Iran's emergence as the predominant
indigenous power in the Middle East is often
attributed to recent geopolitical changes in the
region, in particular the downfall of the Taliban
and Saddam Hussein. The importance of external
events notwithstanding, new internal dynamics are
an equally important dimension to Iran's growing
geopolitical weight.
The sudden rise of
Mahmud Ahmadinejad and the emergence of a more
homogenous political elite in Tehran are
unprecedented in
the
27-year history of the post-revolutionary Iranian
state. In little over a year Ahmadinejad has
consolidated his power at home and is fast
emerging as an important player on the global
stage, as evidenced by his trip to Venezuela and
the deepening relationship with that country's
president, Hugo Chavez.
While internal
unity is clearly reinforcing Iran's growing clout
in the region and beyond, the long-term impact of
this growing homogeneity on the country's
political development is not so clear. It is more
than likely that the changes of the past 12 months
and the emergence of a more "presidential" system
will have a lasting effect on the fundamental
features of Iran's unusual political system. Often
presented as a lackey of the clerical
establishment, Ahmadinejad may yet end up being
the bane of the same establishment.
Revolutionary Iran: Fragmented from the
outset Understanding the rise of
Ahmadinejad and the political unity he has
engendered requires a deep understanding of the
intricate factional politics of the Islamic
Republic.
The political system that
emerged from the Iranian revolution is impossibly
intricate and complex. At the heart of this
complexity lie the regime's dual theocratic and
democratic aspirations. The theocratic component
is underpinned by Velayat-e-Faqih (Rule of
the Jurisconsult), the most potent symbol of
clerical supremacy in the Islamic Republic. But
beyond this the system is organized as a
conventional republic, with all the institutions
and processes that go with it. Even the regime's
harshest critics find it hard to dismiss its
democratic credentials, which are underpinned by
regular elections and a lively atmosphere at all
levels of the country's political society.
Meanwhile the regime and its hardcore
supporters take pride in the fact that the Islamic
Republic has never undermined the democratic
process. They frequently refer to the summer of
1981, when the embryonic Islamic Republic came
under a ferocious terrorist campaign by an
assortment of extreme leftist organizations, but
the authorities still refused to impose a curfew,
let alone declare a state of emergency.
Much of the ideological rivalry of the
1980s was masked by two potent factors:
revolutionary fervor and the towering charismatic
leadership of the late ayatollah Ruhollah
Khomeini. Both factors were reinforced by the
Iran-Iraq War and Iran's unswerving determination
to thwart Iraqi president Saddam Hussein's
regional ambitions.
It was the war against
Saddam's regime and the charismatic leadership of
the "Imam" that ensured a high degree of
radicalism and prevented the Islamic Republic from
developing into a "normal" state. Moreover, the
war and the "Imam" were at the core of the
regime's messianic message and underpinned its
appeal across the Muslim world. The war's formal
ending in August 1988 sent shock waves throughout
the regime and marked the effective end of its
pan-Islamic ambitions. Indeed, it had a depressing
effect on Islamists everywhere, from Indonesia to
Egypt's embattled Muslim Brotherhood.
The
death of Khomeini almost a year later in June 1989
was another massive setback to revolutionary
radicalism and removed the last major obstacle to
a return to normalcy. For a decade the "Imam" had
been central to the Islamic Republic. He was not
only a unifying figure, but effortlessly reflected
the nature, values and ambitions of the
post-revolutionary Iranian state.
Khomeini's demise also threatened to
expose the deep divisions in the Islamic
Republic's clerical class. Broadly speaking, the
ruling clerical class divided along conventional
left and right themes. The left-wing Majma'e
Rohaneeyoone Mobarez (MRM - Forum of Militant
Clergy) was rivaled by the equally powerful Jame'e
Rohaneeyate Mobarez (Society of Militant Clergy).
The left-wing MRM remained dominant throughout the
1980s, with the majority of deputies in the majlis
(parliament) professing loyalty to it. Many of
these deputies were lay people who were deeply
affiliated to clerical forums. Moreover, the
Islamic left's position was buttressed by former
prime minister Mir Hossein Mousavi, himself a
deeply committed Khomeinist and left-winger.
Khomeini's style of leadership was marked
by factional neutrality and a propensity to reward
and punish both factions in equal measure. It was
this characteristic that enabled rival factions to
claim the "Imam's line" as their own, in effect
ensuring Khomeinism's transcendence over the
left-right dichotomy. The "Imam's" passing removed
this unifying glue, but it failed to undermine the
regime seriously, as many analysts had predicted
it would.
Rafsanjani and the beginnings
of reform The emergence of the reform
movement in the Islamic Republic can be directly
traced to the ending of the Iran-Iraq War and the
demise of Khomeini. [1] The failure of the Islamic
Republic to defeat Saddam's Iraq in the
battlefields forced the country's leaders to
relinquish (at least temporarily) their ambition
to play a decisive role in the politics of the
Middle East and the wider Muslim world. Moreover,
the regime had to accept its limitations as a
conventional nation-state and operate solely at
this level in international relations. The
violence this inflicted on many of the regime's
core ideological premises cannot be overstated.
