Revolution and Aftermath: Forging a New Strategy toward Iran
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Revolution and Aftermath: Forging a New Strategy toward Iran
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Product Details
| ISBN-13: | 9780817921569 |
|---|---|
| Publisher: | Hoover Institution Press |
| Publication date: | 07/01/2018 |
| Sold by: | INDEPENDENT PUB GROUP - EPUB - EBKS |
| Format: | eBook |
| Pages: | 168 |
| File size: | 641 KB |
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CHAPTER 1
The Permanent Revolution?
It is often claimed that every revolution contains the seeds of its own destruction. After a spasm of radical overreach, the revolutionaries yield to the temptations of pragmatism. The need to actually run a government and address domestic concerns eventually causes them to come to terms with the international order. Like the French Revolution, all subsequent regimes have their Thermidorian Reaction. No nation can live on ideology alone, and the imperative of staying in power forces erstwhile radicals to soften their edges. The twentieth-century Chinese experience tends to define our view of how modern revolutionary regimes evolve. After decades of agitating against the prevailing order, Mao Zedong's successors accepted its legitimacy and abandoned communism for a more workable capitalist system. The lure of commerce proved too tempting, as the Chinese revolutionaries soon transformed themselves into savvy businessmen. China is not alone in its journey, as Vietnam and even Cuba are mending their ways. Revolutionaries can either continue to celebrate their ideals or maintain power. They cannot do both.
Why has Iran defied this pattern? In the next chapter, we shall examine how foreign policy has been used systematically to sustain the revolution at home. In this chapter, however, the focus will be on the basic domestic arrangements that tether the Islamic Republic firmly to its founding beliefs. It is becoming increasingly clear that Ayatollah Khomeini was the most successful revolutionary of the twentieth century. While Vladimir Lenin, Mao Zedong, and Ho Chi Minh would no longer recognize the polities that they attempted to transform with revolutions, Khomeini's ideas continue to animate the regime he left behind. Through an ideology that he concocted, institutions that he created, and an elite that he molded, Khomeini remains a central figure in Iran nearly three decades after his death.
The endurance of Khomeini's message belies the notion of him as a stern mullah professing a retrogressive ideology. The Imam, as his followers would call him, forged his own path and articulated a distinct set of ideas that integrated Islamic principles, populist slogans, and Persian nationalist themes into a seamless narrative. The Islamic Republic was to defend Iran's national rights and prevent the exploitation of its resources by foreigners that had been so commonplace throughout its history. Khomeini may have been ignorant of economics, but the revolution was as much about coin as God. The new regime committed itself to providing cradle-to-grave social services to the poor and the peasantry. At times this smacked of class warfare, as the regime expropriated the property of the wealthy and dispersed it to the theocracy's lower-class constituents. Subsidies and material rewards would become an important pillar of the legitimacy of the regime, much to its eventual chagrin. The government that Khomeini left behind proved to be incapable of producing a vibrant economy and unable to relieve itself of onerous subsidies, thereby laying the foundation of an insoluble dilemma for its successors.
The flirtation with progressive concepts of economic redistribution ought not to be confused with any inclination by Khomeini to accept a system of government based on anything but an inflexible adherence to his interpretation of Islam. In his most influential book, The Islamic Government, Khomeini radically departed from the prevailing Shiite traditions of political disengagement. His concept of velayat-e faqih (guardianship of the jurist) called for direct assumption of power by the clergy. After all, the Prophet of Islam was not just a spiritual guide but also an administrator, a dispenser of justice, and a political figure. Given the need to conform the social order to religious injunctions, the clergy must rule, as they are most knowledgeable in matters of religious law. Khomeini disdained those who urged that the clergy retreat to the mosque and leave politics to the professionals. In Iran, the mullahs dispensed with the seminaries for the more exhilarating task of creating and administering a religious state.
In fact, it is precisely reliance on religion that sets apart Khomeini's revolutionary experiment from his twentieth-century counterparts. The Islamic Republic is different from its radical peers as the ideology of the state is its religion. To be sure, this is a politicized and radicalized variation of Shiite Islam and Khomeini's experiment does contradict normative Shiite political ideas that have evolved over centuries. Still, religion is the official dogma. A dedicated core of supporters remained loyal to this ideology, determined to perpetuate it long after Khomeini himself disappeared from the scene. Revolutionary regimes have usually collapsed when their once-ardent supporters abandoned their faith. Mikhail Gorbachev and his cohort of reformers ultimately had to accept the fact that Lenin's patrimony had failed them and that his brainchild had to be disposed of in the dustbin of history. Mao's loyalists pay tribute to him at official ceremonies and then rule the state by capitalist precepts that he would find appalling. And the Vietnamese rulers are too busy attracting Western tourists and hosting American presidents to create a Marxist utopia in Southeast Asia. It is, after all, easy to be an ex-Marxist, as this is merely a sign of intellectual maturity. But how easy is it to become an ex-Shiite? In the former case, it is mere political defection; in the latter, it is apostasy. Although the Islamic Republic has become unpopular over the years, for a small but fervent segment of the population it is still an important experiment of realizing God's will on earth. And it is this sector of society that continues to produce leaders who are determined to return to the "roots of the revolution" and that provides a pool of enforcers who are willing to shed blood in the name of God.
