by Shireen T. Hunter
Today Iranians celebrated, observed, or bemoaned the advent of the Islamic Revolution 35 years ago, depending on their cultural and political proclivities.
The revolution’s cultural dimension, its most important aspect, was nothing short of an effort to reshape Iranian identity and hence society and polity [...]]]>
by Shireen T. Hunter
The revolution’s cultural dimension, its most important aspect, was nothing short of an effort to reshape Iranian identity and hence society and polity according to a new interpretation of Islam. The revolution wiped out the impact of nearly two hundred years of modernization by introducing a far stricter and intrusive Islam into society and peoples’ lives than had ever existed in Iran, even before the advent of modernization. For example, in tales told by foreign visitors, such as the French Chevalier Jean Chardin, who traveled to Isfahan of the Safavid era in the sixteenth century, there is no mention of morality police.
This cultural revolution also undermined Iran’s sense of national unity by attacking non-Islamic aspects of its identity and culture, under the guise of combating nationalist tendencies, and tried to create an identity based on Islamic universalism. This process altered the basis of political legitimacy and created a close linkage between culture and identity on the one hand, and power and legitimacy on the other.
The greatest damage done by these changes was in Iran’s relations with the outside world and in the conduct of its foreign policy. By relegating Iran as a country and nation to second place after Islam and pan-Islamist objectives, the Islamic government severely damaged Iran’s national interests, best demonstrated by Iran’s subjection to unprecedented economic sanctions. Ironically, the revolutionary government failed to gain the support of other Muslim states. Sunni countries continued to see Iran as a Shia and, hence, according to them, a heretic state, and the Arabs dismissed Iran’s Islamic pretentions as insincere and continued to view them as Majus (a derogative name for Zoroastrians) Persians.
Even more consequential was the transformation of Islam from a religion into a state ideology and the creation of a power structure with interests closely linked to the perpetuation of this situation.
Yet is it correct to say that what happened in Iran was really what all the revolutionary forces wanted? Or is it more correct to say that a particular vision of what a post-monarchical Iran should look like, namely the vision of the clerical establishment and some conservative segments of society, triumphed over others?
What happened in 1979 has come to be known as the Islamic Revolution, and in the post-revolutionary period the clerical establishment, together with certain segments of the conservatives classes, have taken credit for ousting the Shah, and the clergy, their families, and entourage. Together with such revolutionary organizations as the Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps (IRGC), this clerical establishment has been among the principal beneficiaries of the revolution, thus forming Iran’s new religious aristocracy.
Yet the idea that the Islamic Revolution was solely due to religion and the influence of the clergy — paramount among whom was Ayatollah Khomeini — does not quite square with the facts.
The idea of revolution in Iran has been part and parcel of the country’s modernization and the impact of Western ideas, both liberal and socialist. The Constitutional Revolution of 1906 was the direct result of the Iranians’ acquaintance with the democratic movements of Europe and European constitutionalism and nationalism. At that time, the overwhelming majority of the clergy were opposed to constitutionalism, and even those who supported it had a very limited understanding of what it implied. Certainly, even for the more ardent clerical supporters of the Constitutional movement, it did not mean secular rule based on sovereignty of the people.
By the 1920s, socialist ideas were the main wellspring of revolutionary thinking in Iran, a trend that continued throughout the 1970s in various incarnations. It was the socialists who turned Islam into a revolutionary creed and changed it from being a religion into an ideology. The late Ali Shariati was the main, if not the only, figure in this process. He himself has said that his greatest achievement was to change religion into an ideology.
The seminaries of Qom were meanwhile far behind. Shariati gave religion an ideological respectability, appealing to intellectuals and students. He was instrumental in replacing the concept of nation with the Islamic Umma; he attacked Iranian nationalism, and he popularized the concept of an Islamic vanguard in the guise of a new version of Imamate. Fortunately, his speeches are available for all to hear and see.
The secular left also did its bit. It was the left, both religious and Islamic, that introduced the idea of armed struggle and engaged in urban and guerrilla warfare. It was their attacks that first demonstrated the vulnerability of the monarchy, and their intervention played a significant role in the final victory of revolutionary forces. Even the Shah inadvertently popularized the notion of revolution by calling his reforms the White Revolution.
Meanwhile, the liberal and semi-nationalists underestimated both the left and the clerical establishment and, instead of settling for constitutional reform, opted for revolution. It is ironic that very recently Said Hajarian, a major revolutionary figure on the left of the political spectrum, admitted that the Shah was capable of reform. But it is too late for Iran to realize that monarchy can be turned into a constitutional form of government without revolution. It is much more difficult to change an ideologically based system without major upheaval.
