialism) and argues that if they (the Jewish scholars and rabbis) had spoken up about the oppression experienced by Muslims, they could have put a stop to it. Moreover, this is a clear reference to the influence of Jewish ‘magical power’ on the aforementioned oppressors, which featured again later in Mike Wallace’s interview with the Shah in 1976.

All in all, these examples provide significant empirical evidence of Khomeini’s attempts to continue, from exile, to obtain legitimacy from the political audience and to plant more seeds for the security act embodied in the 1979 Iranian Islamic Revolution. While there is no direct empirical evidence in the Israeli MFA’s records regarding the political response to Khomeini’s speech acts from exile, there are other sources that clearly reveal how the political audience responded to Khomeini’s speeches. In Azimi’s article ‘Khomeini and the “White Revolution”’, he explains:

While the response of the political audience described above focuses on Khomeini’s early years in exile – in Turkey and then in Iraq – it demonstrates how successful he was in framing his messages in a way that reached diverse segments of Iranian society, even the secular groups who were potentially his rivals in the public sphere. The speeches described above show how consistent Khomeini was in his speech acts. As noted in the work of Mehran Kamrava, these consistencies ‘only enhanced his credibility and revolutionary credentials in the eyes of his growing throngs of supporters’.Footnote ⁹⁵

Phase 4: ‘Securitisation climax’ and the Shah addressing the political audience (1976–1978)

As noted, from 1976, the Shah’s hold on power was weakening. The opposition factions were becoming bolder, and Khomeini’s subversive activities from his base in Iraq were increasing. Most importantly, the latter’s political legitimacy was growing in the eyes of the security audience (the Iranian public). In the same insightful 60 Minutes interview quoted in the introduction, American Jewish journalist Mike Wallace asks:

In this interview, the Shah seems more desperate and changes his tactic: the political audience shifts from the governments of Turkey and Iraq, and now his counter-securitisation move against Khomeini is seen as a means to regain his political legitimacy, as his hold on Iran had weakened in the eyes of the Iranian public. Moreover, a closer examination of his account reveals that the Shah is not only trying to target Khomeini as a security threat but also Israel, Zionism, and the American Jewish lobby. These anti-Semitic tropes highlight the similarity between the Shah’s characterisation of the influence of Israel and that promulgated by his opponent, Khomeini. He also asserted that the American Jewish lobby was ‘disserving the interests of Israel’, and it might be argued that this was actually a reference to Khomeini’s earlier framing that the preservation of the Shah’s regime was in in the interests of Israel, and thus in the interests of all American Jews.

In August 1978, Uri Lubrani, a renowned diplomat and head of the Israeli diplomatic mission in Iran from 1973 until the 1979 revolution, reported on the outcome of a meeting with the Deputy Inspector General of the Iranian Police, Jafari (his first name is not mentioned in the Israel Securities Authority records). The latter was pessimistic about whether the brutal suppression of the popular protests against the Shah would be enough to save the regime.Footnote ⁹⁷ Jafari told Lubrani that the reports from the Iranian intelligence community (SAVAK) to the Shah did not make it clear that the situation was so serious as to call into question the survival of his administration. At the end of the meeting, Jafari told Lubrani: ‘I appreciate the special relationship between us, and I will do anything I can to assist you if I can.’Footnote ⁹⁸

On the morning of the 20 September 1978, Lubrani met the Shah to mark the end of his position in Tehran. Lubrani reported on this meeting in a telegram to the Israeli foreign minister, Moshe Dayan, stating that the Shah appeared depressed, barely smiled, and spent a lot of the time staring into the distance. More importantly, during the meeting, the Shah asked whether the Americans were aware of a Soviet campaign of disinformation to turn Iranian public opinion against him. Specifically, Lubrani wrote in his report that the Shah had asked him: ‘Did you [the Israeli government] notice Soviet involvement in the opposition demonstrations? The attempts to assert that the CIA is involved in the opposition demonstrations against me or that IDF [Israel Defense Forces] troops are here to protect me are absolutely absurd.’ Lubrani responded that ‘both the Israeli government and the Iranian Jews were extremely concerned about the latest opposition propaganda asserting that IDF troops were arriving in Iran to protect the Shah’. Lastly, the Shah asked Lubrani: ‘Is the Jewish American community aware of this propaganda?’ In his response, Lubrani tried to avoid the American Jewish angle: ‘Threats were reported in international media. … and the Israeli prime minister [Menachem Begin] is doing the best he can to advocate for the Shah in Washington and in European capitals’.Footnote ⁹⁹

