Most narratives of the 1979 Iranian Revolution start decades late. The fuse was lit earlier, in a quiet act of violence on a cool March morning in 1951. Prime Minister General Ali Razmara, a pragmatic military man, was arriving at a mosque in Tehran. He was a modernizer, seen by some as too close to British interests, and he opposed the nationalization of the Anglo-Iranian Oil Company—a popular cause.
Waiting for him was Khalil Tahmasebi, a 26-year-old member of the Fada'iyan-e Islam, a shadowy fundamentalist group. Tahmasebi was not a seasoned guerrilla. He was a theology student. As Razmara walked toward the mosque, Tahmasebi stepped forward and fired three shots from a revolver. The prime minister fell. The assassin did not flee. He stood there, allowing himself to be arrested.
The act was shocking in its simplicity and its symbolism. A religious zealot had killed the secular head of government at the doors of a house of worship. The political calculus was immediate and profound. Razmara's successor would soon nationalize the oil industry, setting off an international crisis. But more lastingly, Tahmasebi was transformed into a folk hero by religious conservatives. At his trial, he claimed a divine mandate. He was acquitted. The message was clear: a new, violent form of religious politics had arrived and could act with impunity. The 1953 coup would later dominate Western histories of Iran, but the murder of Razmara was the first, decisive crack in the foundation of the secular state, a preview of the theocratic earthquake to come.