A Study of the Efficacy of Headquarters for Fighting Overcharging in Accelerating the Pace of the Fall of Pahlavi Regime and Victory of Islamic Revolution

Implementation of Pahlavi II’s Fifth Development Plan imposed heavy shocks on various economic areas, such as overcharging of goods and basic commodities in the market. To control the chaotic situation in the market, the government implemented a set of supervisory and support policies. One such policy was the establishment of the Headquarters to Fight Overcharging. The negative performance of the headquarters and the consequent effects paved the ground for more and more friction and contradiction between the regime and the market activists in such a way that the following important claim can be made: implementation of the plan to fight overcharging and public dissatisfaction coupled with the conflicts between the Bazaar and the government served as a catalyst in accelerating the fall of the Pahlavi regime. To prove the claim, this paper tried to study factors and causes behind the establishment of the Headquarters to Fight Overcharging through an explanatory and descriptive method and based on available sources and documents as well as their role in fueling business class’s dissatisfaction of the Pahlavi regime. To that end, the relationship between the government and Bazaar, and related developments were first reviewed; then, in the course of studying Iran’s economic developments, their impacts on Bazaar economy were analyzed as the major components of the discussion.