A special comment by Tamim Ansary, author of Destiny Disrupted: A History of the World Through Islamic Eyes
The Khomeinist regime in Iran is in terminal trouble; but that doesn’t mean Iran is about to repudiate Islam and become a secular democracy. In order to see where Iran is going, it’s important to see where it’s been.
The so-called Islamic Revolution of Iran was never just about Islam. It was the product of three revolutionary currents coming together. One was constitutionalism, a century-old struggle for democracy, driven mostly by Iran’s secular modernists. One was Islamism, a push to put the shari’a in charge of political life—a movement fed by rural resentment of the Westernized urban elite and embraced by merchants of the country’s traditional economy.
And then there was nationalism: a rage fueled by Iran’s long-subjugation to European powers, a passion that permeated every level of Iranian society and made people of all backgrounds hungry to see Iranian sovereignty, strength, and pride restored.
In the tumult of 1978-79, master strategist Ayatollah Khomeini appropriated the nationalist impulse into his Shi’i Islamist movement. He was in a good position to do so because Shi’ism had been intertwined with “Iranianism” for over five centuries. Indeed, it was a defiant Shi’ism that set Iran apart from its powerful Ottoman and Moghul neighbors and let it emerge into history as a nation-state.
By making his brand of Islamism the face of Iranian nationalism, Khomeini combined two streams of revolutionary enthusiasm and used it to crush the third stream, the democracy movement of the secular modernists.
In the next several decades, while the world mourned the death of Iranian democracy, Khomeini and his successors made good their promise to nationalist pride and thus secured their grip on the country. They humiliated the United States; beat back Iraq; eradicated all traces foreign cultural influence in Iran; and forged a menacing state able to project its power through Lebanon into the Arab-Israeli conflict.
But recently the Khomeinists have faltered. The ascension of Ahmadinejad has hurt them. The trouble with Ahmadinejad is not that most of the world sees him as a villanous thug (that by itself could have helped him domestically.) The problem is that most of the world sees him as a laughable buffoon, a donkey: he brings shame upon the nation. And he compounded his flaws by mismanaging the economy. Iranians worried about tomorrow’s livelihood feel their country’s power and prestige waning. As a result, the regime’s ownership of the nationalist agenda erodes. If it loses that chip, it must rely purely on its Islamic credentials for legitimacy and even in Iran, that’s not enough.
Many in clerical establishment have seen this coming. This is what the reform movement has been about. Men like Khatami, Mousavi, and Rafsanjani don’t propose to dismantle the Islamic Republic and replace it with a secular democracy. They’re out to save the Islamic Republic by changing its approach to the world and thus preserve its stature in world affairs. They see what Obama sees: that belligerent bullying ultimately weakens a nation. This doesn’t mean their commitment to Islam (or even Islamism) has weakened, any more than Obama’s willingness to talk with states like Iran means he no longer believes in democracy.
In Iran, however, the pressure of internal contradictions has built up such intensity that there is no controlling the reformist challenge and no predicting its consequences. The only thing we can say for sure is that the regime led by Khamenei is in a bind from which it cannot escape.
The regime is in a bind because the question on the table now is whether it is hurting the nation, and the question doesn’t come from disaffected outsiders but from core members of the ruling elite.
Every instrument the regime possesses for dealing with the crisis tends to put its own legitimacy at risk. Khamenei’s decision-making has further boxed him and his cabal into a corner. Take the election results: had those been counted properly, they might well have produced numbers pretty close to what the regime announced—believe it or not, that’s what a Manchester Guardian poll and several others showed in the weeks before the election. In the voting itself, there may not have been much fraud.
But that no longer matters, because the votes were not counted properly. That’s indisputable. By issuing the results of the voting sooner than the votes could possibly have been counted, Khamenei drew the spotlight away from scattered polling booths and trucks rolling through the streets with ballot boxes, and situated the central act of fraud squarely in the headquarters of the regime.
As Supreme Leader, Ali Khamenei may have many powers, but he doesn’t have the power to do as he pleases for personal gain. As a fundamental principle, in the Islamic Republic, no one is free to do as he pleases, not even the “Supreme Leader.” Everyone is subject to the law—that law being the shari’a. By appearing to commit a blatant dishonesty in order to put his own man in the drivers seat, Khamenei has cost himself an aura of impregnable authority, and this will hurt him because, for all the military and police resources at his command, the Supreme Leader’s authority ultimately derives from rectitude and religious learning, not bodyguards and guns. As soon as people stop believing in his rectitude, guns won’t save him.
No doubt Khamenei calculated that his decree would stop all the protests dead and that life would then do what life does: go back to normal. But the protests didn’t stop and so Khamenei found himself caught out in cold.
