The last king of Iran used the word “revolution” twice during his reign: once in the early 1960’s when he proposed the “White Revolution” reforms under Kennedy’s pressure to avoid a Chinese- or Cuban-style revolution; and once again in the last months of his rule when he told his people, “I have heard the sound of your revolution.” On both occasions certain people criticized him for doing so.

The first time it was Ayatollah Khomeini that told a number of officials who were visiting him at Qom, “This is not a revolution but a confiscation of the word. Revolution is something else that is not green or red; it is not something that the ruler does but something that undermines the ruler when it happens.”

Now, after 28 years, people are still fighting over the late Shah’s second usage of the word “revolution.” Some monarchists accuse whomever it is that they do not like of putting that word in Shah’s mouth. Others blame different people for doing so. But no one asks who convinced the Shah to accept the reality; as if things would have happened differently had the Shah not used the word.

The current administration and its supporters realized soon after their election last summer that what they want to do is not revolution. So far, however, they have not realized that even calling it revolution is a step too far.

One important reason why the current president and his supporters have stopped referring to last year’s presidential election as “the second revolution” is that they remembered that the “second revolution” was a phrased used by Khomeini to refer to the Hostage Crisis. So they revised their language and, at least on one occasion, Ahmadinejad used the phrase “the third revolution” to avoid insulting the Imam. But even the third revolution is as far away from reality as the White Revolution was.

Such name-callings usually happen when people do something without knowing the history and tradition that is behind what they are doing. Some person reaches a position of power and when he visits his hometown for the first time he sees lines of people who are waiting to see him. Since he never saw such a thing on his previous journeys to his hometown he now thinks that such a greeting is happening for the first time in history, and that no person in the position of power has ever been greeted in such a way.

The best way to bring such people back to reality is to return to the archives. All that Mr. Ahmadinejad and his supporters need to do is to watch the video of the million-man march in support of the last Shah on his visit to Mexico City. Alas that the life of such tricks is short.