CURRENT INTELLIGENCE WEEKLY SPECIAL REPORT IRAN'S 'WHITE REVOLUTION'

• Document Type: CREST
• Collection: General CIA Records
• Document Number (FOIA) /ESDN (CREST): CIA-RDP79-00927A005300060002-8
• Release Decision: RIPPUB
• Original Classification: S
• Document Page Count: 13
• Document Creation Date: December 19, 2016
• Document Release Date: May 24, 2006
• Sequence Number: 2
• Publication Date: June 10, 1966
• Content Type: REPORT

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IRAN'S "WHITE REVOLUTION"
What the Shah has labeled as Iran's "White Rev-
olution" is a program of limited economic and social
reform. It is his attempt at partial fulfillment of
Iran's need for a more enlightened and productive
peasantry. The key point in the program, land re-
form, is officially in its final stage. It appears
to have effectively broken the grip of land-rich ab-
sentee landlords on Iranian agriculture, while leav-
ing their over-all economic and political power un-
diminished. Other aspects of the reform program--lit-
eracy, health, profit sharing, and suffrage--have
been progressing well but slowly, and some have
barely gotten under way.
The program as a whole is less revolutionary
than the Shah pretends and than his critics would
like. Conspicuously absent is any suggestion of po-
litical reforms that would reduce the Shah's now
complete control of the government and permit wider
popular participation. The Shah may be counting on
progress in the economic field to mute opposition de-
mands for greater political freedom. This may serve
him only for the short term;:however,since_cconomic and
educational advance is likely to whet the public ap-
petite for similar progress in the field of politics.
Background
In 1953 the Shah nearly
lost his throne in a violent
dispute with nationalist premier
Mohammad Mossadeq. A major ap-
peal of Mossadeq was his promise
of social, economic, and polit-
ical reform designed to improve
the lot of the rural peasant and
the urban worker and to elim-
inate government corruption and
the power of the big landowners.
Nationalist opposition attacks
on the Shah ever since have con-
centrated heavily on the theme
that only his "illegal" ouster
of Mossadeq prevented popular
aspirations from being realized.
In 1961 the Shah started a
series of reform programs, which
he later described as the "White
Revolution." These programs
aimed to accomplish, although
more gradually and in a more
limited way, many of the aims of
the nationalists.. Political re-
form, however, has so far'been
excluded.
The Shah's actions certainly
did not spring solely from an
unadulterated devotion to "the
principles of individual and so-
cial freedom," as he has de-
clared. Neither, however, did
they come only from a cynical,
self-serving desire to maintain
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a tottering regime, as national-
ist oppositionists like to con-
tend. The Shah seems to have a
personal commitment to land re-
form, the keystone of his pro-
gram. As early as 1951 he
started selling crown lands to
the peasants who were farming
those lands. This program con-
tinued sporadically until the re-
maining villages came under the
current land distribution scheme.
Violent antigovernment dem-
onstrations in Tehran in 1960
and 1961 may have given addi-
tional impetus. The Shah subse-
quently appointed a prime minis-
ter and cabinet which were more
reform minded than any in the
past. Many Iranians believe,
possibly correctly, that the
Shah's decision to support a re-
form program at that point was
a direct response to the policy
of the Kennedy administration,
which encouraged social and eco-
nomic self-help in developing
nations.
In a January 1963 referen-
dum the Iranians voted solidly
in favor of the Shah's six-point
reform program. The government
carefully supervised the voting
to ensure a large turnout and
a favorable result. Even with-
out the supervision, however,
the voters probably would have
approved the program, and there
was genuine public enthusiasm
for one key point--land reform.
Following from this key
point, the Shah's second point
called for the compensation of
dispossessed landlords. Point
three was the establishment of
a "Literacy Corps."The remainder
of the reforms were the nation-
alization of forests, a scheme
for profit-sharing between man-
agement and labor, and a change
of the electoral law. Later,
the Shah added a Health Corps
and a Development Corps and es-
tablished "Houses of Justice,"
a system of village courts.
