Exactly 30 years after its creation, the Islamic Republic of Iran faces an unprecedented existential crisis. Its population is sharply divided – and the divisions reach to the very top of its establishment. And yet, the conflicts we see in Iran today were almost pre-ordained from the very first days of the Iranian Revolution. The system designed by Ayatollah Khomeini, the revolution’s main ideologue, was, from its inception, an uneasy cohabitation of theocracy and democracy: velayat-e faqih, or ‘Guardianship of the Jurisprudent’, sought to reconcile an elected executive with oversight by the country’s Shiite ulama. The end result was a system that combined elected and unelected organs of power, plagued by an ever-present tension between Divine and popular legitimacy.
Thus, although the final word always remained the supreme leader’s – Khomeini, and, subsequently, Khamenei – and, although candidates were always strictly vetted, elections held under this system did present the population with some semblance of choice between a range of (albeit pre-selected) alternatives, allowing ‘the people’ to nudge the executive towards one of the factions (reformist, conservative, radical) within the country’s clerical establishment. In this sense, what happened during the latest ballot was unprecedented – the Iranian regime forcibly removed one crucial half of the Iranian regime’s legitimacy – the ‘popular’ half – from the scene at best by inflating the extent of the incumbent’s victory, at worst by stealing the election outright. In combination with satellite television, the internet, and years of pent-up frustration from an ever-younger and increasingly unemployed electorate, this proved to be an explosive miscalculation. More importantly, a crucial mechanism for resolving disputes within the Iranian establishment was fatally compromised. Aggrieved members of the public and of the elite were equally driven to take their objections onto the streets.
Since 1979, Iran has seen the model of its Islamic Republic as an alternative for the Muslim world, an alternative to either the Westernised model of Turkish secularism, or the traditional monarchies of the Arabian Gulf. Iran’s remains a highly ideologised regime, with a keen sense of purpose, both in the region and in the world. And, in recent years, it did seem as if Iran’s star was rising. The removal of Saddam Hussein made the Shiites - Iran’s natural allies - the largest group in this troublesome neighbour; Israel’s withdrawal from Southern Lebanon, and its defeat in the 2006 war pushed Hezbollah - very much an Iranian creation – into the Middle-Eastern limelight. There were hopes among some in Tehran that the Islamic Republic would finally find its place at the head of the Islamic Ummah; all that was missing was that ultimate conveyor of international status and regime security - a nuclear bomb.
Recent events have very much put that into question, by undermining the central principles of the ideological foundations of the regime. The “Islamic Republic of Iran” brand has been damaged, perhaps irreparably so. Much of the ideological appeal of the Iranian alternative came from its combination of religion and modernity, theocracy and democracy. Moreover, Iran’s leaders have consistently presented their project as an emancipatory exercise – from Western domination, and from the oppression of the Shah. Without a credible electoral system, this claim becomes shaky; but with ordinary Iranians shouting ‘death to the dictator’ from their rooftops, implicitly equating their supreme leader with the ultimate tyrant – the Shah – it comes close to collapse. Combined with the defeat of the March 8 alliance in Lebanon - partly because of Christian fears of Iranian domination - and the relative marginalisation of the Sadrists in Iraq, the rising start that was once Iran might – just might – be dropping once again.
It would, however, be wrong to underestimate the level of support the Iranian regime still enjoys, both domestically and regionally. The assertion by Tehran blaming Western powers for the post-electoral unrest will find a ready audience in both Iran and the wider Middle East, always a fertile ground for conspiracy theories. The task of blaming internal turmoil on the West would, however, have been far easier under the previous U.S. administration; with Washington now taking a much more measured approach, the image of America as the ‘Great Satan’ trying to subjugate Iran and the Muslim world has lost at least some of its power. With the splits and contradictions within Iran’s body politic painfully visible, the uncommitted standing at the sidelines, waiting to make their strategic choices – Christians in Lebanon, moderate Shiites in Iraq and elsewhere – are even less likely to choose in favour of Tehran.
The Iranian regime can react in two ways to this situation. Option one would be to reach some kind of intra-elite consensus, pushing through reforms that address at least some of the grievances voiced on the streets in recent weeks, restoring the ‘popular’ aspects of the system’s legitimacy and tackling some of the very real socio-economic problems underlying Iranian society. This would not resolve the fundamental contradiction within the Islamic Republic – theocracy versus democracy – but it would at the very least open a pressure valve bolstering its domestic (and perhaps also regional) legitimacy. The second option would be to retrench – blaming everything on Western interference, and maintaining the ideological purity of the Revolution by closing Iran to the outside world, politically, economically and culturally, turning the regime into an unfettered theocratic dictatorship. With the apparent victory of Khamenei and Ahmadinejad, this second option will also be the more probable, isolating the regime even further, increasing its reliance on ‘the bomb’ for its future survival. Any talk of imminent American-Iranian detente now seems to be painfully premature.
Kevork Oskanian – London based researcher in security and West Asian politics.
