RIP: the outdated export of revolution in the Middle East

Iran’s project is going the way of the Soviet Comintern. Does it show that the Muslim world no longer accommodates the dream of unity around a common enemy or ideological cause?

RIP: the outdated export of revolution in the Middle East

Lebanese Prime Minister Nawaf Salam’s recent declaration that the era of “exporting revolution” was over provoked an outcry from Iran’s allies in Lebanon, yet Tehran responded with conspicuous silence.

Attuned to the shifting tides of global politics, Tehran is quietly recalibrating its foreign posture, the Iranian foreign minister’s subsequent visit to Beirut signalling an intent to ‘turn the page’ with this small but symbolically significant country.

For decades, Iran invested heavily in “exporting its revolution” in Lebanon, both to extend its regional influence and to rally the world’s oppressed, as per its ideological mission. It sought to inherit the legacy of international socialism and communism, which had either been absorbed into liberal democratic frameworks or stagnated into bureaucratic authoritarianism.

Electric moment

The revolution’s 1979 triumph came amidst global upheaval. Ayatollah Khomeini’s return had electrified the region. The Camp David Accords had redefined the Arab-Israeli conflict. Marxist factionalism in Afghanistan had given way to a Soviet invasion. Margaret Thatcher was dismantling the British welfare state, while Ronald Reagan was reasserting American dominance after humiliations in Vietnam, Iran, and Nicaragua.

In this context, the world seemed poised for a new form of revolution, one not driven by class struggle but by identity. Post-war capitalism had shown it could absorb class-based politics and reshape Western societies. Iran sought a counter-narrative.

For decades, Iran invested heavily in "exporting its revolution" in Lebanon, both to extend its regional influence and to rally the world's oppressed

The newly established Office of National Liberation Movements in Tehran became the nerve centre of Iran's global revolutionary outreach. Its ideology centred on a war against "global arrogance," a phrase encompassing not only Western capitalism but all forms of tyranny, from both East and West.

Fall into disarray

There were lessons to learn from the Comintern—the international body established by the Bolsheviks to promote global communist revolution. The Comintern eventually deteriorated into a bureaucratic extension of Soviet state interests, often to the detriment of local revolutionary movements. after years of internal disarray, Joseph Stalin finally dissolved it.

Iran's experience followed a similar arc. Its revolution exported friction and fragmentation, sowed internal division, and exacerbated regional tensions, particularly with neighbouring Arab states. Like the Comintern, the Office of National Liberation Movements was ultimately dismantled, and its director executed in one of the Islamic Republic's more brutal internal purges.

This shift marked Iran's pivot from a transnational revolutionary agenda towards a more state-centric nationalism. It seemed that Lenin's The State and Revolution had finally found a receptive audience among former Islamic Leftists within the Iranian leadership. Yet Iran's (and the Soviet Union's) efforts were not the only revolutionary exports in history.

Other idealogues

As historian Philip Mansel recounts in Constantinople: City of the World's Desire, monarchist loyalists of the deposed French crown feverishly worked to prevent revolutionary ideas from reaching the Ottoman court. Chief among their warnings was the regicide of 1789—widely viewed as a grave sin and political sacrilege.

What, then, does it mean today to declare the end of the age of exporting revolutions, with Iran's model perhaps the final experiment of its kind? Does it reflect a deeper transformation in the political and social fabric of the Muslim world that no longer accommodates the dream of unity around a common enemy or ideological cause?

What does it mean to declare the end of the age of exporting revolutions, with Iran's model perhaps the final experiment of its kind?

Almost from the outset, Iran's revolution failed to unite Muslims, not just because of sectarian fault lines, but because of Tehran's insistence on monopolising both religious and political leadership (the Guardian Jurist system).

A changed world

At the same time, the jihadist Salafi current fared no better in its attempt to spark an "Islamic awakening", burdened by destructive, nihilistic tendencies that ran counter to the spirit of the age and stood in stark contrast to the modest aspirations of most Muslims: peace, dignity, and social justice.

Viewed in this light, neither Iran nor its regional allies should mourn the end of the revolutionary export project. The world is changing hugely, driven not by ideology but by Artificial Intelligence, robotics, and the digital technologies reshaping human existence.

Compared with this unfolding upheaval, the great revolutions of the 20th century—with all their lofty manifestos and ideological fervour—appear not merely unrepeatable, but perhaps irrelevant, or even incomprehensible.

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