The various programs appear
to have been worked out and im-
plemented with an eye to com-
promise. The Shah's apparent
intention was to make them rad-
ical enough to produce some re-
sults? but conservative enough
to avoid extensive disruption
and a truly revolutionary situa-
tion. This is particularly true
in the case of land reform, the
element in the "White Revolution"
with the most potential for shap-
ing a new economic and social
structure.
Land Reform
Land reform touches nearly
all of Iran's 40 to 50 thousand
villages (Iranian statistics are
not consistent) and their 18
million inhabitants (Iran's to-
tal population is 24 million).
The ownership of land in Iran
has been exceedingly complex.
Some of the agricultural areas
have been in continuous cultiva-
tion for thousands of years. Dur-
ing this time, various patterns
of tenure and ownership have come
into use, to be changed or dis-
carded as political and economic
conditions changed. In some
areas there has been consider-
able stability, in other areas
there have been frequent shifts
in ownership.
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Land tenure arrangements
have varied widely from village
to village, but under the typical
pattern of the past there were
four principal categories: I).
private holdings; 2) endowed lands,
whose sale was prohibited and
whose revenues were set aside in
perpetuity for a specific use;
3) crown lands belonging to the
royal family; and 4) public do-
main lands belonging to the gov-
ernment. The present land dis-
IRAN
tribution affects primarily the
first two categories.
Private Holdings
Private holdings were of two
types. One was the large hold-
ings of absentee landlords,many
owning several villages and some
having several hundred. Such hold-
ings included more than 13,500
villages, covering about 55 per-
cent of Iran's agricultural land.
LAND UTILIZATION
Agriculture
Sporadic agriculture
and grazing
Wasteland
Qoma
BAHRAIN
QATAR
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These landlords are the basis for
the semi-myth that 200 (or 500 or
1,000) families control the coun-
try. The second type of private
holding was that of the small
holders, owning one village or
less. Many of these holders
lived and worked on the land they
owned. About 16,500 villagers
were in this category.
The main provisions of the
land reform law of January 1962
affected primarily the large land-
lord. The operation of the two
stages by which it was implemented
is a good example of the com-
promises which were worked out.
The first stage reduced land-
lord holdings to one village. The
surplus land was not confiscated,
however, but bought by the gov-
ernment and sold to the peasants
who had been working the land and
who could supply their own "capi-
tal"--plows and other implements,
draft animals, and/or seed. Ac-
cording to official Iranian
figures, all or parts of 12,875
villages are being distributed to
455,959 peasant families, some
2 3/4 million persons.
ment the purchase price plus 10
percent over a period of 15
years. Forcing the peasants to
pay for the land not only reim-
burses the government for its
outlay to the landlords, but
also encourages the farmer to
produce at more than a subsist-
ence level.
The second stage, which re-
duced holdings to a prescribed
acreage--varying with the produc-
tivity of the land--is more com-
plicated. The landlord was per-
mitted to sell excess land to
the government as in the-first
stage or he could, by mutual
agreement, sell directly to the
peasant, lease the land to the
peasant for 30 years, or divide
the land with the peasants on
the basis of previous cropshar-
ing arrangements. Wherever', the
landlord held less than the
minimum, he could, with peasant
agreement, buy the rights to
the land from the peasant. Most
second-stage transactions in-
volved leasing arrangements, with
813,260 peasants leasing land
from the landlords. A total of
21,764 peasants bought land di-
rectly from landlords.
The value of the land was
determined by the amount of taxes
which the landlord had previously
paid--a condign punishment, in-
asmuch as landlords have consist-
ently underpaid or not paid taxes.
The landlords are being reim-
bursed over a period of 15 years
by a cash down payment and "pay-
ment orders"--negotiable paper
bearing six-percent interest over
a period of 15 years.
Peasants receiving land in
the first stage repay the govern-
A third stage of land re-
form is just beginning. It is
devoted to the improvement and
modernization of farming and to
providing the farmers with credit,
improving cooperatives, and train-
ing. Cooperatives have been a
feature of the land reform pro-
grams from the beginning, and all
peasants who receive land must
join a cooperative. A shortage
of skilled co-op workers is apt
to be a serious weakness in this
aspect of the program.
