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Revisiting the Iranian
revolution
By M K Bhadrakumar
Persians invented the game of chess. It
seems to remain very much their game. It is
"check-and-checkmate" in the epic game between
Iran and the United States - for the second time
in 27 years. There is dramatic irony in the
leadership of the Islamic government in Iran
passing into the hands of a leader who was
instrumental in planning the takeover of the
American Embassy in Tehran in 1979, which
triggered the "hostage crisis" and led to an
ignominious end to Jimmy Carter's political
legacy. Carter, too, had advanced a democracy
project in Iran, and ultimately became its victim.
Is President George W Bush following in Carter's
footsteps?
"They will never let go of us
of their own will. No more than they did in
Vietnam." Humbled by this remark time and again in
the restless streets of Tehran and Qom as the
Iranian revolution gathered speed in the autumn of
1978, Michel Foucault, the French historian and
philosopher, wrote that he wanted to respond that
"they are even less ready to let go of you than
Vietnam, because of oil, because of the Middle
East". Some four months later, half a million men
poured into the streets of Tehran, up against
machine guns and tanks, to wrench liberation from
"their" hands. The Iranian revolution that ousted
the US-backed Shah was certainly hard-earned.
Therefore, the efficacy of watching Iran
through American eyes has never been a good idea.
But the flood of Western media coverage of Iran is
so alluring and sedative that most observers end
up accepting the soporific almost knowingly, for
taking a short-cut to Iran.
Under the
presidency of Ayatollah Ali Akbar Rafsanjani
(1989-97), Iran was described for the first time
as a country of "fundamentalists" and "liberals".
Rafsanjani was the liberal and Supreme Leader Ali
Khameini was the fundamentalist. A dialectics was
on - so we were led to believe. The liberals
needed to be encouraged and the fundamentalists
should be isolated so that Iran's economy could be
globalized. With the Iran-Contra scandal, that
phase of interpreting Iran abruptly ended - with
red faces all around.
During the
presidency of Mohammad Khatami (1997-2005), the
cliche was that Iranians were either
"conservatives" or "reformists". Iran's salvation
lay in the international community facilitating
the ascent of the "reformists". Lately, a further
bifurcation came about - "conservatives" could be
"radical" or "moderate". Still a bit later,
another caveat was added - radicals could either
be "young radicals" or the "Old Guard". That such
neat characterizations have been essentially
polemical emblems is often overlooked.
It
is in this sense that Iran's presidential
elections have turned out to be an ethical
compass. Authentic politics in Iran has surfaced
after a long hibernation of nearly 17 years. Its
timing and outcome is extremely fascinating, and
no less intriguing. Foucault was prescient when he
wrote a quarter century ago:
It [Islamic government] impressed me
as a form of "political will". It impressed me
in its efforts to politicize structures that are
inseparably social and religious in response to
current problems. It also impressed me in its
attempt to open a spiritual dimension in
politics ... This "political will" raises two
questions:
Is it sufficiently intense in
the short term, and is its determination clear
enough to avoid ... Western-style democracy? Is
this "political will" rooted deeply enough to
become a permanent factor in the political life
of Iran, or will it dissipate like a cloud when
the sky of political reality will have finally
cleared ... (a) possibility we have forgotten
since the Renaissance and the great crisis of
Christianity - a political spirituality.
(Excerpt from Foucault and the Iranian
Revolution: Gender and the Seductions of
Islamism by Janet Afary and Kevin B
Anderson.) Mahmud Ahmadinejad's
landslide victory in last Friday's presidential
election in Iran can be summed up as a revival of
the spirit of the Iranian revolution of 1979. We
could glance in it shades of what Foucault called
"political spirituality". What happened?
Though the Iranian revolution of 1979 was
drawn from several quarters of the ideological
spectrum - social democrats, liberals, communists
and anarchists - its leadership passed into the
hands of the Shi'ite clergy. This was inevitable
given the working, intimate climate between the
Shi'ite and his mosque. The mosque is everyday
life for the Shi'ite, life itself. In times of
stress or unhappiness, the common Iranian looked
toward Qom. If there was a crisis, he looked for
the first signals from Qom.