Therefore, he went to the next step and called on his military resources, because what else could he do? The revolution of 1979 suppressed whole currents of revolutionary passion unrelated to Islam, and those sentiments have been festering and heating up under the skin of the Islamic Republic for decades. The Khomeinist regime cannot let that magma keep welling to the surface. The trouble is, the division in Iran runs vertically. This is not a confrontation between a homogenous oppressed underclass and a monolithically united tyranny. Leading members on both sides of the divide are highly placed insiders. In calling out the troops, the regime turns its guns on itself. To justify this action, it has no recourse but to redefine some founding members of the Islamic revolution as disloyal outsiders. Even if it succeeds in thus rebranding men like Rafsanjani, it damages the legitimacy of the state structure as a whole: success is failure.
Furthermore, to keep the opposition scattered and disorganized, the regime has no choice but to stopper up their channels of communication. That means it has to disrupt the Internet, shut down Facebook, stop the Twittering, and keep cell phone text messages from getting through. These, however, are the power technologies of our time. These are what make societies effective, powerful, and modern. In shutting down these systems, the regime is dragging Iran back into a primitivism that can only reduce the country to third-tier status—and Iranians can feel this. So all such actions offend the yearnings still alive in the Iranian soul for strength, self respect, and a high standing in the world.
In short, every step the regime can take to shore up its strength must cost it some credibility and squander some of its ability to keep presenting itself as the champion of Iranian pride. If a plurality of the nation comes to feel that these Khomeinist clerics are good Muslims but bad for Iran, they are finished. Their only possible hope then will rest with some outside force inserting itself into the fray and giving them a convenient scapegoat, someone like John McCain, who incredibly enough said today that the United States “should lead” the Iranian revolution. But then, if the Khomeinists of Iran depend on John McCain to save their hides, they’re probably dead men walking already.
16 responses
Interesting article. I would just mention that Obama was of course wrong about the American use of force — it was apparently the creation of democracy in Iraq that provoked the current demands for democracy in Iran. (And this was predicted back in 2003, of course.) And McCain doesn’t feel the United States should “lead the revolution” in Iran — he simply feels we should lead the world in supporting those in Iran who want more democracy, freedom, and human rights. One can debate how best to do so, but it’s difficult to argue otherwise.
John Lesko, Give me a break…Al Gore had more to do with the “invention of the internet” than Bush has had with the Iranians’ protests against their rulers’ miscalculation!!!
Let’s find another way to make ourselves feel good about spending Trillions of Dollars in the Iraqi debacle.
This is the smartest analysis of the Iranian election crisis I have read to date.
The Bush doctrine in Iraq was flawed but fundamentally righteous. Now it is time for Obama style diplomacy in Iran.
Just imagine: two democratic countries, side by side with spillover into Lebanon? It boggles the mind. The courage of Iranian patriot reformists could well be the key to peace in the Middle East!
Fight on Iran! Freedom loving people around the world see your courage & suffering and support you!
Sounds like Aminijihad is sorta like Iran’s George W. Bush. Think so?
Will, Many Iranians call Ahmadinejad their “Bush.” They’re both NeoCons of different cultures.
John Lesko, You know nothing about Iranian society or history. G.W. Bush was the most unifying force in Iranian America hating since Eisenhower. The invasion of Iraq is THE greatest reason for wide spread (doubtful majority) Amadinejad support in Iran. Bush’s “axis of evil” legitimized Ahmadinejad’s zenophobia. Much of this blood is on Bush’s hands.
I have a story.one mother says she’s aware something is very wrong, but she doesn’t want to hear about it because she just wants to “be with her children and see them grow up happy.†I tell her ,“But, if we don’t stop this, your children may not get to grow up at all.†so basically, she’s using her kids as an excuse for her own inability to face reality.
Great article. And if further proof were needed that the voting figures were almost certainly made up, it’s to be found here:
http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2009/06/20/AR2009062000004.html?1
who cares about 0b4m4? he is only a puppet anyway…
war against terror and all theese lies that only americans could believe.
americans sending americans to die in a pointless war… witch ofcorse happened because of the ‘war against terror’ and not because of the profit usa is now making from exploiting the oil and rebuilding things.
just now its not the same … 0b4m4 got elected by saying he should stop the war so he will have political loss if he interfeers… and maybe (always maybe lol) because russians sell nuclear technology to iran and militery equipment.we cant know for sure but were there is smoke there is fire. history shows us that allways behind theese things there are games for profit and power.
the fact is that persians want to have freedom, freedom to live as they want, freedom to think and say what they think, and a better future.
they dont care about the political games played on their back. they want things to change and they are trying to change them.
the reasons are simple, all big social changes comes with simple reasons.
this is a nice analysis. indeed really nice but the fact is that inocent people die. and we people of the other countries can just watch it happen because some countries have ‘profit’ from the curent regime.
best of luck and i wish strenght for the persian people, but i am really afraid that they will have to deal with this totaly by themselves.