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Land and villages in these
categories have been sold to
peasants periodically for many
years. Further sales now are
being carried out by the Land Re-
form Organization. Government
statistics for second-stage trans-
actions reveal that 7,322--about
half.--of the public domain vil-
lages have been leased to 79,742
peasant families. Some 812 vil-
lages belonged to the royal es-
tates. Most of these appear to
have been distributed, although
an undetermined number have been
retained for the Crown Prince.
Endowed lands have had a
special status in Islamic and
Iranian civil law. Legally,
property can be set aside in per-
petuity, with its income devoted
to personal interest, e.g.,
placed in trust for the settler's
descendants or for charitable
purposes, usually the support of
religious personages, institu-
tions, or functions. As much as
15 percent of Iran's cultivated
land is estimated to be in this
category.
The civil code permits sale
of these endowed lands only if
this results in the acquisition
of better property. Alienation
of endowed property on long-term
lease is not expressly forbidden
by the civil code, however, and
the delicate religious problem
inherent in the confiscation or
forced sale of endowed lands was
solved by granting 99-year leases
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to the peasants tilling the land.
It appears that nearly all of
the more than 700 endowed-lands
villages have been treated in
this way.
Results of Land Reform
Land distribution has gen-
erally been considered success-
ful in breaking the dominance of
the land-rich absentee landlord
and laying the basis for a class
of small farmers. The landlord
is, however, not completely out
of the picture. Some, although
probably not a significant num-
ber, of the large landowners
deeded villages to. wives, child-
ren, and other relatives before
distribution went into effect.
More important, however, the
.landowners with substantial hold-
ings have had other sources of
:income from trade, business, and
industry. There has been no
diminution in their political or
economic strength and, indeed,
-their situation may even have
been improved by being freed from
the social and economic problems
of tenant farming.
Iranian agriculture now ap-
pears divided into two major seg-
rients. One is a traditional vil-
lage agriculture, carried on by
peasants who have received or
have rented land and by the small
holders who have retained village
land. These people are cultivat-
ing the same land as they did
under the previous crop-sharing
system. They now have a greater
control over their own futures,
but a genuine improvement in eco-
nomic status will be slow in com-
ing.
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The other segment includes
lands which have been retained by
landlords, virgin lands being
developed in modern ways by these
landlords, and new agricultural
enterprises being developed by a
new class of agricultural entre-
preneurs. The prospect for the
most rapid growth appears to lie
in this segment of Iranian agri-
culture.
Information on the effects
of land reform on agricultural
production and peasant successes
and difficulties is still scanty.
The long-range effects may not
be seen for a decade. They de-
pend heavily on the success of
the co-operatives and on the gov-
ernment's ability to stimulate
modern techniques.
The major criticisms of the
Shah's nationalist opponents are
that his land distribution pro-
gram is not sufficiently revolu-
tionary, was poorly planned, dis-
honestly executed, and designed
more for political propaganda
than social effect. Although
the big landlord is anathema to
the nationalists, the village
bourgeois smallholder, whom they
see multiplying as a result of
land reform, is also looked on
with a jaundiced eye. In the
words of one of the more articu-
late nationalist critics, "The
big absentee landlord may have
been a kinder paternal figure to
the peasant than the small land-
lord. Feudalism is usually less
ruthless than capitalism."
More trenchant is the ob-
servation that the average peas-
ant holding is too small to be
farmed profitably. Inasmuch as
in virtually every case, the
peasant acquired the same land
which formerly he had farmed for
the landlord, the traditional
pattern was maintained. This
has meant that often a peasant
owns several small plots of land
that are widely scattered and of
quite different fertility. The
difficulties of applying modern
farming techniques under these
circumstances are obvious.