Khomeini's concept of Islamic government may have been for the people, but it certainly was not meant to be democratic. The Imam created a set of institutions that not only ensured clerical political hegemony but also protected his revolution's values from the inevitable forces of change. The Islamic Republic's constitution enshrined the unprecedented theory of velayat-e faqih, whereby a supreme leader would oversee all national affairs. The office designated for Khomeini himself had virtually unlimited responsibility and was empowered to command the armed forces and the newly created Revolutionary Guards, dismiss any elected official, countermand parliamentary legislation, and declare war and peace. The new office was subject to neither elections nor the scrutiny of the larger public. Islamic law was to displace the existing legal codes, circumscribing individual rights and prerogatives. A Guardian Council, composed mainly of clerics, was to vet all legislation, ensuring its conformity with Islamic strictures. All candidates for public office had to submit their credentials to the Guardian Council for approval. Yet another clerical body, the Assembly of Experts, would be responsible for choosing the next supreme leader. The constitutional arrangements guaranteed that Khomeini's reinterpretation of Shiism would remain the ideology of the state and that only those devoted to his vision would command state institutions.
Throughout his life, Khomeini despised democratic norms and rarely made references to a republic. For him, Iran was not an Islamic republic but an Islamic state. He firmly believed that laws should be derived from Koranic sources as applied to contemporary conditions by a clerical elite. Thus, traditional democratic institutions and practices such as assemblies, the right to vote, and referenda had no place in his political imagination. He insisted that people had to be guided by the righteous and the public had to submit to the authority of the clerical class. Unlike many of his younger disciples, Khomeini saw limited utility even in the façade of republicanism. Khomeini's concept of proper governance was a religious autocracy that could not be reconciled with pluralistic concepts.
Had Khomeini remained faithful to his concept of absolutist rule, his religious state may not have endured. The genius of the Islamic Republic is that it contains within its autocratic structure elected institutions that have little power but still provide the public with the means for expressing its grievances. In the absence of such a safety valve, however superficial, the state would have confronted even more protests than it has already. The inclusion of provisions for electoral politics in the constitution stemmed from the nature of the revolutionary coalition that overthrew the shah and seized power in 1979. Khomeini and his disciples may have led the revolt, but the support and participation of many liberals and secularists were critical to its success. The revolution called for creating a state that would be religious in its character but democratic in its procedures. This would prove an impossible task. A state can draw its legitimacy from either elections or religious dogma. The Islamic Republic bears all the hallmarks of a dictatorship, but maintains a thin veneer of collective action.
The Islamic Republic does have an elected president, a parliament, and local councils. These offices may be subordinated to the clerical bodies, but they are not entirely insignificant. The office of the president appoints the heads of government ministries, administers the bureaucracy, and frequently represents Iran at international fora. Although all of the candidates for office must be approved by the Guardian Council, the Islamic Republic has nonetheless featured a diverse collection of presidents. During the past three decades, the presidency has changed hands from a reformer with a genuine desire to foster change to an unreconstructed reactionary and finally to a cunning pragmatist. The fact that the Iranian people can have a say in who becomes president and which candidates become members of the parliament gives them the ability to express their grievances in an orderly manner. An Iran that has gone from the fiery Mahmoud Ahmadinejad to the more temperate Hassan Rouhani gives members of the public the hope that they can have a voice in national deliberations. This hope may be a delusion, and the elections have hardly affected the essential distribution of power. But they have fostered the impression that the citizenry is not a mere bystander in the game of clerical politics.