Three aspects of this document are particularly revealing. First, as in the Mike Wallace interview, the Shah is peddling the same narrative about Jewish conspiratorial power that Khomeini regularly employed. The Shah thus legitimises Khomeini’s security act – depicting the American Jewish lobby and the US administration as a single interconnected whole – and seeks to leverage it to help him retain power. This is not only remarkable in terms of the counter-securitisation actions of the Shah against Khomeini but also highlights one of the theoretical contributions of this case study: the legal audience – SAVAK, which protected the Shah – was not a crucial actor in this revolutionary context; it was the political audience that made the difference. The Shah’s articulation of this Jewish lobby was also framed in the context of their common Cold War enemy, the Soviet Union, since he emphasises the Soviet role in the demonstrations against him, rather than domestic discontent and religious feeling. Secondly, the Shah was actually trying to explain to Lubrani – albeit based on a very anti-Semitic worldview – that this situation was undermining the security of his regime, and it seems that he was desperately trying to find out what the powerful lobby in Washington was planning to do about the decline of his power and the security threat to his regime and thus to Israel’s investments in Iran.

Later in 1978, as the Shah’s hold on power deteriorated further, he asked the Iraqi president, Saddam Hussein, to exile Khomeini from Iraq. Hussein agreed to the Shah’s request, and the Israeli delegation reported to Jerusalem that Khomeini had arrived in France on 6 October 1978. Contrary to what was published in the media, ‘Khomeini was not restricted from conducting any activity’.Footnote ¹⁰⁰ Mordechai Gazit, the Israeli ambassador in Paris, reported to Jerusalem that when Khomeini arrived in the French capital, he entered the country on a tourist visa, emphasising that he would not attempt to undertake any political activity from his exile. Almost immediately, however, Khomeini proceeded with his propaganda, and, quite surprisingly, the Iranian ambassador did not demand any explanations from the French government about Khomeini’s hostile pronouncements against the Shah.Footnote ¹⁰¹

Eliezer (Geizi) Tzafrir, a former senior Mossad officer who headed the station in Tehran between 1978 and 1979, recalled in an interview with the author:

Needless to say, the information Tzafrir provides in his oral account cannot be found in any of the declassified documents released by the Israel Securities Authority (ISA), so it is hard to verify. However, Reoven Merhav, who headed the Mossad station in Tehran between 1978 and 1979, before being replaced by Tzafrir, also recalled in an interview with the author that ‘there were people in Iran, people who were part of [Shapour] Bakhtiar’s transitional government who opposed Khomeini, and asked Israel to kill Khomeini, but we said, “no way”. There are things one doesn’t do. … that was a very sensitive request’.Footnote ¹⁰³ These first-hand accounts provide evidence of Mossad acting as a political audience for the Shah, utilising moral justifications to reject Khomeini’s securitisation. Oral-history interviews with security elites are crucial in demonstrating the ability of scholars to trace the response of the audience acceptance to the securitisation move.

Moreover, together Tzafrir’s and Merhav’s oral accounts reveal two things: first, the extent of the Shah’s desperation at this point, and how he tried to corner Israel – which had made significant investments in Iran and had an obvious interest in the survival of the Shah’s regime – to take care of Iran’s internal problems. Secondly, the accounts uncovered how France agreed to overlook a move against Khomeini. This shows us that even though Khomeini’s supporters could not have known for certain at that time that Mossad had been approached by the Shah with the instruction to kill Khomeini, such a possibility would have been considered rational within the context of the conspiracy narrative which had already asserted that Israel was the secret force behind the Shah’s corrupt regime. On the other hand, the Shah’s request to Mossad indicates that he had subscribed to the same conspiracy narrative of Israeli all-powerfulness. Meanwhile, on 18 December 1978, Yael Vered, the director of the Israeli MFA, sent a telegram to Prime Minister Menachem Begin assessing the risks arising from the Israeli presence in Iran in light of the recent events:

It would certainly be plausible to interpret Khomeini’s statements that IDF combatants are protecting the Shah, helping him maintain control over Iran, as a manipulation of the aforementioned Israeli intelligence training of SAVAK. However, the role Israel played in training this brutal Iranian secret police for several decades in fact created conditions under which Khomeini’s followers could (with no trace of anti-Semitism) reasonably see Israel as an enemy.