Potentially more serious is
the large number--perhaps as many
as 6,000,000--agricultural labor-
ers and migrant workers who do not
qualify for land distribution be-
cause they have only their labor
to contribute. Such laborers
form the bulk of the rural unem-
ployed and underemployed and it
is this group that tends to mi-
grate to the cities, adding to
the great mass of the urban un-
employed. So far inarticulate
and unorganized, abut increasingly
aware of their low economic and
social status, they are likely
to become a major problem in
future years.
The Literacy Corps
Another major part of the
Shah's program is the Literacy
Corps, an ambitious attempt
started in late 1963 to give
millions of peasants at least
the rudiments of literacy in
Persian. Service in the Literacy
Corps, which now has more than
13,000 young men in the field,
is in lieu of military service.
Qualified conscripts are given
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O"M
Literacy Corpsman teaching village children in Iran
basic military training and
special training in teaching
illiterates and then sent out
to the villages for the
of their tour, of duty.
Compulsory education has
been the law since 1911, and 20
percent of the country's popu-
lation are now believed to be
literate. There are about 15,000
schools with 75,000 teachers ac-
commodating about 2.5 million
pupils. There are, however,
some two million children for
whom there are no schools or
teachers and millions of adults
who have never had an opportunity
for schooling.
The problems have been for-
midable. The number of teachers
has nearly doubled in ten
but the number of elementary
school children has tripled.
Teachers have been poorly paid;
many are poorly trained and not
highly regarded. Educational
facilities have been concentrated
to a large extent in urban areas.
The remoteness of many villages,
their small population, the ne-
cessity of children working as
soon as they can walk, the lack
of modern amenities, and fre-
quently the opposition of the
local landlord have all worked
against the spread of educational
opportunities in rural areas.
The Literacy Corps is a
direct and imaginative attack on
these basic problems. As an al-
ternative to regular military
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service, the Literacy Corps is
attractive to the better educated
conscript. The corpsmen receive
higher pay--they all serve as non-
coms--and their status as uni-
formed representatives of the gov-
ernment performing a' function which
the villager appreciates as use-
ful gives them motivation and
prestige that they might never
attain under other circumstances.
Many of them have become advisers
and spokesmen for the villagers
on a wide range of matters, from
building construction to govern-
ment relations. More than 6,000
former corpsmen have now joined
the Ministry of Education as regu-
lar teachers and have been sent
back to rural areas. Only budget-
ary limitations are restricting
this number. Top corpsmen with
supervisory potential are being
selected for college training,
including a year in the US.
As with most of the reform
program, it is difficult to eval-
uate the results of the Literacy
Corps program at this point.
Literacy was formerly defined as
completion of the basic two books
)f the course. By this defini-
tion some 724,000 children and
adults have so far become literate
And nearly half a million are cur-
rently in classes. The Ministry
of Education has now accepted the
UNESCO definition, and an Iranian
now is considered literate if he
learns to read sufficiently to
raise his economic position. By
this definition, results can be
measured only after a considerable
period of time and would seem to
involve much more than simply
learning to read. As a morale
factor, the Literacy Corps prob-
ably rates high among the peas-
antry as a favorable sign of the
central government's concern.
The Health Corps was started
in January 1964 and now has
about 1,500 corpsmen formed into
about 358 teams throughout the
country. The Health Corps, a
parallel of the Literacy Corps,
is an attempt to fill a serious
need in the countryside--the pro-
vision of medical services. The
country has about 3,700 medical
doctors; of these some 1,700 are
in Tehran, and the remainder are
in other urban areas. In urban
areas the ratio of hospital beds
to patients is about 1 to 384,
in the rural areas about 1 to
18,000.
Again like the Literacy
Corps, Health Corps members are
drawn from army conscripts per-
forming their military obliga-
tions in this manner. About 25
percent of the present personnel
are college educated medical
doctors or social workers; the
remainder are high school
graduates. The basic unit is a
team of one commissioned doctor
assisted by two or three medical
assistants and a driver. Dental,
laboratory, and sanitation teams
vary somewhat from this pattern.