Excellent piece of writing.
Thanks a lot for this.
ofc on war on terror i was refering to iraq and the interests behind it.
What boggles my mind in all the articles on Iran lately is that anyone with a modicum of sense would put their faith in any kind of poll. The polls taken in Iran are just as reliable as a poll taken in the 80’s in Czechoslovakia asking random citizens if they believed in Communism.
Otherwise, a fantastic article head and shoulders above all the others I’ve read to date. Thank you.
Awful piece. You are attacking the one guy in congress that’s standing up for us and our freedom in Iran and promoting the guy who is cowardly standing by idly while our people suffer, why? So much long for the days when Ronald Reagan was President! So many liberals and elite media pundits shouted against his taking on USSR and its powers in Poland, Germany and all around the world! Thankfully he did not listen to those who thought they were wise in their own eyes, and we got ourselves a taste of freedom in many parts of the world for the first time. Thank you John Mccain for your service to Freedom, your country and for standing strong for us Iranians.
Anthony,
First of all, I have serious doubts that you’re part of the “us” who’s working for freedom in Iran. But more importantly, the history of US involvement in Iran over the last 60 years, from the toppling of Mossadegh to the protection of the Shah to setting Saddam Hussein loose against them (using chemical weapons we provided) to selling them arms in exchange for hostages (and then using that money to fund death squads in Latin America–Reagan’s a real fricking hero for that one, bub) to George W. Bush’s “Axis of Evil” precludes the US from taking any sort of direct action because we will be playing into the very rhetoric that the current power structure used to gain power in the first place.
Right now John McCain is like a ten-year old kid playing Madden and the only play he runs is the fake punt. Once in a thousand tries, it works, but the rest of the time he’s screwed. All McCain knows is “talk tough and they’ll crumble.” Well, we’re not as fearsome as we once were, and Iran’s got a long history of giving us the finger when we talk tough. Maybe, just maybe, changing the strategy is a good idea. It certainly can’t be worse than what we’ve done for the last 60 years.
RE:Lesko comment: “…the creation of democracy in Iraq…”
May be you can enlighten us with the current thinking in democratic theory which allows the complete devastation and looting of a country, to say nothing of the senseless murder of hundreds of thousands of civilians, as the way to setup ‘democracy’.
Brian is a complete fool! First of all for challenging Anthony’s Iranian credentials without knowing anything at all about him.
I love these post-modern morally ambiguous jellyfish left wingers on this thread, like Brian, who never stand for freedom and democracy when it counts the most.
Anthony is completely correct in pointing out the achievements of the Reagan years in helping bring down the USSR and the Eastern Bloc. The U.S. is not responsible directly for collapse, but helped precipitate it.
I love people like Brian who bitch and complain, but do not stand with freedom when it counts.
Geopolitics is always shades of grey, so pointing out U.S. policy in Iran or the Middle East, where it went wrong, does nothing to advance democracy in Iran right now. We (well you, I am Canadian, not American) supported the country that supported our interests in the region at the time. The U.S. did support Iraq at one point because they faced a greater threat of Shiite anti-Americanism from Iran. You supported the anti-Soviet Muslim fighters in Afghanistan because the USSR was a greater threat at the time.
You know Brian, recycling juvenile Noam Chomsky logic (illogic really) on foreign policy does not advance your case.
Where is your standard bearer Obama in all this? Apologizing to tyrants?
If you had John McCain as president now, you likely would have had a triumphant speech, where McCain identified the Islamic Regime as an Evil Empire, just like the USSR.
It’s time to call a spade a spade.. Iranians know their regime is wrong, they need us in the West to be unequivocal in our support for their democratization.
Pointing to old foreign policy decisions, Brian, does nothing.
Once again, Ansary provides the most cogent analysis of a Middle East issue. Every time the USA has aggressively backed one side in Iran, it’s empowered the mullahs by giving them a bad guy to point to and rally extremists. Iran never forgave us for our CIA-led overthrow of their democracy in 1953, and they’ve been paranoid about us ever since. We can’t give the mullahs an excuse to demonize us again and thus crush a endemic democratic movement. Iran has to fight it out for itself. Iran has to believe it’s instituting its own democracy without USA help. Incidentally, it will be an Islamic democracy, not a secular democracy. Obama is handling this masterfully (so far). Thank goodness McCain didn’t win.
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