The
unprecedented turnout of voters in the first round
of the presidential election on June 17 was a
clear indication to the outside world that all
across Iran, in the mosques, a call had been made
that the Islamic revolution and what it stood for
was in danger, and a renewal of faith in
demonstrative terms had become a "historical"
necessity. Outsiders cannot easily understand the
"historical" imperative except by recalling the
context of the tragic fate and the sense of
tragedy, of the wrongs and misfortunes that
accompany them, embedded in the Shi'ite
consciousness.
In the Shi'ite world,
hardly anything went right for centuries. Fate
slipped through the Shi'ites' hands; every ray of
hope would fade as soon as it began to shine. Acts
of incredible abjuration, courage and spiritual
strength in Shi'ite history, the ideology of
contestation and resistance, and of a defiant
preservation of distinctness and dignity - these
are the hallmarks of the epic of the Shi'ites. (We
are witnessing the early stages of its political
expression unfolding in Iraq, and a variant of it
in Lebanon.)
Why should the "signals" from
the mosque have gone in favor of Ahmadinejad?
Wasn't Rafsanjani, too, of Iran's "clerical
establishment"? Two out of every three Iranian
voters have chosen Ahmadinejad.
To find an
answer, we must revisit the Iranian revolution.
There were two broad political streams in the
revolutionary Shi'ism that overthrew the Shah's
despotic rule. These were the currents of freedom
and dignity with social justice, and, secondly,
the mystical-commercial-gustatory nexus between
the clergy and the Iranian bazaar. The demonic
force of Persian nationalism galvanizing the
revolution and the towering presence of Imam
Ruhollah Khomeini, the long-awaited 12th Imam,
subsumed the contradictory political currents
through the 1980s, though dissent had broken out
in the revolutionary camp no sooner than the Shah
was banished into exile. Of course, dissent took
many forms: for example, the titanic power
struggle between Ayatollah Behesti, the hardline
puritan, and Bani Sadr, who led the
intelligentsia, the students and the mujahideen.
(Rafsanjani played a cynical role then, too, and
rode to power by aligning with Behesti.)
The preoccupations over the eight-year
Iran-Iraq War (1980-88) precluded the dissent from
becoming an outright schism. Soon after, Iran
plunged into the depths of sorrow and loss with
the passing away of Khomeini. The Rafsanjani
presidency that followed (1989-97) presided over a
country deeply in mourning attending to the
million bleeding wounds inflicted by the war. That
was hardly the time for settling dissent. Besides,
Iran was confronted by continued American
hostility, despite the latter's assurances of
peaceful cohabitation that provided the basis of
the resolution of the "hostage crisis".
Rafsanjani, an astute politician of Machiavellian
proportions, utilized the prevailing political
climate for assembling a domestic coalition in
which bazaari interests reined supreme. All within
his coalition benefited, including corrupt
sections of the clergy, and, without doubt,
himself. Marooned in corruption and political
cynicism, by the end of the Rafsanjani presidency,
the Iranian revolution seemed to have all but
extinguished itself. Iran became, once again, ripe
for change and "reform".
Mohammad Khatami
offered a fresh look. Viewed through the prism of
"reformism" versus "conservatism", Khatami's
presidency (1997-2005) may appear as an
unmitigated failure. But, paradoxically, it was
the intensity that Khatami brought into the
Iranian debate that eventually sharpened the
hitherto unresolved questions of Iran's
revolutionary legacy - and, arguably, swept
Ahmadinejad into power.
A politician's
success ultimately rests on his ability to
"connect" with the people. Ahmadinejad's success
lies here. On the contrary, Rafsanjani became a
victim of the opportunist politics that he spawned
- by somewhat downplaying his bazaari links and
instead positioning himself cleverly as a
"reformist" (applauded no doubt by the West: his
advisers had already commenced discussions with
the British Embassy in Tehran for a compromise
over Iran's nuclear issue), as a benevolent uncle
of the Iranian youth and the middle class of north
Teheran. Rafsanjani simply went too far in a
direction that alienated the common man.