Hashemi Rafsanjani was the first champion
of reform. His first presidential term (August
1989-June 1993) was marked by a serious effort to
rebuild the damage inflicted by the war and reform
the country's economic infrastructure. Rafsanjani
and his allies (loosely referred to as
"technocrats" - they later formed a political
party by the same name, known as Kargozaran in
Persian) - and promoted Chinese-style reforms in
the Islamic Republic. They sought to overhaul the
country's infrastructure and reconnect the economy
to the global market in an effort to normalize
Iran's position in international relations.
In hindsight, this was hopelessly
optimistic, not least because the configuration of
political and economic interests in Iran is wholly
different to China. In Iran it is near impossible
to carry out meaningful economic reforms without
substantially altering the political landscape in
the process.
The shortcomings of
Rafsanjani-style reform and the corruption it
engendered provoked sustained opposition from two
quarters. First and foremost, it mobilized the
core supporters of the regime on the left and
right. To the Islamic left, Rafsanjani - by
eliminating subsidies and generally undertaking
policies that hurt the poor - was abandoning the
core principles of the revolution, which had
promised relief from misery.
To the
Islamic right, the relaxation of social strictures
and easing of Islamist attitudes posed a very
serious threat to the cultural and ideological
cohesion of the regime. While the Islamic right
was dominant for most of the 1990s (in a reversal
of fortunes from the 1980s), many on the left
joined it to isolate and undermine Rafsanjani and
his supporters in his second term in office
(1993-97).
Second, opposition to
Rafsanjani came from a group of second-generation
revolutionaries who were deeply disillusioned with
the regime in its entirety. Mainly hailing from
the intelligence services and the Islamic
Revolutionary Guards Corps (IRGC), this group of
second-generation revolutionaries wanted the type
of reform that would eventually change the Islamic
Republic beyond recognition.
The key
personalities were Saeed Hajarian (former deputy
minister of intelligence); Ali Rabi'i (one of the
founders of the IRGC and a former senior
intelligence officer); Abbas Abdi (a former
student who participated in the seizure of the US
Embassy in 1979); Akbar Ganji (former IRGC
intelligence officer); Hamid Reza Jalaipour
(former IRGC commander); Mohsen Armin (former IRGC
commander in Lebanon); Mohsen Sazegara and Ali
Mohammad Mahdavi (both former IRGC commanders).
These former intelligence officers and
IRGC commanders first came together in the "Center
for Strategic Studies", a think-tank linked to the
Iranian Foreign Ministry. They later branched out
into obscure publications, all the while working
hard to engineer a climate conducive to a
reformist seizure of power. Their time came in May
1997 with the surprise presidential election of
Mohammad Khatami.
Khatami and the end
of reform? Unlike Rafsanjani and his
"technocrats", Khatami and his allies were serious
reformers who sought to weaken and finally remove
the theocratic institutions of the regime. But
despite an early promise, this large and serious
reform movement gradually splintered and finally
collapsed altogether. While much has been made
about the reaction of the Islamic right and the
conservative establishment and their single-minded
determination to thwart the reform movement, the
failure of the liberal reformists was in essence
rooted in a lack of unity and viable policies.
The reform movement was impossibly broad,
accommodating at one end such personalities as
Khatami and Hajarian (who were rooted in the
Islamic left tradition) seeking gradual reforms,
and at the other radical student activists out to
destroy the Islamic Republic. What had started off
as a reconfiguration of factional politics in the
Islamic Republic (with elements in the Islamic
left moving toward the liberal center) had, by the
summer of 1999, morphed into a potentially serious
security challenge to the Islamic regime. The
subsequent crackdown on the reformers was
inevitable.
More broadly, the liberal
reformers' failure was partly due to a mistaken
belief in their ability to monopolize reformist
politics in Iran. The theory and practice of
reform are among the legitimizing themes of the
Iranian revolution. Different factions in the
regime entertain different ideas about reform. The
liberal reformers' fatal flaw was in
overestimating their constituency and failing to
appreciate that any reform program in Iran
immediately prompts rival reform narratives and
projects.
In essence, the liberal
reformers were mostly composed of
second-generation revolutionaries who had broken
with the discourse of the Islamic regime. However,
they were vastly outnumbered by more mainstream
second-generation revolutionaries who also aspired
to reform the country. This second generation came
of age with the surprise presidential-election
victory of Mahmud Ahmadinejad in June 2005.
The rise and rise of Ahmadinejad
Western analysts have been at pains to
describe the sudden rise of Ahmadinejad. Lacking a
deep understanding of Iranian politics and the
vast and complex networks of power and patronage
that keep the Islamic Republic together, these
analysts have resorted to portraying Ahmadinejad
in simple terms. Most of these descriptions
revolve around the theme of Ahmadinejad as an
ultra-fundamentalist millenarian hell-bent on
propelling his country toward conflict with the
West.