To become a revolutionary and risk one's life for a cause that seems distant, if not improbable, is one of the most crucial decisions any citizen will make. All social protest movements battle against great odds at their outset and history has shown that most revolutions fail. At times, desperate masses have seen little choice but to revolt. They did so in Iran when the shah's monarchy offered them no avenue for expressing their legitimate grievances other than protests in the streets. The Islamic Republic does offer the public the opportunity to participate on the national scene, but it is an opportunity hemmed in on all sides by clerical fiat. Still, when an average citizen is faced with a choice of rebelling against a vicious system or casting a ballot that will have a limited impact, he will probably opt for the latter. The elected institutions of Iran will not govern the theocracy, but they do provide it with an important safety valve.
All this is not to suggest that the clerical oligarchs have mastered the means of staying in power forever. The Islamic Republic's tenure has been a turbulent one. In its first decade, the theocracy had to battle the marginalized remnants of the revolutionary coalition that were agitating for their share of power. Then in the 1990s came the reform movement, with its enterprising efforts to conform religious ideals to pluralistic norms. Supreme Leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei and his militant followers understood that such a reform effort would not create an Islamic democracy but would lead to the extinction of the Islamic Republic. And then came the titanic Green Movement in the aftermath of the fraudulent presidential election of 2009 that shook the foundations of the state. The regime has never completely recovered from the convulsions of that summer. In 2018, Iran was once more rocked by demonstrations that began with economic grievances but quickly led to calls for the overthrow of the theocracy. Still, Khomeini's unusual amalgamation of clerical ruling bodies coexisting with less consequential elected institutions was an ingenious manner of protecting his revolution. It is an enterprise that will one day come to an end. But its sheer longevity is a tribute to his innovative approach to founding a political regime.
Yet another facet of the Islamic Republic is its uncanny ability to renew its constituency in the Iranian polity. A revolution usually fades when those who were present at the creation pass from the scene and a new generation of leaders inevitably looks to different sources of authority and legitimacy to underpin its rule. In the 1990s, Iran gave the impression that it would be following the model of China and other revolutionary states that eventually transcend their founding dogmas. Intellectuals, businessmen, and technocrats dominated the public sphere as Iran seemed to be distancing itself from its revolutionary heritage. The clerical reformers were speaking of an Islamic democracy while the younger generation was moving away from a political culture that celebrated martyrdom and spiritual devotion. Beneath the surface of reform and change, however, was another segment of society: pious young men, many of them veterans of the extreme violence of the Iran-Iraq War, who remained committed to Khomeini's original vision. From this segment of society emerged men such as Ahmadinejad and diplomat Saeed Jalili, to provide a second wave of true believers in Khomeini's original ideology.
A strong strain of nostalgia motivates this younger generation of conservatives. In their publications and declarations, they tend to romanticize the 1980s as the pristine decade of ideological purity and national solidarity. Its adherents saw it as an era when the entire nation was united behind the cause of the Islamic Republic. Khomeini and his disciples were dedicated public servants free of corruption and crass competition for power, traits that would hardly characterize many of their successors. Self-reliance and self-sufficiency were cherished values of a nation that sought to mold a new Middle East. As with all idealized recollections, the conservatives' view of the 1980s has a limited connection to reality. But it is an invented past — a manufactured reality — that continues to draw a segment of the public to the theocratic state.
It is impossible to determine what portion of the Iranian public supports the revolution and its mission of ensuring God's will on earth. Given all that we know about the cultural tastes, political aspirations, and cosmopolitan nature of Iranian society, it is likely to be a small minority. Still, it is a minority tied together by religious networks, state patronage, and a sense of being under siege by the forces of change. The toxic mixture of radical religion and strident nationalism continues to attract some portion of the younger generation to Khomeini's cause. These people find material benefits in his state and a sense of salvation in his ideology. Marxism promised its adherents rewards here on earth, while Islamism calls for sacrifices that will be redeemed in the afterlife. After decades of failed experimentation, it was easy to prove that Marxism had not succeeded and that it could not transcend the forces of history. It is harder to demonstrate conclusively that Islamism cannot deliver on its celestial promises.
All this discussion of ideology and institutional juggernauts should not obscure the centrality of terror in sustaining the Islamic Republic. The regime's main enforcers are the Revolutionary Guards, the 125,000-strong shock troops commanded by the ideologues who stand committed to the values and philosophical outlook of the militant clerics. Throughout the 1990s, they called for the suppression of the reform movement and denounced its attempts to expand the political rights of the citizenry. The Guards were unleashed to deal with student protests in the summer of 1999 and pressed the leadership to violently dispense with the pro-democratic forces. And they were critical to the repression of the Green Movement in 2009. As they gained stature and wealth, the Guards emerged in the 1990s as an independent pillar of the state whose predilections and demands cannot be ignored by the ruling authorities.
(Continues…)
Excerpted from "Revolution and Aftermath"
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