Son of a blacksmith, Ahmadinejad's fierce
championing of the downtrodden struck a chord
among the "pious poor", both in the rural areas
and among the urban poor - be it on land
redistribution or emphasis on social justice. His
impeccable revolutionary pedigree (he played a
role in the takeover of the American Embassy in
Tehran in 1979), his personal integrity and
Spartan private life, his unquestionable loyalty
to the regime, his anti-American rhetoric, his
pledges to fight poverty, corruption and
discrimination, his promise of a fairer
distribution of Iran's vast oil wealth (instead of
by "one powerful family" as he put it) - all this
immensely appealed to the common people.
The most important aspect of Ahmadinejad's
politics is that his platform attempts to put the
derailed Iranian revolution back on track - making
amends for the deviations of the "Rafsanjani era".
It harks back to the two principal ideologues of
the Iranian revolution - Ayatollah Shariatmadari
and Ali Shariati. For Shariatmadari, all power was
bad except the power of the imam. He inspired
among the Iranian revolutionaries the vision of an
Islamic government characterized by an absence of
hierarchy in the clergy, which allowed religious
leaders independence from one another, but placed
a dependence on those who listened to them and
gave importance to purely religious authority; an
Islamic government that was more a movement that
gave a permanent role in political life to the
traditional structures of Islamic society; an
Islamic government that allowed continuing
activity of political centers spawned in mosques
and religious centers all over the country,
introducing a spiritual dimension to political
life - what Foucault called a "political
spirituality".
Ali Shariati, enshrined as
the "invisible present", or the "ever-present
absent" (the highest privilege that Shi'ism
permits), and who studied in France, brought into
the revolution an entire doctrine of non-Marxist
socialism. Though coming from a religious
background, Shariati preached that the true
meaning of Shi'ism should not be sought in an
institutionalized religion but in the sermons of
social justice and equality as preached by the
first imam. Shariati's martyrdom stands out,
without doubt, as one of the most poignant sagas
of the Iranian revolution. It must be recalled
that Shariati's name was the only name that was
called out, besides that of Khomeini, by the young
Iranian revolutionaries (like Ahmadinejad) pouring
out into the streets in the winter of 1978. By
echoing Shariati's sermons, Ahmadinejad in his
election speeches reached out to the slumbering
collective memory of the Iranian revolution -
revisiting the revolution itself.
Thus,
the election of Mahmud Ahmadinejad as the new
president of Iran is bound to jog American
memories of Iran. But, first, what could be the
impact of Ahmadinejad's election for the outside
world minus the US (and, of course, Israel)?
To begin with, it should be clear to
anyone who followed the lively Iranian election
campaign over the past several weeks that the main
plank of Ahmadinejad's "manifesto" was Iran's
domestic issues. Ahmadinejad repeatedly emphasized
in his campaign speeches that he would lead the
Iranian people back to the principles of the
Iranian revolution - namely, economic development
based on social justice and national dignity. He
made promises on land reforms, employment
generation, fair distribution of oil wealth,
social control over national resources, support
for the weaker sections of society, the fight
against corruption, etc. He hardly spoke on
international issues.
Inevitably,
Ahmadinejad has taken positions on the two issues
that are central to Iran's foreign and national
security policy at the moment - Iran's relations
with the US and its nuclear program. On the first,
he has gone on record saying that any
normalization cannot but be on the basis of Iran
upholding its national interests. He has
emphasized that Iran will not compromise on its
national dignity and freedom of action on
international issues. His rhetoric is strongly
anti-American.
On Iran's nuclear program,
Ahmadinejad has asserted that Iran will not give
up its right to pursue a peaceful nuclear program
and develop nuclear technology, consistent with
its privileges and obligations as a signatory to
the nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty. Ahmadinejad
completely conformed to the stated official
Iranian position on the nuclear issue.