The left also bequeathed its foreign policy beliefs to the Islamic regime. The so-called struggle against global arrogance, with its focus on the United States, is a reworked version of the left’s anti-imperialist and anti-American creed, as is the inordinate hostility to Israel and so-called international Zionism, as well as toward conservative Arabs.
For those Iranians who are old enough to remember, imperialism, Zionism, and Arab reaction were the three devils of the Arab left and part of the European left, internalized by Iranian revolutionaries of various stripes. Together with the pan-Islamism of the conservative Muslims, this leftist legacy intensified the unrealistic and destructive dimensions of the Islamic government’s foreign policy.
The left wanted a socialist system with a thin veneer of Islam but got an Islamic system with a thin veneer of socialism and that only at certain periods. Consequently, what has happened after the revolution has been nothing short of a subterranean and more open conflict between the leftist and clerical/conservative elements of the Islamic revolution, as with the 1990s’ struggle over defining the Islamic revolution and Khomeini’s legacy. What has not changed is at least the pretension of allegiance to the revolution and to its so-called ideals, with virtually no one any more quite remembering what the revolution’s ideals were. According to Ayatollah Mesbah Yazdi, revolution was not for a better life but for the revival of Islamic values, while others claim that it was to achieve both goals.
Irrespective of what the revolution’s goals were, today concepts of revolution and counter-revolution are used to promote factional interests, going as far as to undermine the country’s very security, as illustrated by the seemingly ideologically based opposition to Iran’s interim nuclear deal with the P5+1 (the U.S., Britain, France, China and Russia plus Germany). Yet increasingly, it is not ideology that determines factional divisions in Iran, but factional interests that determine the ideological positions of its different actors.
Of course, no country can remain in a perpetual state of revolution, and certainly ideological purity can not be pushed so far as to endanger national survival. The experiences of both the People’s Republic of China and the Soviet Union support this premise, as in both cases communism was adjusted to the interests of China and Russia.
The question is whether Iran can peacefully manage the transition to a post-revolutionary state. This is not impossible, though it will not be easy. Due to the ideological baggage of the Iranian revolution, legitimacy and power have come to be linked much more closely to ideology than at any other time in Iran’s history. A change in revolutionary ideology would mean a change in the composition of the political elite and the basis of power.
The question then becomes: can the current elite, or significant portions of it, put the interests of the country ahead of their corporate interests and develop a new, non-ideological and inclusive, Iran-based cultural and identity discourse, and thus a popular basis for political power and legitimacy? Failing that, can they at least allow for enough flexibility to avoid future upheavals and save Iran from its current predicament, until the revolutionary fever runs its course? The election of Hassan Rouhani so far offers a glimmer of hope that this might just be possible.
– Shireen Hunter is a Visiting Professor at the School of Foreign Service of Georgetown University. Prior to that she was associated with the Center for Strategic and International Studies from 1983 to 2005, last as the Director of its Islam Program. Her last book was Iran’s Foreign Policy in the Post-Soviet Era: Resisting the New International Order, Praeger 2010.
Following debate in Iran ahead of its June 14 presidential election is like watching a movie by Luis Bunuel — think the Discreet Charm of the Bourgeoisie — or looking at a painting by Salvador Dali; everything opposes reality.
Indeed, while the candidates of various political stripes vigorously and energetically discuss [...]]]>
Following debate in Iran ahead of its June 14 presidential election is like watching a movie by Luis Bunuel — think the Discreet Charm of the Bourgeoisie — or looking at a painting by Salvador Dali; everything opposes reality.
Indeed, while the candidates of various political stripes vigorously and energetically discuss issues ranging from the country’s monumental economic problems to the threat of cultural aggression, no one refers to the underlying cause of these problems.
That’s because they’re operating from within the straitjacket that the Islamic Republic’s ideology and Khomeini’s legacy has imposed on the country. Even worse, there seems to be no escape, at least not without undermining the interests of one group or another or, more fundamentally, for the system itself to be replaced or transformed beyond recognition.
Ironically, in averting the discussion of the basic cause of Iran’s national crisis — and it is a full-fledged national crisis — both the so-called reformists and various shades of conservatives are complicit; they all have a stake in the system and its survival. Others who are not part of this conspiracy of aversion, such as important elements of the so-called Green Movement, have such extreme ideas that implementing them would lead to the end of Iran as we know it.
Even Ali Akbar Hashemi Rafsanjani, coming out of the shadows and declaring his candidacy at the last minute, was in his own words doing so in order to save the system — meaning the Islamic Republic with all of its ideological trappings.
Admittedly, Rafsanjani and the moderate reformists, such as Muhammad Khatami, have a more gentle interpretation of the Islamic Republic of Iran’s (IRI) ideology, which allows some room for other Iranians who might not share that ideology to participate in society. But make no mistake, the survival of the system — and with it the privileged position of the clerical establishment, their offspring and other coteries — is Rafsanjani’s main goal as well.