The more cynical analysts have gone
one step further and attribute Ahmadinejad's rise
to a massive election fraud orchestrated by
conservative-controlled security services and
paramilitary forces. This type of banal analysis
is flawed through and through and reflects the
worst aspects of Western journalism in the Middle
East. For all his eccentricities and shortcomings,
Ahmadinejad was elected by a broad majority of the
Iranian people. His shock election victory
(similar to the shock victory of Khatami in May
1997) is a product of the Islamic Republic's
imperfect democracy and the extreme volatility of
the Iranian electorate.
More broadly,
Ahmadinejad's success as president over the past
12 months is grounded in his populist style and a
genuine reputation for probity and honest
governance. Ahmadinejad is very different from the
previous five presidents of the Islamic Republic,
because of both his impeccable working-class roots
and his career in the IRGC. His working-class
credentials (immediately obvious in his demeanor
and speech) have arguably made him into the most
popular president in the republic's 27-year
history.
At the strategic level,
Ahmadinejad's rise can be attributed to the
empowerment of second-generation revolutionaries.
Broadly speaking, the second-generation
revolutionaries developed their ideological
consciousness and political ties on the
battlefields of the Iran-Iraq War, as opposed to
the turbulent streets of the Iranian revolution.
They are generally young (mostly in the 35-50 age
range), are culturally conservative but espouse
more egalitarianism in the socio-economic field.
Although they are close to the first-generation
Islamic right, they are not part of the
conservative establishment.
At the highest
political levels, the second-generation
revolutionaries are represented by two core
organizations, namely the
Jamiyat-e-Isargaran-e-Enqilab-e-Islami (Islamic
Revolution Devotees Society), better known as
Isargaran, and Etelaf-e-Abadgaran-e-Iran-e-Islami
(The Developers of Islamic Iran Coalition).
Isargaran is in essence composed of war veterans.
Although it is ideologically close to some
right-wing circles, it does not have strong ties
to the conservative establishment.
Etelaf-e-Abadgaran is also composed of war
veterans, but it has two distinctive features:
large numbers of former senior IRGC commanders at
its core and closer ties to the conservative
establishment. Both organizations flow into each
other, but the relationship between political
coordination and personal ties is not clear.
Little over a year after assuming power,
Ahmadinejad and his allies have radically altered
the political landscape. Once plagued by factional
disputes and intractable ideological debates, the
Islamic Republic is becoming more homogenous and
self-confident.
The growing homogeneity is
rooted in four factors. First and foremost,
Ahmadinejad enjoys the support of a vast network
of activists who are mostly organized by
second-generation revolutionaries. Second, the
confident and populist leadership style of
Ahmadinejad has reinforced the second generation's
growing power in the Islamic Republic. Third,
growing public disillusionment with the reformers
and the conservatives (and the left- and
right-wing clerical organizations that control
them) has created a vacuum that is being filled by
the second-generation revolutionaries. Finally,
Ahmadinejad enjoys the strong support of the
Islamic Republic's leader, Ayatollah Seyed Ali
Khamenei. Often mischaracterized as a
conservative, Khamenei is in fact a deeply
committed ideologue who (out of all the top
leaders of the regime) is closest to the
"Hezbollahi" grassroots.
While Khamenei
had major problems with both Rafsanjani and
Khatami, he seems to regard Ahmadinejad as his
protege. It is this unqualified support that has
deterred the conservative establishment from
attacking Ahmadinejad and his allies. After all,
some of the reforms of Ahmadinejad's government
(in particular the lowering of clerics' profiles
at the commanding heights of government) have
directly threatened deeply entrenched conservative
interests.
This growing homogeneity -
underpinned by a natural alliance between
Ahmadinejad and Khamenei - has had a major impact
on the Islamic Republic's perception of its own
clout in international relations. There is now
more clarity about the country's foreign policy
objectives, which enables the foreign-policy elite
to make decisions in a more timely and confident
manner. Nowhere is this confidence more evident
than in the nuclear-energy field, where the new
negotiating team (led by the tough and intelligent
Ali Larijani) has scored major successes over the
past 12 months.
In the final analysis,
while the country's geopolitical weight is set to
increase gradually for the foreseeable future, it
is not entirely clear what impact the advent of
political homogeneity will have on the Islamic
Republic. The system as a whole is not used to
this high level of unity, but to date there has
not been any serious resistance to Ahmadinejad and
his style of politics.
This has created
unprecedented opportunities for Ahmadinejad,
particularly in the foreign-policy field, where he
is fast emerging as the most sincere and
charismatic leader in the developing world. But
Ahmadinejad's growing prestige also raises the
profile of the Iranian presidency as an
institution. This may prove fatal to the
theocratic component of Iran's enigmatic and
complex political system.
Note 1. For an original
and authoritative account of the emergence of
Iran's reform movement, refer to the author's The Origins of
Iran's Reformist Elite, Middle East
Intelligence Bulletin, Vol 5, No 4, April 2003.
(This article first appeared in SaudiDebate.com.
Published with permission.)