Equally so, something must be said about
how Iranian statecraft works. One of the enduring
legacies of Khomeini has been that policymaking in
Iran is a highly diffused process with a regime of
interlocking mechanisms providing an underpinning
with a view to ensure that optimal discourse and
debate takes place on all vital issues of national
interest and arrives at a consensus. Khomeini
thought of such a regime taking into account the
diverse social, political and ideological base of
the Iranian revolution, apart from acting as a
safeguard against foreign interference.
Thus, the office of the Iranian president
is vastly different from the American or French
system. It is no doubt an executive office, but in
the formulation of national policies, it works
within a collegium. It is rendered "powerless" if
it puts itself at odds with other key policymaking
institutions - the majlis (parliament), the
Expediency Council, the Guardians Council and, of
course, the Supreme Leader, who is the ultimate
embodiment of authority.
Iran has a highly
effective National Security Council (NSC), which
is the brain trust of the government on foreign
policy and security issues. The Foreign Ministry
carries out the NSC's decisions but is far from
being the "foreign policy establishment". The
majlis appropriates an assertive role in foreign
policy. This system of policymaking has ensured
consistency to the fundamentals of Iranian foreign
policy over the years, and at the same time
enabled Tehran to react to the outside world in
terms of its national interests. Clearly, it is
downright churlish to view Ahmadinejad's election
in apocalyptic terms.
But Ahmadinejad's
presidency will have certain new features.
Firstly, in systemic terms, there will be far
greater ideological cohesion at the policymaking
level in Tehran. Arguably, never in the past 17
years of the Iranian revolution, since Khomeini
passed away, has the country had such cohesion at
the leadership level as it will have in the coming
period. This, in turn, means that a hostile power
such as the US can no longer bank on a policy of
fragmenting the Iranian leadership structure
("fundamentalists" versus "liberals",
"conservatives" versus "reformists", "radical"
conservatives versus "moderate" conservatives,
"young revolutionaries" versus the "Old Guard",
unelected clerical bodies versus representative
state organs, etc.) and breaking the national
consensus.
Taking the above factors into
account, the US will be seriously limited in
threatening Iran at the present juncture. From now
on, Washington knows - and Tehran knows too - that
an outright military invasion of Iran has become a
"non-option" more than ever. The national
solidarity in Iran makes any form of intervention
a non-starter for a foreign power. On the
contrary, the US policy of containment of Iran has
not worked either. Iran's international standing
has never been as comfortable as it is today.
Soaring oil prices could make Iran an even more
important interlocutor.
European powers
are unlikely to jeopardize their cooperation with
Iran for the sake of sub-serving American
interests. The same is the case with Japan. Iran's
relations with Russia and China are fast assuming
the nature of strategic partnership. On the other
hand, Iran's cooperation is crucial for
maintaining security in Afghanistan and Iraq -
which happen to be "bleeding wounds" for the US.
Over and above all this, the carnival of
democracy in Iran makes a complete mockery of the
Bush administration's democracy project in the
Middle East. Tehran has thrown a gauntlet on the
arena: can Washington afford to allow a
legitimization of state power by the Arab street?
Finally, the mainstream impulse of the
Iranian revolution of 1979 had been toward
bringing Iran within the community of nations that
emerged out of national liberation struggles in
the developing world - in radical departure from
the Shah's proclivities of locating Iran within
the four walls of the Western world. Thus, in
sharp contrast with most other candidates in the
presidential election, Ahmadinejad has made it
abundantly clear that he is not in any hurry to
normalize relations with the US.
The
Iranian revolutionaries planned the "hostage
crisis" of 1979 as an insurance against any brazen
American attempt to interfere with the flow of the
Islamic republic's destiny. By choosing an
unvarnished revolutionary to lead the country at
this juncture, Iranians are once again signaling
to the Americans to lay off and to leave them
alone.
M K Bhadrakumar served as
a career diplomat in the Indian Foreign Service
for over 29 years, with postings including India's
ambassador to Uzbekistan (1995-1998) and to Turkey
(1998-2001).
(Copyright 2005 Asia
Times Online Ltd. All rights reserved. Please
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