The ideological trap into which Iran has fallen is also manifested in the twenty year-long dispute over Ayatollah Khomeini’s vision. The reformists portray him as a real democrat who believed in the right of the people to decide on the country and its fate. The conservatives see him as the creator of the Velayat-e-faqhih (the leadership of the Islamic Jurist) even in its absolute form. They argue, if only Iranian politicians had done as the Imam (Khomeini) had told them, everything would have been perfect. All Iran’s problems, according to this line of thought, occurred because Rafsanjani and Khatami, and, recently, Mahmoud Ahmadinejad, deviated from Khomeini’s teachings.
Nevertheless, anyone who has read Khomeini’s writings going back to the 1940s and his interviews in later decades, as well as the current Iranian Constitution, would realize that what Khomeini wanted was an Islamic government, which is an essentially religious construct, and that’s what the IRI is. His republicanism was extremely weak and his view of the role of the people — as far as deciding the character of the country’s culture and politics — was extremely narrow. People could decide where to build a highway or what crops to grow, but not change Islamic law or deviate from Islamic morality. But none of the presidential candidates or most others in Iran’s political life will agree with this; doing so would be tantamount to admitting that they had been fooled from the beginning and/or tried to fool others. Or, that the whole revolution was a colossal mistake.
So in addition to the ideological straitjacket Iran is wrapped in, it’s also caught in what one could call the Khomeini trap.
The most damaging aspect of Khomeini’s ideology was that it was essentially anti-Iran and anti-Iranian. As he admitted, Khomeini had no feelings for Iran as a country. He seldom referred to the Iranian nation. Everything he did was in the name of Islam and the community of Muslims (Umat-ul-Islam). Khomeini saw Iran as a base and headquarters for a revolutionary movement to revive Islam and to achieve Islamic unity, no matter the cost to Iran. Hence the disastrous war with Iraq and the unrelenting quest to “liberate” Palestine. If this meant massive destruction for Iran, lost development, international isolation, sanctions and now the real threat of disintegration, then so be it.
Lest some people think this is not the case now, they should recall that when two years ago President Ahmadinejad came up with the idea of an Iranian School, based on ideas that Iranian civilization is self-contained and even has its own version of Islam, Ayatollah Mesbah Yazdi and several other senior clerics said that Iran has no value without Islam. Yazdi said whatever honor Iran has is because of Islam, and Iranians’ accomplishments came after the dawn of Islam. He added that Iran is a mere vessel without value until the “substance,” namely Islam, is poured into it. For him and his followers, if Islam were to triumph, Iran’s destruction in the process would be more than worth it. Of course, Yazdi’s personal and class interests are closely linked to the predominance of the Islamist discourse, even if sustained through force.
This means that no matter who is elected as Iran’s next president, as long as a critical mass of Iranian politicians fail to clearly state that Khomeinism and Iran’s survival and interests are incompatible and an Iran-centered discourse should replace the current Islamist ideology, it will be impossible to alter Iran’s current predicament.
An Iran-centered discourse does not mean old-fashioned, ethno-centric or chauvinistic nationalism and does not ignore the role of Islam. Nor does it require a return to past political structures. It simply means putting the interests of Iranians and Iran ahead of some utopian Islamist quest.
The problem with the more extreme reformists and the Green Movement has been that they replaced Islamist utopianism and ideology with a vague version of liberalism and human rights discourse. Although laudable, mere liberal values cannot create national cohesion and provide policy guidelines. Moreover, some of these extremists have had views regarding Iran’s minorities that, if implemented, would inevitably lead to the country’s disintegration. Ironically, as recent experiences in Iraq and elsewhere have shown, such a process would not benefit anyone in Iran.
The idea of an Iran-centered discourse is not far-fetched. There is a growing fatigue with Islamism and any kind of revolutionary adventurism in Iran, as well as growing anxiety regarding Iran’s survival in the future. For example, in the last two years, both reformist and moderate conservative figures have stressed the need to put saving Iran ahead of factional disputes. The fact that, after attacking Rafsanjani brutally, reformists agreed on him as a consensus candidate proves this point.
Still, as of now Islamists of all stripes are not willing to abandon the discourse that propelled them to power, though some are prepared to make some adjustments to it. As a result, whoever is elected president, a dramatic change in Iran’s prospects and behavior is unlikely.
– Dr. Shireen T. Hunter is a Visiting Professor at Georgetown University’s Center for Muslim-Christian Understanding where she is finishing her 16th book on the underlying elements shaping the Iranian Revolution, including its foreign policy. She was previously Deputy Director of the Middle East Program at the Center for Strategic and International Studies, and for 13 years was a member of the Iranian foreign service under the Shah. Her Phd Is from the Geneva Graduate Institute of International Studies.
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