Page 2 of 2 Iran revisits the Khomeini
legacy By Kaveh L Afrasiabi
echoed the
same sentiment in his full-page "paid commentary"
in the Wall Street Journal titled "I pray for Bush
to bomb Iran".
Of course, not everyone,
even in Israel, is on the same page with respect
to Iran. A respected Israeli military historian,
Martin van Creveld, has recently been quoted in
the right-wing Washington Times: "We are in no
danger at all of having an Iranian nuclear weapon
dropped on us. We cannot say so too openly,
however, because we have a history of using any
threat in order to get
weapons ... thanks to the
Iranian threat, we are getting weapons from the US
and Germany."
Unfortunately, van Creveld
is an exception to the rule, and as the
proceedings from a recent conference in the
Bahamas on the "Iran threat" make clear, there is
a serious attempt under way to steer US policy
toward coercive confrontation with the Islamic
Republic.
The list of participants in that
conference included an Iranian expatriate, Abbas
Milani, who works at the conservative Hoover
Institution in California and has recently penned
articles with a number of former colleagues of US
Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice, eg in the
Washington Quarterly, about how an opening with
Iran should be exploited by the US to push for
that country's democratization, calling this a
"win-win" strategy. The sponsoring organization of
the Bahamas conference has just announced a new,
generous grant from the US State Department aimed
at helping "activists" in the Middle East.
But in a direct rebuttal of such misguided
approaches, which backfire with the democratic
elements in Iran, Nobel Peace Prize winner Shirin
Ebadi has penned an article in the International
Herald Tribune, together with an Iranian
colleague, Mohammad Sahimi, questioning the wisdom
of the White House's "fund for democracy" in Iran
that only takes away the legitimacy of those
pushing for greater democracy there.
The
fact is that the appellation "theocracy" for
today's Iran does not fully capture the complexity
of post-revolutionary political developments in
Iran. Khomeini founded an Islamic republic
enjoying a kind of institutional heteronomy and
linked to two distinct forms of power,
republicanism and theocracy.
Accounts
predicated on "Iranian theocracy", eg Said Amir
Arjomand's book The Turban for the Crown,
underestimate the post-revolutionary paradigm
shifts away from monarchical rule and toward the
republican system of separation of powers and
checks and balances reflected in the new
constitution and so far highlighted by three
plebiscites, eight presidential elections, and
seven parliamentary elections, as well as several
local elections. A growing number of associations,
groups, political parties and publications have
emerged in Iran, which contradict the
stereotypical image of the Islamic Republic as a
closed, hermetically intolerant society.
The recent criticisms of certain setbacks
on democratic rights in Iran typically miss the
negative implications of the United States'
military invasions of Iran's neighbors and its
constant threat of military invasion, which,
together with other reports of US-sponsored
espionage inside Iran, have caused the Iranian
polity to tighten up and close the loopholes
allowing US meddling.
Ahmadinejad must now
deliver on his promise that there will be no
compromise of legal rights and proceedings with
respect to the Iranian-Americans detained in Iran.
Should their innocence be proved in a court of
law, they should be released immediately.
Some writing about the Islamic Revolution
have been insufficiently cognizant of its
"world-disclosing" potential aptly captured by the
late French philosopher Michel Foucault, who
observed the revolution directly and termed it a
"fascinating break" with the past and also "the
first insurrection against the global system".
Nearly three decades later, Foucault's
premonitions are hardly refuted, as Iran continues
to struggle, together with other assertive
developing nations such as Venezuela and Cuba,
against a post-Cold War unipolar moment led by the
US superpower - and perhaps Nicaragua, in light of
the impending visit to Tehran by President Daniel
Ortega, who has stated: "We want to improve
relations with Iran in all areas."
On this
path, Iran has recycled the self-empowering
religious ideology that exalts heroism and
sacrifice, recalling Khomeini's statement: "This
martyr-producing nation is not afraid of any
enemy, power or conspiracy. Afraid are those whose
school of thought is not martyrdom."
Yet
contrary to Lewis and other pro-Israel pundits
constantly accusing Iran of having been devoured
by a "suicidal" religious ideology, Iranian
revolutionary leaders have always tempered their
exaltation of the "cult of martyrdom" with edicts
on national interests, the result being a
pragmatist foreign policy revolving around Iran's
cluster of national interests.
On the
whole, since Khomeini's passing, ideological
fixity and pragmatic policy reconsideration have
co-existed, sometimes rather uneasily, causing
ideological fragmentation, particularly when the
hot subject of rapprochement with the "Great
Satan", ie, the US, has received a new lease on
life, as is the case today, and one wonders if
this will mean yet another case of conservative
side-effects or a brave new chapter toward a
"post-Khomeini" foreign policy.
The
republic's short history has already proved that
there cannot be a "clean break" from Khomeini's
legacy and that the only healthy approach is a
gradual evolution based on the changing context of
Iran's survival strategy in the global milieu.
Kaveh L Afrasiabi, PhD, is the
author of After Khomeini: New Directions in
Iran's Foreign Policy (Westview Press) and
co-author of "Negotiating Iran's Nuclear
Populism", Brown Journal of World Affairs, Volume
XII, Issue 2, Summer 2005, with Mustafa Kibaroglu.
He also wrote "Keeping Iran's nuclear potential
latent", Harvard International Review, and is
author of Iran's Nuclear
Program: Debating Facts Versus Fiction.
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