However much the establishment of the Islamic Republic, the approval of the constitution, and the conclusion of presidential elections may have encouraged the feeling in spring 1980 that the revolution was about to settle down into the “year of order and security,” events were leading in a very different direction. Iran was on the verge of a decade of continued upheaval and struggle, dominated throughout by the inexorable presence of the Ayatollah Khomeini.

Bani Sadr’s electoral triumph raised great expectations of what he could accomplish, not least of all in his own mind. He quickly proposed to end the hostage crisis, assert his control over the Revolutionary Guards and government agencies, deal with the minority problem, and introduce numerous social and economic reforms. In actuality, his situation was not at all unlike that which had confronted Bazargan. With Kurdistan and the American hostages, he was saddled with tough problems that needed to be solved through compromises which would discredit him if he failed and be used to attack him if he succeeded. He was a lay leader, not a cleric, and could not expect to control the clerical

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