The Health Corps has been
enthusiastically accepted in the
villages, so much so, in fact,
that the seeds of future trouble
may lie in the almost certain
shortage of medical personnel in
later years. The villagers who
taste government welfare for the
first time see it as a citizen's
long overdue right. One Health
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Corps doctor remarked that the
villagers looked upon free medi-
cal treatment as a government
responsibility and refused to do
anything for themselves. They
wanted "the hand of God to come
down from the sky to help them."
;Other Programs
Management has been given several
complex formulas for determining
the basis on which profits may
be shared. The formula can in-
volve percentage of net profit
or percentage of total produc-
tion. It can be based on reduc-
tion of waste or additional pro-
duction above certain norms.
The achievement of other
aspects of the Shah's program
has been less noticeable. The
forests have been nationalized,
and the former owners presumably
are being compensated. However,
no major moves to preserve and
exploit this valuable natural
resource seem to have been made.
The Development Corps, also made
up of army conscripts, and the
"Houses of Justice" are barely
under way.
The program of profit shar-
ing between management and labor
in industrial enterprises aims
to give workers up to 20 percent
of the profits of the shop or
factory in which they work. In
practice, the agreements which
have been concluded--covering
some 87,000 workers out of a
possible 400,000 eligible--have
been tied to various types of
production incentives, with the
average annual benefit probably
less than five percent of the
worker's income.
Management has generally
opposed the profit-sharing scheme,
although giving in to government
pressure. On the other hand,
there has been a tendency in
some cases for the Ministry of
Labor to demand profit sharing
even though the company may not
have made a profit.
Some workers are reported
to believe that they have a right
to receive 20 percent of a fac-
tory's estimated profits, regard-
less of any formal agreement,
and they have been critical of
the most common form of agreement,
that which requires greater dil-
igence and effort. This last
approach, however, has had a
significant effect in at least
two factories, where a great de-
crease in waste and an increase
in production have resulted in
as much as a 40-percent increase
in the workers' annual income.
The Shah has recently re-
iterated the necessity of carry-
ing out the profit-sharing law
to the letter, and there is every
indication that the Ministry of
Labor intends to proceed as fast
as possible.
Some changes in the elec-
toral law, called for in the
Shah's original program, appear
to have taken place. The law
under which the September 1963
elections were held was in effect
the same law that prevailed in
1960, but changes having to do
with the mechanics of voting
were made, The most conspicuous
change was the enfranchisement
of women. Few women voted in
1963, however, and the government
made no strong attempt to get out
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the female vote. They were per-
mitted to vote in the January
1963 referendum, but their votes
were not counted in the final
tabulation, thus avoiding a di-
rect confrontation with the re-
ligious authorities at that time.
Women were for the first time
"elected" to parliament in 1963.
This was clearly the decision of
the Shah, inasmuch as all candi-
dates were personally approved
by the Shah and the government
saw to it that they were elected.
The most conspicuous feature
of the Shah's-reform program is
its lack of any attempt or even
thought of political reforms.
The Shah is clearly the moving
spirit of the program, and neither
the newspapers nor the radio per-
mit the population to forget his
role.
So far, however, the Shah
has made no attempt to organize
peasant support. The nearest he
has come to this was the "Peas-
ants' Congress" in early 1963
and the "Congress of Free Men
and Free Women," which met later
the same year to choose candi-
dates for the election which
followed. Both of these were
carefully stage-managed to pro-
duce the desired results, but
there has been no follow-up.
The refusal of the Shah to
push for any political reforms
reflects his well-known views
that the Iranian people are not
yet prepared for a more demo-
cratic milieu and that political
reform is impossible until eco-
nomic reform has been achieved.
At what point the Shah will de-
cide that more political free-
dom is possible is not clear.
The elections which should
take place in 1967 may give a
clue to the amount of free po-
litical activity the Shah is
prepared to accept. It seems
unlikely, however, that he would-
do more than permit some choice
among government-approved candi-
dates,and, perhaps, encourage
greater participation by women.
Certainly he will not permit his
nationalist opponents the free
rein they demand. Meanwhile,
the Shah's position continues
to depend on the regime's abil-
ity to continue to show some
progress in reforms, the alert-
ness of the security forces,
and the bad aim of potential
assassins.
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