Phase 5: The ‘stage of mobilisation’ and the Iranian Islamic Revolution (December 1978–February 1979)

As already mentioned, Paul Roe suggests that the political audience involved a distinct two-stage process: a ‘stage of identification’ and a ‘stage of mobilisation’. The identification stage was achieved in Phase 1 with the Khordad Uprising of 1963. Phase 5 then is the ‘stage of mobilisation’.Footnote ¹⁰⁵ In December 1978, Vered sent another telegram describing the events in Tehran and the winds of change. She wrote that the opposition’s activities against Israel and Israeli representatives in Tehran had escalated. Khomeini’s manifesto stated that ‘if any Israeli visits Iran asking for oil, all Muslims must expel and kill him’.Footnote ¹⁰⁶ At the end of her telegram, Vered then turned to assess the state of the Iranian Jews, stating, ‘the Jews are not an object of the opposition. A few religious leaders from the city of Shiraz have claimed the Jews are a protected religious minority in Iran.’ Perhaps the most significant turn, however, was, as noted by Vered, that ‘Khomeini himself has published a manifesto which attacked Israel, but stated that the Iranian Jews must be protected’.Footnote ¹⁰⁷

After Khomeini’s conspiracist propaganda against the Iranian Jews, Israel, and Zionism between 1963 and 1964, portraying them as a Zionist fifth column in Iran, what could explain this apparent change in attitude? The application of our conceptual framework would be helpful here. As the reallocation of power between the Shah and Khomeini was more evident in late 1978, it could be argued that a more pragmatic approach vis-à-vis the Jews reflects the delegitimisation of Khomeini’s conspiracy narrative of Jewish power. A related argument would be that, as Khomeini got closer to power, he wanted to send a message of tolerance to all Iranian minorities regarding the policies of his regime, thus delegitimising his conspiracy narrative from early 1960 until 1978, in order to recruit the members of these minorities for his planned coup.

Turning to MFA archival documents, Vered also reported that some of the leaders of the Iranian Jews had met with one ‘Talharni’, whose full name is not mentioned in the ISA records but is known to be Ayatollah Sayyid Mahmoud Taleqani, who had close relations with Jewish leaders and indeed served as Khomeini’s right-hand man before his return to Iran. After the meeting, this group of Jews formally identified itself as the ‘Intellectual Jewish Committee’ and issued a manifesto that supported the struggle of the Iranian people and condemned Zionism and Israel. Vered concluded: ‘the Jews who signed this manifesto think it’s an “insurance policy for their safety”, much like the Armenian–Iranians who signed a similar manifesto’.Footnote ¹⁰⁸

Phase 6: De-securitisation: Khomeini’s changing attitude towards American and Iranian Jews

As described by Lior Sternfeld, in late 1978, a delegation from the Iranian-Jewish community travelled to Paris to meet Khomeini with the aim of gaining initial recognition from him and making sure that Jews would not be labelled as enemies of the revolution.Footnote ¹⁰⁹ While Sternfeld reveals that the meeting with Khomeini was initiated by the delegation, ISA documents add another layer to this development, confirming that further meetings followed as part of the thawing of relations between the Jews and Khomeini, but this time on the initiative of the latter. On 14 February 1979, there was a meeting in the United States between Shahriyar Rouhani and American Jewish organisations, as reported by Zvi Rafiah, who was Minister-Counsellor at the Israeli Embassy in Washington DC between 1973 and 1979, serving as the liaison for the Embassy with both Houses of the US Congress.Footnote ¹¹⁰ Rafiah noted that Rouhani was Khomeini’s representative in the US, according to a message sent from Jerusalem to Rafiah: ‘As with the Shah, Rouhani has tried to meet several high-ranking Jewish officials given the importance Khomeini’s people are giving to the United States, American public opinion and the importance of American Jews.’Footnote ¹¹¹ The Israeli official further stated:

Khomeini’s initiative in the United States entailed a continued softening of his position towards the Iranian Jews, as discussed earlier in this article, thus highlighting that he was actually quite pragmatic in his attitude towards the United States and proved able to switch policies as he came closer to power. This document must be treated with caution, however, as it was written from the point of view of the Israeli MFA and may have given Khomeini’s initiative too much weight because the Israelis were still hoping that the new regime would appreciate their investments in Iran and especially continue the supply of oil. Nevertheless, in keeping with the theoretical framework, Khomeini’s trend towards softening his attitude vis-à-vis the Iranian and American Jews shows how he delegitimised the conspiracy narratives as he got closer to power. It should be stressed here that Khomeini’s pragmatism in this context was still somewhat anti-Semitic, in that it appeared to be predicated on the assumption that American Jews and the American Israel Public Affairs Committee (AIPAC) lobbying group influenced US decision-making. That said, the flexibility Khomeini demonstrated when it came to the conspiracy narratives surrounding the American Jews shows that his position was more of a means to an end (the Islamic Revolution), which could be adjusted to different political circumstances.